How Transcendent Leaders Make Leaps in Business
Today, enlightenment and leadership need to go hand in hand.
As leaders, we may be stirred by a purpose, inspired to create greatness, or even be moved by a vision that energizes us. Yet without anchoring our actions in the depths of our Being, we can find ourselves adrift on the currents of reality, facing challenges and stumbling blocks that are qualities of the lower mind.
An Enlightened Leader is someone who has recognized their true nature, their ‘I- Am-ness.’ They have realized the eternal essence of all things, which goes beyond all descriptions.
This direct experience is what all the ancient teachers and great wisdom masters throughout time have been speaking about.
Can you imagine yourself as an enlightened leader?
Nowadays, it's not a far-fetched idea.
If you've been around the block, you've come to recognize that personal growth can only take you so far.
What's called upon in this day and age is the awakening and enlightenment of our total condition as a leader.
This means bringing to light the areas of our lives where we have shadows, insecurities, and struggle patterns. We've adopted them from society, from our childhood caregivers, or from other successful figures that we think we should somehow emulate. Perhaps they formed when we tried to appease a parent in some way or tried to gain acknowledgment from the public or others.
These subconscious desires for approval and safety are not our highest motives.
These motives take us off track from the power, the impact, the influence, and the reach of our magnificent work.
To come to that magnificent work, we have to be able to subject ourselves to the vulnerability of asking ourselves – truly, from an unfettered, pure, baby-like space:
“Who am I?” This is the starting spot.
Japanese Zen masters have called this experience Kensho: “seeing into one’s true nature.” It is, ultimately, a process of inquiry that continually reveals deeper layers of our true essence.
Obviously, the answers to “Who am I?” are many – I’m a relationship to someone in this way, I’m a father in this way, I'm a business leader in this way. I'm a son to somebody. I'm a lover to somebody else. I'm a business colleague, etc.
These are identities, identities, identities.
Most of the time, it's our identities that are leading our lives. But our identities are only structures, personality structures that are formed from the ways that we deal with reality. They are the roles we play.
We can choose them, change them, discard them and create them.
Our identities are not our true Self.
When we choose to lead from our true Self, who we actually Are, we are choosing a very courageous act.
Leading from the energy of our core essence, we become uncut, we become unleashed, we become more powerful, we become more aligned with existence itself.
This essence of enlightened leadership is within me, it is within you. An enlightened leader lives from a place of true transcendent power, allowing all things to come and go, acting with the clarity of a warrior and the wisdom of a sage.
I believe it is within each and every leader to come to this eternal knowledge, this eternal wisdom. It is our highest calling to lead from our true being, rather than from the small mind of identities and patterns that we carry around with us.
Are you willing, truly, to have that experience?
To let reality, existence itself, be the guiding force of your leadership?
One who says yes, to me, is an Enlightened Leader.