Everything is A Gateway to Awakening

Awakening is the moment when everything drops away and the only thing left is pure consciousness. It’s the feeling of aliveness that is at the centre of who we are. It’s the formless energy that everything is birthed from and that everything returns to. It’s the spirit infused in a newborn’s first cry and the soul present in the final breath of a beloved. It is the purity of the now. It is life itself.

Not my life, life.

While this may sound like a religious or spiritual teaching, what I’ve come to see is that it’s as important in leadership, as it is in the rest of our lives.

Awakening in leadership is the moment of inspiration, creativity and connection. It’s the lightbulb moment that uncovers answers to questions we’ve been trying to figure out for days. It’s the creative solution to a problem that our analysis and logic was unable to come up with. It’s the moment that our thinking drops and everything is possible.

And how do we access it? Well, what if everything is a gateway to this awakening?

What if we can be at the lowest point in our careers one moment, and in the most beautiful and expansive feeling the next?

When I first heard Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle describe their awakening moments, what surprised me most was that it came at a time of deep pain and misery. And in an instance, everything changed!

The particulars of their lives stayed the same, but their experience transformed with no intention or effort on their part, as if preordained, or at a minimum, not up to them.

This seemed peculiar to me.

How did this happen with no intervention, no personal development, no amount of meditation or intention?

As I read and learned about other awakening moments, and experienced my own small moments of awakening, I noticed they occurred all of the time.

I could be feeling awful about myself, and a little voice would mutter, “That’s not true. Go deeper.” And with no effort at all, I would naturally settle.

I could be angry and frustrated, and a voice would whisper, “There’s more to this than you can see.”, and a warm feeling would arise within me.

I could be in the midst of a contentious meeting or even on the receiving end of an angry tirade and find myself calming down with no conscious effort on my part.

It was as if something else was taking care of it.

As if I was meant to settle, meant to calm down.

But how could this be? How could I have spent countless hours reading and learning about tactics and strategies to be at peace, when it was already wired in, like a reflex I was born with and no one told me about.

When I was younger I thought that a beautiful sunset or a walk in nature would be gateways to awakening.

And I’m sure they are for some people, some of the time. They certainly have been for me sometimes. But they are not necessary, and they are not prerequisites and they certainly are not causal.

This became very apparent during a trip to Costa Rica. I was on my usual morning walk on the beach when a beautiful serene energy came over me. I was thrilled to be alive. I could feel the warmth of the sun on my face, the coolness of the sand on my toes and the sounds of chirping birds and waves caressed my earlobes. I was one with my surroundings. Boundless, expansive and in love.

Then suddenly a conversation I had had the day before crossed my mind, and my experience shifted instantly. I replayed the details of the conversation. I felt myself get irritated and righteous. My body became tight, my focus constrained and the beautiful feeling that had so eloquently and gracefully engulfed me moments before, seemed to disappear.

And maybe because the contrast of my experience was so drastic and so quick, something occurred to me.

I couldn’t be in love with the backdrop, it was still there and yet I felt entirely different. I must have been love itself because that is what is left when everything else fades away. Love is my nature. It only seems to disappear when I’m preoccupied with whatever created reality my mind has assembled.

But awakening hides in the shadows of my thoughts, humming along like a little piccollo amongst a loud and dramatic orchestra.

And if that is true. If love is my nature and these self created realities drop at any moment with no effort on my part, then everything and anything and nothing at all are gateways to awakening.

I don’t need to wait for the sunset. I don’t need to wait for the beach. I don’t need to walk in nature.

Awakening is my birth right. My most loyal friend, always ready to be heard, to be felt and to be of service.

And why should you care about awakening as a leader in the business world?

Because knowing this, and seeing this at a level that sits beyond our intellect is the secret to innovation, productivity, and solving complex issues.

We believe that answers to big challenges come from our intellect, our analysis and logic, but if we look for ourselves we’ll see that while easy answers may come from there, the big ones come from a space beyond our intellect, from the depths of our mind.

The more we attempt to find answers to complex issues in our intellect, the more we become tangled in the mind’s web of possible solutions, directions and methods. This alone should be proof of it’s inadequacy for the job, but we make it about us, our inability to find the right path forward and fail to notice that it’s simply the wrong tool for the task.

This is what Eckhart Tolle is pointing to when he says:

“There is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence.”

To know this, and to know that our nature is this, is the biggest gift to leadership that I can imagine. To know, really know, that this infinite genius is ready, available and willing to guide us through the biggest challenges of our careers is like having the smartest, wisest of mentors by our side every step of the way.

To know that we don’t have to do anything to access this genius.

That “Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.” (Alan Watts) is to discover that there is less to do than we ever imagined. We simply notice our thought created world dropping away effortlessly. And what is left is us. Us as a part of a greater whole. Us as a channel for infinite intelligence. Us as love.

And it’s time. Time for us to actually see this. To witness love in business all around us. To not negate it’s existence in this realm. To not excuse or wave it away as having no part in leadership, because how could that be true, if we are love, if we are infinite intelligence.

And it’s simple, dead simple.

“The quieter you become, the more you can hear.” Ram Dass

It’s like searching everywhere for an answer that is written on our forehead. If we simply become still and look inward, towards ourselves rather than outside ourselves, the answer reveals itself because it’s been there the whole time. If not in it’s entirety, then in a simple next step.

I am not suggesting our intellect has no place in leadership. Of course it does, but the more I look in this direction the more Robin Sharma’s quote rings true.

“The mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master.”

And recognizing this for ourselves, the simplicity and kind nature of it all, seems to help us dilute the illusion. And what is left, with no effort at all on our part, is infinite love, infinite genius and infinite possibilities.