Leading like a Shaman

There once was a village that was experiencing a horrible drought. In desperation the villagers sent for a holy woman in hopes that she could break the drought. When she arrived, she went into the small house that the villagers had provided and closed the door behind her. The holy woman sat in the house and began to meditate. The villagers paced back and forth outside the house impatiently waiting for her to come out and deal with the drought. After three days of this, the sky clouded up and a gentle but steady rain fell from the sky. When the holy woman emerged from the house the villagers asked how she had made this miracle happen. She looked at them and smiled. “When I arrived,” she said, “I realized that this place was out of harmony, and that I too was out of harmony. I went into the house and meditated for three days, until I was back in harmony. When I was in harmony, the place moved back into harmony. When the place was in harmony, the rains came.”

The holy woman understood the secret of alignment; we can align with the place and people around us, or pull the place into alignment with our own connection to Spirit. This is such a subtle process that most people do not realize that they are moving away from their sense of spirit and aligning with the surrounding emptiness until the inner sense of barrenness becomes overwhelming. Leaders who are driven by Spirit must face and embrace this challenge on a daily basis; how to remain connected to Spirit, and bring that connection to the out-of-harmony hallways that fill our academic and corporate worlds.

It is easier to make decisions from fear than it is to stay open to adventure. It is easier to create shields of hierarchy than to be visible and vulnerable. There is no true leadership or connection to Spirit, however, if we make our choices from deep within our own fears. It is more powerful to ask ourselves what we would do if we were like the holy woman, aware of our ability and need to stay in harmony and alignment with spirit.

This is the challenge then: to be a Shaman, aware of how the places and tasks, people and obligations, commitments and goals, time schedules and rules tug on us, drain us, and pull us out of our internal sense of spiritual harmony, and yet bring spirit with us as we walk through the empty hallways of our world. If we take the time and energy to realign ourselves with spirit, if we find the courage and elegance to walk and work in that state of harmony, we will find that our hallways are no longer empty, but are filled creative possibility and passion.

Inspiring a Renaissance of Spirit

What is a Renaissance of Spirit? It is awakening the inner sleeper, the dynamic creative force that longs for a true experience of life. It is heeding our desire to live with passion, to embrace and be engulfed by our bliss. A renaissance of spirit ocurrs when we embrace a personal relationship with the universe, measured only by the depth to which it resonates with our true self.

Why do we seek this? Because, as Joseph Campbell said, we are not looking for the mealing of life, but for a meaningful authentic life experience. It is this personal experience that opens our heart and allows us to embrace our own depth of emotion, that frees us from our mundane quotidian routine. We are lifted above our concerns and worries, all of which seem to become trivial, and placed into the midst's of our personal adventure.

How do we enter this personal renaissance? Not through our minds, but through our hearts. The most exciting and often frustrating thing about the journey is that there are no rules, no always or never, no one-right-way or guaranties, only crative chlices. The guides posts are our sense of connection and joy, and feelings of alignemne with the universe. As a wonderful pirate once taught, "Listen to the singing compass of your heart, and it will guide you to the wonderful horizon." Here is to the Pirate's way of navigating into our own true life.