The power lies within

Like all of us he was born free. However, unlike most of us he chose not to fall into the trap of environmentally imposed captivity. He shied away from taking competitive examinations, defied his parents and elders in not choosing the career they thought would make him rich and successful and landed himself a job which made him stay with the IT industry for 18 years.

All along he kept his dream alive and despite all the professional pressures kept escaping into pursuits that would bring him closer to his dream each day. And today, having chosen to step out of the illusory comfort of the corporate, seven years back, he lives a life of fulfillment and joy, still flowing and un-carving, refusing to succumb to the temptations of getting type-casted by the world as an expert or authority in applied human behavior and related subjects.

There are broadly three factors which are responsible in hardening and carving of the soft pulp of possibility that we are born with:

1. Parents and elders’ expectations which though imposed with the right intent often leads to an emotionally and spiritually hollow future. 
2. The academic pursuit which freezes one with the guilt that if the education acquired is not utilized in one’s profession, it will be a waste (as if it is not a waste any which way).  
3. The work experience which tends to make one believe that he or she is an industry, domain or functional specialist and therefore doing anything different would dilute the specialty. 

Life a gift 

Besides these three factors there is this overarching illusion of pursuing happiness through success as a fundamental right, not realizing that life and everything that comes with life is a gift and cannot be pursued as a matter of right. In fact, like sleep, more we work towards acquiring it, the more we get away from it. 

The current economic context demands un-carving. Un-carving and re-carving from a developer to a back-end process executive, a business analyst to an insurance agent or an investment banker to software architect.  

For those who are affected with the sudden need to un-carve and re-carve, more than the pain of rejection and worthlessness what could be bothering them is the perceived loss of professional relevance.  

The reality of relevance is however very different. The roles we take on in our lives – either stereotypically or archetypically – are ‘outside-in’ reactions. The prevalent socio-economic script tends to show up certain opportunities, to address which, there is a whole lot of investment in terms of strategy, time and effort for career planning. 

Never for once we stop to look inside and try to figure out

• Who am I?
• Where am I going?
• What am I doing here?

Never for once do we try to explore what could be the purpose of one’s existence, the innate preferences one is rooted and the innate potentials one is meant to grow towards. Yes, every growth in nature is heliotropic – growing towards the sun. And the sun – the ‘tat savitu’ – that we as human beings grow towards is our innate purpose, preferences and potentials – The Power Within. 

Maybe the disruptive climate that is here today and that which has been confronting us every now and then, is to awaken our consciousness of this power within and push us to embark on a journey of discovering the same. 

  

Discover one self

Once we have discovered this power the true inner relevance of an individual comes to light as one brings to life one's dream, rooted in the generative power of the individual. The road block to such discovery is our own smallness, powerlessness and worthlessness acquired as conditionings over millions of years across several generations.  

To able to move forward in this journey the first step therefore is to bring these conditionings to our conscious awareness. The second step is to accept these conditionings, which are lurking somewhere in our unconsciousness as an integral part of the unique ‘in-divi-duality’. The third step is exploring in the heights, through the power of affirmative and generative thoughts and words.

There are two beliefs which forms the cornerstones of this process of discovery –

1. In the world of perceptual reality all existence is dyadic - the day and the night, the birth and the death and the substance and the shadow. At no point in time can we, through this reality, view even a speck of sand in its entirety. The absolute reality however is non-dyadic which transcends the dimensions of time and space.  
2. All creations embody the true likeness and image of the creator just like the drop and the ocean – ‘tat twam asi’. Only when grounded in this belief one can be prepared to explore and discover higher than realized levels of participation and performance in human lives.

This article of mine was published in Deccan Herald on December 24, 2008. The original article may be downloaded from here.

De-mystifying Intent

About three years back, a protege of mine, came to me to declare with a sense of joy and pride that she had finally manifested her intent to be rich and famous. She announced with much elan that she had landed herself an envious assignment with a consulting major which would be taking her places (which also meant away from the miseries she was going through at that point in time) and will get her a fee which was more than ten times (in dollars) of what she could earn otherwise in India. To my astonishment, instead of feeling elated, I sensed a tinge of sadness in me. I don't know why. Infected by her enthusiasm and hoping and praying for the best to happen in her life, I held back my feelings and left her with my good wishes.

We weren't in touch for a long time until we bumped into each other a few months back. It took me some time to recognize her. Her attractive eloquent eyes were sunken and had dark circles around. The characteristic glow on her face had given way to a sickening pallor. The near-hour-glass shape she used to flaunt once had turned into that of a barrel. I instantly knew something was wrong. With concern, I whispered into her ears as I held her in an affectionate hug, "Good to see the prodigal return." And that was enough for the dam to break. In tears she described how her life was in a complete mess. Her relationship with her 'significant other' got screwed up so badly that she had to leave her home and family. She had landed in a legal battle with her partner which was draining money from her coffers like a receding tide. She had no one to turn to as her 'friends' and 'family' had distanced themselves. She was a complete wreck - socially, economically.

I instantly knew how it could have all happened. A pathological philomath she would be seen attending almost every other training program which had to do with ways of becoming rich and famous, quickly. She had also attended a rather expensive session on The Law of Attraction and The Secret and felt she had the answer. Inspired by the law, and driven by her greed, she did everything to manifest her desire, only to lose all of that and much more, coping with unfortunate events that had to come in her life to balance out the disharmony she caused for herself by manifesting something that had distracted her from her purpose of life. Yes, The Law of Attraction had become a Law of Distraction.  Savita (name changed) is not the only one to have been a victim of 'the law of distraction' and glorified greed mistaken for intent. There are many. Thanks to indiscriminate dissemination of mystical knowledge (which is called 'guru-mukhi-vidya' in India) and unguided practice of the same.     

Intent is a single-minded, self-affirmative and purposeful thought, directed towards
achieving a specific outcome, which galvanizes all energies and garners all support, magically, towards fulfillment.
The three words that qualify Intent and differentiate it from a greed-led egoic desire are:

1. single-minded - it's not another passing wish, 
2. self-affirmative - it's not a fear-led sponsoring thought and, most importantly,
3. purposeful - it's fulfillment justifies the very reason for the intendor's existence and contributes to the fulfillment of the Universal intent

The outcome that the power of pure intent drives is not conceivable by the logical mind. It is incredulous and exemplifies the power of divinity, dormant within.

In the above unfortunate instance and many such, where utmost misery has followed a flash of success, though there is lot of power and specificity packed in the thought, it is quite likely that the thought did not arise out of a inner sense of purpose. Most often than not, logical outcomes are envisaged and manifested outside-in, more out of desperation and a need or greed to get out of where one is. Leading to a temporary mirage of fulfillment, followed by mysteriously painful experiences.

So, what could be the reason for such painful experiences? How come they get manifested even if one has not consciously thought about them? 

To understand this mystery, one needs to have faith in the Cosmic Principle always working towards guiding us away from the path of perishment towards the path of purpose. The Existence is always re-organizing itself to make corrections and restore harmony systemically, even if it means causing hurt and pain, locally. Like a stone that, by coming in the way to cause hurt and pain, helps us to change our course of journey, so does a seemingly unfortunate event. Blessings in disguise, they are meant to bring us back in touch with our purpose of existence, thereby allowing Existence to fulfill its own purpose.

Misfortune often also serves as a catalyst to igniting of our intent. Real-life stories like that of ABCL and Mr. Amitabh Bachhan are testimonies of that.

Now, how do you think now that works? Feel free to leave your responses behind, if this speaks to you and reachme@indroneil.com if you intend to make a miracle happen in your life, without the risk of being hit by misery.

Why entrepreneurs are struggling to create value?

In the last decade or so I have been closely watching how entrepreneurs like you tend to conduct their businesses. One thing that I have noted is that at any point in time they would be in one of the three roles,

1. Executive - doing things
2. Expert - telling others how to do or
3. Enabler - making things happen

the executive and expert roles being more preferred than the enabler.
If you look at each of these roles closely, you will, to your astonishment have some answer to why as an entrepreneur despite slogging it out is not able to create equitable value. 
 

The Executive 

When you are in an executive role your influence and impact is the least. It is conductive in nature. You are in the dimension of Time and Space (which can be imagined as the rim of a wheel) transacting with entities in immediate proximity in an illusion of duality. The value transacted out of such execution is linear and incremental. It will be directly proportional to the time and effort you expend and the movement you make. The processes being cyclical, the net value creation in this role is zero - what you receive would be equitable to what you give and vice versa.

The Expert

When you are in an expert role your influence and impact is limited to your area of expertise. It is convectional in nature - intermediate entities playing the role of carrying the value across from your location to those who are in the area bounded by the limits of your expertise. Operating from the spokes of the wheel, you can expect to impact, indirectly across the radial lines of influence, only the entities which are on the arc between any two radial spokes. Because of interplay of intermediate and impacted entities some value creation happens, though most of it being tactical and not creational in nature.

The Enabler

When you are in an enabler role your influence and impact is the maximum. It is radiative in nature. You are no more in dimension of Time and Space but in an axial location around which temporal and spatial transactions happen amidst the illusion of duality. The value that you create is more far-reaching, pervasive, creational and eternal. Also, since your contribution are no more defined by dimensions of Time and Space there is hardly any time, effort or movement involved to create such value. The power of your presence, like the sun illumines and nurtures the system that is built around your presence.

Myth of value creation

The value that you assume to have created as an executive or an expert is like the cat licking blood from a stone thinking it to be of its prey, where as it is the same blood that had oozed out of its own bleeding paw. 

Recommendation

The most recommended role for an entrepreneur to take, for value creation to happen, is that of an enabler. More so in the human economy in which the ubiquitous network is the playground. Yet, as we are more conditioned to doing and telling, as opposed to making things happen, it does not come naturally. In order to take on the role of an enabler, by choice, one needs to learn new ways of influencing and impacting the enterprise and even before that, an entirely new way of seeing life. And once that happens, it's not only that the nature of entrepreneurship will different, the enterprise and economy itself will radically transform.

It's beginning to happen. Slowly but surely. You will see new models of engagement, earning and entrepreneurship emerging. Waiting for a new you to emerge. For which you have help at hand only if you are ready.

Are you? I am.

Is there a right price?

If there is one thing common amongst most sales professional it is the perception of, for whatever they are selling, the price being high. This is particularly true of products and solutions that are of niche and specialty nature.

It happened with me too at the beginning of my career when I was trying to sell some futuristic automation products to corporation at a price which I then thought was astronomically high. Much the same way, Chris Gardener would have felt trying to sell bone density scanners in the movie Pursuit of Happyness, at the end of most days I also would feel doggedly dejected. Till one day I realized that price was a mere perception. It was an indicator of the perceived worth of the product or service. And if there was mismatch between this perceived worth and the indicator, in most cases the indicator being higher than the perception, price was considered to be high.

How would the buyer be made to perceive the true worth? Obviously, by the seller making it known. A little soul searching led me to quickly understand that the worth I was making the prospective customer known was colored by my own perception of the worth of the product I was selling. And this perception, in turn, was colored my own self-worth or lack of it.

This was a revelation of sorts. I was projecting my own self-worth on to the product. And the customer, being no fool was getting to see it. The bigger revelation was that as soon as I became aware of it - and so acute was the realization that I will always be aware and watchful of it - this unconscious transference of worth vanished. I was still coping with my low self worth as an individual yet as a professional, in my role, I could with exactitude, communicate the value proposition pretty well, creating in the prospective customer a desire to own.

Much later, in early 2000, when I started my own consulting practice, I was faced with this challenge to set my own price. This time i was alert and aware. Because the market conditions due to recession were not very conducive I kept my person day rate low. But mind you, I would always say that this is s specially discounted price to suit your affordability. My rack rates were never compromised.

Only y'day i was sharing with my partner how for a facilitating a management intervention recently my rates, which by industry standards are considered to be premium, got accepted without the customer batting an eyelid. And I know it's going to be this way only. even if I am doing something pro bono, I never fail to mention what is the rate chargeable for my services.

So next time, before you want to state that the price is way to high for what you are selling, look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself what is my own worth to myself? Do I value myself for what I am? Do I love myself? Do I demonstrate it in my day to day action? And if not, do I carry my perceived worthlessness in my awareness, being watchful of not projecting it on to the product or solution I am selling or worse still on to the customer, who might also be struggling with her own worthlessness?

There is nothing called a right price. The price at which you buy your own product or solution, honestly, is the price at which you can easily make the other buy. And  if you can manage to raise your self worth, you can imagine what good you would be doing to what you are selling and the business. The 'how' of it will fall in place once you have bought into the 'how much', inside out.

Those who want to work with and raise their self worth may reachme@indroneil.com.

Man of action

It was the autumn of 2009. I was facilitating a 3-day session of The Power Within for a group of CXOs and entrepreneurs at a nearby resort. Participants had come in with their bags and baggages, to stay there for those three days, in quest of their real world, locking out the unreal. No one was in a hurry to react to the call of duty. A sense of freedom and stillness prevailed.

I was in my usual contented self, centered and surrendered to the Tao of unfolding. I had no need to 'do' anything as the group gradually morphed in a space of collective awareness that was being consciously held by me. As we re-assembled  after lunch on day-one, Anish one of the participants, an ops head with an MNC BPO quipped, "What is Indroneil doing here? Do we need him at all?" I had no verbal response. Just smiled amused, while others chuckled at this quip and then carried on with their exploration. At the end of the the third day, as the participants were sharing their experience of The Power Within, this same ops head announced unequivocally, "I have found my master ... within". Tears of wonder and gratitude rolled down my cheeks. It was humbling to witness the blossoming of six human souls. As an enabler there was little that I did but accept and acknowledge my presence as an instrument of Universal grace that got channeled through me to touch lives of those in the group. At the end of the program, even after working for almost 12 hours each day, with very little sleep in the nights I was full of youthful energy and zest. Like every time I was ready to get into another lab, another intense experience of human awakening. Because there was no doing, no fretting, no sweating. No task to be completed, no goal to be achieved. No mask to be donned, no loss to be retrieved. 

I had no need to prove my relevance. To myself or to others. No fear of my existence being questioned. No aspiration of being approved.  

It's been like this now for more than a decade now. Watch meaningless, transient activities going on, on the merry go round of tireless time, from the center. Sometimes go out to fetch lost souls hovering around watering holes of make-believe organizations from the circumference of futile slavery to the axis of responsible action for them to awaken and blossom. Leaving no footprints on the radial path for others to try and trace.  

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Sustainability starts from within

Oye zealots of sustainability! How sustainable are you as an individual? How efficient you are with your human energies? How effective are you in managing your inner clutter and use of time and effort?

Sustainability, as often misunderstood, is not so much about ecology or economy. By its very definition, it is by and for humanity and human-ness waiting to be awakened.

World over there are many honest believers and missionaries who have dedicated themselves to furthering the cause of sustainability. And then there are, like it happens with any transformational movement, many humbugs that have craftily blended themselves with the sustainability brigade to become rich and famous. I have met both the kinds - the honest and the humbug - and frankly found not much of a difference when it comes to making the mission possible. The reason is simple: all of them are passionate about doing something outside, with the ecology (the supply side) or with economy (the demand side) or both. Yet none seem to be concerned about looking at themselves – their being and their behaving – and work towards transforming themselves as human beings before going out to transform the world.

If sustainability has to succeed as a mission, it needs to embrace and start with enabling individuals to become emotionally and spiritually more energy efficient, responsible for their behaviors in the human eco system and sensitive to the impact that they leave on humanistic systems by what they think, say and do.

Human beings are perhaps the only form of life on this planet that is capable of generating energy not only for themselves but also for the environment in which they live through consciousness. They’re meant to carry a sense of awareness and be led by love which is essentially who they are, to incessantly create and cascade energy all around. It is this consciousness which gives rise in the human, compassion for the earth. It is again this consciousness that brings in the human deep contentment with what life has to offer, as it is. And cradled in lap of this compassion and contentment lies sustainability – a natural outcome of human transformation and evolution.

I can’t think of many missions being mainstreamed and successful where someone wanted to go and change the world without bringing in any human transformation. Slavery is yet to be abolished, racism continues to thrive under the gossamer of suavity and poverty, illiteracy, corruption largely still remain agenda for rich deliberations happening under the aegis of apex bodies without touching the core of human soul. Such will be the fate of sustainability too unless we start from the individual, showcase that we are zero energy driven human beings and extend the same to propagating sustainable human practice.

Two possible exceptions of such missionaries who have been successful in mainstreaming their mission are Gandhi and Vivekananda and in both cases they either started with the individual or went out to preach and propagate or enable human transformation simultaneously with their effort to bring in a social transformation. We have perhaps a few more such success stories not to ape but to reinforce the truth that all egoistic, ‘holier-than-thou pursuits’ of wanting to make-my-mission-adopted-and –accepted-by-others would be futile unless we submit to the fact that it starts with transforming myself and my immediate context with humility.

(This article was published on August 22, 2012 Wednesday in Management Next.)

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Why don't you listen?

Yesterday I chanced upon this blog written by Ram Charan on the The Discipline of Listening. An excellent read, with clear do-ables, possibly intended to make leadership more effective:

"For leaders, listening is a central competence for success. At its core, listening is connecting. Your ability to understand the true spirit of a message as it is intended to be communicated, and demonstrate your understanding, is paramount in forming connections and leading effectively. This is why, in 2010, General Electric—long considered the preeminent company for producing leaders—redefined what it seeks in its leaders. Now it places "listening" among the most desirable traits in potential leaders. Indeed, GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt has said that "humble listening" is among the top four characteristics in leaders."

However, from my experience as a human enabler, I can vouch that not more than 10% of those who read my dear friend Ram's blog with the intention of learning to listen will actually imbibe this rare quality of being a natural listener. 

The reason very simply is that true listening is transformational. And, most of all those form-hungry boulders-on-the-shoulder leaders - self or other appointed - despite cognitively wanting to transform, unconsciously resist anything that threatens to change or transform their identity, their persona, their egoic story of 'me', the conditioned self that they have become. Including listening.

Ram puts this across very gently in the concluding para of his blog: 

"Truly empathetic listening requires courage—the willingness to let go of the old habits and embrace new ones that may, at first, feel time-consuming and inefficient. But once acquired, these listening habits are the very skills that turn would-be leaders into true ones." 

He listens!!!

So what are the different ways in which you block yourself from listening?Easiest would have been if you had ear-lids to shut them. But, it seems while it is okay to be discerning about what you want to see and sometimes shut your eyes, Nature doesn't want us to ever shut our ears and stop listening. And yet, man has so marvelously been successful to do that. Most men, most of the time.

 

Fight or flight

Look at those seated at the back of a seminar hall. 70% of them would be sleeping. It's not that they are any short of sleep. They have conditioned themselves to fall asleep to take flight from the tyranny of listening. 

Once,  the wife of a famous public speaker came up to him and begged of him to come and speak their son for he was not sleeping. When this person asked her how's it going to help she retorted, "If you could put hundreds of them to sleep by your motivational speaking, can't you do it with this one little child".

Another very common method by which you take a flight, is actually taking a flight. No sooner the speaker would have opened his mouth and uttered the first few words, you would caught on to a couple of these words to escape into your own reverie constructed out of these very words. You are no more available. You are gone into some meaningless land of dreams.

Taking away eye contact to look at your computer screen, looking outside the window or even staring at the speaker with an empty look are some of the other ways by which you take flight.

I remember about a decade back, when I was attending a human process lab, the facilitator held a mirror on to me to see that no sooner has someone got prepared to speak to me, I would shower a barrage of hard hitting words which will pierce the speaker like arrows stunning him to silence. This is how I used to defend my fragility - living in glass house and throwing stones so that the other could not even dare come closer. When I look back today bemusedly to those days of blocking listening and therefore any change, I realize how wonderfully I would do so, fighting. 

This is an extreme. There are many of you who would wait for the speaker to finish and then react. Not allowing any time to yourself to take in what has been expressed, leave aside reflect. I know of several CXOs doing this with the excuse that they do not have much time. And the justification that they are not meant to listen, but make others listen. How pitiable!

They are many of you who are compulsive interrupters. Even if you have learnt painstakingly to not interrupt as it is considered rude, you would still be fidgeting, moving your fingers, shaking your legs or meaninglessly nodding to interrupt non-verbally. You still are successful in disrupting the flow of the speaker. By managing to be not still.   

 

Random self-talk

I consult for a iconic enterprise in the space of sustainable urban development. Often, in town halls and other staff meetings I have found the employees carrying an empty look on their face and absolutely tight lipped even when they are invited to share. An uninitiated watcher will believe that they are absolutely clued-in and mesmerized by the speaker. In reality they are lost in incessant self talk.

Barring a few who have practiced with discipline to shut the self-chatter up, most of you are hapless slaves of the mind engaged 24/7 in an imagined conversation which completely distorts if not block what is being spoken by the speaker who is expecting you to listen.  You could be rehearsing to respond and funnily enough respond without having completely listened. Or you could be admiring the way the speaker is speaking and rehearsing how you would do it when your turn comes. What ever is the script, 99% of what is meant to be listened by you is lost in the din of self chatter.

 

Caught in the content

It is believed that the mother can make sense of a baby's babble. Yet the same mother often gets caught up in the 'what' of what is said without being sensitive about where the speaker is coming from and makes a mess of the message. There is something called Conscious Listening - listening with your entire presence - wherein you listen to the unsaid 'way' in which and the 'location' from where it is said. However, those of you who are too caught with the content - the 'what' - of the expression miss out on such Conscious Listening.

 

Making meanings 

How often have you accused someone of having said something that the other genuinely believes to have never said? How often have you misquoted, misrepresented or misunderstood someone without having any intention of framing the other?


Well this is a typical case of meaning making. You use filters of meanings, interpretations and perceptions to listen through what is being said to you, thereby not only giving it color and shape but very often completely distorting the original expression. 

You not only interpret what is being said but often create stories of where the speaker is coming from. Without any need of validating the speaker's location. And having done that, having believed your interpretation to be true, you go ahead with your reaction. Most social and political complexities arise out of such filtered listening.

Listening transcends language and collapses physical distances. It connects, unites and merges energies across geographies.  In love, you can communicate and listen for hours together, in silence. Even distantly. Out of love, despite all physical proximity, you fail to listen and resort to yelling and shouting.

If you are reading this, you would perhaps be saying to yourself that this is not meant for me. I know, I listen. The irony is all those who do not listen are under the mis-conception that they listen. For they haven't really listened to themselves. 

Listening is a meditative art. True listening happens in a space of still non-doing. It's an act by which one leaves all form and its shadows to uphold ones shadowless being. No matter how much you try to 'learn' the 'skills' of listening you can't unless you are ready to let go of your form and transform. 

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 MY RESPONSE TO RAM'S BLOG

Scramble 'listen' and it becomes 'silent' ...

Well, listening is a function of how silent you are ... inside ...

If you can stop unnecessarily, compulsively talking to yourself all that will befall your ears, will reach your consciousness leading to spontaneous actions ...

The tips then will be redundant ...

Conscious Enterprises are here to stay

All crises, including economic crises stem from a crisis of consciousness. And as, with each passing day, systems get more and more crisis ridden and driven, the need to awaken sub-systemic and systemic consciousness gets more and more imminent.

In my article, Tap Enterprise Consciousness, which got published about two years back, I had briefly underscored the need for living enterprises to awaken consciousness and become Conscious Enterprises in order to stay alive and evolve.

There is an element of consciousness of a certain essence of life amongst living systems. This is the fundamental determinant for a living enterprise to evolve. Thus, there could be enterprises which are very much alive, breathing and pulsating over decades and yet with little or no sign of movement. This is a classic case of the enterprise consciousness being not awakened, threatening extinction of a living enterprise.

And today, it is not surprising, as if in response to the prevalence of crises, that there is a subtle yet significant shift amongst the custodians of business enterprises to re-shape there organization as Conscious Enterprises.

So what is a Conscious Enterprise all about? How is different from a classical enterprise?

A Conscious Enterprise works with a greater and sustained consciousness of its DNA of existence - the very purpose and ‘seed’ of its existence, its fundamental drivers and therefore for whom and why it exists and the ways in which it inherently is meant to create and offer value to its stakeholders.

In the case of conscious enterprise the ends are more human - life-enhancing, creational / transformational, inclusive and inter-dependent and all-sustaining. This necessitates the means to the end to be discerningly employed and aligned to such values.

The paradigm that primarily focuses on and seeks return by fostering consumptive behavior and "quantity in life" is fast fading to give space and reason for emergence conscious enterprises that crusades for creation and conservation and fosters "quality of life" through alignment with higher values.

In order to generate sustainable economic value for itself and its stakeholders from the humanistic values it is built upon, Conscious Enterprises must have intent-driven practices that acknowledge and embrace the first principles of life on earth – the Law, the Tao or the Primordial Order. It is this foundational quality that essentially differentiates a Conscious Enterprise from any other enterprise creating and offering value.

The challenges of creating and running a conscious enterprise stems from the paradigms of the traditional economy driven world that we carry and find difficult to let go.

For example, growth in conscious enterprise does not happen in the physical realm where much of processes are reactive in nature but in a space of shared consciousness, a space where a much higher intelligence – awareness- get’s into play making original actions and harmonious responses possible.

It is essential therefore for conscious enterprises and system to awaken consciousness in the sub systems too – what we can call as cellular consciousness.

Conscious enterprises also warrant a departure from being led by a frozen and static character – a poor substitute of consciousness. Which obviates the end of trying to ‘learn’ from or ape the others’ greatness and fosters valuing of individual uniqueness blossoming with learning from life.

Breath is the gateway to consciousness. To survive, it is enough to breathe. However to be consciously alive it is essential to ‘know’ that we breathe. By being aware of it. To enable this knowing, members of conscious enterprises must slow down with their effort-intensive ‘activities’ and be more watchful to allow for a certain spaciousness around them. The focus then shift from ‘doing’ to ‘making things happen’. There is no performance, only contribution to creating value. And with ‘performance’ becoming contribution, its causal linear link to short-term outcomes also vanishes.  

In addition to the above, cellular consciousness also enables simultaneity, transcending the limits of physicality. Unlike inter-dependence of roles and responsibilities across functions in a traditional enterprise, here it is interplay of energies emanating from the conscious presence of each individual. Linear logic, speed and velocity lose relevance.  Seemingly magical events happening without much effort amidst a sense of harmony prevailing across the organization becomes the order of the day.

It does not take competence, experience or knowledge to belong to a conscious enterprise. Quite contrarily the process of seeking membership with a conscious enterprise begins with shedding the egoic attachments to ones credentials and upholding what could be ones calling. The moment this calling resonates with the institutional calling and mission, a process of conscious engagement and enrollment takes over and within no time one finds a purposeful space for making meaningful contributions. Delivery gives way to enablement, products / solutions become offerings, functional boundaries dissolve and jobs get re-defined as responsibilities. Responsibilities that serve one sacred and superordinate cause for the Existence to make manifest itself and allow joyful co-existence of those who have dedicated themselves to this cause. With humility. 

If you feel you are Conscious Enterprise, one in making or aspire to be one and you find this post speaking to you, please feel free to reachme@indroneil.com with your experiences and insights. Would love to include the same in a possible sequel to this post.  

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5-steps out of misery and misfortune

You often land in situations that  are correctional in nature. These situations come up to restore harmony and balance that you had at some point in time disrupted by some thoughts and actions of yours and you label them as misfortune. In your frenzied attempt to get out of such situations you fail to see the doorway and bang your head against the wall. You label this experience that you create for yourself as misery.

Here are five simple steps of finding the doorway and getting out of the the misery and misfortune:

1. Acknowledge that you are in misery - while it is okay to hop malls and partys and drown yourself in the din of meaningless chatter to avoid confronting your misery and misfortune, at least in the privacy of your closet, acknowledge to yourself  that you are miserable and muster up the courage to get in touch with your misery.
2. Accept that you are responsible for the misery - how often you cry foul, naming all and sundry, except yourself as responsible for your misery. After all, who was sleep walking, did not see the door and banged against the wall? Wasn't it you? Once again, if accepting openly hurts your pride, in the privacy of your closet accept that you are the one responsible for the misery. That you are miserable. And better still, you are the misery.
3. Activate your conscience - the hidden ear - while we have five senses to capture stimuli from the physical plane which get's translated to instructions for response, we have a sixth inner sense - the conscience - that can be activated to listen to the voice of Universe. The activation key - the Master Key - is in your awareness. The space you find yourself when you manage to quieten the rambling of your thoughts. You don't need to do anything. The moment you are aware, your conscience get's activated.
4. Attune to the voice of Universe - the Universe does not speak in familiar language for it does not think in familiar linear logic. Its language is metaphorical, its thought expansive. Let your conscience listen, without any anticipation or expectation. Let the listening happen. Do not try to 'listen'. Soon you will get to hear seemingly illogical messages. You are possibly now attuned to the voice of the Universe.
5. Attend to Conscience - now bring your attention to this mega listening device of yours, your Conscience. It needs a certain amount of surrender to stay with this supervisory device. And while you are attending, you will soon notice a kind of a light bulb flash - an idea, a thought-like thing pass by. Your conscience has captured the voice of Universe and has now send instructions for you to act upon. Instructions that will show you the doorway and lead you out of it.  

It's like the white rabbit which now you need to follow, with humility, to get out of this world of misery.



Happy journey, down the rabbit hole.!