Revolution of the Spirit: Feeding our Hunger for the Sacred
In times of transformation and damage, it is often the skills of the healer that need to take center stage. In times of cultural transition from one paradigm to another, the world requires healers who are willing to become leaders: to be able to realistically assess what is happening and to propose creative solutions that might challenge the status quo. These healers may be required to step out of the treatment room or office and into a global arena where health matters to every single being on our planet. Some health care practitioners shy away from the word healer, as if it connotates that the practitioner does something “to” the patient. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The healer is a facilitator working on a team with the person they are serving to bring in exactly the kind of medicine that particular person needs. This kind of healer supports, suggests, challenges, invites, and maybe even goads their patients toward restoration of health or complete transformation, depending on what is required. There is an invitation for healers to offer a different kind of leadership and to change the consciousness of Western culture. We are called upon to sit with people and hold their hands in times of personal and global crisis, which healers have been doing for thousands of years. Nothing is more electrifying than the collaboration of creative thinkers, so we must expand our definition of the word healer to include not only bodyworkers, physicians, nurses, and counselors, but also teachers, inventors, politicians, community or movement organizers, farmers, consultants, and others who are encouraging our modern culture toward wholeness. And we must change our definition of “healing” to include all acts that seek to transform our world from a vision of apocalyptic greed or apathetic depression to a vision of diverse and joyful cooperation between cultures and between all beings.
Sacred Leadership: How Extraordinary Vision Heals the World
Many of us dream of a world where we are living sustainably on the planet in peaceful relationship with all other species. Many of us are involved in actively creating that world in some form. If it were easy to shift our culture into a life giving social ecosystem, we would have done it already.
This web of lies that feed each other and buttress systems of oppression throughout the world can almost feel like an evil spell in a faery tale. Like the main characters in all the stories, we can awaken to the invitation to reclaim our power where we see the negative patterns and addictions of the dominant culture as a spell that has been cast to take our power and governance.
In order to take sacred leadership, we need a foundation to which we can return when the doubt creeps in. In Sacred Leadership, we base that foundation on our belief that we are divine human animals with connection to something larger. We offer five elements of leadership that can remind us of the personal work we can do to return to our purpose and our ground: Energy, Confidence, Self Awareness, Influence and Enthusiasm are fundamental parts of our powerful selves that we claim as human rights. We fill up in these areas not to dominate others, but to continue our charge to live fully and actively in this world. Taking leadership with assurance and breaking the grip of self doubt requires that we remember these tenets.
Communication Breakdown: How Changing our Communication can Change our Lives
In every group of people trying to change the world, conflict will erupt. Humans will always have disagreements and differing opinions about how it should be done. Unfortunately, unresolved conflict can tear relationships apart and sidetrack all the goals of the group. People leave, feeling disgusted only to try and find another community of people with whom they can really relate. Our allergies to conflict often prevent us from deepening our rapport with a community or within a workplace. We perpetuate a legacy of human isolation without knowing why we can’t just get along with each other.
One of the most important tools in the modern world is the ability to communicate our needs powerfully with brevity and to give and receive feedback gracefully. It is our human responsibility to become quite skilled in this area. The words we use in our personal and professional contacts carry weight and the feedback that we give to other people has a great impact on them. It is essential that we are able to hear and understand communication from those with who we are attempting to collaborate so that we can improve our effectiveness and create harmony in our relationships.
