Suffering to me is an indication that you are going in the wrong direction, you are resisting the natural flow of life and so an adjustment is in order.  It is similar to the pain you feel when you put your hand in a flame; it is a message that you are doing something wrong, and you should pull your hand out of the flame. Leaving your hand in the flame will not deepen your learning; it will only destroy your hand.  Likewise, continued suffering or a system that elevates suffering beyond a natural feedback system can also destroy individuals and society.

As more and more of the people of a country fall below the poverty line, and cannot support their families it is a message to the leaders of that country that they are moving in the wrong direction. Additionally, as science has pointed out, there is a force that transcends and time connects us all instantly; so one person’s suffering affects all of us. We are our bothers keeper, like it or not. The challenge of “relieving the suffering of sentient beings” as the Buddhists commit to, is for all of us.

In a small village this is obvious and the tribe takes care of its own as a natural response to an individual suffering.  But now we are organized into Nation States, it becomes more complex, and is beyond individual capability. Hence, our equivalent of the tribal elders must take responsibility to relieve suffering and build a healthy society.

As thought leaders, how do we encourage our leaders to take responsibility for this massive effort.  Letting the people of your tribe or country work their own way out of suffering does not always work, and often creates deep levels of anger and resentment.  I think we can see this building here in the USA.

I grew up as a farmer, and if you don’t tend to your crops they wither and die.  Each plant has a life force, as each person has, but that force can be diminished or destroyed if it is not nurtured, and its force will be magnified beyond imagination if is nurtured.  Our people and the society we call The United States of America will respond in the same way.   Again, what are your ideas.

It seems to me that intention is more like a feeling than a thought.  Like working your way into a wave when you are surfing. As a friend of mine who is a Harvard PhD. and surfer, Said,  “You cannot think your way into a wave, you have to feel it.”

Connect To Who We Really Are

Like the surfer connected to a force of nature that propels them forward, our intentions have more power when they are flowing with the natural current of our lives.  We all have a natural current and rhythm within us that is part of the greater flow, which is our unique being or who we really are.  When we resist this current, which some call purpose, we suffer.  When we know it deeply, and learn to swim with it, we move forward with grace and ease in an almost magical manner.

“Know Thy Self”

Knowing yourself is not a mystical notion, it is entirely practical, but it is not easy due to the distortive effect of our thoughts and belief systems.  Once a belief system gets a hold on us, we distort our true reality to be right about what we believe. It is like trying to navigate to a location without knowing your present position. It is impossible, and will be filled with misadventures, frustration and anger.  Our present reality is not a framework or belief, which by their nature are only an approximation of reality.  These notions must be discarded or put into perspective as approximations, before we can feel who we truly are.  As the Buddhists say, “Don’t mistake the finger pointing at the moon, for the moon itself.”

It’s the Feeling or A Knowing

Knowing how to connect with the larger current that we are part of on a deep level is genius. Feeling the difference between emotions that come from our thoughts and beliefs and the feeling of being connected to our unique river is the secret. Once we know this, we can begin to expand ourselves while moving forward in our natural current, and use intention to create new realities that change the flow of our lives, and the flow itself.  We move with grace and ease creating something that is a natural extension of our deepest purpose while adding to the beauty of the world around us.

Again, I look forward to your insights and thoughts, even though they are only an approximation of reality, as are mine.

“According to a new survey of 1,500 chief executives conducted by IBM’s Institute for Business Value (IBM), CEOs identify “creativity” as the most important leadership competency for the successful enterprise of the future.

Much has happened in the past two years to shake the historical assumptions held by the women and men who are in charge. In addition to global recession, the century’s first decade heightened awareness of the issues surrounding global climate change and the interplay between natural events and our supply chains for materials, food, and even talent. In short, CEOs have experienced the realities of global integration. The world is massively interconnected—economically, socially, and politically—and operating as a system of systems. So what does this look like at the level of customer relationships? For too many enterprises, the answer is that their customers are increasingly connected, but not to them … FOLLOW LINK TO READ MORE www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/may2010/id20100517_190221.htm

Genius Stone Partners is a source for this kind or creativity. We would like to hear your comments.

Arrogance Combined With Ignorance Is Deadly
Focusing our consciousness on our beliefs, thoughts and political agendas instead of understanding how present reality is emerging into the future will destroy our nation, as it has destroyed many others. Standing arrogantly on a belief without understanding present reality is the most deadly form of ignorance. Operating like this is like a basketball team arguing in the middle of a fast break. It just does not work, and yet we cling to beliefs that have nothing to do with what is happening in the moment. The teams who have the best talent, coaching and, most important, are able to get into the zone more often, win championships in sports and provide a great microcosm. We as a nation, and many of our businesses, seem to be locked into what we believe to be true instead of paying attention to what is happening. Believing we are the greatest nation, sports team or business on Earth does not change the flow of cause and effect that has the momentum of a runaway freight train.

It Is Time To Change The Game Plan
We need a time out, and some coaching. We must learn to understand and acknowledge reality by placing our consciousness on the flows of cause and effect that are emerging in the present and respond to those flows like a team in “The Zone,” instead of arrogantly defending our beliefs. Stop, take a deep breath and realize that what we believe will not stop the momentum of climate change, the debt crisis, failing businesses, and the raising dissatisfaction of our people. We must work together like a team in “The Zone” or we will lose the game of life here on the planet, or in our businesses. Acknowledge reality, see how it is emerging into the future, make a plan and act with courage, while you keep an eye on the present.

Use More Common Sense and Genius, Instead of Belief
A genius has beliefs, but uses them as a platform for discovery, instead of being defined by them. A genius does not cling to what they believe to be true, they are practiced in letting go once they begin to discover present reality. They are masters of combining existing flows to create something new. They have their consciousness focused on the present to see how it will turn into the future, like an athlete driving to the basket in “The Zone.”

The Past Is A Weak Teacher
Most of our understanding about the past is highly filtered by the beliefs we were holding during our experience at that time, and further distorted by our present beliefs and moods. Our memories, history and beliefs about the past are generally distorted; yet we argue about it and often lose friendships, miss business opportunities, and create political systems that do not work.

Reality is unfolding in the present moment and will extend into the future. If we can hold our beliefs lightly and truly understand the present, we will see how it will lead to the future. Start with understanding present reality, no matter how ugly, and look forward. Leave the past behind, where it belongs. Don’t stand in front of a runaway freight train thinking “I have never been hit by one before” hoping for a miracle. Hope is a feeling, not a strategy for success.

How Do We Create A Better Future?
With the help of comments from my readers, I will explore how to create what I call “FastBreak” solutions teams that respond to the present and create the future. Since I do not know everything, I need your comments and wisdom. So please reflect on what I have written, and provide my readers with your solutions.

No Substitute For Practice

Many leaders are masters of the left brain, less of the right brain, and few can sync both consistently. The leaders who learn to synchronize both see the right moves ahead of them as they approach, and move at a speed that seems like slow motion to them, but is like a sudden burst of lightning to those in a normal state of mind.
Different Practices

Each of the three skills are only mastered with training and practice. Determining your areas of strength and weakness and committing yourself to the rigor of training and practice is essential to achieving mastery. Each of these has a different nature and requires different approaches.

Presence: Being in the present moment and experiencing unfiltered realities
Discernment: Reducing reality into meaningful related parts
Integrative Presence: Simultaneously integrating discernment and presence

If our discernment is not based on the actual flow of cause and effect, it will be weaker. Both must be strong to achieve “Integrative Presence.” There is a point in practice when your experience allows you to slip into “Integrative Presence” at will. It happens like magic after you have learned to feel your way into this state. Mastering these skills is the first step in the journey to become a great leader or fascinating person. We should all ask ourselves which we need to most work with.

Here are a few of my observations. I look forward to yours.

The Bad News

• We are at a disadvantage in the export markets due to our high wage rates, compared with Asia. It is almost impossible to be competitive on cost of goods.
• Our economy has been expanded beyond it’s natural size due to financial reengineering that has created and lost, due to the financial crisis, more jobs than we can sustain. It will take decades to rebuild the consumer base.
• Our culture is becoming less competitive with the movement of entitlement into the middle class, which used to be our strength, and worse, our attitudes indicate we are living off past glory … we often act like spoiled children.
• Our debt to equity ratios across the board are way out of balance and it will take at least a decade to rebalance them, hence credit availability will never be as robust as in the past.
• Real global competition, which we have never experienced in the past, is heating up rapidly. We built our economy after World War II, while Europe and Asia were devastated. The assumptions built up in our culture and business practices are no longer relevant, perhaps even dangerous blind spots.
• Our social, financial, educational, and physical infrastructures are behind Europe, and Asia is using enormous cash flows to build new ones. We have been living on borrowed time and money for thirty years.
• Our military spending is greater than all the other industrialized countries combined, and brings us little advantage in the world. Over-spending and over-extension of the military destroyed the Soviet Union, Great Britain, Rome and many others.

The Good News

• Innovation is still a deep cultural strength that positions us in leadership positions in many products and industries. Hi-tech being the primary example.
• Our standard of living is still the best in the world. There is really no better place to do business or to live.
• The rule of law is much stronger than in most of the world, with the exception of Europe. We are a civilized nation that offers safety and certainty.
• Our vast size, natural resources, common language and culture still provide advantage in many industries. Oil is our only real weakness.
• Our diverse culture has shown high levels of resilience and an ability to change in times of crisis, as the increased savings rates indicate. We feel like anything is possible and we can achieve anything, and have one of the most diverse cultures in the world.
• Our financial systems, once properly regulated, are still the safest in the world. China still sends its money for us to invest, and the oil rich countries are still anxious to invest their money in the U.S.A.
• Much of the world, especially emerging economies of Asia, depends on our middle class for consumption of their products. Therefore, it is in their best interest for the U.S.A. to succeed.

To summarize, our optimism, while being a great strength, dulls our ability to acknowledge reality prior to crisis. Often times those who acknowledge realities are considered unpatriotic and subversive. This is the most difficult cultural challenge, which plagues America as a whole and many of our business enterprises. We cling to the glory of the past, and often use hope as a strategy. How do we shift this mentality and use our strengths to compete in the global economy?

This is a start to a white paper that Genius Stone will write, as a major part of our product launch. I am looking for input from the team. Could you all please add to the good news, bad news sections and begin to suggest our positioning.

Genius is, as I define it, collaboration with the natural flow that extends from the present, and from the knowledge, intention and consciousness of an individual or group. It is achieved through Integrative Presence, which allows you to integrate all the realities of the moment simultaneously while combining them with your intention.

A story from William F. Russell, who was a star player with the Boston Celtics, who won 11 championships in 13 years:

“Every so often a Celtics game would heat up so that it became more than a physical or even mental game, and would be magical. That feeling is difficult to describe, and I certainly never talked about it when I was playing. When it happened, I could feel my play rise to a new level. It came rarely, and would last anywhere from five minutes to a whole quarter, or more. Three or four plays were not enough to get it going. It would surround not only me and the other Celtics, but also the players on the other team, and even the referees.

At that special level, all sorts of odd things happened: The game would be in the white heat of competition, and yet somehow I wouldn’t feel competitive, which is a miracle in itself. I’d be putting out the maximum effort, straining, coughing up parts of my lungs as we ran, and yet I never felt the pain. The game would move so quickly that every fake, cut, and pass would be surprising, and yet nothing could surprise me. It was almost as if we were playing in slow motion. During those spells, I could almost sense how the next play would develop and where the next shot would be taken. Even before the other team brought the ball inbounds, I could feel it so keenly that I’d want to shout to my teammates, “it’s coming there!”—except that I knew everything would change if I did. My premonitions would be consistently correct, and I always felt then that I not only knew all the Celtics by heart, but also all the opposing players, and that they all knew me. There have been many times in my career when I felt moved or joyful, but these were the moments when I had chills pulsing up and down my spine.

Sometimes the feeling would last all the way to the end of the game, and when that happened I never cared who won. I can honestly say that those few times were the only ones when I did not care. … On the five or ten occasions when the game ended at that special level, I literally did not care who had won. If we lost, I’d still be as free and high as a sky hawk.” (William F. Russell, Second Wind: The Memoirs of an Opinionated Man, 1979)

Our Avalanche of Fear
Sometimes it seems like our view of this light is covered by an avalanche of fear piled upon us by the struggle of living in this finite world. Somewhere between the moments of birth, dancing with the joy of childhood, and our first steps into adulthood, we burry the light of our hearts beneath piles of fear. Slowly, almost without noticing, our lives become cold and meaningless. We lose touch with the flame of life. We lay beneath the debris our painful mistakes have left behind. Smothered with coats of armor around our hearts to conserve warmth and protect what is left of our light. But shields of protection also block out the light that leads us to the surface. One day, because we held the flame in our hearts, we see the light and begin the climb. We live again in the radiance of our Soul.

Our Light Within
Once we recover from the avalanche of our fears, and find the surface full of light, the quest to let our lives shine with this creative presence only begins. As we see we are connected to an infinite being, we nurture this awareness each day quietly and follow our breathing, letting go of the fears that cover us as they fall out of our comparisons and judgments. We learn to let ourselves fly to the edge of our Soul, and peer out into the infinite. We feel the currents of the divine flowing into us, and let them guide us deeper into the heart of life. We learn to drink of this refreshing spiritual spring that is always there for us. When we feel this essence with every breath, our lives will never be the same.

It Waits For All of Us
This is what the ancients called “Awakening,” which is the beginning of a timeless infinite journey into a beautiful mystery beyond anything I can describe. It waits for all of us to take the first step.

Why Are We So Unhappy?

Philosophers, spiritual teachers and most religions say that we are spiritual beings living in the material world.  Most see this as the cause of unhappiness.  They see the material world as a place of suffering or, at best, a place to prepare for the next world, which is much more pleasant.  Suffer here and you will get your reward in heaven.  This of course is another way of saying, “This is not it, and I am not satisfied.”  In our consumer economy your reward comes when you “make it.” In religion it is in the next world.  Happiness is always in the future.  Not a good thing.  No matter how much you have there is always more, and what you have is often falling apart.

Is The Material World Really The Problem?

My understanding of the “Material World,” or what philosophers call form, is the following:  All form emerges out of a formless intelligence, which is often called God.  This intelligence is expressing itself in form, which is based on duality or differences.  For example, you cannot see black without white.  This duality splits into many parts, thus creating the array of things in this world including ourselves, trees, the oceans, the air we breathe, lakes, rivers and all living things.

This formless intelligence is continually creating new forms.  Each form comes into existence, grows to its full radiance, shrinks back and dies.  All forms are infused moment to moment with this divine intelligence, which I call “The Life Force.”  We are all full of this force.  All the beauty that naturally unfolds every second is filled with this mysterious force.  Yet we often feel empty.  The Buddhists have a phrase for those who feel this way; they call them “Hungry Ghosts.”

“Hungry Ghosts” are always trying to fill them selves not realizing that they are already filled with divine energy.  They are over eating, over spending trying to find things to fill the void, which does not really exist.  They can never be satisfied. The whole process of “having what you want” draws our consciousness away from, “what we’ve got.”   Form is like fountains of beauty flowing all around us from the well of divine intention.  Yet we are always looking for something else. That is why philosophers are telling us to “Be Here Now” instead of hoping for something in the future that does not exist. Happiness is turning our consciousness to “what we’ve got,” which is beyond description.

How Do We Lose Touch With Beauty?

Last week I went to lunch at a restaurant that always has new paintings.  Waiting for my lunch date, I found myself entranced by a beautiful painting of a naked woman looking at her self in a tall mirror.  The colors and the moment of her seeing her own beauty sent chills up my spine.  My lunch date arrived and came over to the painting and had the same experience.  We talked about the creation this artist provided for us.  Then we looked at the price, which was very high, and thought, we cannot have this painting.  Suddenly we felt disappointed with a sense of loss, when in fact we had already experienced the beauty.  The artist created something that touched us until our desires to own it broke our connection to this existing beauty.  We did not realize that we already had it.

This is want happens to us moment to moment as we move our consciousness from the miracle of who we are, a living being full of grace, to who we should be or want to be.  We lose touch with what the painting was trying to tell us, we are all beautiful beyond description.  If we could only see that to live in human form is a gift we often squander trying to feed our desires.

I asked Steve why he was so successful. He said, “I am driven to win and the answers are already there. If you work hard enough, you will find them.” He also said, “I know what I want because I can see it.” He went on to explain that he never gives up until the show is exactly right. He said that he stays humble, and always looks for a better way before releasing his shows.

After listening to his story, I told him about a movie Martin Scorsese recently produced about the life and career of Bob Dylan. As the story is told, they cut to interviews with Bob Dylan. He comments on the various stages in his life throughout the interviews. Dylan discovered the needs and wants of his market and became the voice of his generation, while transforming American folk music from the backrooms of Greenwich Village to a global craze.

Dylan in response to the interviewer saying he was the voice of a generation commented that, “It was already there.” He explained, that he noticed how people would respond positively to various aspects of singers like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and many others. Each singer had certain things that would connect with the audience: the look in their eyes, the tone of voice, the way they picked the strings on their guitar, and combined great singing with meaningful words. What the generation wanted was already out there, but not embodied in one person.

Dylan observed what worked and then let go of the aspects of his act that were not connecting, and adopted all of the elements that were connecting with the audiences. He literally became the voice of a generation by discovering existing realities and combining his intention and creativity with the needs he noticed in his audience. It seemed simple to him. He could see the future success by observing what was happening in the moment. He truly unleashed his genius by living in what I call “Integrative Presence” and connecting with an existing intelligence, which was the flow of cause and effect in his market.

When he returned to Minnesota after only five months in New York City, which was the center of folk music at the time, he had been transformed from an okay singer to a genius. Many from Minnesota commented on what seemed to be a magical transformation. One said, “It was almost like he had sold his soul to the Devil.” But, of course, he didn’t; he was able to let go of what he knew, and be open to a series of insights about what was really impacting the audiences, combined it with his intention, and became the voice of a generation.

To make that transition Dylan had to let go of his past and be totally present. He even changed his last name and often says that, “it really does not matter who I was.” Letting go of the past is the first step to insight and discovery of present reality.

After listening to the story, Steve Ober said, “Exactly, and that just shows what a great filmmaker Martin Scorsese is.” Steve Ober and Dylan have formed the habit of allowing insight: which is as Webster’s says “A clear understanding of the inner nature of some specific thing.” … Which in my view is the gateway to genius.