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Spiritual leadership
Pondering on the Challenges of the Time
It is almost impossible to miss the fact that around the world, at every level and in every sphere – political, religious, business and organisational - leaders are being called to account in unprecedented numbers, and outmoded forms of leadership challenged. It is also apparent that we struggle at this moment to find even a short list of world leaders, or leadership groups, whom we recognise instinctively as great and whose leadership qualities we are inspired by.
In its 1995 report, the UN Commission on Global Governance registered its grave concern at “the lack of leadership over a wide spectrum of human affairs.” It pointed out that the world needs “credible and sustained leadership ……. leadership that is proactive and not simply reactive, that is inspired, not simply functional, that looks to the longer term and future generations for whom the present is held in trust. It needs leaders made strong by vision, sustained by ethics, and revealed by political courage that looks beyond the next election.” (1)
Such leadership must be concerned not only with the welfare of its own citizens, but must reach out internationally in ways which recognise the interdependence of all life and which seek to take necessary responsibility for the welfare of both humans and the planet itself. Along with that, says the report, it is critical that leadership demonstrates “political courage in articulating the way the world has changed and why a new spirit of global neighbourhood must replace old notions of adversarial states in eternal confrontation.” (2)
Recognising True Leadership
True leadership is not simply about managing a country’s (business’s, community’s, college’s) resources – economic, environmental and human – and selling them in the global marketplace to the highest bidder. It is about sounding a clear, pure note which inspires every person in that country to greatness of heart, mind and soul. A note which calls them to unashamedly declare themselves tall poppies, committed to visioning a greater purpose for their land and its peoples as a member of the global neighbourhood. Above all, a note which supports the living out of that greater purpose by every citizen, family and community.
Most of us have been conditioned, when we hear the word government or ‘governance’, to think of adversarial politics – a governmental system based on difference, opposition, fault-finding, ‘put-down’, personal insult, exclusion, and notions of ‘in’ and ‘out’. While this governance style has been common to most democracies, and has contributed in no small way to the capacity of nations to develop sound economic bases and the capacity to trade on a fiercely competitive international market, it is apparent that its negative aspects are beginning to take their global toll – in overfished and polluted international waters, rising crime rates, and in the alienation of the ordinary citizen from governance, with all the accompanying feelings of impotence, frustration and apathy.
We have also become used to short-term governmental solutions, ‘fire fighting’, ‘patch-up politics’ and vote-catching policies, coupled with inadequately considered, and sometimes blatantly irresponsible, spending of public monies. We are used to thinking of politicians as evasive ‘yes’ people toeing the party line, often unwilling to be held accountable for decisions taken. In this regard, Californian politician John Vasconcellos once commented:
“Government is us – and it is as we choose it to be. We elect leaders who are close to where we are in terms of vision. We need to see to it that our institutions, including government, become peopled by those who share our struggle, our vision about this human transformation.” If we are to do that we have, firstly, to ourselves be people of vision.
Old and New Paradigms
As we begin to move into the twenty-first century and the very different energies of the Age of Aquarius, it is important that we take time to contemplate the old political and governance paradigm (and even seemingly newer paradigms which may include multi-party, coalition and other more ‘co-operative’ options), not for the purpose of discarding it for something ‘new’ and ‘trendy’, but because it is vital that we ask ourselves which components have continuing value and which no longer serve the larger good and planetary unfoldment.
Once we can begin to consider leadership (in every area of global life) and governance not as a ‘thing’ outside of and separate from ourselves but rather as the ongoing actions of people in goal-setting, decision-making and action-taking, perhaps it will not feel as alien. With that mindset shift we will have begun the process of attempting to understand governance, whether it be of a multinational corporation, a hospital, church, mosque or large farm, as ‘the exercise of power within an agreed-upon form’ which seeks to marry, at the highest and most life-giving level, the needs of each individual and the needs of the collective. Such a marriage is one of the major themes, and will prove to be one of the ongoing and essential challenges, of the Age of Aquarius-Leo.
Perhaps the issue of leadership and governance worldwide has never been so confusing and the need for wisdom, maturity and spiritual vision in our leaders so great. Given that, it is disturbing to note in current leadership worldwide a trend toward a form of zealous fundamentalism which deliberately promulgates religious rather than spiritual leadership. With its divisive, exclusivist ‘God is on our side’ and ‘If you are not for us you are against us’ rhetoric, such leadership – whether it is in Israel or Iraq, Palestine or USA - not only deliberately creates confusion and fear, but forces people into dangerous retrenchment.
Asking the Crucial Questions
It is high time that, at the grassroots level, all of us became political creatures and began seriously asking, ‘What type of leadership and governance does this moment in earth’s history demand? In what major ways does this differ from the models promulgated over the past two thousand years of the Piscean Age, and even from models promulgated since World War II?’
One of the greatest challenges for every one of us at this moment (and especially pre-elections in any country or local area) will be discernment, and a well honed capacity to listen between (and beneath) all the words for evidence of the following keynotes:
1. Responsibility, accountability, purity of motive, and true integrity at every level.
Integrity is one of those ‘big’ words’ whose depth and subtlety we sometimes have a problem coming to grips with. What does it mean? Integrity is a spontaneous outcome of the integration of the personality as a vehicle for soul expression. A person with integrity is a person acting from their soul. Though we may find the word itself difficult to analyse, we know instinctively whether or not a person or leadership group is acting with integrity.
2. Capacity to see a picture far greater than organisational, national or multinational interests, and to let go of old divisive modes of leadership
This moment demands leadership whose picture embraces all of humanity, all the other kingdoms of nature, and all of the planet, as a tiny part of a cosmic picture and Divine plan. And leaders with a deep capacity to both sense the greater good and consistently act to that end.
3. Clear vision of planetary process and the journey of human/planetary unfoldment, plus an absolute commitment to serving the people without ego, self-interest, or alignment to powerful lobby groups with their own vested interests.
4. Clear sense of the right relation between part and whole, along with policies which promote both personal dignity and genuine relationship (with one another, the environment and Divine purpose). On this Aquarius-Leo cusp leaders must exhibit a deep understanding of both autonomy and interdependence, and be committed to the honouring and empowering of both individual needs and those of the group or whole.
5. Commitment to right relationship, willingness to take risks to proactively move people toward this.
6. Right use of power, that is ‘power with’ rather than ‘power over’ or ‘power on behalf of’. Leadership is being called to put aside ‘stand-over’ or coercive tactics designed to force conformity and punish difference of opinion. Currently, the US government’s blatant threat to deny free trade agreements to countries like New Zealand, which have chosen to take an independent stance on the Iraq war, is a reminder that ‘power over’ is still a commonly utilised leadership practice.
7. Fearlessness in fighting corruption, greed, extortion, exploitation, despoilation and abuses of all kinds. Such courage has not recently been visible at all in, for example, the leadership of either the Democratic Republic of Congo or the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church.
8. A deep understanding of the laws of right manifestation, which will effectively create and ground while ensuring wise use of resources, sustainability, and right money flow world-wide. Anything less than this has no long-term future.
9. Synthesis rather than compromise or hard-line policies. Synthesis requires vision and the capacity to bring together, at a higher level, the best within differing elements to produce an outcome which is far greater and more transformative than either element. This is a far cry from both compromise and ‘no compromise’.
10. Leadership which truly begins to release the deeper aspirations of people and set alight their spirit, not for the purpose of creating or guarding an exclusivist inward turned power base but so that they become powerful contributing units within the whole.
“It is not Kings and Generals who Change History. It is the Masses of the People.”
The age of top-heavy centralised government is past, though national governments seem not to recognise this. It is at the level of community that issues of employment, social and spiritual need, education, health, regional planning, and relationship with the environment are met and worked through. And it is at this level that local needs ought to be able to be quickly intuited and addressed in ways which align each community with the divine Plan.
What we need at a local level, therefore, as much as at national and international levels, are leadership teams with:
• Spiritual vision and insight, along with an understanding of what it takes to create community
• Great sensitivity to the multi-layered evolutionary needs of the community as a whole – with special emphasis on the young, and currently disempowered
• Powerful incorporation of both youth and wise elders as visionaries for the community
• A strong commitment to the fostering of right relation and right power within every community, as well as right relationship with the wider national and global community
• Commitment to right relation and real partnership with the environment
• The creativity and drive to make decisions which will empower every member of the community, as well as calling forth from each one of them a deep sense of participation, commitment, responsibility and accountability
Empowerment promotes engagement and mobilisation of aspiration. It allows maximal utilisation of all qualities, skills and experience brought by members of any group. The result of such empowerment and utilisation is an incredible increase in the effective sounding of the group note and the ability to ‘make a positive difference’ in world affairs. In his book The Soul of Politics Jim Wallis says,
“Real social change is not just about great leaders, it’s about releasing the aspirations of millions of people. The truly great leaders know that they are servants of ordinary people and of the God of history.” (3)
New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark has always seen herself in the role of servant leader. Nelson Mandela would begin his first speech in Cape Town with the words: ‘I stand before you not as a prophet, but as a humble servant of you, the people.’ (4) And in front of a crowded stadium at his first Soweto rally, he would declare, ‘I am more convinced than ever before, it is not kings and generals who change history. It is the masses of the people.’ (5)
While South African people were to prove him right, their empowerment could only have been achieved alongside and as a product of an empowered, humble and ‘servant-oriented’ governance group.
“It is empowered and empowering leadership which inspires a group to greatness, mobilising as it does the aspirations or ‘higher needs’ of group members. All true leaders or governance groups have a two-way relation with the group they lead, and this engagement produces transformation in both leader and led.” (6)
Taking Up Our Political Power
We can only begin to act in a genuinely empowered way at this moment in history if we make the effort to be discerning. It is crucial that we all pause now to ask hard questions about leadership, political direction, and priorities. Questions such as:
• What qualities do I expect in my Member of Parliament, Prime Minister/President or leadership group? How do I expect them to act?
• What type of leadership does this country need if it is to begin to model the best in Aquarian governance? What would be its direction and priorities?
• How much do I value integrity and wisdom?
• How can I help put in place a leadership, at all levels and in all places, which is responsive to deeper group need and which actively seeks to demonstrate the highest and most inclusive spiritual vision and principles in all decision-making and interaction?
The finale to Time’s ‘Leaders and Revolutionaries of the 20th Century’ edition listed two of humanity’s greatest challenges of the twenty-first century as ethnic hostility and fundamentalism. “The next 100 years,” asserted reporter Joshua Ramo, “will bubble with questions that are as difficult as we have faced in this century. Perhaps, because of their incredible subtlety, these questions are even more difficult.” (7) Fifty years earlier, as World War II was coming to an end, Alice Bailey had written of the global challenges facing humanity:
“We are entering a vast experimental period of discovery; we shall discover just exactly what we are – as nations, in our group relationships, through our expression of religion and in our mode of governments. It will be an intensely difficult era and will only be successfully lived through if each nation will recognise its own internal defects and will handle them with vision and deliberate humanitarian purpose.” (8)
She believed that it would be ‘the overcoming of pride’ and ‘right human relations’ which would bring humanity through this time.
In this crucial cuspal time people the world over are crying out for leadership which much more truly reflects their highest aspirations and Aquarian imperatives. Even as the twenty-first century unfolds there are still leaders whose corruptness, greed, extortion and determination to maintain power at all cost continues to suck countries dry. There are still leaders whose harsh fundamentalist ‘no-compromise’ stance or arrogant incompetence holds their citizens victim not only to outmoded attitudes, ‘tribal’ bitterness and fear but to responses which alienate them in the global neighbourhood.
How long does the world have to wait for leaders and governance groups “made strong by [spiritual] vision, sustained by ethics and revealed by political courage that looks” (9) not only beyond the next election but as far into the big picture of global unfoldment as is humanly possible?
References
1. Report of the UN Commission on Global Governance Our Global Neighbourhood Oxford University Press 1995 p353
2. ibid p356
3. Wallis, Jim The Soul of Politics Fount Paperbacks London 1995 (1994) p254
4. Quoted by Jim Wallis in ‘Drum Major in the Music of Freedom’ Sojourners 19, no 7 p50
5. ibid
6. Lawson, Jan Leadership and Governance: An Aquarian
/Seventh Ray Model (monograph) Web Publishing 1994
7. Ramo, Joshua ‘The Shape of the Future’Time 13 April 1998 p113
8. Bailey, AA The Problems of Humanity Lucis Press 1964 (1947) p28
9. 1. Report of the UN Commission on Global Governance Our Global Neighbourhood Oxford University Press 1995 p353
By Jan Lawson
www.ists-spiritualschool.org
From section: Spiritual Leadership
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