Consciousness, Unconsciousness and Leadership

I'm experiencing a deep sense of sadness as I reflect on an event at the recent G8 summit meeting in Japan in July, 2008. The event was a six-course lunch followed by an eight-course dinner where the agenda was - hang on to your hat, and take a deep breath - famine and the global food crisis.

First, some details:

·Participants were served 24 different dishes during their first day at the summit - just hours after urging the world to reduce the "unnecessary demand" for food, and calling on families to cut back on their wasteful food use.

·The dinner consisted of 18 dishes in eight courses - including caviar, smoked salmon, Kyoto beef and a "G8 fantasy dessert".

·The banquet was accompanied by five different wines from around the world, including champagne.

·African leaders - including the leaders of Ethiopia, Tanzania and Senegal, who had taken part in talks during the day - were not invited to the function.

·The dinner came just hours after a 'working lunch' consisting of six courses.

The lunch/dinner misstep is a metaphor for the unconscious, hypocritical and insensitive behavior many leaders and managers manifest when they espouse values that purportedly support the well-being of their organizations and then engage in the sort of excesses and unethical behavior that only undermines their integrity, respectability and credibility.

Betrayal and the corporate world of today.

Betrayal and mistrust are rampant in the corporate world today. Take, for example, corporate bosses who paint a rosy picture of the future, then show thousands of workers to the door, then pile work on the unfortunate individuals who remain. Or those who urge employees to take care of their health, then denigrate them for using the gym on 'company time' while expecting them to work 70-hour weeks, including weekends. Then there are those leaders who drive their organizations into the ground financially and walk away with huge bonuses and severance packages for doing so - while their employees walk away with nothing.

These and many other examples of daily betrayal are creating a pervasive atmosphere of mistrust in the workplace.

The excessive spending and lavish consumption of the G8 participants points to the difference between consciousness and unconsciousness when it comes to living life by taking the high road, to living life by following one's inner moral compass and to living life by serving others.

Consciousness and unconsciousness defined

There are four basic levels of consciousness:

·Not conscious (instinctual, ego-driven) - The behavior of the G8 leaders is simply being unconscious - allowing their lower-level, ego-driven, base, and selfish desires to drive, completely unaware of the consequences and the impact on greater good' of the community.

·Subconscious -habitual, robotic, reactive.

·Conscious - aware, intelligent, conceptual, reflective

·Superconscious - (intuitive, guiding, truthful, loving, universal

It's not about contempt for others. It's about being conscious! Awake! Aware!

The behavior of the G8 folks is one of being unconscious - allowing one's lower-level, ego-driven, base, instinctual, selfish and blind desires to have free reign, completely unaware of the consequences and the impact on the "larger good" of the community, of humanity.

It's not about arrogance. It's not about greed. It's not about politics. It's not about contempt for others.

It's about being conscious! Awake! Aware! It's about the fact that no one - NO ONE - said, "Wait a minute! What are we doing here? Something doesn't feel right to me." No one!

That's unconsciousness. That's being disconnected from our True and Real Self. Unconscious.

Consciousness is about spiritual (not theological, not religious) intelligence and the fundamental principles that govern the behaviors of our leaders.

It's about honesty, sincerity, self-responsibility and self-awareness.

It's about living one's core values - assuming one has core values and has thought consciously about how to live them at 9:00 Monday morning.

It's about integrity. It's about walking the talk. It's about being a business person and human being at the same time.

It's about taking the high road.

How does it apply to you?

Consciousness is about viewing my life right here and right now, from the 25,000-foot level and asking:

"What am I doing right here, right now?"

"Who am I being, right here, right now? Am I acting in alignment with my core values?"

"Is there harmony between what I think, say, feel and do, and if not, why not? How can I create that harmony for myself?

"What am I thinking about and what do I think about what I'm thinking about?" "Am I 'going along to get along' even though I know it's inappropriate?"

Consciousness is simply about being decent right where I am. That's who successful and truly respected leaders and managers are.

Consciousness is simply about having and showing character and working for the highest good of all concerned, right where I am. That's what successful and truly respected leaders and managers do.

Consciousness is about showing up, authentically, with integrity, and acting to make the workplace, and the world, a better place - for everyone - even if it's uncomfortable and inconvenient. Pure and simple.

Consciousness tugs on our sleeve consistently as we reflect on the following questions:

·How aligned am I with my core values?

·When my colleagues, bosses, direct reports, clients, friends, and family observe my behavior, do they consistently observe me "walking my values talk?"

·Do I ever act in a way that others might perceive as arrogant, haughty, egotistical or greedy? If so, do I care? If not, why not?

·Do I show concern for my fellow at work, at home, at play, when I comment on the world at large, and when I'm out and about?

·At what level of consciousness do I live my life most of the time?

·Have I ever spoken up when I felt I needed to tug on someone's sleeve about their inappropriate behavior?

·Do I gloss over unethical or immoral workplace behavior as the "cost of doing business?"

·Do I exhibit the change I'd like to see everyone else exhibit?

·Have I ever betrayed another person? Have I ever been betrayed? How did I feel in either or both event(s)?

---ABOUT THE AUTHOR---

Peter Vajda, Ph.D, C.P.C. is a founding partner of SpiritHeart, an Atlanta-based company that supports conscious living through coaching and counseling. With a practice based on the dynamic intersection of mind, body, emotion and spirit, Peter's 'whole person' coaching approach supports deep and sustainable change and transformation.

Peter facilitates and guides leaders and managers, individuals in their personal and work life, partners and couples, groups and teams to move to new levels of self-awareness, enhancing their ability to show up authentically and with a heightened sense of well be-ing, inner harmony and interpersonal effectiveness as they live their lives at work, at home, at play and in relationship.

Peter is a professional speaker and published author. For more information: http://www.spiritheart.net or pvajda@spiritheart.net or phone 770.804.9125.

Non Consciousness, Consciousness and Unconsciousness

In our three dimensional reality awareness gets reduced to either non consciousness, consciousness or unconsciousness. In the non conscious state we sense the world through our bodies. Every cell in our bodies is a receptacle for millions and millions of pieces of information streaming in from the environment. It is total awareness of everything going on at every level possible in the human including the spiritual or soul level. It includes the five sense stimulation but none of the other inputs are overwhelmed by physical sensing and no sorting or discarding of information takes place. Only intuitive sensing is taking place and sureness of situations and surroundings is all that is known.

We almost never reach this state or perhaps it is better to say we almost never "return" to this state. The process of becoming adults in our three dimensional reality pushes us into consciousness and most of our ability to sense the world at the higher level of "non consciousness" is forgotten. Consciousness is the narrowing of non conscious awareness down to a very focused "few pieces" of information that becomes what we sense as the world around us. It is a limited view of the world and is mostly only known through the five physical senses we all possess.

In consciousness we filter out the greater part of life that is streaming in at a phenomenal rate every second. Consciousness is limited awareness because of this filtering. Even at that the view of reality through the five senses is an incredible view. There is beauty all around and we can see it in the particular way our senses and conscious filtering has been conditioned to see it. It might be said that the filtering of consciousness is the result of our unique conditioning that began at birth and has been a process of reaffirming that awareness ever since. Consciousness is a degradation of non consciousness and unconsciousness is a degradation of consciousness.

Unconsciousness happens when our consciousness is overwhelmed by our identity with the illusory world of consciousness. In other words, we become so fixated on the illusion of consciousness that we grab hold of everything we think is important and hold on to it as if our very lives depended on it and to let go or have these things taken from us sets in motion all the crazy "goings on" we can attribute to the current and ongoing "human condition." Aggressively we go after those things perceived to be important and fearlessly we hold on to them once we have them. This becomes our identity and almost the reason for living. We give so much of our energy to it.

Consciousness gets buried in this struggle and non consciousness all but disappears. At this point life becomes a getting and having instead of living and all that that entails gets lost in the shuffle. Most of us exist somewhere between the conscious and unconscious states of awareness. At times we are moved at the beauty and wonder we sense through our physical states but ultimately we revert back to the "other" things our unconsciousness has identified with and we go back to the life of getting and having.

Somehow we must come to realize that nothing in this life is ever ours. We really don't "need" anything. There is never a need to get ourselves into a state that we must get so we can have. Our inherent nature, the part of us that is non conscious, has abundance power and awareness that dwarfs anything we could possibly want or have in this life. The universe is ours. We created it and no one "needs" of anything when we realize our divine natures.

To be conscious we need to dis-identify with those things we think make us who we are and let go of all the baggage of life that makes us unconscious. To be non conscious we need to reconnect to that divine part of ourselves that is aware of everything. It is an infinite awareness. It is the playground of gods!

Our view of the world is an interpretation of the events, activities and circumstances of our experience. That interpretation is the sum of all of our conditioning since birth and is only a small fraction of what is going on in our reality. We can change the interpretation by altering our conditioning.

Carl is an author, philosopher, and spiritual leader. His book "ON Being God - Beyond Your Life's Purpose" is published and available on amazon.com: http://tinyurl.com/ycqeszt or you can download the ebook from his website. He is committed to bringing everyone to the awareness that not only are we all connected and have a higher purpose but that each of us is divine. Greater then anything we can comprehend while caught up in our illusory state.

For more information Carl can be contacted through his website http://www.spiritual-intuition.com

Discover YOU. The true God of your experience lies within. YOU are the god of your own reality!!

Consciousness, Unconsciousness and Leadership

I'm experiencing a deep sense of sadness as I reflect on an event at the recent G8 summit meeting in Japan in July, 2008. The event was a six-course lunch followed by an eight-course dinner where the agenda was - hang on to your hat, and take a deep breath - famine and the global food crisis.

First, some details:

·Participants were served 24 different dishes during their first day at the summit - just hours after urging the world to reduce the "unnecessary demand" for food, and calling on families to cut back on their wasteful food use.

·The dinner consisted of 18 dishes in eight courses - including caviar, smoked salmon, Kyoto beef and a "G8 fantasy dessert".

·The banquet was accompanied by five different wines from around the world, including champagne.

·African leaders - including the leaders of Ethiopia, Tanzania and Senegal, who had taken part in talks during the day - were not invited to the function.

·The dinner came just hours after a 'working lunch' consisting of six courses.

The lunch/dinner misstep is a metaphor for the unconscious, hypocritical and insensitive behavior many leaders and managers manifest when they espouse values that purportedly support the well-being of their organizations and then engage in the sort of excesses and unethical behavior that only undermines their integrity, respectability and credibility.

Betrayal and the corporate world of today.

Betrayal and mistrust are rampant in the corporate world today. Take, for example, corporate bosses who paint a rosy picture of the future, then show thousands of workers to the door, then pile work on the unfortunate individuals who remain. Or those who urge employees to take care of their health, then denigrate them for using the gym on 'company time' while expecting them to work 70-hour weeks, including weekends. Then there are those leaders who drive their organizations into the ground financially and walk away with huge bonuses and severance packages for doing so - while their employees walk away with nothing.

These and many other examples of daily betrayal are creating a pervasive atmosphere of mistrust in the workplace.

The excessive spending and lavish consumption of the G8 participants points to the difference between consciousness and unconsciousness when it comes to living life by taking the high road, to living life by following one's inner moral compass and to living life by serving others.

Consciousness and unconsciousness defined

There are four basic levels of consciousness:

·Not conscious (instinctual, ego-driven) - The behavior of the G8 leaders is simply being unconscious - allowing their lower-level, ego-driven, base, and selfish desires to drive, completely unaware of the consequences and the impact on greater good' of the community.

·Subconscious -habitual, robotic, reactive.

·Conscious - aware, intelligent, conceptual, reflective

·Superconscious - (intuitive, guiding, truthful, loving, universal

It's not about contempt for others. It's about being conscious! Awake! Aware!

The behavior of the G8 folks is one of being unconscious - allowing one's lower-level, ego-driven, base, instinctual, selfish and blind desires to have free reign, completely unaware of the consequences and the impact on the "larger good" of the community, of humanity.

It's not about arrogance. It's not about greed. It's not about politics. It's not about contempt for others.

It's about being conscious! Awake! Aware! It's about the fact that no one - NO ONE - said, "Wait a minute! What are we doing here? Something doesn't feel right to me." No one!

That's unconsciousness. That's being disconnected from our True and Real Self. Unconscious.

Consciousness is about spiritual (not theological, not religious) intelligence and the fundamental principles that govern the behaviors of our leaders.

It's about honesty, sincerity, self-responsibility and self-awareness.

It's about living one's core values - assuming one has core values and has thought consciously about how to live them at 9:00 Monday morning.

It's about integrity. It's about walking the talk. It's about being a business person and human being at the same time.

It's about taking the high road.

How does it apply to you?

Consciousness is about viewing my life right here and right now, from the 25,000-foot level and asking:

"What am I doing right here, right now?"

"Who am I being, right here, right now? Am I acting in alignment with my core values?"

"Is there harmony between what I think, say, feel and do, and if not, why not? How can I create that harmony for myself?

"What am I thinking about and what do I think about what I'm thinking about?" "Am I 'going along to get along' even though I know it's inappropriate?"

Consciousness is simply about being decent right where I am. That's who successful and truly respected leaders and managers are.

Consciousness is simply about having and showing character and working for the highest good of all concerned, right where I am. That's what successful and truly respected leaders and managers do.

Consciousness is about showing up, authentically, with integrity, and acting to make the workplace, and the world, a better place - for everyone - even if it's uncomfortable and inconvenient. Pure and simple.

Consciousness tugs on our sleeve consistently as we reflect on the following questions:

·How aligned am I with my core values?

·When my colleagues, bosses, direct reports, clients, friends, and family observe my behavior, do they consistently observe me "walking my values talk?"

·Do I ever act in a way that others might perceive as arrogant, haughty, egotistical or greedy? If so, do I care? If not, why not?

·Do I show concern for my fellow at work, at home, at play, when I comment on the world at large, and when I'm out and about?

·At what level of consciousness do I live my life most of the time?

·Have I ever spoken up when I felt I needed to tug on someone's sleeve about their inappropriate behavior?

·Do I gloss over unethical or immoral workplace behavior as the "cost of doing business?"

·Do I exhibit the change I'd like to see everyone else exhibit?

·Have I ever betrayed another person? Have I ever been betrayed? How did I feel in either or both event(s)?

---ABOUT THE AUTHOR---

Peter Vajda, Ph.D, C.P.C. is a founding partner of SpiritHeart, an Atlanta-based company that supports conscious living through coaching and counseling. With a practice based on the dynamic intersection of mind, body, emotion and spirit, Peter's 'whole person' coaching approach supports deep and sustainable change and transformation.

Peter facilitates and guides leaders and managers, individuals in their personal and work life, partners and couples, groups and teams to move to new levels of self-awareness, enhancing their ability to show up authentically and with a heightened sense of well be-ing, inner harmony and interpersonal effectiveness as they live their lives at work, at home, at play and in relationship.

Peter is a professional speaker and published author. For more information: http://www.spiritheart.net or pvajda@spiritheart.net or phone 770.804.9125.