Spiritual Intelligence

I have been on facilitator training the last two days.  One of the take-aways from the session is that a key part of being a true friend is indignation.  What do I mean?  Simple:  Sometimes  in order to be real with the people you care for you need to be indignant toward someones actions or a situation.  Through this you can help people realise that what they are doing is harmful to themselves and/or others.

So this morning I woke up feeling very indignant about the way that we are going about business and life.  I look around and feel disgusted and the greed and selfishness that pervades society.  What is worse is that so many of us simply shrug our shoulders and say well, what can we do?  That is the way things are.

Well I am here today to use this public space to raise my voice and firstly remind myself and secondly remind you to ask the question:  What is all of this about?!  Why the rush, the fear, control and waste?  We have lost touch with spiritual intelligence.  We have lost touch with our neighbours and in the mad dash to the finish line everyone has become our competition.  I feel tired of this world.  I feel tired of running trying to 'meet the deadline'.  I know we have to work and I agree that work can be something beautiful; something creative.  We have however enslaved ourselves to greed and work is the slave master.  Why do you work?

In the next post I will look at ways to get out of this mindset and I ask you to help me.  So look at what you have just read, reflect and watch this space so you can share from your wisdom.

Moral Compass

My previous post ended with reference to a moral compass.  I truly wanted to write about this during December but I never got around to it.  I could give you a soppy story about how the last days at work were really busy and when I went on holiday my focus was on relaxing and that writing the post seemed less important.

The reality however is that I was not acting in alignment or as some might say attunement.  What does that mean?  Simple; moral compass refers to your core principles, values and beliefs.  From there they should lead to some formal or informal goal setting.  Finally goals should lead to behaviour which consists of thoughts actions and emotions.  If you therefore live in such a way that your goals reflect your moral compass and your behaviour reflects your goals you are living in alignment (some use the term alignment for the same kind of process in relation to systems and processes and attunement for the internal personal process).

Here lies my problem.  I resolved in my goal setting to write a post once a month and then did not do this at the end of 2010 - I was not acting out of alignment; I was in fact out of alignment.  This experience in combination with other experiences (such as observation about my relationship with colleagues and family) have been valuable as reflective information.  This information I could also only really process during vacation time because it was in fact one of my objectives for the festive season - perspective!

From here I had really good conversations with my parents and my wife over a period of two weeks which have empowered me in a surprising manner for 2011.  Although the adjustments are small habitual things it is about getting back into alignment and using my strength (discipline) to catalyse greater release in the rest of my life.

Are you ready for 2011?