HAPPY NOROOZ AND SPRING CELEBRATIONS

March 20^th of 2014 is the first day of spring which marks the Persian New Year. It is also called NOROOZ which means “a new day” in Persian language. At this time families gather around a traditional table setting called Haft-Seen to observe the rituals of spring season which is celebrated in many countries.

At the spring Equinox, when the sun is at zenith over the Equator, days are close to 12 hours long and get longer as the season progresses. Spring and “springtime” refer to the season and also to the ideas of rebirth, rejuvenation, renewal, and growth.

The last Wednesday evening of the year is called Wednesday Light when bonfires are lit and people jump over the fire saying a purification rite. This is an ancient Persian-Festival dating back to 1700 BCE.

Wednesday Fire Jumping

The traditional table setting called Haft-Seen in Persian language means seven items that their name starts with the letter “S”. Every item has a significance of its own symbolizing something very special. The items are found on every traditional Haft-Seen table around the world. The items and their significance are listed below, and as you can see there are more than seven items in my list but we should not have less than that.

1.      Sabzeh meaning sprouts of lentil, wheat or combination of other kind of seeds that we can grow in a dish. sprouts represent rebirth.

 2.      Seeb meaning apple which symbolizes health and beauty

3.      Senjet which is the dry fruit of Lotus tree and symbolizes love

4.      Seer meaning garlic which symbolizes medicine

5.      Sumac berries which symbolize sunrise

6.      Samanoo which is a wheat germ pudding and it symbolizes new life.

7.      Sekkeh meaning coin which symbolizes affluence

8.      Serkeh meaning vinegar which symbolizes age and patience

9.      Hyacinth flower which symbolizes constancy

10.   Gold fish swimming in water symbolizing life.

11.  Painted Eggs which represent spring celebration

12.  Mirror which symbolizes the sky and light.

13.  Candles which symbolize fire

14. Cookies which symbolize sweetness of life

We can have other decorative items such as all kinds of beautiful flowers or anything that adds to the beauty of the table. The traditional food of New Year’s Day is a special kind of vegetable rice and white fish.

ON LEADERSHIP

As a life long learner I have always liked what I learned through experiential methods because the coaches let me get involved in a concrete experience. The learning has never been about definitions and theories but I could actually infer meaning from my own direct experience.

Aristotle called experiential learning “learning by doing”, and David A. Kolb, influenced by the work of John Dewey, Kurt Levin, and Jean Piaget, expanded it to Experiential Education. In this regard, Werner Erhard author of transformational models and ontological insights says “Coaches never tell us what to do they tell us what to observe. They will alter what is possible for us to observe by creating distinctions and bringing forth paradigms”.

Here is the essence of what I learned about leadership as a learnable competence which I have always kept close to my heart and it has consistently been relevant and applicable to my work situations:

1. Leadership is an assessment about our capacity for action in taking care of other people. Exercising power without taking care of others equals manipulation.

2. Leadership is a social phenomenon and should produce teamwork. Our capacity for action to help others is dependent on our competencies and the commitments we can elicit from others. Standing in the commitment is expressing it so people can listen and possibilities are created.

3. Leaders generate change and promote learning and education. They declare their vision and are able to see what others don’t see in terms of possibilities for future. The new way is to see the future as a possibility arising now in the present which explains the past. When we clear ourselves for the future’s possibility we are listening to what inspires and empowers us in the present.

4. Leadership requires effective listening as a primary competence for all other competencies. Effective listeners listen less to the words being spoken and more to the concerns being addressed by the speakers. The highest level of listening is that everything anybody says is a contribution.

5. Leaders are masterful at managing moods and emotions. They know that our moods are not based on grounded assessment and they should not allow themselves to be dominated by their moods. Moods are affected by our biology meaning the chemicals and the hormones in our body, they are even affected by the conversations we have with others or in our head. Right conversation in the wrong mood is the wrong conversation. In general, moods of ambition, peace, gratitude, enthusiasm, and reflection are appropriate for effective action.

6. Leadership is different from management. Management is the competence to coordinate the actions of many individuals to generate and deliver the conditions of satisfaction involved in the leader’s promises. Managers are responsible for producing results with the authority delegated to them from the leadership of the organization.

I would like to close this article with words of wisdom from David Spangler the American Philosopher who says:

“There are those who live in the consciousness of the oneness of life and work to build and serve the best interests of the whole, they are of the new”.

#Leadership

MOODS OF LEARNING

I know:  The graduate

I already know: Boredom

I don't know, and I don't like it: Confusion

I don't know and it is OK: Perplexity

I don't know and I like this: Wonder

I know that I don't know that I don't know: Awe

Awe is a promise to learn but the person needs to have commitment, practice, rigor, time, patience and courage.


To be continued........     

HOW TO STAND IN YOUR POSSIBILITY

It was the first day of our training program and we were all waiting for the coach to arrive and start teaching. The participants were professionals from all walks of life and it was the peak of popularity of Ontological Design and Experiential Learning workshops which created awareness about new ways of being and showing up in life.

I never forget that day because when the coach arrived he went directly to the white board and wrote: WHY ARE YOU HERE?! The whole class was staring at him and we were all speechless as if we needed more explanation. After a few minutes of silence he asked the class to stand up one by one and to respond to his question starting with the front row. We were about twenty or twenty five participants and our answers to his question were more or less the same thing, ranging from wanting to improve our life, to perform better, to succeed, etc. When we each delivered our response he would ask us to sit down and he would continue with the next person. At the end of this exercise we realized that he has not been happy with any of our answers.

While we were trying to cope with our anxiety and disappointment in ourselves he came a bit closer to us and said: THE ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION IS VERY SIMPLE. YOU ARE HERE BECAUSE YOU WANT TO BE HERE. IT IS YOUR CHOICE TO BE HERE. AS SIMPLE AS THAT!

I was in awe because nobody had thought about that. It was about the importance of the choices we make and the stand that we take with our words. He then wrote on the white board: MY LIFE IS MY CHOICE BECAUSE, I AM THAT EVERYTHING ELSE IS!

That was the start of an exciting and dynamic training program about standing in our possibility vs. clinging to our stories and fears.

Here is the essence of the lessons learned:

1. We usually think of possibility as options but it also means a state of being, a context for something to be created and a domain in which new options become possible. I can be a story about my fears and doubts or be a possibility that I stand for. Living out of possibility gives me access to the extraordinary.

2. What I see as possible or as achievable determine how I think, manage, talk and act. I should be able to distinguish Being from the action of thinking. This is the distinction between what I think and who I am. That is when the Being takes over.

3. Possibility is a declaration and my words create reality when I speak it. The confidence comes from what I am standing for, which is making a difference in other people’s life. My declaration and words can also free the best in others.

4. If I have fear it is because I am thinking about a story, something that happened in the past. If I keep saying that “this will not work out” then I bring it to myself and I let my future be determined by my past. I should give up the fear in order to be my possibility. I should constantly ask myself - what do I stand for.

5. Possibility involves others, it is not personal and it includes everyone else. The question is who I have been being in my community. Have I been resigned or in action. I should confront my cynicism and resignation and give those up to become enrolling. I should be able to find out how I have been stopping myself and how I can teach myself to fly. I should invent other possible ways to be.

6. When I am enrolled in my possibility there is compassion for self and others, there is effective listening and hearing the concerns of the members of the community. I cultivate authenticity and openness and people feel that they are being taken care of; otherwise, there will be boredom and nervousness which will stop my self-expression and my meaningful efforts.

I would like to briefly add here that I personally chose to stand in the possibility of Vitality and Self-Expression which was the challenge I needed in order to get out of my comfort zone. Given the socio-cultural background where I came from, this was not an easy task to do but my stand and my declaration enabled me to stop shying away from people, to live my life fully, and to impact other people’s life in a big way. In other words, I learned to fully and authentically express myself in a way that forwarded the freedom and self-expression of others.

To be continued.....

IN SEARCH OF REALITY

I have always been curious about the realities of life and existence. I used to read and document the views and comments of my favorite writers on specific concepts or topics and then delve into what they had said for hours, even days.

The philosophical definition of “reality” is “something that exists independently of ideas concerning it.” Considering this definition one could assume that the sunset is the “reality” and a painting of it is what we make of it.

Here are my notes of what some writers have painted of “reality”.

David Spangler - The universe is ultimately the manifestation of non-physical, non-material possibilities, and the dominant view of science now is how much we don’t really know about the nature of reality. On atomic and sub-atomic or quantum level, reality is a joint creation or product of the participation of observer and observed. Reality is continually co-created. We perceive only what we think or believe we can perceive. The world is as hard as we wish it to be, or as open, fluid and expanding as we can embody.

Chogyan Trungpa - The human potential for intelligence and dignity is attuned to experiencing the brilliance of the bright blue sky, the freshness of the green fields, and the beauty of the trees and mountains. We have an actual connection with reality that can wake us up and make us feel basically, fundamentally good. The problem is that when we begin to realize that potential goodness in ourselves we often take our discovery much too seriously. We might kill for goodness or die for goodness, we want it so badly. A genuine sense of humor is having a light touch, not beating the reality into the ground but appreciating reality with a light touch. The discovery of basic goodness is the realization that we can directly experience and work with reality, the real world that we are in.

Susan Howatch – We live in the world of movement, of change, which is reflected in the words “past”, “present”, and “future”, but beyond this world is another world to which we are inextricably linked but which we can only dimly perceive. This world is kingdom of values, the absolute values of goodness, truth and beauty, and it is these unchanging values present in our changing world of time and space, which reflect the other world, ultimate reality, which is beyond space and time.

Rick Fields - For the ordinary man whose mind is checkerboard of crisscrossing reflections, opinions, and prejudices, bare attention is virtually impossible, his life is thus centered not on reality itself but on his ideas about it.

Hugh Prather – What an obsured amount of energy I have been wasting all my life trying to figure out how things “really are” when all the time they weren’t. There are no absolute for something so relative as human life. The measure of communication is trust. Insofar as I hide any feeling or experience, I separate myself from knowledge of reality and the love of others.

Gary Zukav - Quantum physics was born of an intense and cumulative effort to understand the nature of physical light. It is possible to build a device that reveals wave-like nature of light that causes light to produce phenomena that can only be produced by wave. It is also possible to make a device that detects particles of light, as though they were tiny pellets, and to measure the force of the impact of each particle. Yet it is not possible for light to be described as a wave phenomenon at the same time. In other words, it is not possible to describe the nature of light – literally, the shape of physical apart from the experimental apparatus that is used to determine it, and this depends upon the intention of the experimenter.

The dependency of the form of physical light upon the intention of the experimenter reflects in a limited but accurate manner the dependency of the form of non-physical light upon the intentions of the soul that shapes it, just as the nature of physical light itself reflects in a limited but essentially accurate way the nature of the light of the universe. The true human condition in its most perfect form has no secrets. It does not hide, but exists in clear love.

Allan Watts -  Intelligence is not a separate, ordering faculty of the mind, but a characteristic of the whole organism-environment relationship, the field of forces where in lies the reality of a human being. Nature is a field of relationships rather than a collection of things. If the fundamental energy and impulse of the universe were not blissful, the whole system would have ceased long ego.

Elizabeth Heich - We are able to shift our consciousness into the past or into the future at will. In other words, we are able to experience the past and the future as present. And with the same case we can free ourselves from the hindrance of space and move our consciousness to any place we wish. In this condition there is no “here” and no “there” but only omnipresence. For past and future – here and there – are only different aspects, different projections of the one and only reality, the eternal omnipresent.

Buddhism - Considers “I” an idea of incorrect perception of reality. The teachings deal with truths which go entirely beyond the merely rational, unfolding a transcendental vision of reality which altogether surpasses all our usual categories of thought. There is a belief that we have the capacity to penetrate directly to the heart of reality.

Ray Grigg - There is mystery because there is not-knowing

                     Yet beneath each knowing is the next not-knowing

                     So each knowing deepens the mystery

                     Yet even in knowing there is the mystery of knowing

Well said as a conclusion!

To be continued….

THROUGH THE MIRRORING EYES....

My continued focus on self-awareness has empowered me to constantly look back at the events of my life and to gradually stop defining myself through the mirroring eyes of others. Here is a brief account of my journey in the past six months.

To begin with I learned to detach my self-worth from the opinion and approval of others and I stopped looking for their hard to get attention or love. This was a huge realization for me because as a child and while growing up, I had learned to do the opposite.

I learned to protect my boundaries by having my own standards and by letting go of any type of blame. This helped me get rid of my defensive attitude, which was ready to pop up, every single time I was criticized.

I learned to deal with my fear of disapproval, and I opened the channels for my authentic self-expression. As a result, I stopped alienating myself and I started to connect with others around me and feel the impact of belonging.

I learned to let go of perfectionism in me and to start loving myself as the imperfect person that I was. How could I love other people if I did not have self-love and self-compassion as pre-requisites? My joy from this realization is immeasurable.

I gained the courage to face and to own my vulnerabilities and to talk about it with my loved ones and others. This deepened my sense of clarity about who I am and what I need to do in order to gain resilience. I come from a culture that people rarely share or talk about themselves, their fear being that they will be wrongly judged. 

Here I am now, getting grounded in an inner life that is growing in richness and in providing the freedom of mind that I need. I owe everything to my teachers, present and past, and from whom I learned either in person or by reading their writings.

The year 2013 is coming to an end but my journey on this path is only beginning. I have gratitude for life and for being able to see myself and others only through the mirroring eyes of love and compassion.

To be continued….

LIFE IS ARITHMETIC!