Everyone talks about changing the world for the "better".

As always, skepticism comes to me.

There are a few challenges with this:

1: Are we using the same instrument that got us into this mess to move to "better". Can you really trust the salesperson that sold you a lemon telling you the next car is "better"?

. . .

A dialogue on Unconditional Love - Silent Leadership Institute, Tsukuba Japan, October 2023.

Whatever difficulty you are facing, whatever challenges you may have, love can transform your entire consciousness. But not the love that you know.

Participants: What do you mean, “not the love that you know”?  I don't understand what you are referring to. I know that love can transform everything, but this is nothing new. I haven't seen love change the world in any compelling way - it’s always only in pieces, parts, here and there, now and then.

GC: Indeed, you are right. Can it be love if it’s in pieces?

The question is: Is prayer a waste of time and energy??

GC: Oh dear. I wish you wouldn’t ask this question. This may not be a popular inquiry because we have been so well taught that prayer has some deep and sacred energy; that it’s associated with the spiritual world or reserved only to the Gods. So before we inquire, we must for a few moments put aside all of our pre-defined definitions of it. If we don’t untangled the meanings of that word with that activity itself, we will stumble. We will be blocked. We will resist it, or it will in actuality resist us. So can we put aside for a few moments, all the correlations about prayer in your own mind, and ask this question openly, and neutrally just to see if something interesting comes up but without expectations - it may or it may not. Can we do it?

Every month, the Silent Leadership Institute runs a “LEARNING WEEK” in Japan (Osaka, Tokyo) where we deliver a number of talk sessions at the customer site. In June, one of the sessions requested was regarding workplace engagement. Here is an excerpt from that session (printed with permission)

The questioner asked: "How can one find alignment between personal values, the work of the organization, and employee wellbeing?"

GC: I wonder if you can.

[A Dialogue on Sleep with Company Directors, Yokohama, 2023]

On the topic of sleep importance (from the third dialogue: Workplace and Individual Wellbeing)

GC: Why have we put such an extraordinary amount of emphasis on sleep? What does it mean to be asleep? And what does it mean to be awake? Are we awake right now?

Participant: Yes, we are here talking and concentrating together.

GC: I mean, when are we really awake? Is it when my wife calls me and tells me the baby is sick and I take immediate action to go home, pick them up and take them to the hospital? Is it when my boss calls me into their office and tells me I’m fired? Is it when a relative calls me and tells me there has been an accident? Do you see what I mean by awake?

For the love of life...

We are experiencing an unprecedented focus on self improvement, self love, self care and so forth. It is important not to judge whether these activities are "good" or "bad", but to be aware of what they are doing! So I’d like to question the reason/s why we are promoting so many “self” activities at a time when we need to think about the wellbeing of the entire world. We have so many entities of it:

I had a tremendous fear of falling asleep and not waking up from that sleep, ever. I am sure this is not uncommon and I have heard that is also happens to some after long periods of meditation. Now, I could simply label this as sleep anxiety or something like that, take a few pills and get some shut-eye, and deal with it again tomorrow. But for me taking any medication is a last resort as it only blankets truth. I could also opt for a nice strong alcoholic drink but obviously that has potential risks for something worse to deal with (and besides, I don’t drink).

Participant: Could you kindly go into diversity - what is it and how can we bring more acceptance in this world.

GC: Diversity. What is it? Diversity, as a word, means to be different. In Italian, diverso implies different. Fast forward to today and the word diversity has become a very important aspect of corporate culture, and in society. And it’s not just about being different but accepting these differences. There are many efforts to change people’s mindsets to accept more diversity. At work, diversity can be the engine for a more innovative culture under the right environment. And therefore, this is seen as good for business as ideas can converge, often bringing about a uniqueness that gives organizations a potential competitive edge…

My findings on meditation and mindfulness meditation (from an EX-practitioner of 20+ years)...

The current methods of meditation, mindfulness, etc are "practices" and routines which actually have nothing to do with what meditation really is. To plan on spending 10 minutes a day sitting quietly and then going back to your disruptive ways does not sound so appealing to me.

The problem is we set-out to "become" still/quiet instead of being about to understand the whole beauty of meditation is to be free from all thought. But most of the "stuff" that is being taught out there, whether in the east or the west, teaches you to use thought to "focus" on something - like concentrating on a book. Or they teach you to "watch" - observe your feelings and notice that you are "experiencing" something, ultimately detaching yourself to... what exactly?