“All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream.” Edgar Allen Poe
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What I have found is that being human really all comes down to this. We have an ego. It thinks that the world of form—that this physical plane, five senses world—is IT. We see ourselves as separate from everything else. Believing that we are thus form and separate from everything else, we sense that we have been severed from God and thus have little value. And, to some degree or another, we have this deep fear that we are going to fail, that failure will cause us to become exiled from our tribe, and that we will wander around in the wilderness, hungry, starving and will die in extreme pain, agony and regret.
Something to look forward to, right?
In our worst of times, that is pretty much the operating system (OS) that drives our so-called decisions. Is it any wonder we throw things out of balance so consistently by our wrong actions, inaction, etc.? Is it any wonder we hurt people? Is it any wonder that leaders make fatal mistakes? It’s all fear-based. In the truest sense of the word, it is in-sane. Our perception is insane.
That is the madness of the dream in which we live, in which virtually all of humanity lives. That is the madness of the rational mind when we do not know how to work with our mind. It runs the show, and it thinks all these things. And that, dear leader, is precisely the underpinnings of your perception, and therefore your decision-making process. Not all the time of course. But almost always in the most emotional times, when the stakes are high and the game is on the line.
Now, can you see why I have been telling you that you simply must gain control of your own perception if you are going to lead into this new era we face?
Leaders don’t know how to reprogram their OS. Even Stephen Covey says it, that for all that has been written about emotional intelligence, there is very little that has been written about how to actually develop it. So what do leaders do? They load all kinds of software (books, training, leadership techniques, education, religion, social conditioning, “values”, etc.) on top of that operating system to try to cover up that underlying glitch in their OS. To one degree or another, it mostly works. But, alas, we all know there is something wrong. There’s a ghost in the machine and an underlying angst to our actions. And it will never, ever, fully work to mitigate it by laying more software on top of that flawed OS. We cannot work around that flaw in the underlying operating system.
We have to reprogram our OS. We have to wrest power away from our code and put it back in the hands of the Programmer.
That is called developing emotional intelligence, self-knowledge, or whatever you wish to call it.
So there you have it. All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream. And for most of us, at least occasionally, it is a bad dream. Some might say, a nightmare even.
But, alas, that is only because we do not see the full context of life in the moments that matter most, and thus are working with a flawed perception.
Here's my key point here. I don't care whether you believe the above intellectually. Your intellectual understanding of the above is nothing more than a belief. That, and a buck seventy-five American will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks (which is nowhere as good as it used to be but don't get me going on that).
You won't understand this, really, until it is experiential. Until you are right slap dab in the middle of taking an action (reaction, more likely) based on that flawed OS, and in the moment you are acting, you literally snatch that reaction out of thin air and replace it with a real action so quickly that you will swear magic just happened. And you are left wondering, who is the Magician?
This, then, is knowledge. It is experiential. It is not intellectual. It is self knowledge, and self knowledge is power. Precisely the kind of power you should hunt for.
More on that, tomorrow.
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This is a follow-up to the October 7th post Leadership, Perception and Emotional Intelligence and is a continuation of looking at the connection between perception and the ability to break through the next level of leadership. During this exploration, I share a part of my own story through quotations...
