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I had a dream a couple of days ago. In it, I was working with a small group of other people. We were trying to name the event that we were creating. In the dream it was a few days later that it was coming to us. It had to arrive for us, rather than being forced on the spot. “Clear Leadership” is what I shared with the group in my dream. “Yes, Clear Leadership.”
From night time dreams to the waking dream that is day to day life, I find myself thinking a lot about leadership. In myself. In others. In people that I work with that come from many walks of life — ministers, educators, health and wellness professionals, corporate managers, and a whole host of people that are just trying to improve the kind of humans they are. As individuals. As groups, teams, and communities.
In my dream, “clear” had a connotation of depth and simplicity. It wasn’t more management and control of people and circumstance, though that can be important. It was clear story. It was clear commitment to human beings evolving a sense of who we are together and why we do what we do together. It’s one thing to produce widgets. Great. Thank you. It’s another thing (and to be fair, even part of producing widgets) to open ourselves to a broader purpose of being human together and in continuous wonder.
You know, I was in a workshop this weekend, in which one of the fundamental premises was that there is nothing to fix in self or other. Improve, yes. Evolve, yes. Grow, yes. Let go of, yes. Lament, yes. Human learning has full range, doesn’t it. But fundamentally, these are all perfectly normal things. In a Buddhist way, as Pema Chodron shares, “This very moment is the perfect teacher.”
Clear leadership, to me, when it comes to evolving souls, is very much about waking up (and perhaps removing distractions, habits that numb us, or even comforts) to a different story. The story isn’t “more, more, more.” It has a quality of “less is more.” It’s not blame (or concession) for all that is “out there.” It has attention to the intimately nuanced layers of what is “in here” and how the “in here” is in fact shaping so much of the “out there.”
“Clear leadership.” Hmmm… Clarity of soul. Clarity of purpose. Clarity of essence, that perhaps can only be found together and in the company of others that amplify energy, spirit, and memory of what we already know, deeply, and simply.
Here’s to more dreams, and clarity, in all of us.