Fall 1990, Part 2

An Interview on Leadership

With Paula Mueller

Paula: You have spoken recently about spiritual leadership. Can you tell me what your definition of spiritual leadership is?

First, spirit—spiritual anything—is the conscious raising up to the highest level possible of the physical and the mental self. It’s a spiritual action when you’re raising it up to the highest level you can do. It’s a spiritual thought when you’re raising it up to the highest level you can think. That is the definition of spiritual. So spiritual leadership is simply leadership—which I’ll tell you my definition of later—that is raised up to the highest conscious level of your best good. The best you can be where you are with what you have. So first, I’m not talking about leading a population of spiritual beings. This is not about how to be a priest.

As far as leadership is concerned, one definition is communication, the ability to express your vision in such a way that others want to take part. First you’ve got to know what your vision is. Then you need to be able to express that vision in such a way that those who have a like interest understand your vision enough to be able to say, “I want to take part in that.”

Next, you need to be able to express that vision in a way that others can take action on. How would that express itself, for instance, in world peace? That’s a nice generic sort of thing to want, and we need leaders whose vision is world peace. But world peace isn’t enough. What you want to say is, “I want world peace that expresses non-violence.” All right, you have brought that vision into something other people can relate to. “I want non-violence, too. For me, non-violence means no weapons. For me it means nuclear disarmament.” You begin bringing it to the issues that people can relate to.

Then you begin bringing those issues into activity. You see, leadership is vision. The example is those who are laying bricks and those who are working for overtime and those who are building a cathedral. They’re all on the same job, but the difference is vision. The person who understands that by handing out these pamphlets they are working toward a non-violent world is going to do it with a whole lot more passion than those who are handing out pamphlets simply because it gets them three dollars an hour or the approval of somebody else.

Now, in that arena of communication, there become issues of motivation. And there tend to be three broad areas through which people are motivated. One of them is power; those are the people who are motivated by recognition, organization, instigation. That’s not actually a form of leadership; it’s a form of motivation. There are those who are motivated by activity. “I don’t want to set it up, but I want to always be doing. Let me be the one out there to hand out those pamphlets.” And they fret if they don’t have things to do. And then there are those who are motivated by people, the ones who want fellowship. They are motivated by, “how do you feel about this, let’s keep everybody satisfied. Let’s keep the people element going.” Those are the motivations for action, action in pursuing the vision.

The one who communicates that vision must be able to communicate in order to draw each of those types of people, because an organization needs all of them. And the true leader is the one who is able to fill in the gaps of the motivated force from what they have drawn in to help. The greatest leaders are the ones who understand those three motivations, who are able to see what motivates the people who are around them and make sure that all the motivations are evenly balanced and represented.

Paula: The leader is the one to keep the whole picture in mind.

Aye. And keeps passing that out. “Here is the vision. Here is what’s being done here. Here is the purpose. Here’s what’s going on.” So that you never have to have somebody just laying bricks, just doing their job, but that you’re surrounded by individuals who are laying the bricks because they’re building a cathedral.

That means you’ve got to know what your cathedral is. You must be focused. You must be clear, and you must know what is needed to make that happen.

Paula: Along that same line—leadership—you said that our government reflects who we are. We’ve had a lot of problems in the past fifteen years or so, with dishonesty and deceit in our government. What’s that reflecting in us, in our inner selves?

As a whole, change and confusion, a fear of the unknown, a desire to stay with what is familiar rather than risk change, which is what humanity is very much going through in this time of transition. But specifically, in regard to your mentioning as examples deceit and dishonesty, that’s a very major human issue at this time of transition. You don’t know what mask to put out there. Humans aren’t honest within themselves. That’s why there’s so much spiritual dishonesty. As long as humanity is willing to say, “All there is is what I can see. There’s nothing more,” they’re fooling themselves, and they must constantly alter their reality to reflect their belief that this is all there is. And that requires a lot of dishonesty.

Remember that this great new age, the great change, is not going to be humanity’s waking up to the fourth or fifth initiation, but to the first. Humanity as a whole is going to become aware that they are beings of spirit cloaked in human form. That’s so shocking to most, so unbelievable. Most of the people whom I work with are far beyond that. But humanity as a whole is about to reach a jubilee point. They’re going to wake up to what they’re about. It’s a transition time, however. What you have right now are those who are already awake and moving and acting, you have those who are just awakened—rather dazed, not sure what’s going on—and you have those who are still asleep. Those who are still asleep are in the majority. They are doing everything they can to say, “This is the proper way to be. Anything different than this is wrong.” They are deceiving themselves. That deceit forces them to remain in a very objective world; and it’s not an objective world. It forces them to be judgmental, dichotomized. It forces them to manage in the world with their eyes closed and try to convince everybody else that that’s the proper way to be.

But remember, that’s going to change. This is transition time. Remember that the masses are not all asleep. Therefore government is not all asleep. Remember that you’re out there. That’s hope.