Country/Region: New Delhi, India
Goal: An investigation into the importance of spirituality within organizations and the impact on our individual lives, drawing from the wisdom in one of the world’s most diverse and complex societies; India.
Status: Completed

International Conference on Integrating Spirituality and Organizational Leadership
A conference bringing a multinational congregation of attendees with representation from academia, government, corporate, NGO, and media organizations. The opening speech was delivered by Sri Swami Dayananda Saraswati, one of the great masters of interfaith relations who also addressed the UN Millennium Peace Summit. You can read more about him here.

Topics of significant interest:

• The role of major religions in economic development
• Integrating human values and economic development
• Business as a spiritual practice
• Psychological and spiritual implicatins of work
• Rehabilitating the self
• Challenging the dominance of western management models: reflections from the wisdom and traditions of Asia
• Eupsychian management
• Sustainable development and its ties to the spirituality dimension

Important Lessons and Afterthoughts:
“Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has warned that malnutrition rates for children in his country remain among the highest in the world. In a strongly-worded letter sent to state chief ministers, Singh said that a massive program to improve health and nutrition had failed. The letter said that the program had been ‘poorly implemented.’ A UN report in May said that half of the world’s under-nourished children live in South Asia, with most in India… Economists say that India’s economy has grown at over 8% over the past three years and is expected to expand close to 9% in the fiscal year ending March 2007. But despite the new-found prosperity of the few, close to 300m Indians still live on less than $1 (44 rupees) a day.” – BBC News, 16 January 2007.

Today, I have witnessed poverty in its most desperate form, simultaneously clashing with the forces of rapid economic development. I can’t help but ponder the sere conditions of our continent and how we’ve come to this point. Here in India’s capital I lay in a caliginous room, distraught but hopeful, that a significant middle-class above the starving millions will create the necessary momentum for change. During the matutinal hours of the day, I expend dolorous moments in silence, contemplating my own humanity and the true importance of my life pursuits…

The conference in question served as an opportune springboard into this self-learning exercise. The majority of discussion was centered on “The Psychology of Being”, more simply rephrased as the fundamental elements that make us human. Sri Swami animated the discourse by explaining the “Economics of Shiva”, or the economics of creation and destruction and the principle of “Dharma”, i.e. righteousness. Within that context, we plunged into the structure of society, our work places, our organizations, and the significance of individuals in the collective human family. It is said that there is no way of escaping the influence of the collective. Some refuse to succumb to it and attempt to influence others. Many are drawn to objects of desire, amass wealth and gain the world, but lose themselves (their sense of humanness) in the process.

“If you have much, give of your wealth; if you have little, give of your heart” – Arabian Proverb

It’s a shame that most organizations are created around a philosophy that ignores humanness and denies respect and dignity of the individual. As a result, the contemporary praxis has been to earn enough money to create a life outside of the organization. One the most offensive misnomers ever created is the term “human resources” or “HR.” Humans are not resources, they are humans. When we allow humans to be viewed as resources, we allow ourselves to justify their exploitation.

“The problem of every human being is the acceptability of the self” – Sri Swami

The mind is not strong enough to control the heart and soul, and spirituality without religion can exist. Education is the manifestation of the perfection inherent to man, thus let us draw from Indian and Gandhian philosophies of self-learning:

• Self-governance – govern yourself before governing others, In a person’s capability to conform to Dharma (righteousness) one becomes incapable of going against the dharma, in other words, one comes to understand the value of values.
• Self-ownership – We blame everything, the world, the past, countries, ethnic groups, others, etc. The moment you begin addressing your own problems, you become spiritual. Wake up to reach the limit of your reasoning power. To understand truth one must understand untruth.
• Self-realization – Living creatures possess varying degrees of manifested consciousness. Just as naturally as a cow knows what it needs to do to survive, humans are able to internalize their purpose of being as the freedom of choice, the ability to sense guilt, right and wrong, hate and love, resentment and compassion, etc., and are able to reach the mental apex of inner consciousness through self-realization.
• Self-actualization – Actualization results in leading action. Becoming a leader took the redefinition what it means to be leader within yourself; one that can reshuffle ideas with openness, fearless of change, open to continual learning. Leaders learn to follow first; they are not self-appointed or demand society to make him/her a leader. Leaders resonate with spirituality and are in tune with everything that can teach them –> i.e. humility. When everybody’s interest becomes your interest, you become a leader, a eupsychian.

Ultimately, these four principles of self-learning to achieve self-acceptability embody the manifesto of being a successful person in relation to one’s self. Happiness lies in the self and the self of others. Everyone is divine and tries to be divine. Perfection is living in harmony with imperfection. Love and spirituality are equivalent to gravity; they are invisible yet omnipresent, holding mass and the masses together.

There are times when it is wise to become invisible. Like the period after sundown when the light has dissipated and the activity left over from the light of day continues to radiate translucently. When the shadow of foolishness reigns, it is best that any vibrancy remain hidden, that thoughts and efforts remain quiet and self-contained, protected from harmful external influences.

So it’s under this very premise that I seek refuge in reformation – a reformation to be completely autonomous without sacrificing the dignity of our loved ones. In tandem, we maintain a low profile on the public scene but a high prerogative in world affairs. Here on this globe, where I’m judged by my appearance by those that don’t appear to be the judge, my natural instincts succumb to the lure of nature in an attempt to decipher the politics from the politricks. Everyone is in search of the meaning of life; meanwhile, I travel foreign lands to keep my phonetics versed in multiple tongues. This is the first major step of a long journey, where the pages of my texts are dedicated to the blood of the next man to fall unjustly. To be an individual means to deliberately expose one’s self to change, to ignore what people are saying but to understand what they mean. The concept of meaning itself is the very foundation of building something out of nothing…

Freeing myself through these written words, you know very well that the day I stop writing is the day my soul is at peace. It’s the art of using the same words to create new meaning, for my opponents come in various forms, with the largest of them residing in the mind. Morally, I need this to evolve and live simply, so that others may simply live. We all grew up in a sphere of distraction that rotates around the globe at the speed of light and pulls us away from our lives. Hence, I’m not here to change others; I’m only here trying to change myself in the image of righteousness; knowing that I may be leaving soon, the same way I appeared here, slowly conjugating one verb at a time to make my escape for a new chapter in this book of life.

Some 20 Years Ago…
I am the product of a love so great; it brought Europe and Africa together. Raised speaking the language of my ex-colonizers, as a baby I was held in my mother’s arms. My ancestors hail from a raped continent, where the lives of individuals are not valued, and manipulated to fuel the engine of profit. An accumulation of semi-sovereign nations in which the truth is concealed by falsified arguments and the polarization of wealth is overshadowed by a continuous debt imposed upon our people; revealing that none of us can truly exist on only two dollars a day…

At the age of mobility – migrated to the land of opportunity in hopes of a better life. My brothers understood what it meant to have an empty fridge. Too many spoke of it, but few had lived it. Too many of us became experts in bearing arms, but only brought tears in the eyes of our mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters. Surviving a war in two separate worlds, easy money was the devil that trapped us in a game of mental monopoly. Became a victim of a life that didn’t satisfy me; became what I didn’t want to become. The world was cold and filled with hatred and suffering. Unexpectedly, my dreams diffused in a dense cloud of smoke at a time when, no one would offer me an ear to listen to the tragic tales. I wasn’t the worst, nor was I the best. Trusted men and they lied; our eyes witnessed events that were undeniably forbidden. Suffered multiple wounds while lying on my pedestal of death, but as ammunition flew I was submerged in a cloud of bullet. I could have cried all my tears, knowing that they will never come back – I now see that life is just as much saying goodbye, as it is saying hello.

Our enemies multiplied, until we could not count them anymore. I was nothing more than a statistic, graphing my name on the walls of forgotten ghettos. A troublesome reflection of selling people their death in a bag; amidst a riotous profusion of narcotics usage, a frail child offered me stimulants wrapped in aluminum. I wanted to help, but I was frozen, knowing that monetary handouts cause more harm than good. The general good-will of passersby will never relieve the streets. Eliminated the malicious empire, left the negativity behind, and now the bandana defines a different purpose.

Fraudulent Love
The most perfect drug in the world seems to be the signal that travels through our antennas and into our living rooms. I’m not sure when it became fashionable to talk nonsense in this society, but when publicity comes in the form of corporate sponsorship we become tragically attached to a world of superficialities driven by profit. We can never be good enough, attractive enough, rich enough, dramatic enough, special enough; ;ike an army of carbon copies, too many souls are absorbed into emulating the pictures that appear on their television screens. Now the media wonders why frustrated youth roam the streets, but they don’t see that they are the products of oppressive agenda. They talk about delinquency, I talk about inequality. When the issue was addressed many politicians hid behind a wall of logical responses, but what I saw wasn’t logical. These were the same group of ignorants that plague developing nations with political monsters. In their cities, ghettos are falling under the assault of drugs and alcohol. To them, love means accumulating wealth and money at the expense of our self-destruction. Then, they’ll continue to lie in our textbooks, proving that ignorance has no boundaries.

Actresses, or, emotional hypocrites in disguise, want to know love but they don’t love themselves. To compensate, they spend hours in front of mirrors painting a tragic reflection of their insecurities. They talk about change but they don’t see the change in themselves. They therefore transform themselves into different people every time you encounter them. Sometimes the ugliest people come wrapped in the prettiest little packages. Their violence of envious manipulation hides behind the masks, clothes, and make-up of these well-rehearsed performers. Having fallen in love with such a performer, I became the victim of an illusion – a tainted love that consumed the depth of my soul. In her selfishness, it bothered her to see me smile and through her every word she inflicted pain. Life soon became an ultimatum between her and my loved ones; I refused to partake. The truth became evident when the actress disappeared in my time of reflection; it’s hurt people that hurt people. Now we understand that there’s a big difference between loving a person, and loving what a person can offer to you.

Only forgiveness heals, ends the game of guilt, and releases me from the past. Love offers the freedom from fear, but for me and many others, it has been conjugated in the past tense. Love is frozen at our lips, incapable of being articulated, insomuch as the word itself seems to have disappeared from our vocabulary.

A New Direction
I had to disappear from the public eye, only to return and translate bitterness into hope. This is why I inscribe these words as a lesson, for those willing to listen, because one who forgets the past is condemned to repeat it. This is only the beginning – realization results in action, telling myself I will not be afraid to love someday. I learned that truth is not determined by the volume of one’s voice, so I lay quiet knowing that these domestic drawbacks could never fade my global vision. If it was to be done again I would have been much wiser, I would have held my mother, I would have admitted my weaknesses and focused on my strengths. We want comfort even though it comes at a high price, we make the effort, but more often than not we are not strong enough. If it weren’t for my brothers and sisters, more than half this life would have been spent, incarcerated. I had to cleanse my body of alcoholic poisons; the smoke I use to inhale is now exhaled for good. I escaped descent, cultivated friendships, celebrated cultures, and united broad sections of people; learning to choose friends wisely, and always stay close to the best of them. The best friendships find comfort in silence. Therefore, I’m eternally grateful for your silence in times of reflection, and your words in times of reconstruction.

Now 21 years later, I give my dedication to those with whom I shared these moments. Reminiscing upon the days when I use to live do or die, but now I die to live. Alert and aware that there is a day I am continuously ignoring, that one day, I will pass away…Before death comes for me, to all my friends and lost friends, I would like to say that I love you. To you, I offer my sincerest wishes so that you may find the opportunity of seeing something beautiful every day, so that your love stories never have endings…Know that to the world, you may be one person; but to one person, you may be the world. Don’t frown, because you never know who’s falling in love with your smile. Trust people wisely and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great. Try focusing not on the world’s tragedies but on the world’s hope. Remember that you are a person, not a stereotype. Remember who you live for, and who you would die for. You can never please everyone, but through your deeds, those you touch will hold you dear to their hearts indefinitely…