Awareness has its risks, but it makes life more interesting; certainly it strengthens one’s effectiveness as a leader. When one is aware, there is more than the usual alertness, more intense contact with the immediate situation, and more is stored away in the unconscious computer to produce intuitive insights in the future when needed. William Blake has said, “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything will appear to man as it is, infinite.” Those who have gotten their doors of perception open wide enough often enough know that this statement of Blake’s is not mere poetic exaggeration. Most of us move about with very narrow perception sight, sound, smell, tactile and we miss most of the grandeur that is in the minutest thing, the smallest experience. We also miss leadership opportunities. There is danger, however. Some people cannot take what they see when the doors of perception are open too wide, and they had better test their tolerance for awareness gradually. A qualification for leadership is that one can tolerate a sustained wide span of awareness so that one better “sees it as it is.” The opening of awareness stocks both the conscious and unconscious minds with a richness of resources for future need. But it does more than that: it is value building and value clarifying and it armors one to meet the stress of life by helping build serenity in the face of stress and uncertainty. The cultivation of awareness gives one the basis for detachment, the ability to stand aside and see oneself in perspective in the context of one’s own experience, amidst the ever present dangers, threats, and alarms. Then one sees one’s own peculiar assortment of obligations and responsibilities in a way that permits one to sort out the urgent from the important and perhaps deal with the important. Awareness is not a giver of solace it is just the opposite. It is a disturber and an awakener. Able leaders are usually sharply awake and reasonably disturbed. They are not seekers after solace. They have their own inner serenity.
Leaders must have more of an
armor of confidence in facing the unknown more than those who accept their
leadership. This is partly anticipation and preparation, but it is also a very
firm belief that in the stress of real life situations one can compose oneself
in a way that permits the creative process to operate. This is told
dramatically in one of the great stories of the human spirit the story of Jesus
when confronted with the woman taken in adultery. In this story Jesus is seen
as a man, like all of us, with extraordinary prophetic insight of the kind we
all have to some degree. He is a leader; he has a goal to bring more compassion
into the lives of people. In this scene the woman is cast down before him by
the mob that is challenging Jesus’ leadership. They cry, “The law says
she shall be stoned. What do you say?” Jesus must make a decision; he
must give the right answer, right in the situation, and one that
sustains his leadership toward his goal. The situation is deliberately stressed
by his challengers. What does he do? He sits there writing in the sand a
withdrawal device. In the pressure of the moment, having assessed the situation
rationally, he assumes the attitude of withdrawal that will allow creative
insight to function. He could have taken another course; he could have regaled the
mob with rational arguments about the superiority of compassion over torture. A
good logical argument can be made for it. What would the result have been had
he taken that course? He did not choose to do that. He chose instead to
withdraw and cut the stress right in the event itself in order to open his awareness
to creative insight. And a great one came, one that has kept the story of
the incident alive for two thousand years: “Let him that is without sin among
you cast the first stone.”
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