Awareness is the birthplace of possibility. Everything you want to do, everything you want to be, starts here. To be a successful visionary, you must be as aware as possible. At every moment, many paths lead forward. Awareness tells you which is the right one to take.
As a leader, your own awareness affects everyone around you. Those whom you lead and serve depend on your grasp of the situation. You must reach inside for the right response. You alone can raise the group’s awareness from lower needs to higher needs. To do that, you first must fulfill each need in yourself.
Awareness is a synonym for consciousness. There is no limit to what you can change, because consciousness brings light to every aspect of life. But if your consciousness is constricted, everything else will be, too. On the other hand, if you are in a state of expanded awareness, everything else will expand. The most ancient wisdom traditions say, “Know that one thing by which all else is known.” That one thing is consciousness itself. Nothing has a greater power of transformation.
Awareness is the birthplace of possibility. Everything you want to achieve begins here. As a new idea arises, it must gather power and influence. Other people must want to support it: the means to turn vision into reality must come to hand. All of these things depend on your awareness, because the moment you have a new idea, many paths lead to the future. At a deep place inside you, the right path calls out. The successful visionary looks inside, day after day, to find the next step in that path. For her, success is an evolving journey.
Awareness isn’t the same as thinking. The world is so complex that the rational mind cannot calculate all the possibilities in a given situation. Instinctively, we all know this. Therefore we don’t really use logic and reason the way we say we do. We make our decisions intuitively, and afterward we bring in logic and reason to justify our choices. This doesn’t mean that logic isn’t valuable. It means that we use much more of our awareness than we realize.
Brain research shows that even in the simplest decisions, many centers of the brain are involved, particularly the emotional centers. When you look at a banana in the grocery store, a cashmere scarf in a department store, or a used car at a dealership, you may be silently calculating what you think is a fair price. Within seconds you will have made a judgment, yet you are barely aware, if at all, of what your brain has done. One shopper will think it’s fair to pay two dollars a pound for organic bananas while another will pass them by at that price. If asked why, each could probably give you a reason, but at the moment of decision, multiple influences were at work. It would take a long time to verbalize these processes, even without accounting for how they intermingle and weigh against one another.
As a leader, you must make decisions the way a shopper chooses bananas, using many centers of your brain. Most leadership training programs hold the opposite to be true. Reason and logic are purported to dominate; 90 percent of decision making is supposedly based on analysis. But behavioral research indicates that when we make decisions, much more is going on in the brain.
In one experiment, subjects were shown photos with strong emotional content, both positive and negative (a newborn baby, a wedding, a train wreck, a battle scene). Their brains were being scanned, and the photos lit up the emotional center of the brain, the amygdala. Then the subjects were asked how much they would be willing to pay for simple household items. Consistently, these subjects were willing to pay much more than subjects who hadn’t been emotionally stimulated beforehand. And this held true whether the photos had aroused positive or negative emotions. Feeling happier made them willing to pay up to three and four times what they would normally pay, but so would feeling depressed. Even more telling, the experimenters could not eliminate the emotional influence on decisions, no matter how hard they tried. The ideal of the completely rational solution is an illusion.
This is probably a very good thing, for if you could rely solely on reason and logic, you would be depriving yourself of the unseen power of your awareness. Awareness is a synonym for consciousness. In the world’s great spiritual traditions, consciousness is considered an attribute of God and is therefore infinite and omnipresent. The divine sees and knows everything. That is why the Vedic sages of India instruct us to “know that one thing by which all else is known.” They are referring to consciousness. Yet even in secular terms, through brain studies like the one described above, we know that consciousness is vast and largely untapped. The thinking mind is only the tip of the iceberg.
Although you can only think about one thing at a time, your awareness is silently functioning on many levels. A leader takes full advantage of this fact by speaking to those hidden levels. Consciousness delivers the following personal attributes, in ascending order:
Centeredness
Self-motivation
Coherence
Intuition, insight
Creativity
Inspiration
Transcendence
You may recognize that these attributes match the seven needs that a leader must fulfill. The best leaders are always a step ahead of the group in the hierarchy of needs. When the group is beginning to feel safe and secure, the leader is already thinking about achievement. When the group is starting to enjoy success, the leader is already thinking about team building, and so on up the ladder. The greatest leaders are tuned in to all seven levels, which prepares them for any situation in advance. If you aspire to lead from the soul, you must have personal experience of these seven attributes of consciousness.
Centeredness: Awareness is stable and secure within itself, needing no support from the outside. When you are in contact with this quality, you are unshakable in a crisis. While others around you feel insecure and unsafe, you are centered. In this hour of need, you are prepared to relieve the anxiety of those around you and bring out their best qualities.
Self-motivation: Awareness is imbued with the quality of self-referral, which means that it finds everything it needs within itself. From this inner source of awareness, confidence and energy come naturally, and the supply of both is endless. When you are in contact with this quality of awareness, you have no doubt that success is possible. While others see danger, you see hidden opportunities. This ability to unfold a path to success prepares you to lead when achievement is the main goal.
Coherence: Awareness is orderly and self-organizing. It receives streams of raw input from the five senses and forms them into a coherent picture of the world. When you are in contact with this quality, you can inspire others to come together around your vision—whether it’s building a new teen center in town, reorganizing the local PTA thrift shop, or training animals to visit sick children in hospital to give them a lift. In place of confusion and conflict, you see a clear, united purpose. This ability makes you a leader capable of bringing people together in support of your idea.
Intuition, insight: Awareness is always observing. It’s observing you reading these words right now. But unlike your everyday torrent of thoughts, this awareness is unclouded by personal bias; it sees reality instead of illusion. When you are aware, you understand the situation directly, without having to think too much. Insight comes spontaneously. You are adept at dealing with people because you understand what they need—perhaps more clearly than they do themselves. This makes you a leader when the goal is to make each person feel understood and listened to.
Creativity: Awareness is the meeting point between the unknown and the known. It converts dim possibilities into new realities. When you are aware, you feel comfortable with uncertainty—you thrive on it, in fact, because you realize that unpredictability is part of the very fabric of being. It is the essence of innovation, and you love to explore and discover new ways of doing things. When you are aware, you can lead others by encouraging them to see beyond the old ways of doing things, and you can offer them the sheer excitement of replacing their outworn perspectives.
Inspiration: Awareness is rooted in love, compassion, faith, and virtue. According to some of the great wisdom traditions, everything that exists arises from an endless sea of awareness, or consciousness. That is also true of these fundamental human qualities. We may lose sight of them, but they are no less there. No one had to invent love and compassion: they arise from that sea of conscious awareness. When you are aware, you can inspire others. You help them see their better selves, and by doing so, you lift them up. At a time when people hunger for personal transformation and redemption, you are well placed to make a difference.
Transcendence: Awareness ultimately has no boundaries. It exists in this world but endlessly goes beyond it. The world’s great wisdom traditions all derive from a higher reality that is indescribable but can be experienced. This is the greatest wonder and source of awe. As the ancient India sages declare, “This isn’t knowledge that you learn. It’s knowledge that you become.” When you fully absorb this insight, you know what it means to transcend. You don’t need to travel anywhere; all of reality exists in you. You exemplify wholeness because you are united with everything and everyone around you. You exist to demonstrate that human beings can reach the infinite, and by simply being who you are, you help others get there.
As a leader, you try to raise group consciousness from its present level to the next highest one in the hierarchy. This process is cumulative—it works only if it can build on the previous step—so make sure to start at the beginning. Don’t take anything for granted. Step by step, you can unfold the seven attributes of consciousness, as follows:
Centeredness: This silent aspect of consciousness gives us a strong sense of self. When a group is at this level, everyone feels secure.
Exercise: One of the simplest techniques for becoming centered uses body awareness. Ask the group to sit still and take a moment to get in touch with their bodies, to relax into the simple state of being physically present. Ask the group to become aware of areas of comfort and discomfort.
As a variation on this basic technique, ask the group to sit quietly and become aware of their breathing. Ask people to pay attention, gently and easily, to their breath as it flows in and out. Another alternative is to become aware of the heart. Ask them to sit quietly and to bring their focus, easily and gently, on the area of the chest beneath the breastbone. The aim here isn’t to listen to their heartbeat, but to be in contact with the heart as a center of emotion. Let whatever feelings or sensations that arise be what they are. If you feel self-conscious about leading a group in this way, you can show people these exercises in one-on-one sessions. There are very few groups that wouldn’t benefit from these techniques for becoming more centered, which also have the beneficial effect of reducing stress.
Self-motivation: This aspect of consciousness inspires achievement. When a group rises to this level, everyone feels that they have an equal opportunity to succeed.
Exercise: Announce that the best motivation is to work from each person’s strengths, and to do that, we need to know what those strengths are. Divide the group into pairs, handing out pencil and paper. Have each partner write down three strengths she sees in the other person. To get things rolling, offer some possibilities: “My partner is good at coming up with ideas, making others feel comfortable, scheduling and organization, being productive, meeting deadlines, negotiation, persuasion, innovation, etc.” If people are new to the group, have them write down their own strengths.
After five minutes have the pairs exchange lists. The two partners will now discuss the strengths that were noted. Modify these if there are doubts or disagreements. Then have the pairs draw up action plans that would maximize those strengths. (A simple format would be: “To better use my strength, which is _______, I suggest the following: __________.”) The goal here is to match each person with what she is best at, and then to show that you intend to utilize her strengths. This is an effective way to spark motivation. When someone feels that her strengths have been recognized and will be put to use, her motivation to perform will naturally increase.
Coherence: This aspect of consciousness bridges differences. Group coherence means that everyone is pulling together and shares the same goals.
Exercise: Realistically, it’s not easy to get a fractured, divided group to pull together into a cohesive team. But you don’t have to accomplish this right away. Instead, ask the team to divide into pairs of their own choosing. Each pair will work as a partnership. They don’t have to share the same tasks, but they will share everything else, from positive things (like the progress being made) to negative things (like frustration and obstacles to progress). Each person will thus be a sounding board and a source of feedback.
The point isn’t to assign one person’s work to two but to create a bond between partners who care, help, and share. At their first meeting, each pair should agree on what benefit they want to get from being partners. They should meet once a day for a few minutes if possible, or at least three times a week. At the end of the week the whole group gets together for an informal verbal report on how each pair is doing. Then the group can move on to a general discussion of how their overall goal is coming along. By using pairs instead of trying to bring coherence to a large group, you are creating bonds at the most personal level.
Intuition, insight: This aspect of consciousness generates empathy. When a group rises to this level, each person feels understood.
Exercise: Divide the group into pairs again, putting together people who are not close friends. (There’s a reason for this.) In fact, strangers would be the best choice, if possible. Sitting quietly in relative privacy, each person tells the other something he has never told anyone before. It shouldn’t be a deep, dark secret or a source of guilt and shame—more like something that has been on his mind that he hasn’t had a chance to say. The next step is to discuss each other’s disclosure. One person may ask the other for advice with whatever issue he’s raised, but that’s not necessary. The point of the exercise is to be heard and understood.
As the leader, you may feel that sharing confidences is too personal. In that case, have each pair fill in the blank in the following sentence: “The thing I want others to understand about me is ___________.” All but the most reserved person will be happy to answer this question. To follow up, meet again as pairs a week later and discuss whether each person feels more understood.
Creativity: This aspect of consciousness unfolds the future in new ways. When a group rises to this level, it embraces the new.
Exercise: Creativity is an aspect of personal freedom, so find out if the people in your group feel free to let their creative juices flow. Hand out the following self-assessment, asking each person to fill it out anonymously.
Part 1: In the interests of making our team more creative, please answer the following questions by circling Yes, No, or Neutral.
| Yes | No | Neutral | The rules are loose enough for me to breathe. |
| Yes | No | Neutral | I’m appreciated. |
| Yes | No | Neutral | There is minimal pressure to conform. |
| Yes | No | Neutral | Things are not too organized. |
| Yes | No | Neutral | People are having fun around here. |
| Yes | No | Neutral | New ideas excite those in charge. |
| Yes | No | Neutral | New ideas move up the ladder quickly. |
| Yes | No | Neutral | Risk is equated with reward. |
| Yes | No | Neutral | I’m allowed to be independent in choosing assignments. |
| Yes | No | Neutral | There’s room for play. |
| Yes | No | Neutral | I am given time to myself. |
| Yes | No | Neutral | I admire what the group stands for. |
Part 2: Choosing from the above list, rank in order the three things that would enable you to be more creative.
#1 ______________________________
#2 ______________________________
#3 ______________________________
Collect the questionnaires and tote up the number of Yes, No, and Neutral responses for each item. At the same time, list the three choices in Part 2 that got the most votes. The next time the group meets, hand out the results for discussion. You will have a good snapshot of how creative everyone feels. You should also have a good idea of where the quickest improvements can be made.
Inspiration: This aspect of consciousness brings about inner change. When a group rises to this level, all the members feel that they have found their true calling.
Exercise: The longest-lasting inspiration comes from within. Ask each person to come up with a role model or archetype whom he or she finds truly inspiring, and to write down the person’s name. The aim is to help people express the same qualities of that archetype. For example, one quality may be the love embodied in Jesus, the compassion of Buddha, the peaceful strength of Gandhi, the wisdom of Athena, the power of Wonder Woman. Have them write down the specific qualities that are most precious to them in their archetypes. Ask them to become the incarnation of these qualities.
Here’s my own personal program for inspiration. I have set aside a special place in my home for meditation, and there I surround myself with images of my archetype. (Actually, I have several archetypes, one of which is Krishna, the Hindu deity.) When I finish my daily meditation, I open my eyes and look at these images, focusing on Krishna’s strength, love, and all-encompassing wisdom. Quietly I ask for these qualities to increase in me. Knowing that all archetypes are symbols of consciousness, I am using Krishna to stand in for aspects of my own awareness. It is these aspects that I want to increase.
As you can see, this exercise isn’t directly related to a project or group goal. But if your group has risen to the level where everyone is comfortable revealing their need for higher guidance, they can share their own inspiring stories of personal growth and cherished role models. At this point every aspect of consciousness is being enhanced because the closer you get to the soul level, the more the invisible power of awareness can benefit you.
Transcendence: This aspect of consciousness brings liberation. When a group rises to this level, enlightenment is their shared goal.
Exercise: Traditionally, people reach enlightenment through spiritual discipline, most especially through long, deep meditation. Nothing could be more individual. But three aspects of the spiritual path can be shared very productively:
Be of service together.
Share wisdom together.
Become a community in spirit.
Every wisdom tradition has espoused these three practices, which reflect the same thing, really: the knowledge that each of us is more than our limited mind and body; we are part of the infinite consciousness that generates and governs the universe. Therefore each practice is a way of going beyond the small, limited self.
When you are of service, you value others as you value yourself, making their needs your own. When you share wisdom—through reading and contemplating the world’s scriptures—you show that your real allegiance is to the soul. When you organize as a community in spirit, you declare that living from the level of the soul can peacefully unite people from any background. The overall effect is to rise to a higher level of existence, the level embodied by the greatest saints and sages. They represent the ultimate in successful visionaries.
Nothing has more power to transform than awareness. When you become complete inside yourself, the worst conditions in the world don’t matter. A few years ago I took a boat to Robben Island, which lies off Cape Town, South Africa. Continuously pounded by an Atlantic surf heavy enough to break apart any ship unlucky enough to run aground on it, this island was once considered the perfect place to isolate lepers. A prison was built there for political prisoners, one of whom would be Nelson Mandela.
In 1964 Mandela was convicted of sabotage and of taking part in various antiapartheid activities. Fortunate to escape hanging, he received a sentence of life imprisonment instead. Today visitors can see for themselves the tiny jail cell with its iron cot where Nelson Mandela spent eighteen years of his life. The only other furniture is a small table and a covered can that served as a toilet.
Walking around the prison grounds, which are now preserved as a memorial to the freedom movement, one still feels the heavy air of oppression. Daily life for Mandela was the lowest of the low. Because his offense was political, and because he was black, Mandela was given the worst and most meager rations. For the first fifteen years of his imprisonment, before he was given a bed, he slept on the floor. He performed hard labor in a limestone quarry, and he was allowed one letter and one visitor every six months.
How did such a great leader emerge from such inhuman conditions? To speak of ordinary motivation would be to miss the point. Motivation temporarily raises your spirits, but it is difficult to sustain. Inspiration is more durable, and Mandela’s inspiration came from his remarkable awareness, which he chose to develop further during his ordeal. Mandela went into prison as a hot-headed rebel who condoned violence. He emerged after twenty-seven years a transformed man, still firm in his intentions, but having renounced violence and having transcended the pitfalls of hatred and bitterness. Guided by his enlightened consciousness, the African National Conference shifted its emphasis away from black domination and toward the creation of a united country that included all races, with malice toward none.
As the father of a free South Africa, which was born without the bloodbath that had always been predicted, Mandela rose to the stature of a secular saint. But the personal qualities he developed sprang from a source we all have in common: awareness. This is the source of insight, nurturing, inspiration, and transcendence—all qualities that emerge when a leader’s awareness expands. They are available to you, too. The seeds of greatness were planted in you the very moment you were granted consciousness. If you follow the inward path using truth and clarity as your compass points, the outer world cannot help but respond to your intention. Its exact responses may be unpredictable, but through its support the rightness of the path will be proved to you again and again.
Awareness is innate—you don’t have to seek it outside yourself. But expanded awareness must be cultivated. Today you can start out on the path to unlimited awareness. The steps are simple, as you’ll see below. You don’t have to adopt the whole program all at once. Return to this section as a road map. Wherever you are starting from, the path to higher consciousness is always open.
Stop struggling.
Keep listening to your inner voice.
Meditate in order to reach the core of your awareness.
Test your boundaries.
Remain centered.
Look beyond your personal beliefs.
Gather information from every source.
Learn to have clear intentions.
Value inner peace.
Even though awareness is invisible, taking these steps will make the benefits of expanded awareness evident very quickly. Let’s take a close look at each of these ways to expand your awareness.
Stop struggling: The first step is to realize that life isn’t meant to be a struggle, and what makes a leader isn’t toughness in the face of obstacles. Rather, you could help others see that it is possible to find support within themselves, taking advantage of the smoothest, shortest, and least effortful way to reach results. Until you actually test a new way of doing things—the way of expanded awareness—you will only be putting window dressing on your old belief system.
Keep listening to your inner voice: No matter how skilled you become at dealing with challenges, in the end every decision gets tested inside. Whether you call it listening to your gut or obeying that little voice inside you, the process is the same. But not every inner voice is the same, or equally reliable. A leader pierces through layers of secondhand opinion, stress, anxiety, groupthink, and the welter of opinions both within and without. Only when she finds the voice inside herself that is almost silent has she located the voice that should be listened to. Start finding that voice today.
Meditate to reach the core of your awareness: The practice of meditation has enormous implications for awareness. Waiting inside you is a level of silent being. It is the source of your awareness and the womb of creation. All solutions exist here, as well as all possibilities. When you meditate and reach this level of yourself, something magical happens. All boundaries disappear. If you could maintain this boundless state permanently, you would achieve enlightenment, which is nothing more than residing in the state of pure awareness, where all possibilities coexist in this moment and in every moment. Although very few of us ever attain enlightenment, you and I can still experience that boundless state for a brief time. Every visit to this level of your consciousness refreshes your mind and body like nothing else.
Test your boundaries: Becoming more aware is an internal process, but that doesn’t mean it’s passive. Meditation and turning within can also serve as very powerful agents of change in the outside world. They can significantly improve your life, as well as help you fulfill the needs of others. When you step out of your meditation and back into the arena of stress, turbulence, emotional conflict, confusion, and competition, do so with this intention: I want to see what I am made of. What you are made of isn’t a given. It changes every day. And yet the underlying aspect of awareness remains ever the same.
I am not suggesting that you plunge into ordeals that will overwhelm your awareness. Testing means checking a boundary to see if it has moved. Even a slight shift is enough. You don’t have to overcome massive resistance or prove yourself. Quite the opposite, in fact—what you’re doing here is expanding your comfort zone. As awareness expands, so do the areas in which you feel strong, confident, and capable.
Remain centered: Your center is your place of power. When you remain there, the universe will channel everything you need. It’s as if your actions were superfluid, a term used in physics to describe the state of no resistance and no friction. Leaders who handle crises exceptionally well aren’t keeping their heads so much as they are keeping centered. How is that done? First you need to know what it feels like to be centered, if you don’t already. As discussed, meditation is a good way to experience this state. Being centered comes naturally to all of us, and you can recognize it by the following indications:
Your mind is quiet. Mental chatter is gone.
You feel safe and confident.
Your mood is carefree.
You have a strong sense of being.
You feel a quiet but intense energy from being alive.
Your attention is fully in the present moment.
Everyone has experienced such a state from time to time. It’s up to you to cultivate it. Then when you find yourself in difficult situations, when there are forces pulling you in all directions, you can locate the quiet zone inside that you have grown familiar with. You will have access to your place of power, the still point in a turning world.
Look beyond your personal beliefs: The stronger your beliefs, the narrower your viewpoint. Strongly held beliefs are a sign of restrictive boundaries and constricted awareness. We all harbor a mental image of leaders being pillars of strength who cannot be shaken from their core beliefs, and in some situations, such as wars or major political upheavals, such leaders may be necessary. But in the end it’s the person who is flexible, who can see the situation from all sides and is alert to subtle changes, who succeeds best. Being able to see beyond your personal beliefs is a vital step in actually going beyond those boundaries. Your attitude should be “I think I’m right, but that doesn’t mean I see the whole picture.”
Gather information from every source: There’s a big difference between being centered and being self-centered. When you are centered, information flows in from all directions. You function as the switchboard, gathering as many viewpoints as you can. But when you are self-centered, ego takes over. You become convinced that your idea must be the best simply because it’s yours. At first this is a difficult distinction to make. Most leaders are afraid to seem weak or uncertain. They place such a high value on being decisive that they find it hard to take in other opinions. But the more viewpoints you absorb, the wider your awareness will be.
A great leader practices what appears to be a peculiar kind of alchemy. He listens to everyone around him, taking in all each has to offer; but when it comes time to make a final decision, he stands behind it with total conviction. There is no magic involved, actually. If you are centered, you won’t be shaken by contending opinions; you will become wiser for them. If you aren’t centered, the opposite happens: the more voices you listen to, the more you vacillate. As a leader, you must learn that if you want to avoid indecision, the answer isn’t to make up your mind alone and insist on your way or the highway. The answer is to become open to all influences, but be swayed by none.
Learn to have clear intentions: A good leader is comfortable giving orders and having them carried out. A great leader goes one step further: he has an intention, takes steps to realize it, and then lets go of the outcome. Action is still required. You don’t just make a wish and blow out a candle. But because it resides at the deepest level of awareness, intention is a very powerful thing. Having expressed a completely clear intention from the deepest level of awareness, or consciousness, you expect the forces of nature to support you, and as they do, you obey the signals that the situation sends to you. Perhaps you will have to do very little, or you may have to fight against tremendous odds. Both extremes are possible. But what is really happening is that your intention is leading to a result.
Our society, which is materialistic, doesn’t teach us that intentions have their own power, although we are told to “follow our dreams,” which is roughly what a clear intention is—a core desire, or dream, that leads you on day by day. Beyond this vague notion of following a dream, you must realize that intentions come true when the following conditions are ripe:
You desire from a deep level of awareness.
Your desire is true to who you are.
You trust that the universe can bring about the result you want.
You let go and don’t force the issue.
You resolve your inner conflict and confusion.
You remain alert to receive any feedback, however faint.
You tune in to find out what is needed next.
Rarely when you put in a penny does the candy machine spit out the reward you seek (although sometimes things turn out this way). The path to making any desire come true is to be aware every step of the way. Begin to walk this path now. Small intentions lead the way, but even the greatest wishes are achieved through the same steps.
Value inner peace: In this society we proudly announce how much coffee we drink, and we celebrate our status as adrenaline junkies. Surrounded by chaos and stress, people often mistake being excited for truly feeling alive. There’s no denying that a surge of adrenaline can give you a great high—for a few hours. As the adrenaline ebbs, however, body and mind are exhausted, and over time the negative effects of stress take their toll. It’s a dead-end strategy to think that you must be as amped up as your surroundings. Nobody thrives on stress, no matter how convinced they are otherwise. The most productive state of being is peace. Many leaders find this hard to learn. They trade the present for the future, throwing themselves into chaotic situations with a promise that one day, years from now, they will have time to rest.
This is a devil’s bargain. Peace is either here in this moment or it doesn’t exist. By peace I don’t mean passivity. Peace has nothing to do with lethargy or lack of involvement. True peace is a vibrant state. It’s alive with potential and the expectation of great things to come. It’s the moment just before birth brings new life. The first step to achieving such peace is to value it. Awareness brings you more of whatever you value—that’s a basic rule of consciousness. So by valuing the state of peace with its inner silence, you invite it to become part of your daily life.
As your awareness expands, you will become of greater service to the world. Because we are so used to leaders being authority figures, it’s hard to accept that to lead is to serve. But this becomes second nature once you realize that service isn’t self-sacrifice—it’s the effortless expression of your state of awareness. (I’m reminded of an aphorism, “I can’t hear what you’re saying because who you are is deafening.”) So who are you? You are your awareness, in every fiber of your being.