Special Edition

Tuesday, April 11 | Leadership in the Next Age

FIRST, a clarification. In yesterday's edition, I said that to get into government on the top level, one had to be a crook, an idiot or both. This was not intended as an insult to public employees, and I apologize because it may have sounded like that.

I was referring to specific entities and levels of government, particularly the president and vice president, senior level cabinet positions under both Democratic and Republican administrations, most related political appointments (director of FEMA, for example), 98% of the the Senate, and to a great extent, the House of Representatives. These are what I observe to be the "power for its own sake" positions.

I was specifically not referring to career civil servants or those people who survive from one administration to the next; they are the ones who get the job done.

When I think of government by crooks, I think of Congress, which doesn't follow it's own laws, such as the minimum wage; I think of Madeline Albright, who participated in, and approved of, and admitted to complicity in, the murder of 500,000 or more Iraqi children under the late Bush I and Clinton administrations; I think of Janet Reno, who supervised the murder of children in the Branch Davidian compound disaster in Waco, Texas.

There are some who would take issue with the assertion that all people on this level of government are corrupt, and it's clear that there are always exceptions. But exceptions are exceptions, and these are not what I was talking about. They can make a difference, and perhaps they are doing so. But at the moment, I think we need more, and to demand more, from those who allegedly govern us.

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MANY leadership styles exist besides the ones we have heard of, or are typically accustomed to. At Miracle Manor we were consciously preparing for the New Age, and were conscious of the fact that leadership needed to be different than in the 'old age'; and we were open to different ideas. Though it wasn't talked about much, there was a notion that we ought to try being true to the leadership principles of the Course.

One of the concepts it presents is that, "Everyone teaches, and teaches all the time." So that requirement spread out the responsibility.

Another concept is a notion of radical equality, and also the idea that everyone needs to be prepared to take any role at any time -- based on the idea that ultimately, we are not special, we just do what we have to. However, the Course recognizes that certain people are gifted with certain special talents and that since, in the philosophy of the Course, everything in the world needs to be put to use for the one purpose of healing, those talents are included. There was also a sense of devotion that we could, if we agreed, let Spirit work through us and the right thing would happen.

From outside the Course, we were familiar with ideas about non-competitive interaction; leadership from behind; circular models of leadership; and working through consensus (which is an idea I no longer think is so smart, actually). A few people had done a lot of work with organizations so we had an idea of how things generally got done in the world, when they did get done.

But we were not a very regimented bunch; I think everyone would have liked the place to run itself, and not to have to take responsibility for one another. Also, everyone had some other important personal commitment, since most of us had full-time jobs along with being part of the community and working with the Course.

The leadership system we came up with involved creating a rotating, three-person committee which basically ran things, and decisions were made by a quorum the full group (that is, more than half of us had to be present for it to count). This is actually a fairly traditional model. Something else fairly traditional happened, which is people took roles they were suited for.

Vicki and Dan had a talent for negotiating with Mario, the landlord, so they were often our representatives to him and would relay back his orders. Patrick was a chef who had worked as executive chef at the Columbia University Faculty Club, and as saucier at Windows on the World (on top of the World Trade Center). Patrick had a mid-career conversion and had become a macrobiotic chef. He had a flair for being able to recreate anything out of tofu, you name it. I have a talent for group meal preparation and I also wanted to apprentice myself to Patrick, who "knew his onions," as they say in French. Between us, we kept a grip on the kitchen and could knock out meals for everyone with nearly no effort.

In theory, everything should have gone great. Yet in our era, people are not really socialized to live in groups; we can barely handle a family and in truth, compared to a century ago, the family is basically extinct. It's weird because we humans are tribal animals.

But any form of group involvement, particularly cooperation in a circular style, rather than top-down, takes a lot of adjustment for everyone. There is a situation we all have to deal with regarding the way that most women are socialized in industrial societies, which is to compete against everyone -- including close female friends (often for men) as an individual; whereas most guys are taught to organize themselves into teams, play a good game, and go out for beers when it's over. Women are, organically, brilliant cooperators, but modern society has decayed that, and even feminist models tend to push the 'heroic' role of the individual, and as a result tend to be alienating. And when people feel alienated, that does not help group dynamics.

One thing that's required in group situations is willing participation both in the group itself and in one's own inner process. People have to take a lot of responsibility for their state of mind, because we can quickly see how it affects others profoundly.

And more attention needs to be paid to decisions. Typically, we are used to letting others run our affairs and make our important decisions. There are a lot of things that happen in the world, or in our communities, that we don't care to know about or think about. So the need for taking some measure of personal responsibility for the whole required a certain degree of coming out of one's shell.

However, the necessities of accelerated spiritual growth also require a definite inner focus. And, for sure, when you put people together for the shared commitment of growth, everyone is affected in some way, whether they love it, or whether they go kicking and screaming toward awareness. So this represented something of a paradox -- the need to be internal much of the time, as well as the need to participate with one another. For many, it was a very difficult balance to strike. Some people really clung to their individuality and seemed to feel that cooperating with a group was a form of giving in.

Another thing we found was who had a taste for peace, and who had a taste for war. Much of what happens in any therapeutic situation is that people project their inner scenario onto the group, and the group acts out in patterns resembling the family of origin.

We had two women firmly committed to getting in everyone's face about anything they felt like; there was always a showdown looming with Rosalie or Marina. They did a nice job of grounding neurotic mother energy. Mario, the landlord, took the role of psycho control freak father, to whom we paid tribute (rent) and strove to make happy at any cost, but could never succeed.

Dan, a young lawyer, was always the one doing conflict resolution, much like an older brother. He was smart and funny and understood the Course better than anyone; he practically had it memorized. Janet and Vicki were pretty good at older sister energy and generally at suggesting things that helped move things along. Vicki took a lot of personal responsibility for the community.

Dave Crismond, a doctoral student at Rutgers University down the road, was the elder statesman of the group. He provided a kind of philosophical last word, including on certain spiritual issues (he was also the only astrologer). He was not stuck on Course dogma and also had considerable experience in leadership of another spiritual community -- that of a well loved guru named Hilda in Manhattan (at St. John the Divine) and upstate New York. He seemed to have the "decent father" energy but he was a bit aloof and did not want to get involved in family drama. He had more important things to do, in truth.

In group situations, people take their roles pretty quickly, and the dynamics emerge. I found the kitchen easily, and was also the scribe and one who took the idea of how we would govern ourselves quite seriously -- two familiar childhood roles that you could easily say were the result of a kid who was given too much responsibility too young in a too-chaotic situation. I was probably the biggest complainer that there was no structure to our work with the Course, but I was very structured about it in my private time; I did all the lessons that year, and read the textbook three times.

At the end of the day, real leadership involves coming out of familiar roles and finding ourselves in the present. It is nearly impossible to overstate the power of the psychological and emotional material that cements us to the past; the language that does so (literally, the words we use); the expectations we have; and our ability or inability to trust. And there is often a lot of chaos that can emerge when we start to come out of those seemingly intrinsic roles, face our feelings, and find our true voices.

And this always needs some facilitation. This is where real strength, maturity and experience come in. Basically, in any group situation where people are going to be triggered, and where you don't want things to degrade to toxic chaos, you need at least two people (preferably many more) with a LOT of experience in seeing and addressing the dynamics, and who don't get lost in them. This is not only something that requires a natural gift, plus learning and enormous patience, but those people need to be willing to take on vast personal responsibility for holding the space of the group process. And the people in positions of leadership have to be willing to bear the brunt of other people's projections, their authority issues, their rage at their parents, and much else besides.

Part of why society has so many problems is that people are encouraged to suppress rather than expose and process their problems. This is done for the sake of order, and there is something natural about it; but it's also true that many people currently in leadership are not qualified to address that kind of intimate personal material in people's lives. But ask anyone who has been in charge of anything and they will tell you that "psychologist" should be the first thing on their job description.

In our particular group, one person turned out to be suffering from psychosis and it was clear that at least one was suffering from fairly severe, debilitating depression. How to handle these situations, which will inevitably come up, is an important part of leadership where any group is concerned, particularly if it's residential. These problems are more common than most people realize. They are just well masked most of the time.

Finally, the group itself needs to be committed to moving in some direction that everyone agrees to as a common purpose. With semi-political groups like the Library Society or the PTA, that's kind of obvious. Where personal growth is mingled with group process and householding, it can be pretty difficult to pin down a purpose.

At Miracle Manor, we just did not have enough of these things. We had the experienced leaders, for sure, but none of the people who had that experience were willing to take that on the kind of leadership that was necessary, at that time. I also remember a big issue in the fact that many people had other spiritual involvements (Hilda, for one thing) and the Course played second fiddle for enough people that it was not really a group priority. So we had no unity around our stated primary purpose. It was in the background. In the days of Allan Cohen, there was meeting in the chapel every night, with a meaningful discussion and meditation on the Course.

Our control-happy landlord noticed our lack of spiritual cohesion and psychological leadership, started making ridiculous overtones about being the guru, and then lost his temper one day over a minor issue (a file cabinet in the 'wrong' place). It was not long after that we all found ourselves looking for different living situations.

But you can't say we didn't try, and I don't think there's anyone who lived at Miracle Manor in 1986-1987 who didn't feel they learned something vital and fundamental about themselves. We would jokingly call the Manor 'spiritual boot camp' and one thing is for sure, we all had a clue that where the world was concerned, there were some challenging times ahead, and we were going to need to be prepared.