Emergent Nirvana - The Dialectics of Living with Honor.

1st Jan 2012. We call it a start of a New Year. But I can't understand what is so new about it? I can't feel the coming of a New Year. It is so disconnected from Nature. Nothing much has changed in Nature. I still feel the cold. I don't see new leaves bursting forth to clothe the naked trees. The sun is still mellow in the northern hemisphere. The days are still shorter than the nights that induce me to sleep more than I do in summer. But the darn clock on the wall would not let me do any of that. I would have to get up and run and rush playing our daily games by the rules that we (my friends and I) have set up. I would have to adapt to the timepiece and all the routines that are entangled with it. I am continually caught out of breath in the vortex of meaningless rituals into which we are desperately trying to breathe life into to create the inauthentic lives we live. I am not allowed to adapt to the rhythm of nature as per my own natural tendencies and inclinations. But still we keep shouting hoarse asking people to follow their hearts and save Nature and adapt to her ways to prolong our continuation of life on earth.

Wonder as to why we have gradually synchronized with thousands of mental concepts and constructs that we formed with impunity and fancy aided by a system called formal education much of which goes against basic human rights that might have otherwise allowed us to live like members of the human race. For whom? For what? For whom the bell tolls? What is so special about the human race that makes us believe that we are separate from nature?

What made us follow thinkers and leaders who till date haven't been successful to create the 'desired future'. Are we still continuing our nomadic journey through the heavily inhabited deserts of our unkempt minds in search of the 'Promised Land'. Where might be this land? Whose land is that? The Capitalist got it wrong. The Communist got it wrong. The religious teachers got it wrong. The scientists got it wrong. The Gurus got it wrong. The Governments got it wrong. The lives of common men and women continue to be crushed and even the thin line that is left behind after their death is mercilessly obliterated by the grinding wheels of our 'structured civilization' that takes no cognizance of such events and phenomenon. We are still no where. Our food, clothing, shelter, living, meaning in our lives are all threatened. That surely isn't civilization.

Where did they all go wrong? I think it is our ritual of honoring the false concept of rise of the 'individual' based on the belief of a 'self identity'. Therefore, we want to improve ourselves. Therefore, we search for definite traits of a creative individual. Therefore, we are madly searching for so called 'leadership traits' that make us better leaders. Therefore, we define ourselves, the things that we see around us, the factories, the organizations, our love or sense of belonging, in fact everything around us. And then we define what is good and what is bad and what is desirable and what is not so desirable and what we must do to improve ourselves and what we must do to get richer and better. And how might we teach others the same. We are so concerned with being an individual. All these are simply 'false'.

This is a lie that can never be supported. We simply can't live alone. We are never ever alone. We live in relationships -- with other humans, animals, plants, objects, the energy fields that fill up the cosmos or the universe itself. And as the nature of the relationships change they evolve in terms of strength, quality and complexity. Caught in the web of numerous relationships we are constantly being modulated and changed. Our choice, therefore, lies in the way we pay attention to those various relationships, constantly responding to the pulls and pushes of those relationships, living for those who bring meaning in our lives and learning from those modulations in our relationships. It affects our collective mind, health, learning and living. Death is experienced in the closure of a relationship giving birth to a new one or strengthening an existing one.

These relationships are teeming with thousand possibilities of every kind that we need to care about, provided we learn from the continuing dialectics contained in each relationship. It allows us to see truth in different perspectives and dimensions -- all valid but never totally encompassing. It brings in the possibility of the 'excluded middle' as the real possibility of creative living or living as a real member of the human race. 

Since it is all about relationship in the dialectic mode it is not about improving ourselves and making ourselves better, stronger or richer. It is all about improving one or many relationships that entangle us. We are as good as the web of relationships itself. The individual improves through the dialectic motion exhibited by the relationships one is entangled in.

We can't live the path unless our web of relationships becomes the path itself. There is no shame, guilt or fear of being such a changing path informed by the nature, quantity and quality of the connected and interdependent relationships. This is because the path is constantly evolving to new states of becoming through its constant movement shaped by dialectics of the relationships. The path goes nowhere in any linear fashion but evolves to the subsequent stages. We can only be the change by remaining open & attentive. There is no manipulation. We don't play a zero-sum game. There is no need for any personal ambition to excel since all improvements are matter of co-creations. The relationship evolves or gets stuck.

The co-creation would depend upon recognizing reality through detached application of discrimination.

Such co-creation would be creative only when it flows from insights gained from a situation.

Such co-created evolution would be about actions that spring from the depth of choices made by the elements with the web of relationships fuelled by the collective will power of the relationships.

It is about harmony, melody, dancing to the rhythms of nature and enjoying the freedom of flow that comes from being centered in the middle of the dialectic play of energy fields within relationships.

Our collective ability to negotiate increasing complexity of such collective evolution would depend on whether the relationships bounded by space, energy fields and time acquire the --

Right Dialectic Mindset of viewing reality

Right Centering, Attention & Intention

Right Will and the power of communications

Right Practice

Right effort to co-create, design and facilitate the higher and complex evolution of relationships

Right Learning

Right Living

Right Actions to bring forth into reality the lessons learned from living the relationships

I call this "Emergent Nirvana" that has a rhythm of a collective moving through cycles and exhibiting patterns, which gives us the power to design our own lives centered on co-evolving relationships developed through co-operation, collaborations and co-creation.

To be this path of Emergent Nirvana and to live this path we would be our own Gurus where the existing relationships would offer us the necessary lessons of Relevance, Resilience and Reliability to be the change and evolve to increasingly complex planes of a fulfilled existence.

Intention is the Difference that Creates the Difference!

Intention is the difference that creates the difference.

Same information creates two different meanings for two people viewing the same information at the same time. Their intention differs.

Same information creates two different meanings for a person over a period of time. This is because the intention towards the information changes over time. Therefore the difference is created.

Same poem can evoke two different responses from two different personas. The intention makes the difference.

Two persons speak the same sentence in two different ways. Intention makes the difference.

Same lecture is understood in two different ways by two students. Their intention towards the lecture, lecturer, content and subject differs. And that creates the difference.

A student says, 'I am not able to memorize anything. I must first understand something very well before it gets under my skin." It is her intention that would determine whether she would remember or fail to remember or remember after a lot of struggle and time.

Plain looking Jack loves a plain looking Jane. A plain looking Jane suddenly turns into a beautiful princess in the eyes of a plain looking Jack and not to other Jacks. They are suddenly transformed into Cinderellas and Hamlet. Their intention towards each other made the difference. Their intention towards each other creates the attention and determines the quality, nature and form of attention. 

One single photo posted on Facebook generates 31 different comments. It is the intention of a commentator towards the photo, photographer and other commentators that creates the difference. The intention that creates the difference is out in the open for others to feel. Palpable!

People enter a 'brain-storming' session already knowing what the management wants of them and they storm their brains or think accordingly. The output of such meetings is determined by the intention of the management. If the management's intention is to force people to buy-in something people would buy in. If the management's intention is to create an open creative environment to foster creativity and innovation then the output would be creative solutions and innovation. The intention of the management creates the difference in the outcome.

No one can possibly sell anything to anyone unless the intention of the buyer allows for that. Sales figure of different regions differ by the intention of the customers from different regions.

The win or losing of a political party in any democratic election is a result of voters' intention. The intention makes the difference between a winner and a loser.

Intentions create memories. Intentions create actions. Intentions create results. Intention creates beauty. Intention creates chaos and complexity.

But intention is a highly emotional response. It is not subjected to rational thinking, rationale, logic, or this theory or that. It is created from direct experience or direct perception of a person or influenced by others whom one trusts and respects. It is influenced by the environment (physical, mental, spiritual) one lives. It can't be influenced or modified or changed by force or by battering one with any mantra. It is sudden. It is emergent. It is chaotic.

Intention is also the glue that binds collaborative efforts.

Intention paves the way for a heart to heart dialog to create meaning and evolve into higher consciousness.

Intention creates love between two persons.

Intention creates the environment that determines whether an employee would give out his/her heart for the work or leave an organization.

Intention creates the relationship between the teacher and her students helping a student to love and master a subject.

Intention helps us find things and be happy about it.

Intention helps us link two distinct memories, words, thoughts, ideas, images, solutions, people into something more than any one of the original items. Intention is the source of creativity.

Intention creates a brilliant business or a failed one.

Intention helps us achieve seemingly impossible tasks.

Intention restores our health or destroys it.

Intention would determine whether a problem would be solved or would it remain unsolved.

But for creative flow to happen Intention must be matched by intention. Then only creativity flows.

Intentions can be felt or understood even in silence, without a word passing between persons.

Intention determines whether one would express in poems, prose, mathematics, scientific rationale, speech, art, stone,... etc.

Intention works like magic to create the differences that we see around us. There would never be a world where everybody thinks and behaves alike or can be forced to think or behave alike.

In others words intention is the cornerstone of personal development and creative leadership.

In simple terms, intention is, "What do you want?"

Those simple words must be the first words of a leader to his/her followers.

Are we clear about what we want?

Have we made it clear?

It hardly matters whether it is explicit or implicit. But it has to be there. Once there, the rest happens automatically and effortlessly.

It is the difference that creates all the differences.