Leadership for the New Millennium

If you invest in the timeless,

the timeless will invest in you.

ALISON CAMERON

I pay respect to the land and traditional custodians of the Yugambeh region of South East Queensland, where this book was written and their Elders past, present, and emerging.

~

First Edition 2020

Published in Australia by Living Essence Publications

Copyright © 2020 by Alison Cameron

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher unless in the case of quotations embedded in articles, materials or reviews.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia at catalogue.nla.gov.au

Cover design, internal design and layout by Tess McCabe

www.tessmccabe.com.au

Printed in Australia.

ISBN 978-0-6488869-0-7

www.alisoncameron.com

REFERENCES

¹ Blake, William, and Leonard Baskin. Auguries of Innocence. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1968. Print.

² Eliot, T S. Four Quartets. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company,1943. Print.

³ Rumi, M ‘Soul Receives from Soul’, Another city—a selection of poems from the Persian. Lulu.com 2014

Contents

Preface

Terms

Introduction: Leadership For The New Millennium

Chapter 1: Purpose

Chapter 2: Patience

Chapter 3: Love

Chapter 4: Harmony

Chapter 5: Truth

Chapter 6: Commitment

Chapter 7: Grace

Chapter 8: Vitality

Chapter 9: Humility

Chapter 10: Passion

Chapter 11: Self-Knowledge

Chapter 12: Wisdom

Chapter 13: Heart

Conclusion: Leadership As A Living Meditation

About the author

PREFACE

While it can be difficult to enter into another’s subjective experiences or to share one’s own, for the reader who is about to embark on this journey with me, let me share a little of my story.

Soulful stirrings

From a young age, my soul made itself known by catalyzing awakenings to what I experienced as a higher purpose. While I always experienced life soulfully and intuitively, with a depth of thinking and feeling, my conscious relationship with my soul began in my early teens.

When my soul started to be heard, its voice was one among the usual range of teenage voices and experiences: the blush of first crush, uncertainty about my place in the world, and the desire to define a unique identity. Running through these various threads of experience was a voice and essence deeply moved by issues and events happening outside my own limited sphere. The challenges of environmental degradation, injustice, and cruelty spoke to me of an opportunity for a different world, one with more kindness and love, less oppression, and less fear.

In the face of such widespread challenges, I experienced deep despair and a sense of helplessness. As I allowed myself to experience this despair, I was opened up to a connection with my soul and purpose. That purpose was, and remains, to guide myself and support other human beings, individually and collectively, to discover their unique essence and soul and to express this in ways that support the alleviation of suffering and the birth of a brighter world.

As with many journeys of transformation, the work clearly started with me. It began with the commitment to live in alignment with my own soul.

Though years have passed, along with the learning and experience, triumphs and suffering that humans, as part of life, experience and endure — my commitment to my soul has remained. This commitment is a pulse that gives rhythm to my days and holds me steady through the seasons of life.

My Teachers

I have been blessed with many teachers, who have re-invited me into my soul’s grace at times when it appeared distant.

In my late teens, I was blessed to meet a mentor who would change the course of my life and provide me with skills and practices that would be foundational to my soul’s evolution and expression. This mentor was a guide and guardian of the ageless wisdom, the essence of which may reside in a range of traditions but is not limited to any.

This wisdom exists within each of us as our soul, calling us back to ourselves. While you may hear reflections of various traditions, both Eastern and Western, in this book, it is important to me that you know that the knowledge shared is derived through practical application. This book is not intended as a theoretical dissertation.

Application is how to make knowledge real. Therefore, I invite you to experiment with what you read and make what you find valuable your own.

A friend and guide recently shared his perspective that the best books reflect in the reader what they already know deep down but need to be reminded of. If this book serves that purpose for you, I would be delighted. At the very least, I know it has done so for me.

The Unfoldment of This Book

This book is the culmination of my life’s work in leadership thus far. More importantly, it is a dissemination of some of the knowledge I have acquired through my own soul’s journey.

The information in this book does not consist of insights that have occurred to me over the last few months or years. It is knowledge based on wisdom awakened, digested, and assimilated over many years. Practiced, tested, and made real through the living of it.

I first attempted writing a similar book in my early twenties, fresh with the innocence of early enlightenment experiences. At that time, my knowledge was pure but untested. It was born of a moment of enlightenment and not very well digested. After completing the initial manuscript, I was guided to pause and rewrite. Little did I know that it would take two more decades to arrive at the moment in which I could authentically present the concepts in this book to the world.

When I started to write again, I did so from a fresh slate, yet inspired by a vision that had been working itself through me and my work for twenty-seven years.

A Focus on Leadership

Over those years, my inner world continued to deepen and become richer for the trials and tribulations I encountered and my commitment to living with purpose and soul at those moments when that choice is hardest.

My work in the world flourished, taking me to many countries to work with world leaders in politics, spirituality, human rights, ecology, and business. I had the opportunity to lead, support, and guide social and organizational transformations. I developed higher levels of self-efficacy and worldly experience to complement the inspiration of my soul.

What I have learned through working with individuals, organizations, and communities is that when I work with any one system, I am also working with all the systems with which it is interconnected, and ultimately with the blueprint of positive future possibilities for humanity. I have learned that by maintaining this awareness of multi and meta-systemic impacts, my work with each system and individual can be more powerful and profound.

Over the last decade or so, I have primarily been called to work in the arena of business and organizational transformation with a range of large organizations, testing what might be possible if business liberated itself to become not only a source for good but a transformative agent of wellbeing and evolution for other systems and our lovely planet.

I have worked with thousands of people over the last decade, some who held leadership roles and some who are leaders in the truest sense, investing in soulful evolution above ego or immediate personal gain.

The principles explored in this book have already supported the brilliance and potential of many human beings and leaders with whom I have been blessed to work. You, too, can use this book, in your own unique way, to support your evolution and the expression of your greater potential.

Because I have attempted to make certain subjective realities objective and, therefore, more accessible, some aspects of the writing may resonate with your experience while others may not. The point is not for us to reach agreement but rather to provoke thinking into new perspectives on yourself and the world.

This book is an invitation to step into more soulful leadership, a treatise on what might be possible if we do, and a guidebook for personal and social transformation.

It is my belief that if we are to effect real and positive change, we need to work on ourselves as the instrument of transformation, and yet, we can’t wait to become perfect instruments before beginning our work of creating a more positive reality.

As above, so below; as within, so without. Our personal transformation and our unique contribution to the world around us are indelibly interconnected. Rather than see them as separate, I approach them—in my life, my work, and in this book as parts of an integrated whole.

To integrate who we are with our work in the world and to express this authentically and freely is perhaps the greatest work of being human, and sign of an artful and soulful life.

And yet, a warning: Living in alignment with soul does not guarantee the kind of safety or security our world has given the illusion of providing. It takes us down a different path, one that requires bravery, heart, and wit, much like Dorothy’s companions in The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy’s yellow brick road is a pathway of unknowns, magic, and mystery, of realizing potentials undiscovered. So, too, is the journey of a soul. If we navigate with our soul as our compass and anchor, we, like Dorothy, can find our way home.

This book is written with and from love, and I ask you, the reader, to receive it as an offering of love, from my heart to yours.

If this book can help you to lead from your heart and soul with more gentleness, grace, and strength, it has achieved its purpose.

A note on the 2020 edition

We see many of the concepts outlined in this book, such as the interconnectedness of systems and the need for wiser leadership, playing out on our global stage through the current pandemic.

As COVID-19 made its way across the globe and began to change all our lives, several people who read an advance copy found it prescient of the times and a helpful companion during the initial outbreak. Perhaps this book can be a useful companion to you too and support you to live more gracefully through these challenging times.

My editor, Ed Levy, from New York, kindly accelerated his very useful editorial work to enable me to release this book during such a critical time, when more soulful leadership is needed.

Gratitude to Ed and also to Kanchi Rao, who provided initial feedback on the book and Rebecca Cameron for her expert proofreading.

This book is written for all the extraordinary leaders I have had the pleasure to know and work with and those whom I don’t yet know and perhaps are not yet born. Together, we energize a network of grace, creating opportunities for a better world, now and into the future.

TERMS

Some of the words and terms used throughout this book may be unusual or carry a different meaning than you are used to. The following descriptions may assist you to more deeply understand the meaning, essence, and intention behind them.

Blueprint

Each unique life also has a unique pathway to unfolding its potential. As human beings, this pathway is our blueprint to the expression of our life’s potential. Through it, we can express our essence and experience soul learning. Our blueprint, when lived well, can be a pathway to the attainment of self-leadership, thus supporting the realization of both our material and soulful potentials.

Consciousness

Consciousness originates and manifests at various levels; therefore, a singular or reductive definition of consciousness is unlikely to be useful for the reader. Instead, let’s explore this term as life itself and all of its manifestations, and in the human being, as awareness of life.

We can consider light as a metaphor for consciousness. Light exists in and of itself and also can be experienced in spectrums. One example of this is the color spectrum—a manifestation of visible light in the electromagnetic spectrum. If we enter a darkened room, colors may still exist as spectrums of light, whether we are aware of them or not. As the room lights up, our awareness of the spectrum brings an awareness of light and shade, shape and form, to our own consciousness.

The room, light, color, and human awareness are all manifestations of consciousness. The world makes us, and we, in turn, co-create the world. Consciousness and reality, as we experience them, are in a continuous interplay and co-creation process.

Ensoulment

Ensoulment is the process of imbuing yourself, your life, your choices, your actions, your creations, and your environment with soul. This includes bringing out, recognizing, and honoring something, whether it is an action, intention, being (sentient or insentient), or relationship in a way that empowers and enlivens the soul.

Essence

Essence is the intrinsic nature or indispensable quality of something. Each living being has a unique essence that contains all that it is and can be. Our essence being expressed is the purpose of our lifetime.

Leadership

Leadership has traditionally been defined based on context, whether it be military, corporate, or social leadership or leadership based on a particular theory such as servant or transformational leadership.

In this book, the concept of leadership is viewed in the context of a multidimensional self and multidimensional world and begins when we choose to no longer be captive to our conditioning. To lead means that we are able to have and apply original thought and perception rather than follow the thoughts, perceptions, and worldviews inherent in, and gifted to us by our upbringing, culture, and education.

This book celebrates the subtle, quiet, and invisible art of self-leadership, which leads to the development of self-knowledge, wisdom, and heart.

Life Expression

Our unique life expression is the bringing out of our essence, wisdom, and passion in a way that gives life to who we are, including our purpose and potentials.

Mind of Consciousness — The Creative Mind

The Mind of Consciousness has the capacity for new, vibrant, and living thinking. Through the Mind of Consciousness we are able to perceive more accurately, and co-create new realities.

The Mind of Consciousness can support us to express our unique genius in the world. Using our conscious mind, guided by our higher Self and intelligence, allows us to ensoul our world.

Mind of Reason — The Conditioned Mind

The Mind of Reason is a highly effective information storage system. It is the mind that we use when we need to recall something—for example, a recipe while cooking or theories when completing an exam. These thoughts are conditioned and, as such, are usually thoughts we have had, read, or heard before. The thoughts of the Mind of Reason, prior to any kind of mental training or meditation, are often like a recording on repeat. They are part of the deep conditioning that we are subject to and view as reality.

Many societies and education systems have emphasized the Mind of Reason at the expense of the Mind of Consciousness. This has resulted in the Mind of Reason being overused. Rote learning and other subtle and more overt ways of celebrating and reinforcing the use of the Mind of Reason have underemphasized the beauty of learning how to think, perceive, and create, let alone, how to engage with the soul and higher consciousness.

Therefore, rather than using the Mind of Reason as a storage and recall system, which it is designed to be, people tend to use it to guide their present and future decisions and outcomes, locking them into a conditioned worldview and set of choices. This often leads to the kinds of thinking and behaviors that Einstein defined as insanity — doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result.

The Mind of Reason tends to color and limit our perception, while the Mind of Consciousness enlivens, deepens, and liberates it.

Self

Throughout this book, the reader will notice that Self is sometimes spelled with a capital S and at times with a lowercase s. The purpose of this is to differentiate the different aspects of self.

Capital S refers to one’s higher Self or higher intelligence.

Lowercase s refers to the everyday personal self (sometimes called the ego) that, when aligned and balanced, can partner with our higher Self to bring artistry and soul into our way of being and living.

There are times when either or both may be applicable. In these cases, I have used lowercase s.

Soul

Soul is a term used repeatedly throughout this book, and yet it is not a word that becomes more powerful through definition. Therefore, I would ask you to use this term as an inquiry, rather than something definitive or material. Rather than conform your thinking to preconceived definitions of soul, I invite you into a contemplation of soul in your life.

You might like to consider the soul as a perspective you can learn to look through and an energy you can learn to relate with, or even embody. As you hear the words soul and soulful emerge in