Daily Insight: Disturbing

  

Daily Insight: 28.02.12
Last night I delivered a talk at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Shenzhen, southern China. The talk was called 'Becoming a Leader-Sage'. The audience was quite receptive, overall, and considering most of them were very practical-minded businesspeople, it was probably as good as could be expected.

One fellow there looked a little disturbed, however. In fact I'd go as far as to say he looked unhappy with proceedings. But it was not really an aggressive anger. It was more that the whole thing just seemed to disturb him. Later I found out that he was a Christian, which made his unsettled look understandable. The talk was centred around how leaders could use Integrated Intelligence to enhance their decision-making. I touched upon ideas like the extended mind, spiritual intuition, and even spiritual guidance. I also made reference to one of my own spiritual teachers, Jessica, who was a powerful and brilliant women with almost out-of-this world intuitive abilities some people would call 'paranormal' (although my position is that Integrated Intelligence is perfectly natural).

The organiser of my talk was a little concerned that the affected audience member seemed dissatisfied. He was worried, perhaps, that he might not return for the next event, or that he might say something negative about it.

Personally, I was not concerned. One of my goals in talking last night was to stir up the dust, and I said that quite explicitly at the beginning of the night! Quite often it is when we are confronted with that which is disturbing to our understanding that we become just unsettled enough to actually make a space for learning. Jessica herself often made this point, and really pushed people. Often her students fell over. Most got back up and were all the stronger and tougher for their bruises. But others didn't. They quit, or created so much drama that they were asked to move on!

I truly hope that my disturbed friend from yesterday somehow grows from his encounter with some 'alien' concepts. I truly feel compassion for him, having been disturbed more than a few times in my own life.

'May you live in interesting times', is a well-known Chinese curse. But then again, a worse curse might be, 'May you live in comfortable times, and always get what you expect.'