Ancient Wisdom for the Global Marketplace?

Our collective answer to the problems that face the world up to this moment has been to deny what is.  When the banking crisis erupted, we saw on a large scale how fragile our lives can be, but also how inter-connected we are as a species.  Now is our moment to come together as a human family and sit down at the world kitchen table and talk about the mess that we have collectively created for ourselves.  We can empower each other to dissipate our fears and create true and lasting change.  

It is doubtful that leaders with vision for a sustainable future will emerge from the political spectrum.  While this may sound pessimistic, the truth is the electorate remains polarized and angry.  Leaders that come forward with new ideas are immediately branded and set into one camp or the other making it difficult for real change to occur.  However, there are 21st century ideas arising in other sectors.  There are brilliant economists leading the way if we choose to entertain their ideas and suspend our conditioning to categorize them into a political ideology. 

→  Paul Krugman, a recent recipient of the Nobel Prize for economics wrote “The Conscience of a Liberal” and suggests that a return to the shared prosperity of former American generations is possible.  

→  Jeffrey Sachs, an advisor to the United Nations for the Millennium Development Goals Project, wrote “The End of Poverty” and his recent work “Common Wealth” where he argues for a new economic paradigm that is global, inclusive and  cooperative. 

→ In the business arena, “The Corporate Mystic” written by Gay Hendricks in 1996 led the way for a new corporate paradigm that emphasized vision, intuition and integrity as the skills required for a successful business in the 21st century. 

→ James Hunter created “The Servant Leadership Training Course” which is revolutionizing the way in which companies treat their employees and their customers.  Hunter’s model emphasizes a philosophy of compassion, courage, and character for successful businesses through servant leadership.  His thesis is simply, “the greatest leaders emerging today are the ones who have learned how to serve their people, not command them.” 

→ Finally, Patricia Aburdene, one of the world’s leading social forecasters writes in her recent work “Megatrends 2010” that the most significant force that is reshaping American business in the new millennium is consciousness.  She predicts that the future for business lies in an economy based on ethics and spiritual awareness as opposed to pure profit at any cost. 

These are just small samplings of the incredibly talented individuals who have positive ideas that are circulating through the collective mind to reshape our future.  The one idea that is common among these innovators and most visionaries for the 21st century is the notion that our collective leap in consciousness will bring resolutions to many of our problems. 

Optimists could be described as folks who fly into change whole-heartedly with trust, enthusiasm and courage because they know that as a collective we can do it.  Good teachers very often have these traits.  I have had the opportunity of meeting and learning from a teacher with just those remarkable qualities.  Derek O’Neill is one of those rare individuals that regard the human being as powerful, without limitation, and possessing all the knowledge within to create a better world for all, without exception.  An Irishman who holds not only an advanced degree in psychology and several martial arts, he is also a well-known psychotherapist in Dublin and a popular spiritual teacher in America and abroad. 

Derek also happens to be a fully enlightened human being, which affords him a rather uncommon perspective about every aspect of life.  More importantly, his enlightenment makes it virtually impossible for anyone to categorize him.  He is appealing to folks on both sides of the political and ideological spectrum because he has no attachment to either.  He cannot be categorized into one religion or even a spiritual perspective because he is attached to none.  His teachings are powerful because they come from a place that transcends division.  The knowledge that he shares seems at the same time to be ancient wisdom that also applies to this very moment.  He speaks only in terms of unity, which is a place that feels familiar and therefore has a resonance to each individual member of his audience.  He can’t even be categorized as a New Age guru because he wants no followers, nor does he seek publicity or accolades.  It is undeniably an amazing experience to be in the presence of someone who wants absolutely nothing.  One only needs to hear him speak to understand this remarkable dynamic. 

I met Derek for the first time in the fall of 2005 at his advanced training course in Dublin.  I registered for the workshop “More Truth Will Set You Free” at the suggestion of a friend but fundamentally, I saw the trip as a nice break after completing my own graduate study in psychology while holding a demanding job for an international oil trading company.  I was physically and emotionally exhausted and I believed I was going for a nice vacation to the bonny shores of Ireland and maybe learn something at the same time.  The name of the course was intriguing to me and I thought at the time that more truth and more freedom were two things I could certainly use in my life.

The workshop I attended during that week in Dublin in 2005 changed my life immeasurably and also changed those around me who were not even in attendance.  I have attended Derek’s twice-yearly course in Ireland for the last three years.  I highly recommend this experience particularly to those in corporate jobs because my time spent in these workshops has transformed my personal life but has also had a profound effect on my business life.  His one-day workshop in the U.S. and his week long course in Ireland are very different from any event in the human potential market in that there is no agenda, no syllabus, no timetable of events, and no information to jot down.  Derek only asks his audience to relax and allow their own experience to unfold and trust that what happens for each individual is perfect for them.  So how can something like this change your life?

My career in business has spanned over 30 years and I credit my staying power in an industry that is highly competitive to hard work, experience, and a good dose of common sense.  Unfortunately, very often there is little observable common sense in corporate life.  This can lead to cynicism, but if one can temper that cynicism with humor, corporate life can be rewarding on many levels.  When I attended Derek O’Neill’s course in 2005, I was surprised to meet many people from varied backgrounds such as banking, real estate, medicine, retail, corporate, psychology, massage therapy, yoga teachers, and astrologers. 

I heard him talk about changing the world and I remember thinking that it was a nice idealistic concept that will never happen.  The cynic in my head was obviously jockeying for position.  He caught my attention however, when he said that HE wasn’t going to heal the world but we were.  How were WE going to do that asked the rapidly weakening cynic inside?  Derek replied that you first heal yourself, then you heal your family, then you heal your town, then your city, then your country, and then you heal the world.  When most facilitators say that a healing is required, they often imply that there is something wrong that needs to be changed and therefore healed.  When Derek uses the word heal, he is referring to one’s conditioning.  And conditioning has very little to do with who we truly are.

Conditioning refers to our patterns of behavior that we have either acquired or learned since birth.  A child is first conditioned to eat and sleep at times often chosen by a parent.  Then school starts and conditioning from peers, teachers, coaches and siblings is added to the ongoing conditioning by parents.  Then add in a few trauma experiences, which we all have had because life is inherently traumatic, and we become further conditioned and move further away from our true nature.  How do we come to think and behave the way we do?  Why do we have strong feelings of like or dislike for a type of mate, or a person from a different race or culture?  Who conditioned us to feel that way? Who told us to fear?  Most of the time it doesn’t matter who or why.  But conditioning takes up an enormous amount of space in the psyche. How many of us live with spoken or unspoken coulda’s and shoulda’s?  How many of us consciously or not try to impose our conditioning on others? 

The challenge that Derek offers his students is to accept who you are – warts and all.  At the same time, know that conditioning can be jettisoned at any time because it’s not really who you are.  When you recognize the conditioning and choose to let it go, who you truly are can then step forward.  This sounded like a paradox to me (and it is) but I decided to with it anyway.  Derek will be the first to say (with a touch of an Irish twinkle in his eye) that to look within requires courage and character because while it’s relatively easy to see how we are conditioned in a positive way, it is more difficult to see the not so shiny parts.  It is downright unnerving to meet the parts of the personality that lies and cheats, or that is viscous, hateful, prejudiced, anxious, lazy, addicted, depressed, or fearful of death.  The reward for shining the flashlight in these darkened corners is freedom, but the first step must be the willingness to see whatever is there.  The remarkable healing that takes place in Derek’s workshops is not, therefore, performed by him but generated by the individual who has the courage to look, to see, and to ask that whatever they saw to be let go. 

I have participated in Derek’s challenge for almost three years.  The changes I experienced came quite rapidly.  The only thing that I can say that I consciously did was make a commitment to myself to look at my conditioning.  I learned that most of my own personal suffering was due to negative thinking and a poor self-image.  I also learned that everything I knew about myself came from the outside – either from other people or events.  More importantly I discovered that I believed my own thoughts about who I was and this was fueling the negativity and forming a relentless loop.  When I let go of the negative conditioning I found a person inside that I hadn’t experienced since I was a child.  I felt free of so many burdens and happy to be alive.  I also realized that many of the voices in my head weren’t even my own.  When I analyzed what they were saying I could see shades of my mother, my father, teachers etc…there was actually enough players inside my head to fill a small football stadium.  

It was a shocking moment when I realized how conditioned I was and how I had applied this conditioning to create the personality of ‘me.’  And then another moment came when it was all just so hilarious.  I had believed myself to be (and my thinking processes and belief systems bore this out) literally a collage of Mom, Dad, my parish priest, the grade school nuns, old boyfriends, cruel bosses, mean girlfriends, a bunch of people that I had limited relationships with, my pets, and a host of others.  Who am I? It was the obvious next question. I can only say for certain at this point what I am not. But in this period of uncertainty some wonderful things have happened.  I am happy for the first time in a very long time for no apparent reason other than I feel free.  I have very little fear because I stay in the present moment and don’t engage in projections to the future or the past.  I spent a lot of years hanging on to old wounds and feeling victimized. 

My work has taken on new meaning and I am grateful and eager to discover the newness of each day.  I work in the oil-trading field which is a highly competitive business.  I was conditioned to be very competitive for many years, getting locked into the “them or us” mindset.  Now my first thought is cooperation and how can a particular situation be resolved with a cooperative spirit instead of the polarization of competition.  My relationship with my peers within my own company has transformed as well. I basically approach my day with the attitude that I want to serve everyone, whether they are a member of my company or one of our competitors.  It feels very natural to work in this way. 

I still look at conditioning on a daily basis because I have quite a lot.  And I still get tripped up into believing my thoughts but those situations are happening less as I continue to inquire into my true nature.  The most important change in me is that I regard myself in a more positive light.  I am slowly developing compassion for myself, and my past experiences, which has led to a kind of self-love that is infectious.  I see how it affects those who are close to me each day.  It’s been nothing short of a miraculous transformation.  This is how the world changes.  First we heal ourselves…

Derek O’Neill is often referred to as a motivation analyst and master healer.  But he will tell you quite simply that we are all masters and all capable of doing not only what he does but much more, and he works hard to empower folks to believe in their own mastery.  He is humble and sincere and his knowledge of ancient wisdom offers a perspective that the world is hungry to hear.  He offers truth that rises above petty differences and self-interests, and truth that blasts open the closed hearts of all who cross his path.   He is looking for the brave who are willing to walk this path of truth with him to serve humanity with heart and soul.  World teachers of this caliber do not come along often. 

We have reached a moment in our collective history that requires us to change the manner in which we live and work together.  We need to conduct our business and our personal lives in a new way; one that is life affirming and sustainable for all inhabitants of this planet.  Political divisiveness, global economic inequities, dwindling supplies of natural resources such as fresh water, and oil and gas, regional warfare, and environmental calamities are problems that are no longer issues that we can look to future generations to solve.  These problems are here now and we as a human family must come together and fervently and intelligently find and implement viable solutions. 

The average global citizen wants simply to live in peace, have enough food to eat and fresh water to drink, and work at a job or a career that provides a sense of accomplishment and the financial means for a happy life for themselves and their children.  These are such simple requests and yet they are elusive for so many.  Change begins with us, each individual citizen, no matter what country or city or town we each call home.  I am writing this article to appeal to the reader to be a part of the solution.  Check out Derek O’Neill for yourself – you may visit www.sq-wellness.com, www.sq-foundation.org, or www.sq-retreats.com.  Don’t take my word but investigate for yourself.  Dare to invite a miracle or two into your life.  It’s the only journey worth taking.   

Karen Heberling, Ph.D. is a consultant for an international oil company who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  She earned her doctorate in depth psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute and recently began teaching More Truth Will Set You Free workshops after being trained by Derek O’Neill.  She can be reached atklh0131@att.net

The core values of SQ lead to the acceptance of diversity and validity of all points of view. The views expressed in the above article are not necessarily representative of SQ Worldwide and its subsidiaries. 

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