Leading from the Soul
The bedside clock flashed 5:12 am. My phone was ringing and I instinctively answered it.
“I need to talk. Nothing is working out. Uhhh…Do you have a minute?”
Half in a daze, I was trying to figure out what was happening. It was a friend whom I hadn’t spoken to in 6 months.
“My entire business is falling apart. My life is falling apart. I don’t know how to do this anymore. I don’t know how to make this all work.”
We had left college almost a decade ago, and had exchanged messages on birthdays and holidays. This call felt like it came out of nowhere.
He had gone on to become a successful entrepreneur. He led one of the fastest growing eCommerce businesses in North America.
He started speaking. At first hesitatingly, testing the waters to see how I reacted. But then in big bursts of vulnerability.
He spoke about his struggles and challenges. The pressures he faces as a leader. The burden of expectations from his customers, his employees, and his family.
“I just had a second kid last month. A girl this time. Did I tell you that?,” he asked abruptly.
We spoke for the next hour, trying to abate the mental breakdown he was having. He spoke about his hopes and dreams when he graduated with me. He spoke about all he had accomplished. And through it all, he spoke about the hollowness that came from getting everything he wanted.
“I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I can’t sleep, and I was going into a downwards spiral in my head.”
As the sun started to rise outside my window, I couldn’t help but reflect on how I too had felt similarly at times. How almost everyone goes through these dark nights of the soul where everything feels purposeless.
As my friend finished his story, I found my mind wandering to the story of man who guided me and millions more to approach leadership completely differently.
It offered an answer to this situation in the most unlikely of ways.
The President and the Monk
On January 26th 2001, a 7.7 ML earthquake had devastated Western India. More than 20,000 people died, and more than 160,000 people were injured. Everyone was completely unprepared for this.
Pramukh Swami, a humble monk, was one of the first on site in the areas which were most affected.
He inspired other monks who would otherwise spend their time in a monastery to serve others.
Spirituality after all is meant to help us live in the world, not retreat from it.
Over the coming months, Pramukh Swami directed and worked to mobilize thousands of people. He gave courage, guidance, and made critical financial and operational decisions that would impact millions.
The lines felt endless. The routines stayed the same. Feed people, clothe them, give them shelter. For months on end.
Through it all, he did not lose the human touch. He thought about the daily routines of the people affected, but also to the future.
How to re-build the homes of the affected people, how to educate them again, how to get them employed again. He thought about the present moment, but also to the future.
As the first set of people on site, he decided to start providing hot meals right away. Instead of opting for making gruel to keep people fed, Pramukh Swami designed a menu that was similar to the native people’s regular food.
“It will give them a sense of normalcy again” he reasoned.
In this and countless other small ways, he stayed focused not just on feeding people, but nourishing their inner hunger. Not just clothing them, but making them feel a sense of dignity. He did not just rebuild homes, but he focused on rebuilding lives and the inner morale.
There were many failures. A lack of water, food, basic infrastructure. It was bitter cold in the dry dessert winds of the Kutch area at nights. And long scorching heat of the sun during the day.
Yet, Pramukh Swami kept going. There was an inner light that exuded from his words that gave hope and direction to everyone who met him, or spoke to him, or wrote to him.
Many months later, President Bill Clinton was visiting India and decided to visit the affected sites. His work led him to be introduced to the work of Pramukh Swami. A brief 5 minute meeting was scheduled between the two leaders.
But 5 minutes became 15, 20, 30, 40 minutes. Their dialogue happened through the intermediary of an imperfect translator. Yet, President Clinton felt a sense of ease and peace in the presence of Pramukh Swami.
He later remarked:
When I look into his eyes, they are filled with integrity. I saw in his eyes that he is a man who has not come ahead by eclipsing others. He has come forward by always placing others before him.
A simple monk like Pramukh Swamiji had just received the validation, recognition, and attention of a world leader.
Instead of letting these words inflate his ego, he finished the meeting and went right back to his work.
He spotted two brothers in a distance who had arrived from a nearby village. When the President left, Pramukh Swami went to the two brothers and started talking with them. He asked them about their families, their safety, and their accommodations. He arranged for their meals, and consoled them through their crises.
This is the essence of the soul-based leader.
A soul-based leader is someone who can completely step outside of themselves. They are not bound by praise, personal biases, or the weight of an ego.
It may have been this this state of realization that helped so many people experience such profound love and peace from him.
Soul-Based Leadership
When you ascend to the level of the soul, your vision expands as a leader. It lets you lead with a level of contentment and joy without getting mired in the drama of the day-to-day.
In the drama of your ego.
It helps us see through the noise of over-information. It helps us see past titles and power structures. It reminds you to connect with the highest truth of your true nature.
From this seat of truth which transcends the ever-changing mind, you can exercise good judgement and courage.
After all, how can one make a tough decision when we are influenced by the problems of the world, by our own stories, prejudices, and priorities?
The Dharmic idea of spirituality offers a way to help us step outside of ourselves.
Getting Past Illusions
The Dharmic lens teaches us that the greatest illusion and delusion we harbor is the belief that we are this body and this mind. We believe the story of us as definite.
We cannot imagine a world that exists after we have passed on. We insert ourselves and our legacy into everything.
But it is your true self that allows the body and mind to exist, to perceive, to experience, to be conscious.
This consciousness is the real you. Not the body and the mind that you inhabit. This consciousness or awareness is the experiencer of everything that you consider to be “your” life. Thus, “you” are completely distinct from it all.
This is not an intellectual exercise, but a plane of existing and seeing if one pauses and tries.
The Dharmic lens asks: Who are you?
Consider this. Look at a picture of yourself as a baby. You were that person, yet somehow, that person you see is a different person than who you are now. It seems like a completely different person altogether. All those memories, all those moments — were you any of those?
In other words, at what point did you become the current version of you? Was the child, the newborn photo not you as well? Yet, that baby can seem like a different person completely to what you feel like today.
Then it is equally possible that the person whom you believe to be you right now is not you either.
On closer introspection, we realize that the mind’s conception of “you” is flawed. It takes an amalgamation of your memories and makes it your identity. This identity always keeps changing. The mind’s conception of you is also ever changing.
When we keep asking ourselves this simple question “who am I?” we are forced to realize that all the problems, successes and failures, the weight and pressure that we feel as leaders are not really ours after all. They are temporary. They belong to the body and the mind, which is ever changing.
Like the bulb that gives light to a room, it is the consciousness of our true self that gives light to the body and mind, which allows us to think, which allows us to feel.
It challenges the adage “I think therefore I am.” It tells us instead to realize “I am, therefore I think.”
When we live and lead from this perspective, we are able to see the critical challenges we face more dispassionately. It removes the burden of leadership and gives us courage to act with our conviction. It removes our ego and lets us lead with freedom.
It helps us see others fully and truly, with an eye of compassion.
The Effective Human
As I shared my experiences, insights, and anecdotes with my friend, I heard him confused at first. But this state of being outside of himself sounded so appealing to him, that he committed himself to a process of self-inquiry to help him touch this experience more tangibly.
He committed to asking himself just two questions:
- Who am I?
- And if I am not that, then who am I?
The first question engages the mind to give an answer, while the second question gets one to go continuously deeper. He committed to repeatedly ask himself these two questions in a regular meditation practice.
The last time I spoke with my friend, he had scaled down his operations to tide through the shifting landscapes. He had to let go of some staff, but he paid them well above what was required of him. He is happier now too, less stressed about running his business.
I too find myself asking these two questions above. As I deal with my own challenges, I try to find a center of existence through these two questions.
Who am I? And if I am not even that, then who am I?
More than anything else, finding and identifying with this unchanging core as the real me has been the most effective way I have found of leading and managing myself.
Now more than ever, we must find a way to incorporate this spiritual lesson if we are to lead effectively through these critical times.
This type of dharmic spirituality that puts the soul at the heart of leadership is something we need more of.
Dhawal Tank
Dallas, TX
