The boss is driving everyone crazy - one day her focus is this and the next it is that. Your son worries you - he has all these big dreams about what he will do and become but cannot seem to do any of the work to get him moving. When faced with these types of situation, how do we normally react? Most of the time we fudge it. We all complain to each other about the boss but hedge with her. We complain to other members of the family and to friends about our son but hedge with him. We are too polite. We usually don't raise the real issues because we are scared. What will happen if I confront the boss with how confusing she is? If I confront my son with how impractical he is, will he hate me?
We hint. We manipulate. We conspire. We get angry and even sick. We act out. But we don't do what is best.
We avoid dealing with the "Unspoken".
In this second of our 4 part synthesis of a conversation I had recently with Johnnie Moore, (Part 1 here) we will look more deeply into the issue of the "Unspoken"
In the picture above we see the Sword in the Stone. In Myth, the Sword stands for the Truth. The sword has the power to penetrate the heart of the matter. But this is not an attack. Johnnie reminds us that this kind of confrontation must not be made as an attack but as an act of love.
"Confrontation doesn't have to be an attack. It's more about presenting yourself more clearly to the other - it can be seen as an offer for a deeper engagement".
If all you do is attack, then you can expect an attack back. Complex isn't it?
I think a story might help. How do you confront with love?
Years ago, I made the switch from a line Investment banking job to a leading staff role. As a line investment banker, if I made my numbers, I could do anything I wanted. My style was very directive. This of course had been very successful strategy for me until then. But it was a hopeless approach in the staff where you had to help people see the best option for themselves. For the first time ever I could see that I was failing. All I knew was to be directive. As I failed, my response was to try my old directive strategy even harder. When of course that failed, I tried even harder still.
I was lost.
My boss, John Ellsworth, (He is now sailing around the world) called me in and I thought that I was going to be fired. Instead he opened by being clear that I was indeed failing BUT that he had confidence that I could turn this around. He gave me a test. He told me that all my colleagues, whom I thought were laughing at me, did not want me to fail. He said that my way back had to start with me asking one of my colleagues for help. My whole identity was tied up in knowing it all. John had found the heart of my problem. It was not that I used the wrong style. It was that I was too proud to learn how to do this better from another. It was my pride that was the deep block. He thrust the sword into this.
By doing this he gave me back my problem to solve for myself. If he had stayed on the surface of my behaviour, nothing would have had any chance of getting better. It just would have been my boss telling me off.
This test changed my whole life. Not that week but it set in motion a growing self-awareness that has been at the heart of all that is useful and good in me. John's confrontation was an act of great love. I knew that he was confronting me because he cared for me. In addition, his confrontation, far from pushing me away from him has created a bond that only the grave can sever.
The barrier that usually prevents us from using the sword of truth is fear that we will be attacked back. The paradox is that "confrontation if done with love usually opens up the bandwidth of the relationship". The love might not be a love for that other person but for the organization or the mission or the kids. Love for something that you and the other share.
In all of us, "there is a vulnerability that is waiting to be recognized" - a fear or a longing or a block.
With me it was and is still pride - I was the good son in a chaotic family. I was the strong and stable one. I had no weaknesses. But John showed me that real strength comes from vulnerability. If I wanted to be strong, which I did and do, I had to be vulnerable. He met me face to face at that place.
He did not blame me. Tell me off. Tell me that I was a bad person. But nor did he fudge or cavil. He opened with the truth that I knew - that I was failing. He confronted me with the Unspoken.
For me, this this confrontation was a big deal. But of course many of the Unspokens in life are not Arthurian life changing epics but are modest appeals for a better connection. We all tend to start on the surface, how can we help each other find a better truth?
Another great pal of mine Paul Evans who had the terrible job of taking my musings and making something tangible from them - he was a Project Manager Sans Pareil - would feign stupidity - his! I would be waxing on about this amazing idea and he would look more and more puzzled. "Sorry Rob I don't have a clue what you are saying" I would struggle to be more clear. "No still clueless" I would try harder. "No still don't get it" This would go onto until he had forced me to be clear. At first I would be annoyed with him. But I learned that he was doing me a great favour. All the work we did together like this worked well - because he had refused to take me at face value.
Don't we so often march off when we have not done this kind of work. If John Ellsworth used the Sword of Truth, Paul would use the Sculpter's Chisel!
So what are the Unspokens that affect you? Pick one and wrestle with it for a while. What do you fear? What may happen anyway if you don't use your sword? How can you act with love? What is at the heart of the matter?
What ails?
Why do we not use the Sword of Truth more often? Johnnie and I talked about this for some time. We wondered if school might be part of this? Are we trained to listen and to speak only the literal at school? Are we trained never to question the authority figure at the head of the room? Does not the media stay relentlessly at the surface and the literal?
So here is the great irony - we fear to use the Sword of Truth because we fear that we will lose badly by using it. Our boss won't like us. Our son will get even more lost. But the real truth is that unless we use it, our boss will not like us for sure and our son will have no chance.
There is so much more going in than on the surface and in the literal and in in simple action.
In the next part we will look at the "Field". That Field of Energy that surrounds each one of us and that encompasses any group. For as we learn to Tune In to this Field or Swim in this Pond, we will be able to find the heart of the matter and also the hearts of us all. For this is where the real action is.
This is no new age mumbo jumbo - our energy field is as real as the one that feeds our cell phones. Most of us have the tuner turned off. But it is there in all of us waiting to be switched on.
With the tuner on, the truth beneath the surface can be seen and acted upon with some assurance. For surely we need more assurance if we are to use the Sword?
