“A human being trying to catalyse the emergence of a higher level of consciousness is like a rocket ship trying to break through the gravity of the Earth’s atmosphere. The gravity that we are endeavouring to release ourselves from is the historical weight of our conditioning, both personal and cultural. If we can generate enough vertical momentum to propel us beyond the boundaries of who we have been, we will find ourselves in uncharted territory.” ~ Andrew Cohen.
As human beings, our behaviour conditioning has created our defence mechanisms and our fear – and this is what needs to be broken through. It’s a frightening experience, because when we stretch ourselves into a new place, often our old ways won’t work anymore. Stretching ourselves means we see things differently, we feel differently, we think differently and we start acting differently. So of course the safe thing is not to bring this higher level of consciousness in the first place – choosing the ‘not knowing what they don’t know’ approach.
For many, the mere sniff of changing and stretching sends them running – when we run leadership programs with our clients it is not unheard of to have participants who refuse to come along and even “taste” the program. They prefer to stick with their existing behaviour conditioning. For others, they embrace the emergence of a higher level of consciousness and want to learn more about leading themselves and others – for them it’s a bit like releasing a Genie – once it is let out of the bottle there is no going back.
Our programs inspire people to be courageous leaders and therefore participants are encouraged to catalyse this higher level of consciousness and it is truly amazing to watch and hear – and along the way comes clumsiness and awkwardness. Our conditioning does not leave us easily and continues to weigh us down as we try to change.
For many, this clumsiness gets them down and they allow gravity to take its course and “weigh” them back down to where they were – their historical conditioning. For others they persist and the long term results are feelings of peace, happiness, even elation and total authenticity – well worth the struggle I say.
I encourage everyone to release themselves from this gravity! And I would love to engage in conversations with others who have experienced these kinds of changes.
