Ep 189 - Wise Leadership Is The KEY To Humanity's Evolution - One World in a New World - Apocalyptic Chats

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Namaste and in La Ketch and welcome to this episode of One
World in the New World. I'm your host, Zen Benefiel.
And this week's guest is GregoryStibbens.
He has a doctorate in education,is the founder of People Savvy
and Master Coach. He is also in the Forbes Council
of Coaching and he has a recent book called Wise Leadership,

(00:25):
Embracing our hearts wisdom thatis rising up the charts.
He is a graduate of Pepperdine Years University with a
doctorate education. And I know we're going to have a
fantastic conversation. So you'll want to stick around
for it. We'll be right back.
Explore the thoughtless sphere. Embark on a life changing
journey of self discovery. Embrace harmony with self, with

(00:48):
others, with Earth, one world ina new world.
Zen Benefield skillfully ignitesconversations, guiding guests to
reveal personal journeys and perspectives.
Listeners are inspired to seek knowledge and find wisdom in
their own lives. Join this transformative journey
as we navigate the depth of human experience.

(01:12):
Greg, it's so great to have you here.
I've been looking forward to this conversation.
I know we're going to get into the depths of awareness and
reality and and connectivity. So I really appreciate,
especially with your background,this is going to be a phenomenal
conversation. Thank you.
My pleasure and seeing. I feel the same with you.

(01:33):
As you know, we've been dancing around the edges of each other
and now we get a chance to really play.
Yeah. Exactly.
So you know when, as we talked about before this, what I hope
to do is bridge the gap between inner and outer realities for
people in ways that are practical and pragmatic.
However, that it means we got totalk about the weird stuff,

(01:56):
right? And it's not so weird, it's just
that we're seen that way becausewe're bereft of having these
conversations about our inner world and our experiences that
are so important and actually create our outer world.
Truth be known, I, I believe, and I think you do too.
So in in your early stages, how did you first get connected with

(02:19):
this notion of things being interconnected?
Well, it, it's, it's an interesting process.
I, I said it was, you know, talking with you before we
started this interview, when I was about 16, my mom was buying
me Gene Dixon books. So I was starting to get

(02:42):
interested in that. And she, she just knew.
I don't know how she knew, but she just knew.
Absolutely. Well, what's strange though, is
that you know, in that further, as you expressed a little bit of
background in it that you grew up in a military family in, in
the history of your father, grandfather, great grandfather
and probably great, great grandfather were all West Point

(03:06):
graduates. Yeah.
And so you've got this really strict command and control
environment that you're in. And your mom's giving you Gene
Dixon books. That's just.
Phenomenal. Yeah.
Well, I don't think she ever told my dad about that, but
well. Back then, probably not there.
Were just to keep separate relationships.
Yeah. So when I was about 17 or I

(03:29):
started to learn to meditate. And you know, when I say learn
to meditate, it was just I just started doing stuff.
And then when I went away to College in the middle of my
sophomore year, I met some people who were studying with a
guy named John Roger. And I started learning how to

(03:52):
meditate for real at that time. So that was about 1970.
What were the adjustments? I mean, I know I've done a lot
of stuff. I'm self-taught for the most
part, as you probably are as well.
When you had that shift from your own practice to a
discipline practice, what were the differences that you
noticed? Well, here's the interesting
part. When I turned 18, I had a

(04:13):
complete change of consciousness.
When I was growing up, it was expected my brother and I would
either go to West Point or the Air Force Academy because my dad
was part of the Army Air Corps, which became the Air Force.
And I had a complete change in consciousness.
And I was like, no, I'm not going to go shoot somebody.

(04:36):
So I went down to the draft board and said, I want to file a
conscience objector. The woman behind the counter
looked at me and said, you'll never get it.
I said, OK, She said, but if yougot it, if you didn't get it,
would you go to Canada? I said no, I'd, I'd stay and do
my service. You know, with my cleaning
bedpans, I'd do that. What I didn't know was that

(04:58):
really touched her. She locked my file in the safe.
And when she finally retired in the early 1980s, she said, oh,
there's some old files in there.You might as well just throw
them away. So it wasn't just me.
She had made the decision that, you know, some of the kids from
the air base that was on had made a decision not to be part

(05:20):
of it. And they had served, served
their time. And, you know, growing up in my
family, yeah. I spent first 18 years of my
life in the military. So but I started learning how to
meditate for real. And then in the middle of my
junior year, I just dropped out of college and moved to Los

(05:43):
Angeles to study more closely with my teacher at the time.
And he told me, he said that you're out here for two reasons.
One is to study the spiritual stuff, and the second is to get
your degree. And I went, oh, OK.
Yes, Sir. So I went back to school.
I got my bachelor's degree, and then they came forward.

(06:06):
I should get a master's degree. So I got a master's degree from
USC and finance of all things. And then I was at a gas station
filling up my car. He pulls up in his car and he's
filling up and we're talking back and forth and he talks
about this university that he was founding and he, you know,

(06:28):
it tells me all about it. And then he starts to get in his
car and he sort of looks at me and says, you know, you really
ought to think about getting a doctorate.
It just runs off. So the next day I'm looking at
schools in Los Angeles about getting a doctorate.
So which I did, I finally did that and.
That's a lot of work and it's, you know, there is a lot with a

(06:52):
lot of folks that would say bye,you know, but really the
discipline, the effort, the strenuous mental activity, let
alone, you know, the hours of study, that says a lot.
Well, and I don't think people are that disciplined and
passionate about life today. Yeah, they're not.

(07:14):
But actually it was more work than you think, because at that
time there was a Community Center that a lot of us lived
at, and there was a requirement of 20 hours a week of
contributing to the people of the Community Center.
And just to make sure I had enough money to do all this, I

(07:35):
worked full time. I know what that I went through
2 master's degrees in business. So you know, you understand that
your social life sucks. Oh yeah?
What? Social life?
Yeah. Exactly.
I heard about that one time. So I was doing all these things

(07:58):
and I was pretty much progressing with my spiritual
studies, but it was more like stealth.
I didn't really talk about it too many to too many people,
except on the rare occasion where Spirit would come in and
say you need to talk about this with this person.
So I was at the time, I was working for a company called
ADP, Automatic Data Processing. I was sitting there huge.

(08:23):
Yeah. I was sitting there in a in a
room preparing accounts receivable reports.
There's a guy sitting behind me and Spiritus comes in like you
talked about and just blasts himnow.
What was that like? All right, Because, you know,
this is where people have difficulty in trusting those

(08:43):
inner promptings when they come.Well, they are.
He was, he was ready for it. It just is, you know, it was
just wasn't time to talk about it with him because he'd asked
me questions every so often. He was aware.
But I. Was talking about the prompting
within you right These are the things that I hope to share with

(09:04):
others that you know because there's this resistance that
because it's a different world inside right now that thing that
that's unquestionable or and undeniable that it happens yet
how what does it happen What wasit like for you Was it a just
this impetus Was it a an actual voice did it was there just a

(09:29):
knowing that arrived or. It was more of an energetic
pattern and just a knowing but but I've had that knowing since
I was a kid. Yeah, I think we all do.
We just deny that we're all inextricably connected and we've
just been in denial. But because.
My mother was We weren't swimming.
Yeah, because I was, you know, my mother was.

(09:51):
So, you know, like I said, Swami, mommy, you know, it was a
natural part for me. It didn't seem strange.
It didn't seem weird. And when I was playing
basketball in high school, she'dalways asked me before a game,
OK, who's going to win? And I would tell her, you know,

(10:12):
because the information would come forward.
Sure. And so ask questions.
What was it? Ask, seek and knock, one guy
said. Well, I'd be, I'd be playing the
game and it's like you talk about a voice.
I would hear a voice say you need to back off and let the
other, let the other guys on theteam score because they're

(10:34):
really focused on you. And so I did that.
That's servant leadership. Yeah.
And the, and the coach, of course, hated it.
And when my brother was playing,because he was a year older,
we've been playing basketball together so much so we didn't
have to look at each other. And so I'd reach stripped like

(10:55):
this and grabbed the wall because he just passed it to me.
But I wasn't looking at him and the coach just just, he just
could not understand that. And it just was too weird for
him, so I didn't think about it.Well, yeah, you grew.
Up like that I I was in sports in in school too.
I had close some close friends that we to develop, not quite

(11:15):
that relationship, but pretty close.
And you don't think about it at the time, right?
It just happens. It's natural, it's part of your
experience. You don't question.
And so when you ask, well, what,what did it feel like when this
thing came in? It was like it was very natural
for me and I he was just. Let me ask one more question

(11:38):
while we're. In.
Eruption because I think it's important because you're one of
the few people I believe that really could go into the depths
of this answer and and when you have that what's the sensation
in your body where where is it you know the indigenous have
this three brain system that gutthe heart and the head and and
that we gently process the opposite direction.

(12:01):
Were you that sensitive that youwould feel these impressions
somewhere in your body as well? Or it?
Wouldn't necessarily be an energetic for me, it would just
be a sense of knowing. OK.
So you know what was going on and then you would respond
appropriately based on what was going.

(12:21):
On and that knowing wasn't necessarily in your head, it was
in your entire being, right? OK at that.
Point. You're in a state of being, not
a state of doing. Yes.
You might be doing stuff, but you're really in a in a state of
doing. Well, we get into a lot of Doo
Doo that way, right? Yeah, I know.
But it is what it is. So he was he was struggling with

(12:45):
this is in it because it hadn't pinned to the sea.
And all I could do is turn around, smile and say it kind of
builds up, doesn't it? He's like.
And he finally got enough saying, you know what's going
on. Yes, I do, you know, seen this
before, you know, experiencing myself and we're still good

(13:08):
friends to this day. But you know, that's.
That's what you can give a person who is in that state of
quasi confusion that oh, yeah, it's OK, let me hold your hand.
We'll get through this. Being as empathic and

(13:29):
compassionate as you can and to let them know that this is just
part of the process and it's just the beginning of the
process and you get a choice. You get to choose in or choose
out. You know, there's no mandatory
part of this. No, there isn't.

(13:50):
And that's the maybe the quandary that folks have.
It is when, and I had this with my wife Luba, because I use the
word submission a lot. And to one who was raised in the
Soviet Union, that's not a good word.
So there's these trigger words that we have to navigate with

(14:13):
because you know, there's this, it's an acquiescence I think is
where I, I went to with that. That's the most suitable to just
denounce it. Interesting.
She uses words. I use the word acceptance, and
acceptance doesn't mean you acquiesce to it.
It means that you're accepting as part of what's going on.

(14:36):
You still get to choose whether you're going to participate or
not. And what I found in my life is
when I choose, the life pattern moves very smoothly.
The few times, the few times I've chosen not to, things get a
little rough, but it's like, youknow, hey, you chose that so.
Well, hopefully there's not too many cosmic tuba fours you get

(14:56):
slapped upside of the head with before you actually get.
Well, the question is when you get slapped upside of the head,
are you really aware of that? True.
Why? Because those are the situations
where you've fallen out of alignment so much that you cause
harm to yourself. Those are two great words to put

(15:17):
together. Acceptance results in alignment.
Yeah. So, and a lot of that has been
the focus of my life. How do I stay in life and how do
I keep in mind, how do I make sure that I'm doing the things
that are necessary to do while I'm still dabbling in the world
and having my experiences and doing all the stuff that sure

(15:39):
really is wasting? And you're kind of sharing a
joyful noise as as a result of that, right?
Because it's so exciting. It's so awe inspiring that that,
that it's, you got to have it right.
You know it's there. It it's that part of life that
just continually accelerates andascends your own activity.

(16:06):
So then I did a bunch of different things, came forward
that I I was part of the university that was beginning.
We put some, I put some classes together and then I had dinner
with Jr. and it was clear to himthat he wanted a program, not

(16:31):
necessarily a bunch of classes. So we put the university on
hiatus. He got two people from New
Mexico that were very good at itand had doctorates in
psychology, and he put together a psychological kind of program.
And I continue to act as treasurer for the university
just to keep my hand in. And then I left to do other

(16:57):
things and I came came about that.
There's a program called InsightSeminars.
It was very much involved in that from the very beginning.
And at that point in time, I wason the board and we were
discussing, you know, we really should have a more formalized

(17:21):
education. I said, why don't we put
together inside university? He said, well, none of us know
how to do that. Said, yeah, I might have some
clues. So I I called.
A friend of mine within your reach, right.
And and this is what I love about the organizational acuity,
if you will, of spirit, for lackof the better.

(17:44):
It organizes things. It gathers people when you're, I
find when you're where you put your attention with intention
and you're interacting with that, it's like a momentum
tunnel that just draws people toit.
Yeah. So I had, I had actually created
a consulting company probably about 1989 and was had a lot of

(18:08):
clients and was doing a lot of consulting.
And this kind of thing through its threw its thing on my
doorstep. And I called a friend of mine in
New Mexico who had formed a university himself.
And so he was talking to him. He had just created a doctorate
program in transformational leadership.

(18:28):
I was looking for a master's program in transformational
leadership. So we got together, we started
talking and I said, you know, ifwe try to do both at the same
time, it's going to kill us. Yeah, because it's tough to put
those programs together. Oh yeah.
Any kind of curriculum development is tough, Yeah.
So we, we chose the doctor program, we got the program up

(18:50):
and running and in New Mexico you had to be, you had to be
accredited within three years, which is just a hump.
So I was working with some people who helped universities
go through accreditation process.
And then the secretary of Education changed the world

(19:12):
because we had a blended program, blended learning
program. Some of it was online and a lot
of it was we would meet as a class once the semester for four
days, but it was an intense 4 days.
I. Had no doubt.
But the Secretary of Education put forward these regulations

(19:34):
for which there was no legislation that basically said
if you have any online programs,you must make sure that the
students, wherever you have a student or wherever you have
faculty, that you're registered in that state as if you were an
in state school. Wow.

(19:57):
Yeah. That's like.
By registration fees in New Mexico were about $1000 a year,
the new regulation. 'Cause the registration fees to
look like going to $3,000,000 a year.
For example, Massachusetts wouldn't even talk to you till
you wrote a check for $10,000 and then they sit down and talk

(20:17):
to you. That's.
Just horrible. You know that about education.
It's, you know, turned into a money maker rather than actually
delivering education. That actually wasn't the worst.
I can imagine that's just the beginning because the trickle
down is what where the damage really occurs.

(20:39):
The state of Texas sent me a letter saying if any of your
students happen to be residents in Texas and they graduate, they
could be criminally liable for what?
Getting an education? So all these things just pointed
out that it's time to time to close the cent.
Down Yeah. And figure out how to make some

(21:02):
adjustments, if that is possible.
You know, the you know, you're so you've got this curriculum.
I can relate to the curriculum development too.
I I taught high school and and Ihad two charter schools.
I had full charge of the high school curriculums and four
grades, right. That was just and but I had some

(21:23):
fun with it, too. I built multiple intelligence
learning centers and just because I thought, OK, let's see
what we can do, right? I didn't know.
I'd never heard that I or even possible.
I just figured, OK, we know thisnow, why not implement it?
We actually graduated two classes before I shut down the
university. You know, I, I just could not

(21:44):
generate. You know, one of the board
members said if we got you $5,000,000, would you continue?
I said no because it'd be gone in two years and none of it will
go to be educating and students.It would just be registration
fees, right? And he goes, oh, OK.
That's like, you know, what are you going to do?

(22:05):
So, well, what can you do it? That's a great question.
What are you going to do? And this is what spurred both of
us, I believe, to go down the paths that we have for change
and attempting to write a listing ship, if you will.
Yeah. So a lot of what I've been doing
in preparation and some of whichyou've been part of the

(22:27):
university was really getting anunderstanding of wisdom
development. And and then the other part of
it was this whole concept of transcendent leadership was
starting to come forward, which is the next layer up from
transformational leadership. So if you look at the word

(22:48):
transcend, it's raised to a higher level.
Right. What was, if we could kind of
not divert, but go off on a tangent a little bit, kind of
what's transformational leadership in, if you could put
that succinctly, what does that mean?
Well, it's been, it's been defined by lots of different

(23:09):
people and each definition is a little different, but it's like
you go through a process of transformation.
But if you're leading an organization, the organization
goes through a process and hopefully all the individuals go
through a process. Well, yeah, you're the
spearhead. So you're leading the way.
And it's going to at least somehow ripple through the, if

(23:32):
you look at leadership development from like the turn
of the last century, 1800s to 1900s.
Before the 1900s, it was called the great man theory because
only men were leaders and only great men could be leaders.
OK? Fortunately, we're beyond that.
Then in the 1920s, it became transactional.

(23:52):
You work for me, you produce X widgets, you get paid, OK.
And there's still companies out today that operate on a
transactional basis and they do really well.
Well, yeah, and that's. Kind of what Dewey set up with
our educational system. Initially the factory workers.
Yeah. So then when humanistic

(24:14):
psychology came to the forefrontin the 1950's, the whole concept
of transformation started comingout.
One of the fathers of transformational psychology was
Abraham Maslow. OK, so all of this became whole
different way to look at education and especially a whole

(24:36):
different way to look at leadership.
And so that's what we were teaching.
But as we were teaching it, we got this clue that, you know,
there's a higher level on this. Sure.
So I went back to Maslow just before he passed in 1969
Nineteen 70 he'd written a paperon transcendence.

(24:57):
Beginning of that paper probablymay happen when he was Co
facilitating a program in early 1960s with the name just jumped
out of my head. But the guy who survived the the
German concentration camps? Well, guys, where they came to

(25:22):
mind was pre off copper, but that's that's not the one.
Anyway, yeah, so. That name will come in just a
little. Minute, I'm out of nowhere.
Of course. So I'm sorry, my brain is going
foul, not found. Unimportant at this point.
So that became that, and then itwas quiet.

(25:47):
And then the paper was written by a doctoral candidate in in a
school up in Washington on transcendental leadership.
And then various papers started showing up in the early 2000 and
that type of thing. I wrote a book on it and it

(26:08):
published it in 2020 on transcendent leadership.
And I've gotten a lot of people around the world who've read the
book and really want more depth and more information on that.
And so if you use the word transcendent, which means to
rise above, what does it mean for a person to rise above all
of these lower levels of consciousness and move into a

(26:30):
higher level of consciousness? That's.
Almost apocalyptic now, isn't it?
Yeah. Yeah.
It's the uncovering. This is one thing that I, I
really find puzzling today is that 99% of the people think
apocalypse is a catastrophic endof the Earth, right?
No, that's not what the word means.

(26:51):
It means uncovering knowledge. Yeah, well, it it depends on
culture you bring in. OK, so it's.
Absolutely. However, tracing it to the
roots, the Greek, Yeah, take thelid off, right?
Part of transcendent leadership is the whole process called

(27:12):
reverence. If you look at reverence from
the Jewish perspective, it meansbow down to God.
But if you look at it from the Greek perspective, it means a
sense of awe where you look at what's going on and you go, wow.
Right. And that's that's where then.

(27:33):
You ask questions, right? Yeah, exactly that happened.
I want more. Yeah, you, you'll get more when
you can handle it. Yeah, yeah.
Otherwise we've got everything out.
So that started coming on and and that's the whole whole
process of wisdom development precedes that transcendence and

(27:59):
wisdom to me is an integration of mind, hunch, head, hunch and
heart. So your knowledge base, your
non, non linear understanding the knowing base and the heart
which a lot of people even todayand corporations have a really
hard time with that. Oh, and don't even talk about

(28:21):
love. Yeah, workplace, right.
Or instituting something, you know, loving and being loved and
all that kind of conversation. It was like, whoa.
Well, that's primarily because most people have the word love
geared up to relationships, and they know that relationships are
not not to be done. They get pounded by human

(28:43):
resources for that. Oh sure, and they get messy.
Who caring about a person is actually a demonstration of
love. Absolutely.
So I'll give you an example of aclient of mine.
The CEO, he will remain nameless, was changing the
direction of his company. He was had a whole different
strategic vision and all of his senior executives had bought

(29:07):
onto it except for the CFO. And the CFO was just becoming a
plug in the piping. Yeah, didn't see the numbers in
it. Yeah.
And so he said, I don't know what to do.
I said, you know, CFO, you can always trade him out.
And he looks at me and says, Greg, I can't do that.

(29:29):
I said, why not? Said he's my best friend.
In fact, he was my best man at my wedding.
I said, ah, so you're feel a little trapped.
What would you do if you really,really did love this guy?
He said I'd probably go find hima job at a company that was
perfect for him. I said great idea, why don't you

(29:51):
do that? And that's what he did.
He went and talked to all of hisother CEO buddies and he found a
perfect job for this guy, transferred him over.
The guy just absolutely loves his new job because his fits in
his wheelhouse. And he went and got a different
CFO that was in alignment with his plans.
To me, that's unconditional loving.

(30:13):
But if you use those words, for most senior executives, they go,
well, no, he's just taking care of the person, right?
That's what loving is, is takingcare of.
Exactly. You give of yourself to the
other in order to make their lives better.
Yeah. And so if you're really talking
about that part of the heart, you're talking about self

(30:35):
compassion. Self empathy and self loving
doesn't have anything to do withanybody else that has to do with
yourself. So when I'm working with people
to take them through the wisdom development process, there's two
things that they need to do. 1 is they need to do self inquiry
to really understand what their experiences have been and what

(30:58):
the learning is from the experience.
And whether they've learned fromthe experience or not.
Most people do self inquisition.Instead, they just beat
themselves up. Yeah, self deprecation.
Of the 70 thousand thoughts we have a day, I would venture to
say 3 fours of them are self deprecating, if not more.
Well, actually, they tested this.

(31:19):
There's a study that took place in in really young kids.
Goody statistics, I love it. And they found out that the
common feedback that they got isstudents, 95% of it was what you
couldn't do. Yeah, so why can you take a
spelling on? That a second because I had an
experience in college. I'll just share it really

(31:41):
briefly. When I first opened a telepathy
and didn't know it right I had coming back.
I worked in cafeteria, lived in the honors dorm that was 50
yards away. I'm walking from the cafeteria
to the honors dorm one day and I'm passing other students and I
hear all of this self deprecation.
You this, you that, you the other, you know all.

(32:04):
And I'm thinking I'm hearing it and you is me.
And I'm like, whoa, where did this come from?
And it wasn't my voice. I locked myself in my dorm room
for a couple of days. And finally a friend comes over
and he says, what's going on? Where you been?
And he and I have been doing some experiments together.
So we were much more open. And I said, well, here's what

(32:27):
happened. He says, well, were those your
voice? Was that your voice or others?
And at that point, I went, oh, shit, ready?
And yet here it is. So if we have that capacity,
man, we open up. You've really got to be careful

(32:48):
what you listen to. Well think about the non vocal
feedback you get even in grade school.
So you take a spelling test and you get 95 out of 100 words
spelled correctly. The score on the paper says -5
and it's in red. Yep.

(33:09):
So once they get past the self inquiry phase this is then it's
a process of self reflection. Except that most people do self
rejection as you said, you know,and so which.
Which creates the chaos in theirlives.
Exactly. Exactly.
So one of the things I found in in working with various

(33:32):
executives in terms of helping them develop wisdom is the
senior executives don't want to do it.
Why? Because it means they got to go
and look at all this stuff that they beat themselves up for
years and they just don't want to do that.
The emerging leaders or the brand new leaders who are just
desperate to learn everything they can about leadership, they

(33:54):
dive into it, sure. And.
So is this generational or is ittranscendent into just the
intention and the choices that folks are making?
I think it's a bigger issue thanI think it's more the evolution
of mankind. Thank you for bringing that up.

(34:17):
Yeah, as you know, and I think that's why you and I and A lot
of other people, our real job isjust to help mankind evolve.
Yes. And so part of that evolution is
some people are really willing to get into it, wake up, become
aware. And self-awareness is so huge in

(34:38):
both transformational and especially transcendent
leadership, right? You don't have that
self-awareness. That's going to be difficult.
Well, in that self-awareness youbecome aware that how you think,
feel, believe does produce the reality of which you experience.
Now how do we get that through the thick headedness in humanity

(35:04):
and bring them to a new state ofbeing?
Gently if possible, because thisright isn't always gentle,
although it can be with proper help.
Well, a person, this is a very general statement.
A person is, this is a summationof their experiences and how

(35:28):
they wire those experiences up. Right.
OK, so in in corporate bit in corporate trainings, there's a
huge thing on emotional intelligence.
Most of the leaders go to the intelligence part of emotion and
still will not feel their emotions.
OK. And so that's part of the

(35:48):
experience. What were your emotions?
Well, the emotions are negative,are they?
So I said, I say look at them. Have you ever gotten angry at
something? Oh, yeah, I've gotten angry at
the people. Great.
OK, So what boundary did the other person cross that caused
that emotion to appear? And what have you done to become
more aware of those boundaries and which ones are appropriate

(36:11):
for where you are or might just be plugged in when you were
getting programmed as a kid? And then that's when the wisdom
moment happens, you know, where the light bulb turns on.
Yeah. It's like OK.
So those are great to see and they're visible.
They're visible when that happens.

(36:31):
Too. Yeah, so every emotion is like
that. There's a gym in that if you
take the time to really look into it.
But I use I use anger because it's such a common, common
emotion. Everybody has it.
Yeah, yeah. So, and those batteries get
programmed in from zero to sevenyears old, where you go through

(36:53):
an imprinting process. And then 7 to 13, you go through
a modeling process. The house next door has workmen
pounding away. So you look for a hammer in
your, you know, kitchen drawer and you look for a board to
pound on, usually the dining room table.
Not all modeling efforts are successful.

(37:15):
Or your parents want to give youa sense of culture, so they take
you to an art gallery. You get home, search at your box
of 64 Crayolas and look for a blank canvas, usually the dining
room wall. Again, not all modeling efforts
are successful. Then from about 14 to 21, you go

(37:36):
through a process where you rewire all the stuff that your
parents have told you, your friends, parents, your church,
your school, whatever, whatever's programmed in, you go
in and you test it. And usually what I'm doing is a
seminar. I'll look at people and say, OK,
so you have kids in that age range, right?

(37:58):
How did you know? Because you're missing large
chunks of hair. Well, and and even with this,
you know, I love this 14 to 21, right.
So this is that crux space, I guess for lack of a better that
for the imprinting to take hold or transcend.
I was one of the fortunate ones,even though I was adopted, not

(38:19):
even though because I was and I was given a much better life
than I could have had. My father was a 32nd degree
Mason, so he introduced me to DeMalay as I went into high
school. And this was just, it made
sense. It felt real.
The the instruction the the precepts the value of for life

(38:46):
and others. Yeah.
So that that provides a great foundation for which you
springboard off of. Yeah, you have to understand
that a lot of people don't have that foundation.
All they've gone through is justhere's what's been imprinted,
here's what I tested is here's what I modeled.

(39:07):
And when you model stuff, you get your parents approval.
Yes, that's a good model. No, that's not the thing to do.
And as you said, 90% of which feedback you get is, no, that's
not a good thing to do, right? So you're kind of left.
And and in that process, you don't think about as a leader,
right, initially you're not aware of all this imprinting.

(39:29):
And because you are in a leadership position position,
your imprinting has been much different and we tend to think
everybody's the same as us. So, so growing up where I grew
up and my father and the other family members being officers in
the military, we were expected to be leaders.

(39:53):
My dad never talked about it, Just there was this expectation
that we would be leaders. There was.
This the. Vibe in the Boy Scout troop.
We were leaders of the Boy Scouttroop, you know, that kind of
stuff. And it's just so it's just it's
part of people say, well, when did you learn leadership?
I said I probably started learning it when I was about
three days old, you know, because it just got imprinted.

(40:19):
And the other part that I didn'ttell you about growing up?
Oh, I like that, pause says. Like do I want to say this or
not? Yeah, so I told you when I was
18 I had a change of consciousness.
Yes. Part of the change of
consciousness was to go down to the draft board and file for

(40:42):
conscience to objector and the woman behind draft board saying
you'll never get it. And by the way, if you don't get
it, are you going to go to Canada?
I said no, I'm going to stay here and do my service.
You know, if it means cleaning bedpans, that's what I do.
And so the file ends up in the. Safe, yeah.
So she puts the filing in the safe and from that point on,

(41:06):
instead of a 2S deferment, I geta 1H deferment, which is a
holding category. No one understood what a holding
category is. Usually it means we've lost your
file, but we're not going to admit that.
So when she retires in the 1980s, she said, oh, there's
some old files in the safe, you might as well just clean them
out, you know? And I didn't know it, but my mom
found out about it and sent me the article.

(41:29):
She said if you ever wondered why you didn't get drafted and
my draft number, which you can relate to was one O 1.
So it was a very low number. But life is like that, you know,
I was meant to do other things and that's how I that's how I
came through. Now, do you feel from that

(41:52):
statement, life was not meant tobe that way for you, is there?
Do you find that there's this the thread of being led to the
greater being that you are? You know, I've always had
trouble articulating this because I believe that there is

(42:13):
a design within us that, that there, you know, if we have this
natural order, we have this infinite intelligence that has
constructed these, this living this reality in such an
infinitesimally specific way that the order there that we're,

(42:34):
you know, if we're designed, if we're children of if we're
fashioned after, then what is this combination of genetic
material and soul vibration, if you will, consciousness?
How does this all fit? Does it?
And what might it lead to? So if we are All Souls, which in

(43:01):
my wheelhouse we are, and beforewe Incarnate, we write the game
plan, the powers that be. So this is all laid out.
And in that game plan you have different paths that you can
take because you have choice. Sure.

(43:23):
So my job is to make sure that Istay with the mandatory game
plan and not take too many side trips.
God knows I love side trips because it's.
I do too. They're wonderful.
Fun and you know that kind of stuff, and you get to be
irresponsible. And meet cool people.

(43:46):
Yeah. So, so that's pretty much
hardwired in me and I know that.And so pretty much everything
I've done has been, this is a time for you to do this.
So the book that I just wrote, Wise Leadership, embracing our
hearts wisdom, Our hearts wisdom, that was laid out for me

(44:10):
about 3 years ago. It took me that long to write
the book. Interesting.
Timing COVID, right. We were talking about this prior
to that COVID, however it happened it with the
sequestration, it gave everybodythe chance to self examine.

(44:31):
Well, not only that, I've been living in California, except for
the five years I was in Santa Fe, NM doing inside university,
but I've been living in California since 72.
So my wife came to me and she said my parents are beginning to
age out. I'd like to go back and be there
for them, which meant going to Green Bay, WI, which is where we

(44:53):
live now. And hey, she let me crackers.
Yeah, she let me tell you what. How cool was that?
Yeah. Before you ask, I have been
gifted a cheese head. So.
So that happened at the end of 2020, right when COVID was
coming out. So my whole world turned upside

(45:17):
down. Sure.
Along with everybody else's for the.
Time exactly so. It's navigated.
So here's the difference that instead of succumbing, you rose
up right where many people got into this fear based mentality

(45:38):
and and rightfully so, perhaps right.
You know, my wife and I was like, this feels like bullshit,
right? So we never paid attention to
anything. We lived our lives just like we
normally would and both of our businesses increased now.
Then we looked around and and we'd go out, you know, and

(45:59):
people be wearing masks everywhere, driving down the
street in their car wearing a mask.
How ridiculous. Yeah, well, you, you told me.
That was a little my bias there.But I'm, you know, truth is
coming out. Yeah.
Saying a lot, but it's coming out.

(46:20):
So I had a different environment.
I had the time to really focus on this.
I had a time to collect all the learning because I've been
studying wisdom stuff for probably 20 years or more.
And you know, and people who know me know, I'm just a

(46:41):
voracious reader. And you're driven to know what's
valuable, not from an economic sense, although that does
happen. As a result, you're looking for
what's valuable in the connection of people, places and
things and how they can work together better and and people

(47:02):
savvy, right? Yeah.
So, yeah. And doing those three things,
I've become more or less an expert on transcendent
leadership, wise leadership, andloving leadership, and then what
I refer to as a trifecta of where leadership is.
Going Oh, and the Trinity applies everywhere.

(47:23):
It's the, I think it's the most ubiquitous pattern in the
universe. You know, we've got the, the
Trinity and, and pretty much every organized religion doesn't
matter. And then at a micro level,
you've got a proton electron, a neutron.
And you know, it's, it's like the here we are.

(47:46):
Can we not see where the, you know, where did that originate?
How did this trickle through andand how do we apply the
understanding and wisdom that comes through the discovery of
that? Well you got to be willing to
look at your experiences and understand the learning from

(48:07):
those experiences and just take it as a learning, not as a self.
No failures. Yeah, there are no failures.
They're just all stepping stones.
It's that that's that goes back into that self deprecation mode
as opposed to, you know, self acceptance.
Yeah, so. But if you've been programmed to

(48:28):
not have that, your first actionwill be not to have that, right?
You know, And then they wonder why they keep repeating the same
experience over and over simply because you have not learned
from it yet. Right.
So, you know, the whole concept of of learning organizations is

(48:51):
like, yeah, but what level of organization, what level of
learning are you doing? It's one thing to learn the
skills of being leadership, and it's another thing to learn who
you are as a leader. So and a lot of leaders don't
understand who they are as a leader shows up long before they
physically show up. Well, sure.
It's visible to everybody. Yeah.

(49:13):
And and then it's internal, right?
It, it's based on here, I'm making some assertions.
It's based on that sense of all curiosity and willingness to
step into where you're being prompted to go.
Yeah, and but it's you promptingyou to go there because you are

(49:36):
the one who wrote the script. Right, you know, and that's the
that's the self love, that's theconnection.
This is what I was talking aboutthat internal design that's
there that we've been, I don't want to say unwilling.
We just haven't had the awareness to look at it yet
until perhaps when quantum. Physics arrived.

(49:58):
A friend of mine had a nice expression.
You know, denial is more than just a river in Egypt.
Yeah, it was. Like the swimming concept or
comment earlier about denial. How does how do we get through
this? What what do you what have you

(50:20):
found that Excel. Yeah, accelerates because we're
in a time, you know, we have time that that's the time.
There's this sense of urgency and yet not right because
universe is you know, creation is going to go on just as it is
with or without us. Doesn't really matter.
However, in this evolution of humanity, there's even there's a

(50:47):
Valentina Morovina is a Russian academician that got her title
that's the highest Academy of Sciences title in Russia.
She got her title through a dissertation called The Global
Mutation in Humanity, and my wife shared this with me.
It's in Russian, of course, but it's got English subtitles.

(51:09):
She's had 10 years of study in the genetic shifts that have
been taking place as part of this ascension.
And the results are just they'reproving that, yes, consciousness
is rising. Now how do we apply that?

(51:31):
How do we accept that? How do we move into it in better
fashion so that we can move forward and in the preparation,
if not the demonstration of loving and being loved and
harmony among people and planet resolving as the process

(51:52):
emerging? People have to begin learning to
accept the differences. So let me give you an example.
Sure. People who have 5 fingers and a
thumb, essentially they have 6 digits.
It's not that unusual. But often if a baby is born that
way, the single digit, the extradigit is removed.

(52:17):
So there's already there alreadyinstances of, you know, Can you
imagine what the span for piano with some of the six digits
would be? Wow.
I mean, Rachmaninoff had huge hands but did that.
He had 6. Fingers on him.
But we we must make them normal so they can be accepted as as

(52:42):
kids. So that's one of the things that
draws us back is lack of acceptance of change, especially
change that is like too weird ortoo strange.
I can't wrap my head around it. So I'll give you an example, and

(53:03):
hopefully I'm not stepping on her toes too much.
My sister became an Episcopal priest and now she's the Bishop
in the state of Montana. Good for her.
But there are people in Montana that do not like what's going on
where you're marrying gay guys and and you have women as

(53:28):
priests. How could you possibly do that?
And of course, some of these Cowboys have taken up the idea
that, you know, we need to eliminate some some of these
folks. So she's she's hypersensitive
about it and justifiably so. But that is an example of lack

(53:50):
of acceptance of change. So this.
Is one of the things where the apeace organization that I'm
involved with live and let live the legal principle don't
aggress. You know, as long as people are
living their lives in peace and they're not aggressing toward
others, let them be right. And if you, if you want that

(54:16):
right, right, to live your life,to love, to honor, to spend
whatever, to control your property, nobody else has
anything to say about it, then you need to extend that to
others as well. And if you look at the rest of
the world where people don't have those rights at the very

(54:38):
beginning, what they do to adaptto that organization, there's a
great book written. We actually assigned it as
reading it was called Why Nations Fail, and it looked at
the government structure of nations that just could not get

(54:59):
out of poverty. Typically it was because there
was a very strong leader and it would happen at an agricultural
level. They needed to feed their
troops, so they would go in and take control of the food sources
and the rest the rest of the population would starve.
So people who were farmers and kept having their crops stolen

(55:22):
moved to the mountains and grew just enough crops to feed
themselves. So they basically chose out of
the system to take care of themselves.
And now we've got big farm that's feeding the military all
over the world. Yeah, exactly, Exactly.
So you know. I don't know if that's true or

(55:45):
not that the the analogy is probably appropriate.
I think it's probably very true,very true you.
Know when you think about it andwe don't realize what's our in
the US military budget is about 7 trillion something like that
and in without realizing that the American economy is running

(56:09):
off that defense budget. Yeah, although you need, you
need to know that things are changing because even at West
Point they have classes and transformational leadership.
They have the whole command control structure has changed.

(56:30):
So it's leadership in small groups or small platoons.
And so this concept of there's ageneral that makes all the
decisions and the shit rolls downhill.
A lot of that's changed because people realize that the guy
who's out in the front lines knows more than what's going on
back in headquarters. I'd met a general that was in

(56:52):
charge of, oh gosh, what was the, the term anyway?
He this was in Iraq and in that area and he was in charge of
the, I want to say emotional health of the.
Troops, yeah. And I forget what the office was
called, but here it was a general that was charged with

(57:14):
supporting his troops, not just inspirationally, but in that
educational, you know, here's where we're at, what we're
doing. Let's treat each other with
respect. We're not here to necessarily,
you know, go to war. We're here to evolve a situation
into better order. Now, how would you suspect that

(57:39):
this shift in the military and recognizing that there is an
evolution of humanity taking place and what that might look
like in the future, 'cause, you know, R&D is 1015 years out at
least not so much anymore with computers, right?

(58:00):
It's 6 to 9 months or something like that.
However, when you're looking at the change of populations and
the distribution systems and things like that, do you see
those early indicators that there's a possibility that we
can shift away from a war economy?

(58:21):
Yeah, absolutely. I can give you an example.
Good. I would always for I don't know
how many years I would go back to West Point with my father for
his class reunions. And so I was in the stands when
the Superintendent was giving his introductory lecture.

(58:44):
His, His most prominent point was a recent West Point grad in
Iraq after Iraq 2, looking at what they could do to make the
world a little better for the, they found out that where the
farmers grew crops and where theprocessing plant was, there was

(59:05):
no Rd. there. So he took some of his troops,
built a road, and now the farmers could sell their crops
very easily to the processing plant.
The processing plant would nevershut down because they had more
than enough food to process. So that's an example of an
entirely different consciousnesswe're talking about, which is,

(59:31):
from my perspective, it's a loving consciousness because
you're taking care of people. Right.
And and there doesn't need to beany aggression in that.
No, there wasn't. There was aggression they had,
they had to have defense people because there were.
So people in Iraq are still trying to.
Oh, sure, sure. But then self-defense.

(59:52):
It wasn't aggression. The big difference between the
two? Yeah.
So a lot of people don't understand that when you're
developing your wisdom, you got to be very clear about
boundaries and be very vocal about the boundaries that you
have. Even to the point of your
thoughts, the distractions in inyour sphere.

(01:00:16):
And, and, you know, it's like, Ithink I, I'm, I'm able to do a
lot in a little bit of time. And I've never really understood
how I could do that. And then somebody says, wow, how
do you do this? You're like, you know, and I'm
like, huh, I eliminate distractions.
Yeah. You focus.

(01:00:37):
Yeah, yeah. So.
In micro moments, right when, when you're doing something,
often times you're giving it to somebody else and you got to
wait. If you're giving it to a
computer and it's got a process or you're giving it to another
person, they have to process. Well, what do you do in that
downtime? Do you sit and wait or do you

(01:00:58):
find something else? And I, I find this in project
management that every activity has a cycle.
It has a rhythm. And if you catch it at the right
points where you nudge it to itsnext level, that's all you need
to do. And you can have all kinds of
things going on simultaneously as a result.

(01:01:19):
Well, I, I think you've got a point there in terms of what I
refer to as wives leaders as they know cycles, they know how
the cycles interact with each other and they know the
inflection point of each of those cycles.
Well, how did you find that out?What you observe?
Ask questions. And and biggest question is self

(01:01:42):
inquiry. Ask about yourself.
How am I doing this? You know, because if you do self
inquisition on those cycles, everything begins to fall apart.
Yeah. So and.
When you and just the opposite happens when you do the other it
it coalesces in this wonderful symmetry, apparently, right.

(01:02:03):
That just it brings that sense of all right, because everything
is working maybe not to its fullcapacity, however, it's greatly
increased and happy people get more done with less supervision
and will exceed your expectations every time.
True. Yeah.

(01:02:27):
How do we do that? What, what, how, how do we
create happy people? How do we we don't create.
How do we invite people to be more happy?
Well, you know, we're kind of kind of the blind people out
there with cane, you know, tapping around the woodwork said
are you in? Are you in?

(01:02:48):
Are you in? Right.
Eventually you ask that questionenough times and people start
asking you, are you in? Are you in?
Said, I can only have you see your experiences.
I'm not going to tell you what to do or how to do it.
You've got to make that decisionfor yourself because otherwise
if I try to take over your experiences, I'm just playing my

(01:03:10):
ego. Yeah.
Well, it's like, what is it? You know, the masters can point
where to look, but what but not what to see, that's up to you.
And in this, how would you anticipate on a daily basis
because we're kind of running towards the end here.

(01:03:33):
It's been a wonderful conversation.
I just, we can talk for hours, right?
It's how would you recommend that people on a personal level
could advance themselves with a simple activity on a daily
basis? Starting, The starting place for

(01:03:56):
anything is focus on your breath.
Breathe in, breathe out. See what that does for you.
You know the joke on that is breathe in, breathe out, repeat
if necessary. So right.
Because we breathe unconsciously.
Yeah. So if you if you can move from
unconscious breathing to conscious breathing, that's a

(01:04:19):
huge leap a lot of people don't understand.
And this is exactly what Young was after.
Yeah. And then then you start going,
OK, I can be conscious of my breathing.
What's conscious of my thoughts going to be, you know, so you
have thoughts come in and out like about a million times a
second. So which ones are you holding?

(01:04:42):
Which ones are you focused on? And then what are those thoughts
producing in terms of emotions? How's that happening?
And then ask yourself the question, who's doing all that?
And when you get a better answer, keep looking.

(01:05:03):
Who's doing all that? Keep looking, keep looking.
And then you eventually you get back into who you are and you
realize that's just a state of being.
It's not necessarily a state of doing.
I'm going to breathe that one in.

(01:05:26):
That's wonderful. Great.
This has just been, wow, such a pleasure, such an honor to have
this conversation with you and even more so to be able to share
it with others and have the impact that I know that it will
on our audience. So I thank you very much.

(01:05:47):
And Ditto for me, Zen. I really enjoyed this
conversation a lot. You asked great questions.
Well, thank you. You know, you got to have guys
like you to be able to ask thosekinds of questions.
Otherwise those questions don't come up.
You know, those are the things that the fall in, right?
It's like I'm listening. It's like, OK, how can I make

(01:06:07):
this better? And I show how can I help you
shine? And that reflection, not just
me, but for the the audience as well, it's a tremendous gift
and, and blessing and I am so humbled and honored by it.
Every moment of these kinds of conversations, you know, it

(01:06:32):
compels me to be my best. Is it?
Is it? I like to tell people I'm still
doing. Repeat as necessary.
Yeah, me too. Yeah, it's that breathing you
got to go back to it. Well, thank you again, Greg.
You. I look forward to crossing paths
again. Soon we will.
We will. Great.

(01:06:52):
All right, Namaste and in La Ketch, and thank you all for
sticking with us for this episode of One World in the New
World. I know you've got some amazing
information and applicable practices for your own lives.
We'll see you next time. Have a great day.

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Ep 189 - Wise Leadership Is The KEY To Humanity's Evolution

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep 189 - Wise Leadership Is The KEY To Humanity's Evolution