LEADERSHIP & LOVE

The awakened spirit exhibits leadership by looking within. Wisdom is nothing but a drop in the ocean of consciousness; enlightenment is the ocean. The soul of a leader is nothing but the essence of her followers. They are her depth; she is their surface. They are her periphery; she is their centre.

Is a leader made, or discovered? Perhaps uncovered, brought to light.

Morihei Ueshiba, the revered founder of Aikido, once stated: “The true martial art is love.” But love often remains shut up inside us; it need only be released. The question is not how to produce it, but how to uncover it. What have we covered ourselves with? What is it that
will not allow love to surface? How can leadership emerge?

Love is the sacred soil for leadership. When one is without love, the ego steps in, darkness descends, consciousness gets clouded. Love and ego cannot coexist: love begets leadership, the ego leads nowhere.

There is an unbridgeable distance between the ego and leadership.

The ego strives to bridge itself with the horizon, with a projected desire. But the horizon does not exist. So how can one make a bridge to it? We can only dream about the bridge. We cannot be joined with the nonexistential. Leadership is the absence of desire, of ego; it is an impulse to move in the present, towards spiritual fulfillment.

Life should not be about dread and defeat, but about achievement and exaltation; it can only happen through leading from love.

[Excerpted from the 'Leadership, Learning & Laughter' edition of The Braindancer Series by Dilip Mukerjea. All the images in this post are the intellectual property of Dilip Mukerjea.]