Listening

The Willingness to Awaken

Laura Basha


Photo By: Anton Darius
 

THE POWER OF A GROWTH MINDSET

 

You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean, in a drop.”

 

– Rumi

 

 

A growth mindset is not something to obtain.
It is a vantage point from which to come. You can cultivate a growth mindset
by being open to what you haven’t heretofore understood
about any particular area of interest.
 

Growth is a realm and a way of being. It is a realm of Power. It is allowing the Source of Creativity to emerge by listening for what you don’t know. Deep listening for what you don’t know
makes Infinite Intelligence available to you.

 

Clear and certain of what you are committed to, grounded in the present moment,
without being threatened by a different perspective,
is the powerful perspective of a growth mindset.
It is the safest and most creative place to stand because it is not personal.
 

There is nothing to do to get a growth mindset.
There is nowhere to go to get a growth mindset.
 

What there is, is to be willing to listen for what you don’t know
in the midst of the cacophony of what you think.
This cultivates, and culminates in, a growth mindset.
 

Cultivating a growth mindset is the practice of
listening for a challenge to your certainty, without feeling reactive.
There is no gauntlet being thrown down eliciting defensiveness.
There is only a willingness to experience insight,
expanding your awareness regarding the concept you are considering.
 

This becomes the willingness to awaken.
And the willingness to awaken allows for the possibility of liberation.
 

© Laura Basha, PhD

Compassion As A Prism For Mind

Laura Basha


 

Photo By: Lucie Dawson
 

“Divine Attributes” refer to those qualities of Mind that we aspire to inculcate, embody, and express as our own personal characteristics … Compassion is an infinite and eternal realm, and is available to each of us through thought, as distinct from our own individual capacity to express the quality of compassion.
 

Accessing one Divine Attribute actually gives access to all Divine Attributes.
 

Compassion as a realm expands into Beauty as a realm, which expands into Love as a realm, which expands into Peace as a realm, …

 

… much as the colors of a rainbow connect to each other when distinguished through sunlight.
 

 

~ from The Inward Outlook, by Dr. Laura Basha

Become a Catalyst for your Personal Purpose

Laura Basha


 

Photo By: Levi XU

 
One thing I have learned is that any enlightenment I have attained is not so much the result of noble pursuit as it is waking up to the fact that my face has been in the dirt for a long time and maybe I don’t really know what I’m doing and it’s time to get up, brush myself off and have the wherewithal to listen for what I don’t know.

 
This was certainly part of the process of creating a personal purpose, which finally resonated into words from the essence of what I am committed to. The purpose is in fact now the articulation of who I say I am as a possibility. It took some courage to keep creating just the right combination of phrasing in the face of wanting to “do it right” or “look good” or “look intelligent”, yet now I have a verbalization that I can truly say is the default against which I can measure what I commit to: “I am committed that people are free from the limitations of the past, profoundly present, generating lives of authentic self-expression and joy”.
 

This process by the way is not dissimilar to the process of creating a painting. In the words of my dear painting mentor, Larry Robinson: “If you don’t hate this painting at some point in the process, it’s not going to be a good painting!”
 

In the realm of creative self-expression there is an angst with which we must engage, working with it, tolerating its discomfort, until harmony unfolds. In the painter’s case, we engage through the brush; in the case of a remarkable human being, through a purpose, a commitment to something bigger than one’s self.

 
If we allow it, transformation has its way with us.
 

 

“Look at any inspired painting. It’s like a gong sounding; it puts you in a state of reverberation.”

 

– ARTIST PHILIP GUSTON

 

 

Become a catalyst for your personal purpose, a catalyst for yourself as well as for others in your world. Becoming a catalyst for your personal purpose is like a gong sounding; it puts you and your world in a state of reverberation, transmuting old worn-out discourses into new realms of possibility.
 

 

This article is an excerpt of a larger body of work, The Creative Process: A Portal to ‘Not-Knowing,’ which you can read HERE.
 

Awakening the Heart of the Evolution of Leadership

Laura Basha


 

Photo By: Sam Edwards, Caia Image
 

In the early 1990’s I was a member of SIETAR, the Society for International Education, Training, and Research, created by the founders of the Peace Corps. The strategy utilized by the most effective interculturalists of the day was the strategy of entering into a culture with no expectations or assumptions, but rather with reverence and a listening for what the culture was speaking not just verbally, but non-verbally. In this way the most effective of the interculturalists were the most malleable, open to assimilating into the culture due to the capacity they had developed within themselves to suspend their own knowledge and ways of behaving. They aligned with the resonance of the new culture much as an instrument allows its own vibrational rate to be catalyzed by a tuning fork.
 

Being catalyzes Being.

 

So, listening for what we don’t know could be a universal strategy, a globally transformative strategy, because the very nature of not-knowing calls for one to be present in the moment with no attention paid to one’s personal thinking from the past: beginner’s mind.
 

In January of 2010 I was asked to design and lead a training for the annual company meeting of an international consulting firm, which delivers its work in 8 languages and whose focus clients are Global Fortune 1000 companies. Their work impacts hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. They are in the process of expanding their company’s purpose as well as supporting each employee in defining his/her own purpose in order to best recognize whether their individual commitment is aligned with the company commitment.
 
What became clear in the presentation of my material was that, much like the interculturalists mentioned earlier, theirs was no longer a question of designing new technology, but rather that each employee be able to discover their own authentic essence within, catalyze it, and emanate the resulting authenticity as they delivered the already mastered technology.
 

This type of awakening is at the heart of the evolution of leadership, and generates humility as well as a fascinated deep listening for another’s perceptions. This is also at the heart of self-actualization, and generates humility and a deep listening for expansion in one’s own listening of one’s self: a new realm of possibility, an emerging reality.

 

From the feedback, the result of the presentation that day was a renewed sense of inspiration for the employees, coupled with a renewed commitment to the company’s purpose, and a commitment by the organization to support each employee in achieving the goals they set for themselves. It became obvious that this would further the actualization of the company’s purpose.

 

 

This article is an excerpt of a larger body of work, The Creative Process: A Portal to ‘Not-Knowing,’ which you can read HERE.
 

No Distance Between Us

Laura Basha


 

Photo By: Aarón Blanco Tejedor
 

One of the conversations I have been exploring and reflecting on, is a person’s commitment to global transformation. Global transformation inherently implies a need for listening to the logic of other cultures, a deep respect for the different points of view of others. Given the way each of us views life, given our varied pasts and what we have made them mean, given our years of education and whatever cultural exposures we each uniquely have had, each one of us is in effect, a different culture.
 

What would happen to communication if we actually listened to one another as if we were each a different culture, replete with our own values and ways of operating that were grounded in a logic perhaps distinct to ourselves, but nevertheless valid and understandable? Communication would have the possibility of effortlessly becoming dialogue: more listening than speaking.

 
In 1988 I traveled to Egypt with a small group of people with whom I had been studying for the ministry for some time. We hired a boat, a small Egyptian doma, which we sailed down the Nile River with our warm and wonderful guide, Mohammed. We of course approached every conversation with a depth of respect born of the humility that we did not know the culture, the terrain, the language, and we relied upon his expertise not only for cultural information but in reality for our very safety.

 
One particularly beautiful evening as our little boat floated down the river, some of us lay on our backs looking up at the breathtaking night sky of below-the-equator constellations. As Mohammed and I conversed, our conversation turned to our children, and the story unfolded of his recent divorce and the decision of his ex-wife to forbid him to see his 2-year-old son. At the time, I was also divorced and my ex-husband forbade my children to speak with me when they were staying with him. Suddenly, Mohammed and I had no distance between us, no cultural barrier, no problem understanding each other despite his self-conscious English and my non-existent Egyptian. Simply parents, we were bonded through shared heartache and love for our children.

 
It remains a precious moment in my life experience and reminds me of the common thread that runs through our humanity, as well as the transformational impact of listening for that relatedness, rather than being seduced by difference. Compassion, familiarity, empathy, intimacy – all available from listening for and from what we didn’t know.

 

 
This article is an excerpt of a larger body of work, The Creative Process: A Portal to ‘Not-Knowing,’ which you can read HERE.

How do you get to Inner Stillness?

Laura Basha


Photo By: Chad Madden
 

“No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.”

 

– Taoist Proverb

 

 

A friend asked me this week, “How do you get to inner stillness?” I thought it was an interesting question, since stillness isn’t actually a place to get to, but rather a whole eternal internal infinite dimension out of which our life experience and the third dimension arises.
 

Taking our attention off of the cacophony of the external world, taking our attention off of the noise of the daily routine, taking our attention off of the drama of everyday life and the incessant inner monologue of the intellect, returns us to stillness.

 

So many of us love to be in nature. Being in nature elicits stillness from us, because nature reverberates Stillness. And, like a tuning fork, if we stop and listen to the quietness of nature, whether in our backyard or, taking in the beauty and quietness of a vista view, the reverberation of nature catalyzes that Stillness realm within, through the tuning fork of its own Stillness. Stillness is not static, it is alive and pulsing with the music of beauty and joy.
 

“The great saint Muktananda was asked by a disciple, “Master, there are so many books that teach ways to meditate! Which way is the best?” Muktananda replied, “Close your eyes.”

 

Take time to be awed. Take in the perfection of beauty – it is everywhere – in the hummingbird hovering in front of you and then disappearing like a bullet of rainbow, or in the common daisy flower or in the countenance of your dear friend or in the timber of the voice of your beloved.”