Open your heart to miracles
Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our greatest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. —Marianne Williamson
A little baby cries and seconds later, well before the tears have dried, it is smiling again. How did that happen? The baby feels sad, but the baby is not sad. The sadness is a passing emotion, quickly replaced by bliss and joy, the moment the cause of the sadness is replaced.
Fast forward to adulthood. How many of us can let go of the sorrow in seconds and return to a happy or at least relaxed state? None of us, virtually!
We have unlearned something that nature has blessed us with, from the very beginning. Try, the next time, to switch from a state of sorrow to a state of peace and bliss. Even if your body can, your mind will resist. You and I have conditioned ourselves into thinking this behaviour is ‘mad’.
As the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung says, ‘Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.’ This ‘sanity’ we hold so dear comes from a suppression of our inner abundance and our real joyous nature. What schools and workplaces have convinced us of, that is insanity.
It is time to start relearning the childlike ability to switch back to bliss, when you find yourself feeling pain. Stop being sane, start being yourself. Scriptures from time immemorial have exhorted followers to become childlike, to be closer to their highest potential.
Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it. —Mark 10:15
Not only is the mind of a child incredibly agile (because it is so open to ideas), it is also naturally humble.
Whoever therefore humbles himself like this boy, he will be greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. —Matthew 18:4
And that natural humility is what sets apart mediocre entrepreneurs from the truly great ones. The true greats, even at their highest peaks, remember that it is still Day 1, and will always be.
The reason children are such great creators is that they have natural humility. Children don’t have a strong conception of ‘self ’ and ‘other’, and the world in their eyes is happening through them but not because of them. We lose most of our natural humility because we think the world is happening because of us, and not through us.
In other words, we stop looking at ourselves as an instrument of the universe, and see ourselves as a mere assembly line worker trying to assemble a life from resources within grasp. On the other hand, the true greats in any field often report being totally unaware of their surroundings, almost as if time and space have vanished.
As a leader, our goal is truth-seeking. Truth from data, truth from your customer feedback and truth from your employees. This truth cannot be found in the absence of childlike humility. Children are naturally eager to explore and slow to jump to stubborn judgements. As adults, we are filled with preconceived notions which take the place of rational argument. Judgements give you a neat slice of reality, but they are not reality.
Everything we seek as a founder or leader in a business comes down to one word: ‘manifestation’. The whole essence of creating a business is just that, creation, of something from nothing. To be creators, we have to go back to our own moment of creation, when we were children.
The creative power which we were blessed with when we came into existence is the same creative power that can help us achieve untold miracles, if only we let it. By no means is this to be confused with being coy, or showing childlike kindness. Children have a natural, endearing kindness which might not translate well into a workplace. What it does mean is to be thunderous, abundant, boisterous and blissful at the same time. This, according to Rumi, is our true nature.
Why should I be unhappy? Every parcel of my being is in full bloom.
Emotions must come and go, like waves in an ocean, and the sea underneath the waves must remain calm and joyous. That is how children are, and that is our true nature. That is true sanity.
What happened to our natural sanity, which we had as children? Why have all of us become insane, believing that the true reality is not happening naturally but somehow forced into existence? I would put that down to how we have been ‘educated’. We are taught from very early on in school to be well-behaved and disciplined. What this meant was being amenable to control.
While this serves the purposes of the modern school system, it subverts the true nature of a human being. We never lose the conditioning that we have to be a certain way because society deems that acceptable. Even today, you replace yourself with a mask which you take off each night and place on your dresser or in your cupboard only to wake up the next day and wear it again. And depending on the day and the people you are going to meet, you repaint the mask in multiple colours and textures, sometimes adding a dash of blue, sometimes a feather or two.
It is usually in situations of extreme trauma that you realise that people’s opinions of you don’t matter and never did.
Excerpted from Ruminate: The Sufi Saint on Mastering Life and Business by Hrishikesh Datar, with permission from Bloomsbury