STRATEGIC THINKING AND SUCCESS
I recently reread a book I hadn't seen in awhile. Called Jesus The Magician, it’s a well-written and scholarly work by Dr. Morton Smith, Doctor of Theology at Harvard. He also has a PhD from Hebrew University and was professor of History at Columbia University in New York. Dr. Smith is well-qualified to address a key idea in my own study of strategy: Suppressed or hidden information can have great power.
Strategically speaking, over time, when limiting ourselves to only certain information we are behaving in a way that is detrimental to our overall health.
Knowledge is power we've been told. That's not 100% percent true. What we do with knowledge can empower or sabotage. Information can contain power. Knowing everything there is to know about Hockey, for example, doesn't get you into Med School. Hockey knowledge has little power in the Med School objective so a great question is what a body of information empowers individuals?
That information can have great value - and not knowing that the information even exists or how to access it will severely limits you.
From this perspective, studying history from the limits of a local view, or having only a single holy book to balance our rights from wrongs are traps. Contrary to the old adage - “Ignorance is bliss...” - it turns out that ignorance can be deadly. Close your mind and self-sabotage.
Dr. Smith's book documents the times, culture, modes and methods that surrounded the life of Jesus Christ in circa +/- 2000 years ago, in the Middle-East. He scoured the facts, sourced the myths and listed all the evidence to show us that, in those days, ordinary men and women coexisted with a more evolved kind of human being.
At the time of Jesus, the idea that ordinary people lived as if this life could be lived this was Heaven on Earth existed and many prophets showed the way. People banded together in entrepreneurial communities and danced to the beat of their own drummers.
Dr Morton explains that Jesus didn't just show up at age 30 and start preaching. From adolescence, he was trained by the Essenes, a mystic cult devoted to establishing and managing God's kingdom on Earth.
The Essenes produced many great leaders who understood that the Old Testament law - interpreted as "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth!" - was the Action/Reaction principle explained in Newton's 3rd law of motion. The Essenes taught the positive aspects of the Action/Reaction law : Act positive and reap positive.
The New Testament is about a corollary to that law: It is proven that if you encounter negative along the positive way, the ONLY way to overcome it (Action/Reaction) is with more positive. If we meet negative with negative we create more negative; if we meet it with like proportion [(+1) + (-1) = 0] nothing happens; so we need more positive as in [(+2) + (-1) = (+1)], for example.
Jesus saw positive energy in motion as love, and he embodied the whole of the law. History showed shows us that greater love has no man that he would lay down his life for his friends. Jesus did this and, as such, he must be God's chosen messiah for that time. His life and death exemplify and testify to his experience of God: The Father and I are ONE!
From this single act, a great migration of consciousness thirsted for a reign of peace and prosperity to replace the tyranny and greed. Thus began the messianic age - See (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messianic_Age). When a tipping point between the elite few and the new direction was reached, sham trials and crucifixions became rampant. The elite used gear to squelch the move toward entering God's Kingdom by the masses of people by awaking in the eternal "here-now".
The Essenes schools did teach ordinary humans how to communicate with, and serve, the higher Ørder, the higher purpose, God's INTENT here on Earth.
But - in any community - if only a select few people can connect with the higher forces and Creator-powers, that others will tend to galvanize into believers and non-believers. You will believe (or not) in the power to connect with sacred power. Or not!
I enjoyed how Smith's book outlines the story of Jesus as told by insiders versus what was believed by the outsiders of his cult.
Smith balanced the different views with descriptions of magic and magical practices known at the time, describing in every detail the evidence for magic results and miracles. History shows that people can indeed acquire the power of magicians.
History supports the contention, exploring the lives of real magicians across time. Isaac Newton, Da Vinci, Galileo, Kepler, Tesla, Darwin, Einstein, and the hidden others were God's wise men and good sorcerers. Those people were often persecuted for experiencing the Creator as being indivisible from Creation. Unless spiritual people become strategic, they will surely pay for how they experience Creator.
[Of course persecution is managed by the ruling elite in the name of what they most hold good and most fear losing. Here’s a top list of 50 magical humans - http://4mind4life.com/blog/2008/03/30/list-of-geniuses-top-50-influential-minds/)]
What I conclude from my most recent reading of « Jesus The Magician » is that some 2000 years ago in the Middle-East, people knew that success is the result of human effort and strategy. Working with the forces in Nature, some people understood the process of magical emergence in Nature: When the conditions are right, things magically appear!
Way back then, ordinary folks could become magicians. They learned how to strategically influence events and circumstances to determine successful outcomes. If you explore the Protomaya history of Mexico and tropical America, you'll see that the Jaguar-kings of America also knew those secrets more than 3000 years ago.
In my own book, Invest in your creative capital, I expand on "peak psychological experiences" where brain/mind frequencies connect with higher Ørder as described in the Bible's - My Father and I are One.
We can reach a state of grace and live there. The paradigmatic hic to all of this is that understanding FOLLOWS experience. Not believing in the law might be no excuse under the law - but non-believers still must act in spite of their disbelief in order to understand.
When we stop and think about it though, magic is easy enough to believe. It’s described as - Causing change to occur in conformity with your will. It is in fact willing change - something every manager knows how to do.
A successful result will be attained if (1.) you identify and allot the resources needed for the transformation task and if (2.) you train participants in strategic thinking so they share a common vision of who, where, when and how to influence the process. And, of course success needs (3.) an efficient leadership empowered to command that magical operation.
Because we know how innovation emerges organically in complex systems, strategic thinking allows us to take a more direct approach to influencing events and circumstances. We can create a environment that fosters innovative breakthroughs by learning the strategic thinking tools that facilitate the process and teaching them to every collaborator in the organization.
The organization must plan its empowerment and then manage the transformation process to reap the rewards of that success. The requirements are sound planning, disciplined work over time and training that keep people growing.
More about strategic thinking next time...
Strategically speaking, over time, when limiting ourselves to only certain information we are behaving in a way that is detrimental to our overall health.
Knowledge is power we've been told. That's not 100% percent true. What we do with knowledge can empower or sabotage. Information can contain power. Knowing everything there is to know about Hockey, for example, doesn't get you into Med School. Hockey knowledge has little power in the Med School objective so a great question is what a body of information empowers individuals?
That information can have great value - and not knowing that the information even exists or how to access it will severely limits you.
From this perspective, studying history from the limits of a local view, or having only a single holy book to balance our rights from wrongs are traps. Contrary to the old adage - “Ignorance is bliss...” - it turns out that ignorance can be deadly. Close your mind and self-sabotage.
Dr. Smith's book documents the times, culture, modes and methods that surrounded the life of Jesus Christ in circa +/- 2000 years ago, in the Middle-East. He scoured the facts, sourced the myths and listed all the evidence to show us that, in those days, ordinary men and women coexisted with a more evolved kind of human being.
At the time of Jesus, the idea that ordinary people lived as if this life could be lived this was Heaven on Earth existed and many prophets showed the way. People banded together in entrepreneurial communities and danced to the beat of their own drummers.
Dr Morton explains that Jesus didn't just show up at age 30 and start preaching. From adolescence, he was trained by the Essenes, a mystic cult devoted to establishing and managing God's kingdom on Earth.
The Essenes produced many great leaders who understood that the Old Testament law - interpreted as "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth!" - was the Action/Reaction principle explained in Newton's 3rd law of motion. The Essenes taught the positive aspects of the Action/Reaction law : Act positive and reap positive.
The New Testament is about a corollary to that law: It is proven that if you encounter negative along the positive way, the ONLY way to overcome it (Action/Reaction) is with more positive. If we meet negative with negative we create more negative; if we meet it with like proportion [(+1) + (-1) = 0] nothing happens; so we need more positive as in [(+2) + (-1) = (+1)], for example.
Jesus saw positive energy in motion as love, and he embodied the whole of the law. History showed shows us that greater love has no man that he would lay down his life for his friends. Jesus did this and, as such, he must be God's chosen messiah for that time. His life and death exemplify and testify to his experience of God: The Father and I are ONE!
From this single act, a great migration of consciousness thirsted for a reign of peace and prosperity to replace the tyranny and greed. Thus began the messianic age - See (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messianic_Age). When a tipping point between the elite few and the new direction was reached, sham trials and crucifixions became rampant. The elite used gear to squelch the move toward entering God's Kingdom by the masses of people by awaking in the eternal "here-now".
The Essenes schools did teach ordinary humans how to communicate with, and serve, the higher Ørder, the higher purpose, God's INTENT here on Earth.
But - in any community - if only a select few people can connect with the higher forces and Creator-powers, that others will tend to galvanize into believers and non-believers. You will believe (or not) in the power to connect with sacred power. Or not!
I enjoyed how Smith's book outlines the story of Jesus as told by insiders versus what was believed by the outsiders of his cult.
Smith balanced the different views with descriptions of magic and magical practices known at the time, describing in every detail the evidence for magic results and miracles. History shows that people can indeed acquire the power of magicians.
History supports the contention, exploring the lives of real magicians across time. Isaac Newton, Da Vinci, Galileo, Kepler, Tesla, Darwin, Einstein, and the hidden others were God's wise men and good sorcerers. Those people were often persecuted for experiencing the Creator as being indivisible from Creation. Unless spiritual people become strategic, they will surely pay for how they experience Creator.
[Of course persecution is managed by the ruling elite in the name of what they most hold good and most fear losing. Here’s a top list of 50 magical humans - http://4mind4life.com/blog/2008/03/30/list-of-geniuses-top-50-influential-minds/)]
What I conclude from my most recent reading of « Jesus The Magician » is that some 2000 years ago in the Middle-East, people knew that success is the result of human effort and strategy. Working with the forces in Nature, some people understood the process of magical emergence in Nature: When the conditions are right, things magically appear!
Way back then, ordinary folks could become magicians. They learned how to strategically influence events and circumstances to determine successful outcomes. If you explore the Protomaya history of Mexico and tropical America, you'll see that the Jaguar-kings of America also knew those secrets more than 3000 years ago.
In my own book, Invest in your creative capital, I expand on "peak psychological experiences" where brain/mind frequencies connect with higher Ørder as described in the Bible's - My Father and I are One.
We can reach a state of grace and live there. The paradigmatic hic to all of this is that understanding FOLLOWS experience. Not believing in the law might be no excuse under the law - but non-believers still must act in spite of their disbelief in order to understand.
When we stop and think about it though, magic is easy enough to believe. It’s described as - Causing change to occur in conformity with your will. It is in fact willing change - something every manager knows how to do.
A successful result will be attained if (1.) you identify and allot the resources needed for the transformation task and if (2.) you train participants in strategic thinking so they share a common vision of who, where, when and how to influence the process. And, of course success needs (3.) an efficient leadership empowered to command that magical operation.
Because we know how innovation emerges organically in complex systems, strategic thinking allows us to take a more direct approach to influencing events and circumstances. We can create a environment that fosters innovative breakthroughs by learning the strategic thinking tools that facilitate the process and teaching them to every collaborator in the organization.
The organization must plan its empowerment and then manage the transformation process to reap the rewards of that success. The requirements are sound planning, disciplined work over time and training that keep people growing.
More about strategic thinking next time...