Many years ago I had the privilege of spending 7 days on the Big Island of Hawaii with a group of about 100 people studying the work of Buckminster Fuller. The material we used was a video taken of him speaking to a group over three days…21 hours…as he would describe, the sum of his life’s work.
Included in this audience were people who knew Bucky and knew his work well, including his protegee of the last 3 years of his life, Amy Edmondson.
For about the first two days of this event every one of us in the room struggled with staying conscious and awake. It was as if someone had put a sleeping draft in the water and we all had narcolepsy. Falling asleep at the table…try fighting this for two days! It was painful. We sat on heels, danced, anything to keep awake. Imagine being in a room for the day were the overwhelming natural urge is to fall on the table and pass out….without the aid of any drug or alcohol. Not just fall asleep, but pass out.
Then suddenly it was as if something inside shifted gears and we became present and alert. From then on we had no issue with sleeping sickness.
My theory on this…we are all, as a humanity, entranced in some form of collective sleep. Problem is we do not even know we are. When a teacher like Bucky comes along, someone who dedicated his life to speaking truth from his own direct experience, and doing so in such a way as to be precise in his communication, few people can engage without making a synaptic leap. And it is a leap….from one state of awareness to another. We were all gathered there with a clear intention to make the leap. We had a field established to make the leap. We had people in the room to support us to make the leap. But it still took 2 days.
Ilya Prigogene, Nobel Laureate, is known for his theory of dissipative structures. When you take a system and apply stress to the system, at some unpredictable point the system will undergo a change, a threshold will be crossed, energy as heat (emotion) will be released. The change is irreversible. You can never go back to the previous system. You can never go back from the diamond to carbon.
If you desire to be a leader….and by that I mean someone who walks from the future…then making synaptic leaps is a prerequisite. Our thinking and being structures need to undergo fundamental change. Not just once, but repeatedly. This is not simply an ‘ah ha’ moment…this is a neurobiological and physiological change. The type of change where there is no turning back.
We are in a collective trance. The only way we will break from this is to make synaptic leaps. To do this you have to set up both your intention, and the conditions around you to enable this. A guide or two for the process is advised.
I am of the opinion that there are many people in the world today who are aware that they are being called to make this kind of leap. They know it intuitively. They also know it is irreversible. They find themselves poised on the precipice….staring out at the unknown and uncertain future, their feet still planted in the appearance of a comfortable present.
But the present is neither comfortable nor sustaining to their soul/spirit/life/work.
To leap, or not to leap….actually there is no question. Leap it is. See you on the other side.