The two pillars of development by Nicholas Janni
THE WORK OF DEVELOPMENT
When describing our culture, Native American wisdom keepers sometimes say that, from their perspective, we live in a ‘trance’.
I call it ‘culture of absence’, disconnection, ‘narrow bandwidth’ and so on. I like the word ‘trance’. It vividly captures the limitations of the pervading consciousness, including our failure to recognise the trance.
In my work with groups and senior leaders, once we touch a certain depth, people start to ‘wake up’; then they say things like “I am beginning to see how actually almost no-one is really listening to anyone”
This means that the trance begins to break its hold. Previously they didn’t see this. They were consumed by the trance. That is the state of our culture. We have normalised ‘absence’.
It is therefore our calling as leadership consultants and/or coaches, to first of all see/feel the ‘trance’ with ever more clarity, and secondly to do everything in our power break it in ourselves, in order to be real agents of change.
The two pillars of development
In my work I have come understand, teach and practice the principle that true developmental work, for ourselves and our clients, has to embrace two parallel streams.
One stream is a depth of meditative engagement and subtle bodywork practice (yoga, qigong etc). These, not as occasional, part-time palliatives that make our dysfunctional trance feel a little less stressful – the way the corporate world all too often dumbs down the profundity of mindfulness - but rather as committed daily practices that open ever
more subtle frequencies and perceptions within us, as they gradually erode the core experience of separation that underpins the culture of ‘absence’.
The second stream is in many ways the more demanding and certainly the largely ignored one. Because here we understand through our experience that the first path will be limited by all the unintegrated emotional parts of ourselves - the emotions, personal, transgenerational and collective, that we and our lineage had to ‘exile’ along the way, as
vital self-protection, because there was never the possibility of a safe enough holding environment to turn fully towards them.
I see, hear and read a lot about ‘managing’ or ‘understanding’ or ‘transforming’ our emotions. And while some of that has a place, it completely misses the fact that, ultimately, no emotion needs fixing, changing or transforming. That mindset keeps us locked in the world of ‘narrative’, of detached conceptualising.
Our emotions - our sadnesses, our fears, our anger, our loneliness - ‘simply’ need at a certain moment to be met with a warm, fully embodied, unconditional embrace, in a safe holding context, in order that we can finally stop defending ourselves against them, finally cease the inner tension and fragmentation of pushing them away, and allow the
profound process of somatic, energetic metabolising to occur deep in our nervous system.
Integration, and a return to wholeness cannot and will never occur through cognition alone. Someone can perfectly understand their core patterns, their adverse childhood experiences, and nothing will change, because the energetic/emotional underpinning of the whole internal structure is not felt/experienced.
There is no such thing as ‘negative’ emotion. So long as we buy into that widespread belief, we are still in the linear mind dominated trance, trying to maintain some kind of control, some sense of inner security.
In exile.
When someone feels safe enough, met and loved enough exactly as they are, to finally stop defending against feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, despair, loneliness for instance, to finally stop trying to get away from or change them, that is exactly where profound inner movement and evolution occur. Where the frozen energy of the previously unfelt emotions naturally transforms itself into life intelligence.
Where our core consciousness transforms from scarcity to abundance. And where the fullest expression and fire of purpose and contribution then naturally blossoms.
As consultants, we will only be able to meet and hold people in those ‘dark’ spaces to the precise degree that we have met them in ourselves. That is part of our ongoing, lifelong developmental commitment.
People who engage only the first stream like to believe that meditation and/or mindfulness ultimately transforms all our negative emotions, our unattended wounds.
It doesn't.
They say that, as I did for many years of fervent hoping, because they have not yet found the context that allows them to engage the challenges and discomfort of the second stream.
It is true, this is very demanding work. Like anything of real value, it asks a lot of us. Actually, it asks everything. Whether in a leader or a coach/consultant this has to become the number one priority. In the times we live in, I believe that nothing else will suffice.
The need for more and more individuals and groups and communities to break the trance has surely never been more urgent.
I align fully with those who say that our future depends on it.
Nicholas Janni
January 2023
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