Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership

by Joseph Jaworski

Sometimes the greatest acts of commitment involve doing nothing but sitting and waiting until I just know what to do next.

When this new type of commitment starts to operate, there is a flow around us. Things just seem to happen.

We begin to see that with very small movements, at just the right time and place, all sorts of consequent actions are brought into being.

We develop what artists refer to as an “economy of means,” where, rather than getting things done through effort and brute for...

Water flows downhill because of gravity. Of course, gravity itself is a pretty mysterious phenomenon. It seems to be a type of field, as if all physical objects in the universe have some attraction for one another. But even though no one knows exactly how gravity works, we can observe the result: water flows downhill. We don’t argue about the result because it is observable. That’s much the way synchronicity seems to operate in this field of deep commitment.

If we were not making such an immense effort to separate ourselves from life, we might actually live life day to day, minute by minute, as a series of predictable miracles.

Notes to Myself, by Hugh Prather,

Instead of controlling life, I ultimately learned what it meant to allow life to flow through me.

Without the control, there are more intense highs and lows, and I felt much more at risk than ever before.

The first was “freedom from,” that is, freedom to get away from the oppressiveness of circumstances.

surface—the freedom to follow my life’s purpose with all the commitment I could muster, while at the same time, allowing life’s creative forces to move through me without my control, without “making it happen.”

The experience at Chartres made me want to find ways to break through the limiting factors I had discovered in myself, especially fear.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull, by Richard Bach.

“Break the chains of your thought, and you break the chains of your body, too.”

Jonathan knew so much about freedom because he knew about breaking the chains of conformity.

lifting ourselves out of ignorance and finding ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and creativity.

It is about overcoming the fear of learning and the fear of seeing the godlike in ourselves.

if we are to participate in the unfolding process of the universe, we must let life flow through us, rather than attempt to control life.

my usual pattern had been just the contrary: to commit to something and then move to fulfill that commitment at all costs, to do whatever it took to “make it happen.” That’s exactly what had happened at the Grand Prix—I had even resorted to deception when the possibility of success looked least likely.

this is a much less powerful way of oper...

flow states,

In this state there is an extraordinary clarity, focus, and concentration.

The flow of time is altered.

allow me to see relationship as the organizing principle of the universe.

Eric Fromm’s The Art of Loving.

Fromm’s thesis is that love is the only satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.

Loving is an art, and we must master not only the theory of love but also...

I learned that our deepest need is to overcome our aloneness a...

Fromm writes that mature love is union under the condition of preserving one’s integrity and individuality.

Fromm sets forth the elements of love: care, which is active concern for the life and growth of the one we love; responsibility, which is caring for one’s physical needs as well as one’s higher needs; and respect, which is allowing others to grow as they need to on their own terms.

He speaks of the types of love—erotic love, parental love, self-love, love of God, and brotherly love.

To learn to love is ...

Much later I realized there was an openness and a vulnerability within me that allowed me to connect with people in a way and at a level that I had never experienced before. It was all part of my experiment with trust of and patience with the natural flow of life, with being open to the next step, and then taking it when the moment seemed right.

As I sat in my room, tears were running down my cheeks. It was not out of sadness that I wept, but because of the realization that I had had a profound effect on someone else’s life.

The alchemy of Fromm’s teachings and my experience with Bernadette provided for me a key insight: when we are in this state of being where we are open to life and all its possibilities, willing to take the next step as it is presented to us, then we meet the most remarkable people who are important contributors to our life. This occurs in part through the meeting of our eyes; it’s as if our souls instantly connect, so that we become part of a life together at that moment.

It’s as if you and the other are in the same family.

in another sense all of the meetings are forever because they are deep and meaningful encounters that we always hold close.

I could barely get my arms around the issues related to building the law firm and trying lawsuits. How could I possibly get my arms around the issues facing our community or our nation?

I felt powerless, and so I just hung back. I didn’t feel qualified, and I didn’t have the linkages outside of my own little group.

I didn’t have any support group to speak of, I was out of touch with anyone but lawyers, and...

Over time I came to see that the boundaries we create in this life are imaginary; they don’t exist, but we create them. Then we feel trapped by them.

The Way to do is to be. —Lao-Tzu

Fromm’s next book, To Have or To Be.

Leadership is all about the release of human possibilities. One of the central requirements for good leadership is the capacity to inspire the people in the group: to move them and encourage them and pull them into the activity, and to help them get centered and focused and operating at peak capacity. A key element of this capacity to inspire is communicating to people that you believe they matter, that you know they have something important to give. The confidence you have in others will to some degree determine the confidence they have in themselves.

Just being able to be there for others and to listen to them is one of the most important capacities a leader can have. It calls forth the best in people by allowing them to express what is within them.

If someone listens to me say what I am feeling, then my feelings are given substance and direction, and I can act.

Somewhere, deep down, I knew that to cooperate with destiny would bring great responsibility, and I was too fearful to accept that responsibility. I realize now that I was being called to engage my destiny, and by doing so, as Joseph Campbell says, I would be yielding to the design of the universe, which was speaking through the design of my own person.

Yet, on another plane, I was spending more and more time alone, writing and reading and thinking and reflecting and meditating. This is what I did with my evenings and my weekends. Every spare moment was engaged in the inner struggle, thinking about the new forum, seeing pictures of it in my mind, pictures of how it would be, and pictures of the results.

At this moment, says Rollo May, one arrives at a point where freedom and destiny merge.

I had a great sense of internal direction and focus, and an incredible sense of freedom that I had never felt before in my entire life. I had committed to something far larger than myself—and through that step, as I was to realize over time, I would achieve a quality of meaning and adventure I had never before attained. As I had no specific knowledge, only the guidance of the dream I had formed during the two weeks in Steamboat Springs, I made up my mind to take one day at a time, one step at a time.