Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace

To be fully free to create, we must first find the courage and willingness to let go: Let go of the strategies that have worked for us in the past... Let go of our biases, the foundation of our illusions... Let go of our grievances, the root source of our victimhood... Let go of our so-often-denied fear of being found unlovable.

Being infinite, the whole of reality is too much for the conscious human mind to grasp. The best any one of us can do is to take the biggest slice of Infinite Reality we can hold - intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally - and make that slice our personal sense of what is real. But no matter how broad it is, any human perception of reality can be no more than a tiny sliver of Infinite Reality. Civilization also has a limited perception of Infinite Reality. And with a haughty self-assurance, it imposes that perception on us until we think it is our own.

Now when I say let go, I do not mean reject. Because when you let go of something, it will still be there for you when you need it. But because you have stopped clinging you will have freed yourself up to tap into other possibilities - possibilities that can help you deal with this world of accelerating change.

Teasing is a disguised form of shaming.

You will find that it is not a one-shot deal, this letting go. You must do it again and again and again. It's kind of like breathing. You can't breathe just once. Try it: Breathe just once. You'll pass out.

Our creative genius is the fountainhead of originality. It fires our compulsion to evolve. It inspires us to challenge norms. Creative genius is about flying to new heights on untested wings. It is about the danger of crashing. It is amorphous, magical, unmeasurable and unpredictable…But we need our genius to bail ourselves out of the messes we continually get ourselves into. So, individually, we must override the cartel, set aside our herd longing for security through sameness and seek the help of our natural genius. Yours and mine.

You have a masterpiece inside you, too, you know. One unlike any that has ever been created, or ever will be. And remember: If you go to your grave without painting your masterpiece, it will not get painted. No one else can paint it. Only you.

Let go of our so-often-denied fear of being found unlovable.

If you are in a position of power and want to lead well, remember: Allow those you lead... To lead... when they feel the need. All will benefit.

Compassionate emptiness. To me that meant a state of nonjudgmental receiving.

I would imagine myself to be an empty vessel existing only to receive. As fully as possible. Without judgment.

The escape from habitual culture must always be temporary if you expect to be permitted back into that culture.

To be functionally inappropriate is to be dysfunctional.

It is a delicate balance, resisting the hypnotic spell of an organization's culture and, at the same time, remaining committed from the heart to the personally relevant goals of the organization.