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THE PROMISE OF SHAKTI LEADERSHIP: A FULFILLED AND FREE WORLD

If there is to be a future,
it will wear a crown of feminine design.

Sri Aurobindo¹

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

We came across a New Yorker cartoon recently that shows a depressed elephant lying on its psychotherapist’s couch, saying, “I’m right there in the room, and no one even acknowledges me.”

That elephant in the room reminded us of Shakti, the unseen, unacknowledged, and unused feminine power. Elephants symbolize gentleness, intelligence, and great strength—a fitting symbol for Shakti.

The power and even the existence of Shakti has long been staunchly denied, perhaps because it has been seen as a threat to society’s traditionally patriarchal structures. Those holding the reins of power have long sensed and perhaps secretly feared this potently feminine power of life in women. Thus they have sought to keep it harnessed and tied down to serve their patriarchal systems. To prevent this power from manifesting its greatness, we have acquiesced to a collective amnesia; we have chosen to implicitly accept the canard that feminine qualities are inferior to masculine ones. Thus the patriarchy has been and continues to be enabled to feel in near-total control of the uncertain processes of life and destiny.

The win-lose consciousness of an immature humanity has caused us to deny, suppress, and devalue the power and indispensability of the feminine in order to maintain the dominance of the masculine. We have so lost sight and sense of Shakti’s existence that we struggle even now to bring it into our awareness, to observe and understand what Shakti really is.

Human history has been filled with great scientific, artistic, and material advances, but also with unimaginable suffering—of one pointless war after another, each sowing the seeds of the next eruption of violence, in an endless succession of acts of manly bravado, unleavened by the nourishing, humanizing, and civilizing touch of the mature feminine. Countless precious, unique, and irreplaceable human lives have been tragically cut short, and all for what? To appease the egos and quench the blood lust of tyrants and despots, and not much else.

Ego-based power and money have long been seen as “the only games in town.” It is time to awaken to the enlivening reality that there are much bigger, better, and more fulfilling games in town. We interviewed many leaders and leadership experts for this book. What struck us was that most of the necessary behaviors, skills, and attitudes they called for and highlighted as essential to human flourishing are at their core fundamentally feminine—that is, aspects of Shakti. In many cases, people are not even aware that these are feminine elements. This is why Shakti feels like the invisible elephant in the room. How can we miss seeing the very principle that hold up life?

Such is the extent of submersion of the feminine in our individual and collective unconscious that we have to dive deep to retrieve it and reengage with it. This creative and sustaining feminine power is intelligent and conscious. It is real and powerful beyond the comprehension of most. The sooner we recognize what belongs to the domain of the feminine, the more conscious we can become of its agency. The more we learn to work with it, the more effective and fulfilled we will become.

Recent research on leadership has unearthed many desirable qualities that are inherently gifts of Shakti. It is like the well-known parable of the blind men describing different parts of the same elephant. Rather than grasping for pieces of the puzzle, we are better served by trying to understand the whole.

Earlier, we wrote of how baby elephants are conditioned into domestic labor by being chained to a tree. They do not know their own strength as they grow up and are seemingly content to remain in the confines of the same space, even as they grow into their immense power and the chain around their foot is unshackled from the tree. The time has finally come for feminine energy to break out of the conditioning it has been under for many millennia and realize it has the power to move mountains—in both men and women, and in the world. It is time, at long last, to finally unshackle Shakti and celebrate its power and grace and bountiful gifts.

Shakti Leaders Speak: On Living Your Life and Values

Shelly Lazarus, chairman of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, advises:

You cannot be afraid to be who you are. Live your values, live your life. I heard a woman the other day use the term “sneaking out of the office” to go to her child’s play. That’s how she described her own behavior. I said, “Wait! Stop right there. I have never snuck out of any place; I walk right down the center hall, and if anybody doesn’t like it, too bad! This is what I need to do to lead my life, this is what I want to do. I’m going to the school play—at 11:15 A.M. Don’t worry about me, I will get my job done. I will deliver whatever people need. But don’t sneak. Just stand up, do what you need to do and smile about it, and look ’em in the eye and say ‘If you don’t like it, fire me! I’ll go find another job, because I’m talented enough and I’m committed enough and I’m smart enough.’”²

 

SHAKTI’S JOURNEY

We are in the early stages of awakening to the realization that the path we have been on for millennia is not working anymore, and indeed never really worked in the past either. It is not working in our individual lives, as evidenced by the epidemics of depression, addiction, and chronic disease we are suffering in growing numbers.³ It is also not working at a collective, planetary level; witness the degradation of the environment and the destruction of countless species.

We are approaching a monumental societal tipping point. A fast-growing number of men are starting to become comfortable integrating the feminine side into their approach to life and leadership. At the same time, huge numbers of women are coming through the education system, rising through organizational hierarchies and assuming leadership roles. With those rising numbers comes greater confidence in their own capacities; women are no longer in a world in which they feel they must emulate the most egregious aspects of masculine behavior in order to succeed.

When you lead with Shakti, you’re tapping into the power that fuels the universe: the power of love and care and mutuality. You’re not operating at cross-purposes with where the world needs to and wants to go. You’re an agent of something that is essentially infinite. You become part of Shakti’s own journey, the general rise of the feminine in the world.

Even as we start by seeing ourselves as the hero/ine of our life’s story, a time comes when we have to become a part of a larger journey, when our small stream merges into the mighty river of Shakti herself. Chris Maddox, founder of The Wild Woman Project, summarizes it thus: “This is (the) shift: from feeling like the star of the movie of my life with a really pretty set, to feeling like part of an epic story being told where I am honored to have a tiny, yet mighty role in this chapter.”⁴

The narrative of Conscious Leadership is incomplete without unveiling and making explicit the idea of Shakti, the power that activates consciousness and embodies the full spectrum of energies that fuel and mediate our evolution. Making this power, this dynamic energy field, discernible and getting acquainted with the archetypes/drives at work within and around us, is critical to our growth. We cannot come into any level of mastery—personal, professional, or collective—until we become aware of and consciously work with these invisible forces.

Author Caroline Myss refers to this Shakti energy in her own language: “Our interior nature is evolving to accommodate the energetic age in which we now reside. Our intuitive intelligence has awakened along with other inner senses causing all sorts of disruptions. . . . Yet we are not familiar with the subtleties of our psychic and indeed our spiritual intelligence. We now truly reside as much in the invisible realm of the psyche and the energy world (via technology) as we do in the physical world. . . . I believe that it is equally important to learn to speak ‘archetypes’ fluently because symbols and myths are the language of the psyche.”⁵

EVERYTHING JOURNEYS

Many readers will remember playing the game Mastermind as children, a game in which we had to crack a hidden code. With each step we took, we got closer to discerning what it was.

The code of life is that, in order to come into being, everything journeys.

Ideas, movements, institutions, and programs are tested, just as species, communities, and individuals are. Only those that are “fit to survive” endure and thrive. For example, the path from the Declaration of Independence to the establishment of a stable democratic system of government in the United States was a difficult and treacherous one. The young country’s leaders had to overcome numerous challenges and deal with circumstances that could have killed the fledgling nation before it was able to find its true identity. The journey of growth and evolution continues to this day and will never end.

The journey has an astonishingly intelligent design built in to it. By now, thanks to Joseph Campbell’s work, the stages and archetypal characters are well known. With fresh eyes and full presence, you can anticipate the stages of the journey and respond consciously. Just as you can use the ordeals to come into your own power and Shakti rather than being consumed by them, you can do the same for any organization or movement that you are part of or care about.

The inner journey to self-mastery is as important as the outer journey to selfless service. Don’t lose track of one for the other. You’re not just here to wake up and fulfill your personal agenda. Your personal hero’s journey is linked to your company’s success, societal renaissance, and global harmony. You’re here to find your swadharma and follow your bliss and in doing so play your part in the grand symphony of evolutionary growth.

Sri Aurobindo’s “Human Cycle” describes the inevitability of our impending evolution. He says that we’re not just doing sadhana and practice for our own self-development and our own freedom and perfection, the reasons most people usually do any spiritual practice. The time has come for us to know the context of why we are doing it: to support evolution itself. This whole creation is a work in progress. Only when a critical mass of people wake up is anything going to shift. We’re still caught in the old context, and that context is slow to change, which means we get stuck and pulled back all the time. We need to bring additional intentionality into the spiritual practices we undergo, the intention that what we are doing is to further evolution itself, to further creation, and to further humanity. It is not a selfish purpose; it is the highest act of selflessness. That is why we must make our heroic journey at this time.

You have a broad sense of the destination, but how do you get from here to there? There are no formulaic standard answers. You’ve been given the map and tools, and you have a sense of the different choices available to you. Living each moment with full presence will reveal the way forward. It unfolds step by step. Every individual, every relationship, and every team is going to experience a different version of the journey. This is the map; it is not the territory. Once you start walking it, you will discover many things.

Start by cultivating presence to get powered by Shakti. From there, work to build the capacities of wholeness, flexibility, and congruence. Become your own mother-father and your own beloved. Nurture and protect your inner child; love and set yourself free to come of age and play the game of life, the lila, joyfully and consciously. Find that family reunion within you, psychologically. Know how to switch between masculine and feminine energy and not get stuck in one or the other. Stay on purpose and live your dharma.

You are already en route to your fulfillment. Use your myth, your story, to journey joyously, without needless suffering and angst. Experience the equanimity that comes with knowing and accepting that the only way out is in and through. Everything begins from your inner self.

Not journeying is not an option. If the human race is to be saved and elevated, each of us needs to wake up, make the journey, and answer the call to adventure. There is, in Martin Luther King Jr.’s words, a “fierce urgency of now,” a joyous, ecstatic urgency, the pull of what could be. It is not about evading the flames below but reaching for the fruit above.

AWAKENING FOR PLANETARY CHANGE

Futurist Faith Popcorn has said: “The end of gender is not about societal androgyny. It is about the integration and emerging dominance of feminine energy. We are at the end of combative feminism, patriarchal dominance, and one-dimensional identity.”⁶

At a subconscious level, many women are still prisoners of stereotypes, unmet expectations, and unconscious biases. They have great latent power that they fail to exercise. As Marti Barletta says, “Women have all the power that matters; they have buying power, wealth, and political power. But bizarrely, nobody seems to know that. It is time for us to be bolder. We have the critical mass: we’re 51 percent of professionals and managers now, 53 percent of entry level into business executive ranks. It’s time to stop trying to blend in. We tried to convince everybody that we were as much like the guys as possible, with our quarterback shoulder pads in the ’80s. We need to help people understand that what we bring to the party is strong and smart and different from what men bring. Like everything in diversity, differences add to the mix.”⁷

But is “leadership” in the sense of top positions the only path to change? Of course not, though we would all benefit from having many more women in leadership roles than we do today. Marti Barletta points out that “One of the key benefits for many men of being the top dog is that you’re the top dog. Not as many women as men care that much about being top dog or are willing to sacrifice everything else in life to get the slot.”⁸ What this points to is that we need to change the way we think about leadership so that it becomes a more human undertaking—one that doesn’t ask people to forgo other vitally essential things in life.

Women need to step up and step out, but not as pale imitations of men. They should confidently take hold of the reins of power to use that power in creative, life-affirming ways. Iconic singer and songwriter Alanis Morissette expresses it beautifully: “The definition of success for me is win-win or no deal, as Stephen Covey said. In my mind, it is the divine feminine at play. Whether it is multimillion-dollar business deals, or what park we’re going to for my son, it’s win-win or no deal. To me, that is success: if we can find a win-win, and we can walk away from something where there is no win-win.”⁹

REVIVING WOMEN’S CIRCLES

We were not just put on this planet to be thinking creatures; we are also part of nature, just as much as the oceans and forests and all the creatures in them. We need to understand Shakti as the earth and as the spirits of the land and the forces of the elements—all are different aspects of the same Shakti. This force, this abundance, moves us and is all around us.

We need a special form to enter into relationship and communication with nonhuman elements. That form is ritual. The root of the word “ritual” is the Sanskrit ritu. It refers to tradition, rhythm, seasons, and the menses. Devising meaningful rituals and bringing them to the workplace is a distinctly feminine way of leading.

The women’s circle is one such ritual. It is a way to get in touch with the archetypal energies inside us. It is a setting in which women can give voice to their deepest fears, hopes, needs, angst, and pain. We surface them from the dark, suppressed places where we have stored them away. We bring them up and offer them to the central fire so we can be emptied of them. When we can empty ourselves, we are then ready to receive a new, higher consciousness, a capacity and ability to know how to handle life’s challenges. So a circle is a way to empty the cup in order to fill it again. These circles are like cauldrons, alchemical spaces for the healing of humanity.

When we do something in a group with the intention to heal and evolve—not just ourselves individually, but collectively—it takes on higher levels of amplification, and profound outcomes become possible.

Several kinds of circles can be used, such as healing circles, dialogue circles, trust circles, divine feminine circles, and yogini circles. The core process of circle work can also be used in the workplace to run effective, inclusive, and efficient meetings.

Here we share the process of Shakti circles, which can be used by women to understand and connect with Shakti. It is a synthesized ritual, drawing from ancient traditions such as the Native American talking-stick and the Indian homa or yagna fire ceremony, as well as modern processes devised by consciousness facilitators we have interacted with and learned from.¹⁰

The Shakti Circle

In a Shakti circle, we consciously work with the evolutionary force of Shakti itself. Shakti is in us and working through us, through our chakras (our yogic energy centers), seeking to get more and more conscious as our energy rises up. We invoke the panchamahabhuta, the five elements (earth, water, fire, air, ether/space) that are around us and inside us. Become aware of how those five elements come together in your creative womb; this is where the alchemy takes place.

Use a tree as a centering device and as a visual metaphor for your spine. It serves as a sacred access mandala (a geometric figure representing the universe in Hindu and Buddhist symbolism), which brings the supreme consciousness down to earth, and connects the consciousness of the earth with the source above. We invite every woman in the circle to feel her womb connect with the earth below and heaven above. Become the collective womb, not just for yourself but to cleanse and heal and transform whatever it is you carry as a woman in your body-mind. We are together not just to heal our own selves. We’re healing womanhood, the accumulated pain and psychic wounds from thousands of years of patriarchy.

We invite everyone’s intention to connect with that level of being—to speak from her Shakti, the core creative power from which they have emanated, the animating force of the consciousness principle. (Recall that in yoga we call the consciousness principle Shiva, the masculine, and we call its creative, dynamic, executive force and power Shakti.)

The circle has some important rules. Start by creating an altar of fire as the centerpiece for the circle. If you can’t sit around a fire, try using a mandala of candles or tea lights and flowers. If possible, float the candles in an urli, a wide and flat water-filled vase that sits on the floor. Then invite the women to become quiet and sit in a circle around it. Always begin by invoking everyone’s higher self for guidance and protection, and for the highest healing outcomes. Surrender the whole ritual to the divine Shakti.

Whenever you speak, speak your truth. Use a “truth-object,” a touchstone. When it comes to you, hold it and speak from your heart, not from your mind. Tell it as it is; don’t sugarcoat anything. Listen deeply to the content but equally to the intent when others speak. Allow yourself to be moved. You’re trying to get in touch with the collective, the Shakti that’s speaking through each person. If doubts and questions or judgments come up in your mind when someone else is speaking, stop and silently observe, “Hmm . . . how interesting that this person should feel this way.” Let it be a wondering rather than a judgment. Allow for a spacious period of deep silence after each person speaks. Let the silence breathe. Absorb and digest what has just been spoken before speaking. Ground yourself, anchor yourself, and speak only when you feel centered. There’s no compulsion to speak; pass the touchstone on to the next person if you have nothing to say. Do not interrupt or challenge another.

The most important thing is to elicit the unsaid. The whole point of the circle is to speak what has not been spoken. This is a safe and sacred space for you to release and let go that which you have held inside. Offer every word to the central fire, not to each other. Do not make eye contact; speak directly to the fire and let it go.

That which is deeply personal is completely universal. Whatever you say, however personal it may be, know that it’s a completely universal truth, and it is part of many women’s stories on this planet.

Every time the touchstone goes around the circle, the leader calls out one question. The question is offered to the fire and to the women in the circle. There are some very key and powerful transformative questions to connect with, release, heal, and transform Shakti. Feel free to speak as much as you need to but keep it as succinct as possible. As you offer your closing words, breathe up the whole intention behind them and offer it to the fire to feel truly cleansed of that material.

When the touchstone comes to you, answer the first question:

As a woman, what brings you joy?

Take a deep breath. Connect with your womb. Connect with the five elements inside you and all around you. Connect with the Shakti inside you, the creative power of the universe. Connect also with your own personality, your ego self, which has journeyed this far. Nilima might say, “As a woman, what brings me joy is my body. I feel deeply delighted that I have a beautiful, dancing body, and that this body has been so faithful. It’s been such an amazing partner. It’s been with me every step of the way and responds to my commands, my prayers, my intentions. I just want to give thanks to this beautiful body and for the fact that I can dance with it.” As you hear every woman speak, feel her joy, connect with your own joy, and amplify the joy in the circle.

Other questions that are typically used:

What causes you pain/fear/anger/shame/guilt?

What do you need to love/accept/forgive/let go/fully grieve?

Sense your way into the circle’s wisdom and allow new questions to emerge as you hear what comes up.

As this is a powerful, alchemical space, sensitive topics may surface. Be ready for conflicted psychological forces of resistance or obstruction getting stirred up—forces that could potentially derail the process. When it comes, see it for what it is with presence; invoke and apply your highest Shakti- and Shiva-like wisdom and compassion to contain it—or park it with humor and move on. Each circle becomes a mini heroic journey in itself, especially for the circle leader.

Restoring Gender Relations: Whole Man, Whole Woman, One Dance

In our work aimed at restoring gender relations, we also run “Whole Man – Whole Woman” circles. This is a process in which an equal number of men and women are invited to sit in concentric circles. First, the inner circle is run for women, while the men are asked to simply sit in the outer circle, hold the space, and bear silent witness, without judgment or resistance, to the voice of “everywoman” they hear as a set of collective, universal themes. Next, the places are exchanged: the women sit in the outer circle and the men voice their deepest hopes, fears, and needs. They answer the same questions, starting with the words, “As a man . . .”

Needless to say, what unfolds is poignant and deeply revelatory for each group about their own reality and that of the other. Men especially have not been socialized to truly feel their feelings and allow themselves to be vulnerable in a safe way. Both groups are usually shocked by the surfacing of the lesser known but extremely significant “masculine wound” around issues such as feelings of inadequacy in their fatherhood, their ability to provide for their loved ones, and their personal legacy.

A profound compassion, what Buddhists call mahakaruna, takes over the space, as each group is able to better understand and forgive themselves and each other. All take away a lasting sense of respect and acceptance of their interdependent existence.

TURNING OUR DRIVES INTO OUR POWER BASES

Just as the drama triangle can be made into a conscious dharma triangle, we can also make conscious the drives of the four-fold self and use them as power bases for our leadership. These drives are within us whether we acknowledge them or not. Together, eros, thanatos, logos, and mythos fuel our journey to individuation.

Sri Aurobindo, in his book The Mother, describes the four main powers of Shakti that together enable the conscious life. These are the qualities of harmony, strength, wisdom, and perfection. We are graced with these qualities when we offer up our ego self and replace it with authentic presence.¹¹

FOUR-FOLD SELF	ARCHETYPES OF MATURE LEADERS	POWERS OF SHAKTI
• Logos	• Sovereign	• Wisdom
• Thanatos	• Warrior	• Strength
• Mythos	• Magician	• Perfection
• Eros	• Lover	• Harmony

 

Adapted from King, Warrior, Magician, Lover by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette, and The Mother by Sri Aurobindo.

As a Shakti Leader, you are invited to cultivate presence and engage with and examine your inner drives. You may find that when you evoke eros, it yields a state of harmony and flow within. Thanatos offers up strength, logos bestows wisdom, and mythos brings you into a more complete perfection. Harmony and strength are eros-thanatos made conscious; similarly, logos-mythos reveals wisdom and perfection.

Furthermore, as you come into your own as an adult leader, you may well find yourself flexing between the four main archetypes of a mature psyche that Jungians offer: the Sovereign (King/Queen), Warrior, Magician, and Lover.¹² The Sovereign has mastered logos, the Warrior thanatos, the Lover eros, and the Magician mythos.

Consciously creating an approach to leadership that is your unique blend of the four bases of Shakti (harmony, strength, wisdom, perfection) will help you make your innate drives conscious and harness them to fuel you. Presence enables making your unconscious drives conscious. The four main aspects of Shakti offer bases of true power to draw upon, instead of being driven by ego-shadow power plays within and around you.

As you leverage the four main powers of Shakti, you may find them to be conscious presences within you—presences that you can access and manifest as needed. Much like your higher self, they too respond to prayer, invocation, and affirmation. Deep and fulfilling connections are safely possible with these Shakti-forces, which partner with us as long as we are in selfless service to our higher purpose and greater good.

Of these four leadership archetypes, one may be most resonant with your preferred way of being, your swabhav. You should anchor yourself in this power source while drawing from the other three as needed.

You are not doomed to be churned by your unconscious forever. You can make the innate drives of your ego-shadow self conscious and gain access through them to the power of your higher self.

A NEW MYTHOLOGY FOR A NEW CONSCIOUSNESS

We need to evolve a new mythology if we are to reach for a new consciousness with a new understanding of power. We also need to re-tell some of the old myths from this new consciousness—myths that were interpreted by the old patriarchal consciousness of an immature humanity. Keeping outdated systems and ways of being in play simply does not serve us anymore. For example, Sita, the heroine of the ancient Indian epic the Ramayana, is exalted as the dutiful and chaste wife of Rama, who is an incarnation of the divine preserver Vishnu himself. Many women in India and around the world who relate to the myth are newly interpreting it and re-telling it from the point of view of an empowered Sita, mistress of her destiny. As they do so, they heal their own story and create a more appropriate and effective personal myth.

A NEW MYTHOLOGY FOR BUSINESS

Joseph Campbell was a strong advocate for a new “mono-myth,” which he felt was essential for humanity to survive. The Conscious Capitalism movement is seeking to create a new mythology for business—one in which business has a higher purpose beyond profit, conscious leaders who are mature and fully human, caring cultures built on love and trust, and win-win partnerships with all stakeholders.

This movement arrives at a time when the digital age has pushed the economy into a new phase. It is largely exemplified and led by young entrepreneurial minds and bodies, unburdened by the outdated myths of old business predicated on a view that is now widely recognized as selfish, instrumental, and narrow.¹³ They thrive on the power of new ideas, and operate as creators who are reimagining the world instead of trying to incrementally change the existing baggage-ridden institutions that are either unable or unwilling to adapt to the times.

Before this new age of business gets conditioned into its own mythology (for everything eventually needs one to drive and sustain it), we offer “Embracing Feminine and Masculine Power in Business” for consideration. Evolution and history have tasked today’s leaders, as creators of a new economy based on the power of ideas, with the daunting but joyous responsibility of reimagining a new world—a world that works for all. By actively embracing the idea of becoming more conscious by tapping into Shakti, today’s leaders can show the way.

We must choose the new myth wisely, consciously embracing the pooled power of the feminine and the masculine to liberate the heroic spirit of business to elevate humanity. Everything else will fall in place after that: the vision, capacities, values, competencies, behaviors, and desired outcomes for leadership and for the enterprise.

IN CLOSING

The human inner experience of eros-thanatos and logos-mythos has long been a veritable battlefield, a kurukshetra of the war between the masculine and the feminine for supremacy over the other, tragically canceling/destroying each other in the bargain. They have been, in Jung’s words, “opposites that come together in the conjunction . . . either confronting ‘one another in enmity’ or attracting ‘one another in love.’”¹⁴ Now that we have seemingly exhausted all ego/fear-based possibilities, we are ready to lay down our swords and bask in the infinite possibilities of soul-based love.

Understanding, acceptance, and forgiveness are needed all around. It is now time for the masculine and the feminine to partner with the other rather than seeking to dominate—like antigens and antibodies working with each other to bring about an indestructible resilience of our embodied being.

Shakti Leaders Speak: On Flying in Circles

Author and activist Lynne Twist offers a compelling metaphor to describe the metamorphosis that we are collectively experiencing:

Something that’s happening right now in the world is what I call the Sophia Century—the century when women will take their rightful role in equal partnership with men. There’s a wonderful prophecy from the Native American people called the prophecy of the eagle. It says that, for many centuries, the bird of humanity has been flying primarily with one wing, and that wing is the male wing. The female wing has not been fully extended; it’s been held back and not been fully expressed, while the male wing, in order to keep the bird of humanity afloat, has gotten overdeveloped and has actually become violent, and the bird of humanity has been flying in circles as a result. This is the century when the female wing of humanity, or feminine expression, will fully extend itself. When it does so, the male wing will be able to relax and the bird of humanity will soar, rather than fly in circles. That metaphor is so moving, because it doesn’t make men wrong. I feel that in myself; when I’m fully expressed in both the energy of the masculine and feminine parts of who I am, I soar. I soar as a leader; I soar as a follower; I soar as a human being. When I’m withheld or stymied or feel oppressed or weak as a woman and try to compensate by using my male energy too much, I fly in circles.¹⁵

 

It is perhaps India’s spiritual destiny to harness and synthesize all the world’s spiritually divergent forces. As author and scholar Neela Bhattacharya Saxena has said, “The contribution of Indian civilization to the world has been the technology that it developed for thousands of years: the science of interiority, how to go inside, how to really integrate. That is what yoga is. That technology has already come into the Western world. If we can connect the dots, there’s no such thing as East-West anymore.”¹⁶

With respect and in the spirit of service, we have offered the idea of Shakti here as a piece of profound yogic wisdom that has great potential to transform our world by helping all of humanity move forward with love and grace. For far too long, half of humanity has been trapped and kept subjugated. We have also disavowed half of our psyche, the part that renders us truly and deeply human, the aspect that is most closely connected with our higher selves and our divine natures.

Shakti Leadership knits all the diverse elements together into an intricate tapestry that extends beyond man-woman, straddles East and West, blends the indigenous and modern, as well as the human, archetypal, and divine. It includes everyone and subjugates no one. It seeks to create a world in which everyone flourishes and blossoms—a world in which we can all win.

Humanity is poised on a massive evolutionary tipping point, moving inexorably forward to its divine destiny of ananda or bliss. The chaos we are experiencing is not a breakdown but a breakthrough, a massive labor of the divine Shakti birthing a new consciousness. If we choose to see it as a clarion call to live joyously and evolve consciously to the life divine, we can welcome a new age of an awakened, thriving humanity.¹⁷

We believe that the ultimate objective of nature’s evolution is to achieve a perfected humanity and planet, functioning as a single organism in harmony and balance. May women and men step in, step up, and step out together. Let Shakti take the lead and show the way for them to hold up the whole sky together!

Whole man, whole woman, whole world. Manifesting Shakti. May the Force (Shakti) be with you.

Let’s dance!