My 25 year old copy

High on the top of my list of things I’m grateful for is my exposure to amazing teachers and teachings. There is a world of fraud out there, unhelpful teachings, ego maniacal charlatans, and simply ridiculous nonsense. I’ll consider it grace that I’ve been continued to have really high quality teachings dropped in my lap, while being guided away from the shallow and just plain wrong. I was 18 when I had Robert Anton Wilson’s ‘Prometheus Rising’ pressed into my hand. I devoured it. I read his other books. They terrified me, and offended me, and I couldn’t stop reading them. They weren’t like the 1970s yoga books I had seen, and they weren’t like my dad’s books on magic and witchcraft, which were more like anthropology meets ghost stories. Wilson’s book practical tools for changing your consciousness, taking control of your nervous system. Intelligence Increase. Who knew? And while I never got to meet Wilson, I still consider him a major influence.

One of the lessons I’ve gleaned from RAW, that I’ve really taken to heart, is his definition of Intelligence. It’s helped me to increase mine, and to value it. I’ve taught it in teacher training. I want students to think about it. I want teachers to think about it.

“Intelligence is the capacity to receive, decode and transmit information efficiently. Stupidity is blockage of this process at any point. Bigotry, ideologies etc. block the ability to receive; robotic reality-tunnels block the ability to decode or integrate new signals; censorship blocks transmission.” – Robert Anton Wilson

Simple. Three simple steps. Input, Process, Output. Increase your ability to do those three things, and you increase your intelligence. The same process can be applied to all kinds of things. How do we give, integrate, and receive love, for example?

For years I thought this was an obscure idea, relegated to the underground and the counter culture.

The New Book

Fast Forward 20 years, I’m doing my lifelong learning thing, working with another brilliant teacher, Doug Silsbee. He’s teaching me to coach, how to use mindfulness practices to create clarity of vision, resilience of being, and results that matter. If we’ve talked in the few years, we’ve discussed it. If we haven’t, give me a shout and we can.

Turns out that Doug has been teaching this same idea. He labels them ‘sensing, being, and acting’. I’m not sure where he picked up the ideas, I’ll have to ask him the next time we talk. He just published a book on the topic. It’s called ‘Presence Based Leadership‘. I’m really digging on it. It offers a beautiful and coherent framework for bringing self awareness to the complex lives of complex people doing complex things. The tools are simple, at at the same time very effective, including things like:

Acting

• Scale awareness
• Extend leadership presence
• Tune the instrument

The teachings of his new book has already worked its way into my coaching practice. If you’re curious about working with this, please feel free to reach out to me, I’d be happy to share a sample session with you.

And please, do yourself a favor and pick up these two books.

Presence Based Leadership

Prometheus Rising

Doug Silsbee, Sitaram Das, and Rodney Allen