On great leadership - domain of the heart

Submitted by David on Sat, 2010-06-12 02:24

Hello fellow travelers of the HEART. Welcome to the launch of our new website, www.wildernessacupuncture.com. We have merged ASOMseminars.com and David Ford Seminars.com into this new website. If you like what you see or hear please pass it on to family, friends, associates, community and national leadership. The picture enclosed illuminates Dr. Ken Norris, the revealer of Porpoise – Whale - Dolphin communication. Ken is a true King and inspirer, more of his story later.

My VISION for this website is to share the simple profound wisdom that arises out of the DAOIST FIVE ELEMENT way of seeing into the interrelated web of all life on our blue green jewel earth. VISION is a domain of the HEART.

This website is not just for five element acupuncturists, traditional Chinese medical practitioners, or natural medicine practitioners. Making decisions is a requirement of leadership. I have decided to open up the HEART of our medicine to all interested parties from all walks of life and all professions, from the homemaker (THE most important and powerful job on the planet), to all healing arts professions, to corporate and national leadership.

It will not just be focused on the FIVE ELEMENT theoretical and clinical applications in our practices. We will also discuss the application of this worldview in politics, ecology, economy, the movies, and mass media [ what the film maker, creator of Avatar, James Cameron has coined, “the collective hallucination”!]

The FIVE ELEMENT system describes and illuminates all living systems and all human endeavors. It helps us develop greater compassion, understanding, and empathy for all that is different and “other” in our lives. In so doing it helps to relieve personal and global suffering among people who develop a deeper understanding of this system.

What does the HEART have to do with leadership? In Chinese Medicine literature the HEART is considered to be the leader of the “nation of our bodies”. It is the King or the Queen.

I have coined a new phrase, “QUEING”. A combining of the words queen and king, to reflect the nature of our times and the fact that a significant percentage of the worlds population have now gone beyond the yin yang story of right/wrong, left/right, good and evil, Jesus/devil, dialectics. We are now operating in whole brain seeing. Our corpus callosums have been drilled open and can no longer function in the separatist thinking of me and other! We are all ONE!’

What are the attributes of the HEART? As was quoted in the film the English Patient, “the HEART is an organ of FIRE!” literally! It is directly tied to our solar body, the SUN. Therefore it represents illumination, the giving of life, leadership, through love and warmth. Some beautiful representations of the state of the HEART and grace through film include Invictus; Henry the V; Elizabeth (watch Helen Mirren and Kate Blanchard’s versions); and The Queen.

To see the HEART in a state of disgrace watch Richard the III; The Last King of Scotland; any film on Adolf Hitler; and Hamlet.

If you have favorite films or living examples of leadership in grace or disgrace it would be lovely if you would share them with us.

Lao Tse in his great classic the Dao Te Ching states on leadership, “that the worst leader is the one that when the work is done he or she says, ‘I did great work’. The next worst leader is the one that when the work is done the people and the leader say, ‘we did great work’. The greatest leader is the one that when the work is done the people say, ‘we did great work’! Great HEARTS do not need to take credit for their vision that guides their nation into greatness because they realize that greatness arises out of the combined effort of all life to be in service to make all life better for all life.

To be in service to others is one of the key domains of the HEART.

At this human induced ecological crisis point in planetary history the call for enlightened vision and united leadership to break out of the “collective hallucination” has never been more important.

From personal experience and watching many of my friends abdicating their leadership responsibilities I have come to realize that one of the requirements of wise leadership is the willingness to take visionary action to bring forth the future, fully realizing that our vision will be unpopular with a significant portion of the population at the time the action is implemented.

Part of leadership is taking bold actions to awaken a brighter future, to protect all LIFE, that will not always be seen in a positive light by a significant few in the present moment.

Back to Ken Norris, and his twinned partner Philly, a TRUE QUEEN. Ken and Philly spun a beautiful web together combining a profound love for all living things with a scientific rigor and a fascination for the magnificent magical web of life. Ken was known as the “professor of wonderment”. Together he and Philly LOVED LIFE! All of it! The shit and the grace! They embodied the principal of leadership that I see common in all the great souls I have personally met in any field of endeavour. What are those common qualities? A willingness to be foolish and to be seen as foolish

A willingness to laugh at yourself.
A lightness of spirit and HEART. (Angels fly because they take themselves lightly)
A sense of wonderment towards ALL OF LIFE.
An unflagging sense of curiosity combined with a restless discontentment toward the information you receive – evolution never ends!
Realization that you are only a student and you can only be a student, never a master of anything! The minute you think you are a master you become like Mickey Mouse, the Sorcerers Apprentice in the film Fantasia.
The giving up of a blind adherence to any ”ism”, especially rationalism.

Ken Norris discovered Porpoise, Whale, Dolphin, communication not through the scientific method but through direct revelation when he picked up a porpoise skull on a beach in Baja California. I asked him how it came to him. He said “when I picked up that skull it was as if I was slammed over the head by a thousand pound sledge hammer and in an instant all the information about their communication was downloaded into my brain. It then took years to scientifically prove out as fact the information I got in the split second.”

REVELATION is one of the most powerful attributes of the HEARTS great vision and leadership!

Trust your HEART. (not your mind)

My friend Casey White, at his valedictory speech as president of the National Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine Alliance, said, “If you have love in your HEART the Gods will dance on the ends of your needles”. If we take this principle to HEART we do not need to be experts to facilitate the healing of each other and the planet.

When Carlos Castaneda asked Don Juan, “what was the common attribute of all great Shamanic traditions”, Don Juan replied,

“IF IT IS NOT THE PATH OF THE HEART IT IS NOT THE PATH”

David Ford, June 11th