Basic, not base emotions

Often, I muse upon the subtleties between enthusiasm and optimism; risk taking and impulse, self-sacrificing and altruism, and so on. These are fascinating areas of thought, and inferences from a similar behavior may trace back to different origins. E.g. who do you think is more of a risk taker - the cricketer Sehwag, or Virat Kohli? Who is more of the impulsive businessperson - Richard Branson or Vijay Mallya?

If seen from a more coarse, or meta-level, what may be the basic emotions we experience as humans? I am left with what Master Richard McHugh taught us years ago. He said there are four basic forms that emotions take. Our brains are capable of focussing on finite chunks of emotion in given time, and as such, may not process each with similar vitality or intensity in the same moment. Yet, when distilled, there are 4 basic emotions to deal with as below.

1.       Joy – where celebration and the general word happiness exist. This may not be an absence of grief, but surely the discovery of meaning is a great contender here. 

      For me meaningfulness is an necessary reframing of grief at times, as the travails of nature hold up gifts through experiences of suffering.

2.       Grief – where the helplessness in loss pervades, and stymies the senses accordingly to a near foreclosure of options. It is grieving during separation, or death of a loved one that calls for a spirited appraisal of emotional investment. Grief is a coming to terms with nature’s cycles when ends are a renewal or a rebirth of life-forms.

3.       Anger – where not being able to get what one wanted is asserted in varying levels of intensity. Unlike grief, it is a contacting emotion, as the aim one can benefit from in the case of anger is a deepening of one’s relationship with the other with whom we are angry.

4.       Sex – and this is the counter-intuitive emotion. Sex is a procreating drive for most, but it is a life-assertive energy that when repressed causes more ill – physical, social and emotional, than we are willing to admit. Sex as bodily differentiation in gender and unity of species as life-form is slow but essential realization. Deep respect can only ensue from traversing the deep masculine, shallow masculine, and deep feminine and shallow feminine aspects of sexual identity in the same body. It is about tuning in to one’s body and its creative forces. It is also about understanding that repressed from civil discourse, we often confuse this with love – which, in fact is a decision, and more than a fundamental emotion.

Having made mention, it is useful to be clear about love. Love is a decision to give in conscious awareness all of oneself to oneself, and to others who may share in spirit, social relationship or ideology. In this sense, love is not a free flowing emotion. It is not an object of manipulation either. As Osho Rajneesh once mentioned, it is psychologically impossible to love another without loving oneself. Self-acceptance and self-improvement are both components of self-esteem, and impoverishing either reduces the chances of loving others.

Loving others as oneself, therefore is a whole new meaning - a joy to live into!

What do you think?

When Breaking Rules is no Sin : Service of the Heart

1 Corinthians 13:13 says “12For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.13But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love”.

In the mindless repetition of this differentiating text from the Bible, I have seen many a wedding solemnized, many a suffering explained away and moments of confusion managed for the temporal convenience of clergy and the laity. The Passion Week is a reminder past the centuries of an unparalleled traverse of the Jesus figure in its intensity and solemnity both. The essence between the text from the Corinthians and the experience of the Now Moment in the present, revealed itself in a pristine view for me today. So, I record them here – partly as a re-discovery of matters spiritual, and partly as an instrument to my own meaning making. And no, I have not gone to the etymological, epistemological or liturgical roots of these terms. So they come minted with the scent of my own till that the world has suffered for me.

Faith is supposed to be a dive into the unknown, and yet, it presupposes a lot. Faith per se is a call to action. On the face of it, it seems a simple, pure and unqualified act of trust. Faith however, rests on the actor’s past. It summons a judgment in the moment between choices in favour of the one choice presented for appeal. Such judgment arises only if the actor has a past experience of matters from which to discern the worth of the judgment call. Hence faith is past-dependent, despite its glory in the present.

Hope is a beacon of aspiration, aligned with an experience yet to be. It signals a poise of uncovering inner potential whether passive, dormant or active. Hope is a form of reliability in unborn futures, separating the moment from the burdens yet to be borne; and yet giving meaning to today’s  yokes. Hope is a tempering of the Spirit, the enmeshment of the Larger Mind within us that connects with what is larger than us.

But spirituality is not just through the mind’s intellect. Spirituality is also through our body and emotions. Transformations happen when we ready ourselves in the moment to receive love. Love exists in the present. We may never know in our lifetimes, as we know it, where Love comes from. It is only in the receiving, that we can recognize Love. In Love, we die to the moment. In this death, we renew ourselves. Mindfulness allows us to integrate what we sense through body and emotion into Love. For Love is a decision, that embeds many a moments of emotion, but is not an emotion of itself. Love is the giving of all you are in the moment you make that decision.

Love can bear all things, if we experience the Presence of Eternity. Forgiving Love is a decision to dissociate feelings and emotions with the person whose acts may have hurt us in the past. Merciful Love is a decision to be in service of the heart, where compassion is a state of accurate empathy with the other’s feelings, and yet, in such service; one breaks known rules of engagement. Love is in the giving. And since each moment is new; when expressed, Love bears authenticity, an originality born of an awareness of the moment.

Integrating the Past and the Future in the Present may seem difficult. In surrender to the moment, not insisting on what we desire, but experiencing from a wholeness to deserve the bounty of resources in the moment, Grace becomes an amazing feature. Grace is the mystical, unmerited mercy, whose gift is like the synesthetic synapse of laughter and tears at the same time. The Presence of Eternity, then alters our perception of time itself. If as the Bible Says, that the Greatest of these is Love, mindful present-awareness has a premium over Past–dependent Faith and Future-oriented Hope. 

Yet, the moment contains the humble connotations of the connected tenses. This is a new meaningfulness for me today. If you let me know what this means for you, I shall be much obliged. 

Spiritual Strength - the Richard McHugh SJ way

Tools of the Spirit are an experience. Also subtitled "Pathways to the Realization of Universal Innocence," it is based on a workshop authored by Robert Dilts and Robert McDonald. The original concept is that there are aids, (prayer, meditation, singing, dancing, parables, rituals and blessings), that bring us more in harmony with the "larger Mind" and "the larger nervous system" of which we are a part. The authors see NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), as a tool to achieve those ends. Richard McHugh (Dick) goes further than this. In fact, he brings to fuse his ‘awareness’ paradigm, partly informed by his Vipasana experience under Goenkaji and partly from his days at Sadhana with Tony D’Mello. Dick does not pretend to know what he does not. So he does not go to the koans or Confucian outgrowth from Buddhist thoughts. He merely stresses bodily delight in awareness through meditative postures endured in silences such as that of Vipasana.

Rev. Richard McHugh SJ, PhD, Master of NLP

What Dick does is to reinforce our connection with larger systems of which we are a part. These include family, profession, community, and the global system. When he does so, he is in the least bit eulogizing Christ, and in fact, chastises Christians for not understanding Christ as someone who asked us to love others as we loved ourselves. that is knowing ourselves more deeply. Experiencing fully, without self-judgment, arrogance or suppression of our sexual energy, Dick leads participants through bodily sensation and kinesthetic movement. We begin to know our limits, appreciate our intentions, the strengths and perception of others. We gradually develop the acuity and the receptiveness to experience grace as unmerited mercy. 


Forgiveness, says Dick, is the ability to give with compassion as we would have given before the hurt. This is possible if in a state of awareness, we can dissociate the feeling from the thought of being hurt. Meaning is to be made, such that we are not attached to the feelings that stifle us from the past. Meaning is to be made in the moment. And meaning is made because we receive it. We receive it only when we allow the unconscious to do its work. We do not know exactly how it works, in the classical scientific traditions of explanation. That is the choice of human discretion we have. The more we resist, the more it will persist. The more we accept it, the more we transform ourselves. 

It is quite tempting to give a procedural rundown of the experience. In fact, that is the easier part. Most practical however would be to refer the original book by the Roberts – Macdonald and Dilts. http://amzn.to/HczXZU . I would rather surrender to the spirits at work within the confines of dignity and beauty. While the rational in me may seek to find coherence in propositional logic, the nature of the proposition of spirituality is incomplete without intuitive inference and the inter-subjective unity in the experience. Empirical evidence is therefore not a direct perception, but as Hindu mystics augur - an atyadhmik atman at work. The self becomes the observer of the self. Perhaps, that is why the individual needs the community and vice-versa. Perhaps, when emotions help us acknowledge interconnectedness through individuals, we realise companionship as a trustful resource in spiritual journeying.


Expressions here are therefore apparently muted, though they come largely from deep realizations of what Dick gives insights in. It is only to the few therefore that the phenomenon of death will seem remote from spirituality.  There are the modern day equivalent of miracles, that Dick facilitates in participant discovery of themselves. His interpretation of dreams and the near instant therapeutic kinesthetic invitation he provides a clear sign of process at work. The Death towards Love, is Spirituality. Love is a decision, and not a basic emotion. That is the paradox many in psychology and philosophy have tried to unravel. Below are some of my insights at the workshop.

1.   A wish could be a fantasy, alright. A want is more concrete. A wish can challenge the Giver. A want can honor the giver. Ask with care.

2.   In Pain, there's a beauty that that endures, as pain passes over. In Suffering, the attachment endures, as the mind fights Reality.

3.   Wisdom comes from forever and the depths of Eternity, just as Meaning comes from the Moment as a gift of the Present time.

4.   Mercy is a compassion that overrides fear, as in a disregard for conventions so as to be in service of the heart. It leads to spiritual wholeness.

5.   Forgiving is to give as you would have given graciously before the hurt. Understanding is awareness of pointless attachment, unmerited mercy

6.   Spiritual presence is like a cosmic perspective through the awareness that you and I are specs of dust that in turn hold the universe.

As I reflect, there is genuine appreciation of the levels of neurological learning, from the environment, behaviors, capabilities, values,  right to the identity. Robert Dilts adaptation of Gregory Bateson's gift from anthropology is a constant reminder of the great intellectual traditions from California. Tools of the spirit, in fact raises us from our own unconscious to the spiritual vision we have for ourselves. 

However, being in the moment, as in Dick’s workshop; I also saw different levels of intent and their manifestations. There were those stuck in analytical freeze. There were others consumed in unworked anchors like those for the need for recognition, fame and the limelight. Others were making journeys from their gender-based roles and learning to move from their deep to the shallows of feelings between masculinity and femininity. The youthfully unattached were curious of their evolving identity, and those who had worn many a life-battle coming to terms with their unrealized identities. 


Perhaps beyond the realm of the personally deepened visions, most people will remember the visually registered symbols that were in the public domain. e.g. A young priest, a young teacher of chemistry and a seasoned nun seemed to agree in a conspiracy of sorts to make Dick’s image and their association with him an unabashedly exclusive veneration. Much against Dick’s known preference for a non-public image, he was photographed in various angles and postures and striking lines of his utterances imprinted in designer bookmarks. First placed on seats on the last day of the seminar, it was next offered as a commercial package. Before the deal was made public, an elderly mother went from chair to chair collecting every single bookmark for herself. It was like each one had their magic card of poker that could deal no higher wild card on the table of the ones playing the game.

The fixation to personalities abounds in our world. I am reminded of a story narrated by Osho Rajneesh. A painter in his Ashram was told to stop painting breasts of women as he needed to mature. Breasts were a fixation in Rajneesh’s opinion, meant for ‘breakfast’ time in life! So the painter went and revised his approach. He had the figure of Rajneesh in the middle – well pronounced, and around this central figure – breasts and breasts and breasts.

Maturation towards inner development is no cakewalk. It is in this week, I realised Dick’s larger mercy, his coming from the space of Spiritual Wholeness, enmeshing his shadows and self-parenting himself past a bi-polar mother and a very misunderstood father of great spiritual resource….His holding cancer of the prostrate as his bodily guest, and ridding himself of the Jesuit cassock for pyjamas that signified his collapsed anchors with the wisdom of India. That is the Mind with the Heart we know, now already at age 82. His willingness to be the child in using mindful sarcasm and the maturity of drawing out others from their child-like state to experience their evolving adulthood, is testimony to a living example of the theory at work. His scholarly sense comes from the distilled understanding of the phase transition that Gestalt theorists missed in their evolution. In hindsight, he feels that had the Gestalt giants like Fritz Perls lived longer, they would have discovered NLP themselves.

He had to contend with a class size of 69 participants and 3 more on his team at our Bangalore session in the last week of March 2012. The march of technology in our environment makes it difficult for Dick to stress his wants in service of the Heart as he would have done in an alternate life-space. His unmerited mercy is a surrender in which the book-marker threesome would feel victors of a feat proximate to their idea of spiritual glory. The keepers of bookmarks in his name have an image; they would get visual anchors to glean through. 


Hopefully, the books they read would also merit attention. Else, I can assure you that the effect of the workshop is enough to ignore the book for a long long while. As of the first day after the workshop - the imprint I have is such that I would think a 5 day course with a day's break in between each would allow for requisite immersion and integration within the self. It is the experience here that is the intelligence and not the abstracted code of reference as in a machine manual! 

Analytical intelligence is seldom a predictor of spiritual wholeness. Besides, there's no place as spirituality that can celebrate the vitality of death, for its inherent lessons of honor and humility. If you see a man willing to laugh at himself, he has a greater chance of being humble and spiritual. This is even more possible because, each of us is innocent. Each of us can learn. Each of us can experience putting to use our creativity from the depth of our unconscious. Judgment is the end in analysis. It is suspended for learning of our greater ultimate selves.


Joy be with you.

Team Roles - Which of the 9 Lives do you prefer?

Thought some of you may not know about Dr. Meredith Belbin. Dr. Belbin has been more known for his contribution to Team Role theory than he has been known as someone who was asked to study the effects of the computer on humans at work. Here's my take on Belbin’s Team Roles.

Team roles describe patterns of behavior that characterize a person’s behavior in relationship to another's when in team process. Functional roles refer to the role of an individual in terms of the general technical demands on the person's formal position and - the knowledge and experience that it requires. Most people enter their jobs on the basis of the functional demands and only learn about the importance of team roles later. Remember people are hired for what they do (and often fired for who they are)! 

Roles themselves are significant for people to understand their work situation or their social situation, as they create the patterns of behavior that give shape to the wider mosaic of interaction at work. Team roles are valued because they contribute to the effectiveness of the team. The functional role is often implied by the job title. In every day terms the functional role embraces a professional role; often more than that – it will have to cover all the work that needs to be done, at least the important bits.

Most jobs are drawn up with reference points that are largely internal. Yet, no person at work is an island. There will be interfaces with other people who are sure to present problems. Long established employees will have different concerns as compared to an unwary new comer. It is common practice for the professional to be expected to work with colleagues from other backgrounds when some important issues arrive. That is why an understanding of team roles play such an important part in enabling professionals to align with others.

In a very small team the focus falls more on the individuals and their working relationships than the work itself. Effectiveness in performing the work is closely related to how they get on with one another. This simple position may serve as a good starting point. However, the fundamentals of team roles emerged after a long period of research at Henley Management College conducted in conjunction with the Industrial Training Research Unit at Cambridge. Dr. Meredith Belbin is one of the original ‘gurus’ in this effort. In his early writing on Management Teams, he reported some unexpectedly poor results with teams formed of people who had sharp, analytical minds and high mental ability – he called this the Apollo Syndrome.

His criteria for selecting these teams have elements in common with criteria for selecting staff – using ability and aptitude tests to select those with high analytical skills. The initial perception of Belbin’s Apollo teams was that they were bound to win in the team competitions. However, the results were quite the reverse, and the Apollo teams often finished near the bottom of eight teams.

This failure seemed to be due to certain flaws in the way the team operated:

·         They spent excessive time in abortive or destructive debate, trying to persuade other team members to adopt their own view, and in demonstrating a flair for spotting weaknesses in others’ arguments.

·         They had difficulties in their decision making; with little coherence in the decisions reached (several pressing and necessary jobs were often omitted).

·         Team members tended to act along their own favorite lines without taking account of what fellow members were doing, and the team proved difficult to manage.

·         In some instances, teams recognized what was happening but over compensated they avoided confrontation, which equally led to problems in decision making.

There were successful Apollo teams, however, that were characterized by

·         The absence of highly dominant individuals, and

·         A particular style of leadership

Successful leaders focused attention on the setting of objectives and priorities, and shaping the way team effort was applied. Rather than ‘drawing out’ team members, the successful leaders were tough, discriminating people who could both hold their ground in any company, yet not dominate the group.

A key lesson from Belbin’s work is that putting together a team of the cleverest individuals does not necessarily produce the best results, and the team needs to be designed to ensure that there is a blend of team roles. The fact that a forecast could be offered with a measure of success made for an understanding of the processes underlying effective team work. There are only limited number of ways in which people can usefully contribute in executive team work.

1.    coordinating the team’s efforts,

2.    imparting drive,

3.    creating ideas,

4.    exploring resources,

5.    evaluating options,

6.    organizing the work,

7.    following up on detail,

8.    supporting others and

9.    providing expertise.

Hence each team member could be described in terms of their team role contribution patterns. Individuals varied greatly in their patterns. What was observed, was that individuals who are outstanding in one team role were often weak in another. This issue gained central importance in combining certain people with others. Complementary combinations of people proved to be far more effective in their working performance than people with similar profiles competing with each other. In workshops, we deal with the nine Team roles from this line of work done by Dr. Belbin. 

And, oh, by the way, I am accredited by Belbin Associates to help you with Team Roles understanding. I've used this often for team designs and interventions in ongoing team efforts. My client teams included CEOs and Business Unit leaders, where the dynamics are quite high-strung. As my former boss put it once "It is like a tiger asking you to count it's teeth. There's little guarantee of getting your hand back from it's mouth"...  I'm telling the real tale!