"Star" bucks, lining-up!

Hello all.
I’ve been saying since I started my external consulting practice that “the stars seem to be aligning” for me, and today was no different. I just met Sartaj at a Starbucks in Georgetown and I find myself now between appointments sitting in a Starbucks in Olde Towne Alexandria feeling like there are chapters of my life about to be written through Begumpura! Sartaj and I were supposed to meet for an hour and instead it was three! It could have been more.

Before I jet out of here for my 2:00pm appt., I wanted to respond to a theme from Sartaj's blog and from a part of our conversation today that deals with Individual and Collective -- but from a polarity perspective.

In the relationship between individuals and the collective, there is a tension between the individual desire for freedom and experience of their own uniqueness (value) on the one hand & the collective desire for equality and connectedness (value) on the other hand. If there is an over-focus on the individual to the neglect of the collective, it can lead to inequality between the individuals and isolation of the individual (fear). If there is an over-focus on the collective to the neglect of the individual, it can lead to a loss of individual freedom and excess conformity (fear). This applies to any level of system. The individual (part) could be a person in a family (whole), a family (part) in a community (whole), a country (part) in the UN (whole).

My hope for Begumpura is to be conscious of this energy, and in an effort to create and fulfill the mission, we intentionally and choicefully identify how we create a virtuous cycle based on our higher purpose that helps us achieve the best of individual and collective. The alternative is a fear-based vicious cycle of fighting between the poles or the zero-sum game of one pole “winning” in a fight between the poles, which always results in the downside of whatever the “winning” pole is.

Gotta run for now. I can’t wait to meet you all and to share my retreat facility with you in crisp spring mountain air!

Cliff