Fostering leadership

I remember an old-timer agonizing that while the Mother gave us this beautiful Charter, she did not leave us with a blueprint on how to manifest the Charter – on how to embody, in the context of building a town, all the values of Auroville pertaining to individual and social transformation. And that lack of clarity on how to proceed constantly trips us – we either wring our hands in despair at our inability to change things and say “thus is human nature” or worse, proceed to build the city with relentless religious fervor in the certainty that if we just get the Crown Road right, or the Crystal right, things will be miraculously transformed.

For the past decade, like perhaps many other Aurovilians, I have chosen not to be actively involved in the governance of Auroville. I have turned down all offers to serve in a working group for I felt, from the experience of a previous decade, that all such efforts were largely futile governing systems were too strongly entrenched in a certain paradigm for an individual to make a difference. So, apart from occasionally joining a discussion on Auronet, I have chosen to live a life of relative isolation, finding meaning and embodying Auroville’s values within the context of my personal life. I must admit I was not entirely happy in my choice, for as Sri Aurobindo says, the collective and the individual are connected and mutually dependent for their fulfillment: while an individual’s inner growth has a positive effect on the society, society provides individuals with greater opportunities to express and fulfill themselves.

Something shifted, recently. At a meeting where we were discussing how to build on the educational potential of Auroville, I found myself asking other participants: “What are the values that you personally stand for? What are the values that underpin this educational project? What is the greatest impact that you want to achieve from this work? What systems do you want to shift through your work?” We all took turns in answering these questions, finding common ground in our values, and deeply reflecting on why we wanted to take up this new project. And while answering the question on the impact that I wished to achieve, I was surprised by my own reply: I said that by changing how we work in this organization (our new project-team), I wanted to change the organizational structure of Auroville; I said, if we could transform governance and money and society in our organization, it would be a fractal that could be repeated in other working groups in Auroville.

Something has shifted recently, because for the first time in years, I find that I am discovering a blueprint on how to embody the values of Auroville in action – in the context of my work – and by doing so, I am helping bridge the gap between our vision and our reality. Something shifted, not miraculously because I had achieved a higher consciousness through my meditation practice, but because I had committed myself to participating in the long and rigorous stewardship workshops for emergence and diligently practiced the tools I had learnt in my daily life and work.

The stewardship workshops that have been offered in the past two years in Auroville, are facilitated by Monica Sharma, a former UN Director of Leadership and Capacity Development who has worked with the United Nations for 22 years fostering leadership and capacity in forty countries in a variety of social contexts. In an age where people are busy promoting themselves on the internet through social media, Monica does not even have a website promoting her work, let alone a face book account. Despite requests from Aurovilians, she refuses to give inspirational talks about her work, for she knows that little or nothing changes through words. It is through action, through walking our talk that we have to achieve the paradigmatic shifts that will change our work-place and the world for better. As was mentioned by a participant at the recently-concluded workshop in Auroville, we have to “build the ship as we are sailing it,” or, in the context of Auroville, we have to discover the blueprint for developing the city as we build it.

In the workshops, participants are not subject to lectures or explanations but are led to discover insights through intensive coaching by Monica. Recognizing that all individuals have the potential to source their wisdom and creativity from the deep fount of spiritual values, Monica begins the workshop by “flattening all hierarchy.” In this recent workshop, she got old-time Aurovilians to get up from their tables and mix with newcomers or with young African students who were also participating. She got the Tamil and French groups huddled in their separate corners to similarly mingle with others. As one old-timer Tamil Aurovilian told me, on that first day of the workshop, it was heartening to see how easily those lines of division between Westerners and Tamils were dissolved. In this space that allows for cross-cultural conversations, in a methodology that is based on experiential learning and peer-based learning, participants are empowered to find trans-disciplinary strategies for immediate application in their work. Participants engage in holistic exercises where they concurrently root themselves in their values, reflect upon the changes they want to see – the systems they want to shift – and then list the actions, within a time-frame, that they will take to accomplish what they want to do. In my experience, this is radically different from Auroville meetings where people discuss Auroville’s values endlessly or jump into action immediately without enough reflection.

The workshops are not easy, mind you. It took me a while to get used to Monica’s direct and brusque manner. I used to hate being called up on to the stage to be publicly coached by her. I used to hate the long hours of a three-day session. But through it all, I discovered Monica’s absolute love and dedication to bringing about the best in each of us. Just to watch her in action is to learn through example: I have never met anyone who is as sharp and as present as Monica is when she coaches for hours on end. I am learning, from her, just to be present to the unfolding moment, without giving in to the prejudices born from the past and projecting them into the future. And I am learning from her and from others how to find practical solutions to manifest my project.

It is not easy for once you complete a session, you commit yourself to triad-practice – meeting two other fellow participants on a weekly basis for a month. For as Monica says, it is only through practice that we change our ingrained habits and strengthen newly-formed neural pathways in our brain. It is not easy, for in the end what is expected of us is to bring Presence in our work. The tools we are given are to foster meditation in action, so that we can listen deeply to others, speak effectively, and most importantly, generate new conversations for action. New conversations that hold the possibilities of change and the seeds of transformation. Conversations that allow us to turn obstacles into opportunities and breakdowns into breakthroughs, grounded, as always, in the values that we stand for.

It will not be easy, but finally, after many, many years, I am encouraged to dream again. To dream of building this ideal society that I came to build twenty years ago. Auroville has so much potential for the transformation of humanity, for by its very vision of being a city it encapsulates all the activities human beings engage in, and if we can constantly source and act from the Divine wisdom that is in each of us, we have the leverage to transform our activities, our society, and humanity itself.

Monica recognizes all of this – she recognizes the potential of Auroville, which is why she has committed herself to coming here, and offering these workshops for free, for the next three years. She recognizes the hiatus between our vision and our reality from her own experience in working with the United Nations. What she narrated about United Nations, about how meetings and documents begin and end with relevant excerpts from the Declaration of Human Rights, but little changes in-between, echoed what I have experienced in Auroville – of how we hang our Charter at the door-post, but for the rest it is business as usual. And yet, just as much Monica, over the years, by fostering leadership has generated measurable changes within the United Nations and has made a difference in the world in areas as diverse as female genital mutilation, sex-slavery, HIV/AIDS, and rights of street-laborers, so also I believe that it is possible for Aurovilians to truly live up to their ideals and manifest humanity in action. It will not be easy, for what Monica demands of us is an unwavering commitment to always act from our stand – from our values – and not just mechanically apply the tools that she gives us or mime a newly-developed vocabulary. But yes, even as all around us things flounder and fail, I see the shimmer of new possibilities and have a gleam of hope.

What other participants say:

• I got real time practical experience, and I learnt a lot from my co-participants. This was the uniqueness of the workshop as compared to other programmes I had attended.

• I learnt to act from my inner capacity and dream big. I learnt it is possible for an individual to make a big social impact when we are grounded in our inner wisdom. I learnt how to convert breakdowns to breakthroughs.

• I learnt how to break free from mental models that hinder our efforts to recognize our inner wisdom and give undue importance to our fears.

• I learnt about the importance of embodying personal and group values in our projects.

• I learnt that leadership is about deep listening, effective speaking, and generating new conversations for actions. It is about the courage to act despite one’s fears.