Of Pebbles & Grenades: 3 Keys to Self-Mastery: A Manual for Becoming a Secret Agent of Love & Transformation

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgement

Prologue

Part I: The Big Picture

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Part II: The Big Idea

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Part III: The Big Deal

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Part IV: The Big Ideal

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

PART V EPILOGUE

The Big I:The Higher Self

EPILOGUE

APPENDIX

NOTE TO THE READER:

What is Next?

Endnotes

Dedication

To the Greatest Pebble Throwers in My Life

This book is dedicated to all who have thrown significant pebbles into my pond triggering millions of ripples in my being. I converted a number of those pebbles into grenades that imploded in my being, pleasantly and unpleasantly. Those grenades revealed soul jewels I needed to discover and act upon. Because of those discoveries, I know I am a better person. From the depths of my heart, I thank all of you.

Special recognition must go to my immediate family members who are the greatest pebble throwers in my life:

o   Annabel Montalvan Corrales, my wife and my sweetest and most honest pebble thrower.

o   Rachel Corrales Sands, our firstborn.

o   Anna-Lisa Corrales, our second born, & her husband, Toby Russell.

o   Sebastian Corrales Russell, our first grandson, a budding master at pebble throwing.

o   Siena Corrales Russell, our first granddaughter, able to stir the soul simply by looking.

I also wish to recognize members of my family of origin who pitched those early pebbles:

o   Those awaiting my arrival on the other side: My parents, Jose and Maria; my brother Rafael, and my sisters, Maria Luisa and Ines.

o   My two living sisters, Pilita and Rosa, who are ever seeking meaning and artistry in life.

Acknowledgement

Ken Wilber

I have also encountered many extraordinary teachers in my life going back to my childhood and development years in the Philippines where I was born and raised. Many of these were truly outstanding teachers, mentors, colleagues, and leaders. But one clearly stands above the rest in his capacity to see more of reality than anyone else I have ever met. That is the philosopher Ken Wilber.

Ken’s influence on me has been primarily through reading his books and listening to him via CDs, DVDs, and seminars. I met him only once on a personal basis. I want to acknowledge the impact the breadth and depth of his work has had on me as a thinker, doer, and especially as a spiritual being in human garb. His integral vision has brought my ideas together in a way I could not have envisioned prior to getting immersed in his work.

Thank you, Ken. The love it took to bring your wisdom into being has triggered mighty ripples of development in this pond. Keep on throwing those pebbles our way.

Prologue

The 3 Keys to Self-Mastery

IS THIS YOU?

I am writing to those who wish to live life beyond the average standards presented by society—in any country and culture in which you find yourself. I’m reaching out to those who wish to bring greater meaning to their personal life, to be more productive, and to be more effective leaders in their relationships—at home, at work, and wherever they are. Leadership is about influencing others in some way. If you are alive, you are in a position of leadership. The question is: What kind of leader are you? Effective leadership presupposes a vision and a degree of self-mastery to pursue that vision with a determination that will not be denied. Do you have a desire to bring out the best in others? Is this you?

Ninety-eight percent of us act as if external events (pebbles thrown into our pond) determine our responses (ripples) believing the pebble causes the ripple. And so we live like victims rippling happily or unhappily at the mercy of chance or of some providential force we do not understand. This is the reality of life for most of us, and we spend much of our time and energy furiously reacting to these external events. We live in a state of anxiety, hoping the world will be kind to us as it defines us through the things that befall us. We give lip service to individuality but succumb to standards imposed from outside. Are we victims or masters of our destiny?

We live on this foundation of sand and we attempt to cope with it in our own way. We find more or less functional ways to bury this fear of being victimized by life as we face one event after another. We build stories about life ranging from the miraculous to the merciless. So, we are either blessed miraculously or battered mercilessly by forces outside of our control. This dilemma unites us all, for it is no respecter of gender, age, race, culture, geography, or century. How we face this dilemma differentiates us into victims or leaders in our dance with destiny.

VICTIMS OR LEADERS?

Victims use passive or aggressive ways in a futile attempt to control events, hoping to find security or happiness by changing the outside world. That is a world built on the foundation of sand. Leaders are masters of themselves first, assuming full responsibility for all their actions. From that solid foundation, they attempt to influence others while aiming to bring out their best. In a twist of positive irony, by managing our interior, we become masters of our exterior.

This is a life and leadership manual that starts by laying out the building blocks of self-mastery. This is the personal development phase for becoming Secret Agents of Love & Transformation (SALT). The SALT Life & Leadership Program is designed to assist us achieve a level of influence so we can make a difference wherever we are. If this is you, read on.

AN INVITATION TO BE A SALT LEADER

Since I am defining leadership as a position of influence, you can be a leader anywhere you are, at home, at work, or anyplace on the planet. However, this program is designed for those with a clear intent to impact others in a conscious way. You can be a spouse, parent, president, principal, coworker, neighbor, CEO, doctor, lawyer, priest, minister, rabbi—any position of influence. If you are alive, you cannot NOT influence. Therefore, you cannot NOT lead. Again, the question is not whether you lead but how you lead.

I am inviting you to become a transformative leader: one who influences others to grow to the highest stages of development achievable by human beings. This kind of leadership can be practiced secretly wherever and with whomever you are, whether you’re with a friend, a family member, a coworker, or someone you’re supervising formally at work. Leaders are agents of change. This is a manual for becoming Secret Agents of Love and Transformation (SALT).

You are invited to become a SALT leader and act as a catalyst of transformation in every relationship. Self-mastery is the initial path for becoming an effective SALT leader.

THREE REQUIREMENTS OF SELF-MASTERY:

A Bird’s-Eye-View

The Code of Wisdom is the framework I use for understanding life as a whole (see Appendix 1 for a brief overview). The SALT books aim to guide people up the ladder of self and leadership development. They are part of The Code of Wisdom Library. SALT 1 sets the foundation of self-mastery for living and leading on purpose. SALT 2 is on transformative relationships, laying out my model for building high-impact relationships designed to bring out the best in others. SALT 3 will focus on high performance, describing the role of learning, passion, and instinct in leadership, individual productivity, and teamwork. SALT 4 deals with the role of core purpose in our lives as spiritual beings. Here’s a brief overview of SALT 1:

SALT 1 OF PEBBLES & GRENADES: 3 Keys to Self-Mastery focuses on 3 requirements of self-mastery: (1) self-responsibility, (2) transforming our emotions, and (3) living from the 3rd altitude of life. Here’s a quick glance of the three great abilities we will develop:

1. The ability to take full responsibility for all my actions in response to anyone, in any situation, regardless of what happens or how I am treated. To do otherwise is to let the outside world determine what I do and to assume a victim mentality, which is the very antithesis of self-mastery. Self-mastery gives us a leadership mentality.

2. The ability to deal with strong emotions comes with the skill to decode our emotional grenades (intense feelings). We have two choices in response to these grenades. We can let them lead us (by acting on the feeling) or we can lead these grenades by decoding their inner message and acting on the message, not on the feeling itself. Each grenade contains a jewel—a message about aspects of the self and what is important to us.

3. The ability to live and lead from the third altitude of life. There are three major altitudes from which to live life: (1) Emotional, (2) Rational, and (3) Integral. Another way to say it is that we can live from the altitude of Power, the altitude of Principle, and the altitude of Purpose. Self-mastery can be sustained consistently only from the third altitude. The ability to take full responsibility can happen only at the third or integral level. Also, the ability to read and lead our strong emotions is a 3rd altitude capacity. One of the rude life lessons we rapidly learn is that the rational level is inadequate to deal effectively with the emotional forces that challenge it. Wisdom is attained only at the 3rd Altitude of Life, not below it. The Code of Wisdom is the approach I’ve developed to help us decode the keys for Living and Leading On Purpose.

THE PROMISE OF SELF-MASTERY

What is self-mastery and why bother developing it? Self-Mastery is the ability to live congruently in the service of your highest purpose. This is not an easy task if you live at the rational altitude of life. It requires the mastery of congruent living: a stage where your thoughts, feelings, decisions, and actions all run together while living your core purpose. Congruence is possible only at the Integral or 3rd Altitude of Life, where WISDOM REIGNS, not just knowledge or raw emotion.

There are many fruits of self-mastery. Here are some of them:

o   Interior peace is experienced as a constant movement toward congruence of thoughts, feelings, decisions, and actions. You can experience this interior peace as a momentary "state of mind." Self-mastery, however, is a "stage of mind" where interior peace is more the rule and the lack of peace, the exception. When one part of the mind is incongruent with another, we experience disharmony (loss of peace). Disharmony becomes a trigger for taking steps toward self congruence (peace of mind).

o   High Productivity results naturally from our congruent actions because all of our parts are running together toward a common goal. When that happens, we are in our Performance Zone (PZ): a state of doing that produces high quality products and services. There is a deep satisfaction that comes from the process of being in your PZ—a byproduct that may be more important than the products we produce.

o   Lifting Your Relationships toward higher levels of functioning despite the other party’s tendency to drag you down. Since self-mastery is the capacity to live on purpose, when we reach that stage, our actions are mostly driven by purpose, not by what others do to us. With self-mastery, we aim to fulfill everyone’s purpose: mine, yours, ours, and theirs. It is that persistent quality of acting on purpose that tends to lift relationships up the ladder of development. Not all relationships will be lifted, but all will feel the lift and be invited to rise to the 3rd or integral altitude of life.

o   The Joy of Being Present in the midst of others’ anxiety is a fruit of self-mastery. It is priceless. People recoil from suffering, shutting themselves from the feelings and from the information those feelings contain. In doing that, they shut themselves off from the inner resources they need in order to respond creatively. They stunt their capacity for maturing. Self-mastery gives us the ability to be present and suffer less. It is that calm, nonanxious presence that gives us the opportunity to grow from our suffering. This presence invites others to breathe, see, hear, and feel more, and thus act on their inner resources.

o   True Empowerment of the self comes from Living the Big Idea—that only our response defines us, not the events that impact us. The world outside does not determine us. This is the true empowerment of the self—the antidote to victimhood.

o   A deep level of spirituality that transcends emotional and rational functioning, giving us a view that bridges the artificial boundary between secular and sacred. All is sacred: matter, body, mind, and spirit in all individuals and societies. This spiritual depth is a fruit of Living On Purpose, which is a key feature of self-mastery.

I make no promises or guarantees that readers will achieve a life of great productivity and inner peace, which are the fruits of self-mastery. I do, however, describe ideas and practices that helped me and many others to deepen the quality of life. Those with whom I have lived and worked will attest to the value these concepts and techniques have brought to their own lives.

It has taken me a long time to put these concepts in a form people can immediately grasp and apply to their lives. My family members, colleagues, clients, and readers have challenged me to put these practices in more learnable and practical form. They, above all, have given me the evidence, the hope, and the encouragement that these practices touch upon universal aspects of our human experience in ways that bring out our deeper capacities. I now know that our experiences, when viewed from the 3rd altitude, can reveal your personal purpose.

Our purpose can become the center that unites all our parts to run together toward a common vision. It is a quality I call congruence, which some mystics and religious traditions call the state of grace. The SALT Life & Leadership Program is designed to make that state of grace a more-or-less permanent stage of grace. We become the SALT of the earth—natural Secret Agents of Love and Transformation.

WE ARE THE MAPMAKERS

Our maps (ripples) of the world shape us more than the territory (pebbles). Then we discover we are the mapmakers and we hold the key to the universe itself since our maps are truly the only realities we directly experience. It this capacity of mapmaking that takes us to the heart of our being as co-creators with the Universal Mapmaker.

Part I: The Big Picture

OVERVIEW

The 3 Keys to Self-Mastery

In Part I, I offer an overview of the requirements of self-mastery as described in the Preface.

o   Chapter 1: Requirements of Self-Mastery. This chapter outlines the main concepts, giving us a broad map of where we’re headed.

o   Chapter 2: The SALT Leadership Program. This will introduce us to the SALT Leadership Program and its link to self-mastery.

The natural fruit of self-mastery is the desire to bring out the best in those whose lives we touch. The purpose of leadership to bring out the best in people as individual and teams.

Self-mastery is the necessary foundation for leadership mastery. That is THE BIG PICTURE.

Chapter 1

REQUIREMENTS OF SELF-MASTERY

What This Book Is About

THE 3 KEYS AND THE 3 METAPHORS

This book is based on what I consider to be the three most important requirements for developing self-mastery. These three are the most effective antidotes to the personal disease of victimhood, which is also a worldwide cultural disease. I say worldwide because the victim mindset is a universal human stage we all must pass through.

Antidotes to the Disease of Victimhood

These requirements can be viewed as three abilities: (1) the ability to take responsibility for all of our actions, (2) the ability to deal with strong emotions, pleasant or unpleasant, and (3) the ability to live and lead from the 3rd Altitude of Life. I will now give a bird’s-eye-view of these three. Each requirement is a key to self-mastery and each key comes with a metaphor that helps us understand and embody the requirement. Here’s a quick view of these keys and metaphors.

THE FIRST KEY: Self-Responsibility for All of Our Actions

This book confronts a pervasive dilemma of life: we cannot control others, yet we feel controlled by them. When we throw a pebble into a pond, we see ripples radiating. Did the pebble cause the ripples? Physicists would say yes, but we say resoundingly NO. Pebbles don’t create ripples. Ripples come from the nature of water, not from the nature of pebble. We conclude that our human ripples (thoughts, feelings, decisions) reflect our own nature. Events do not determine us; our responses build or destroy us. That’s the key and we hold the key. That is the story of self-responsibility—the first key to self-mastery. So we begin our story as mapmakers by owning the ripples that reveal us. The pebbles do not make us. We make us.

The First Metaphor: Of Pebbles and Ripples. With each key comes a beautiful metaphor we can all grasp. Embedded in the first key to self-mastery is a simple metaphor: the image of pebbles and ripples. The pebble triggers ripples that reveal the nature of water. In the same way, the events in our lives, like pebbles thrown into our pond, trigger our inner ripples: thoughts, feelings, and decisions. From this metaphor, we draw ideas and practices that will teach us to take FULL responsibility for our actions. This leads to FULL engagement with life itself.

But who/what causes the ripples? Is it the pebble or is it the pond? The answers to these questions are at the heart of SALT 1. If you say the pebble is the cause, you will end up living a life of victimhood—believing that the events (pebbles) that happen to you make you into the kind of person you are. Remember, 98-99% of the population live as if the pebbles determine their response. Saying and living it are two different realities. If you say pebbles simply trigger responses (ripples) from within you, revealing who you are, then you have discovered the very core of self-mastery. Is it really that simple? YES! But simple isn’t always easy.

Consider this: someone is kind to you and you feel great warmth inside, including a renewed trust in the goodness of humanity. If you conclude that that person "made me feel good," then you don’t have a true understanding of self-responsibility. That line of thinking is no different than if someone treated you unkindly and you conclude that your hurt feelings were caused by that person. The pattern of thinking in both incidents is the same. Believing that the outside event (pebble) created my feelings (ripples) is the core blueprint of the victim mindset.

Notice I deliberately use the terms victimhood or victim mindset because I aim to imply it’s the way we think or the way we think we are that really matters here. This is different from being victimized by some outside force—by people or by circumstance. We all feel victimized at some point in our lives and we all hopefully have the right to take corrective steps. That is not what I mean. I refer to the mindset that identifies the self as being determined or shaped by external events. The metaphor of pebbles and ripples contains the opposite mindset.

When we examine the pebble-ripple interaction, we discover that the pebble does not really cause the ripple. The ripples represent our response—our thoughts, feelings, and decisions that generate our actions. Our actions, in turn, become pebbles we throw into the universal pond, triggering ripples in others. They are responsible for their ripples for they too are mapmakers.

Pebble is a Stimulus. Ripple is Our Response

The key idea here is to distinguish between the event and our response. We respond according to our nature, not according to the event. I venture to say it is the idea most often violated by humans on this planet. Please take note of this idea and come back to this paragraph after you read Part II. At that point, you will most likely agree with my conclusion that viewing the pebble as the cause of our ripples is the most frequent error in human thinking.

The key is our response, yes, but what about the pebbles that are thrown into our pond? How do we make sense of those events? Are they purely random events in a universal game of chance? Or are the pebbles part of a pattern governed by a wisdom greater than ours? How we answer these questions will impact our view of self-responsibility. Pebbles are important too.

The Gist: I am responsible for my responses. You are responsible for yours. Any violation of this principle is an act of grooving a path to victimhood. We respond according to our nature, not according to the event. My responses define me. This is The Big Idea: I define me.

The Practice: I’ll be sharing many practices to embody the first key. Here’s one. Go back to a very pleasant moment and relive it by remembering what you saw and heard. Allow yourself to think and feel what you experienced at that moment. Now ask yourself what caused that experience. If you thought the event did it, acknowledge the victim mindset in you. Then do the same with an event that triggered a painful experience. End the exercise by owning your ripples and claiming your personal power as the mapmaker.

THE SECOND KEY: The Ability to Deal with Strong Emotions

Some events jolt us, rocking our inner peace with intense feelings. When that happens, we get out of the zone and our productivity goes down, including our effectiveness as leaders. We will discover that these emotional grenades take place because we sense that something of great importance to us has been violated by an external event. When we learn to decode the messages in our emotions, we will get back in the zone and learn to act on the message instead of acting on the feeling. When we make that shift, our actions take on the qualities of love, which is the most transformative influence on others. That is another step in becoming Secret Agents of Love and Transformation or SALT.

The Second Metaphor: Of Pebbles, Grenades, and Jewels. We now extend the metaphor to include the ability to transform strong emotions. Imagine a pebble that penetrates a pond, leaving ripples on