A CHANGE OF REALITY

‘Trail bars’ for thought on Personal Leadership.

Written by Johanna van der Schaft

The Essence of Indigenous Wisdom to empower authentic leadership.

“When we forget our carefully assembled fiction of who we are, we find a natural delight in people, in the
planet , the stones and the trees. Then there is no observable limit to beauty and no one is excluded from
it.” This for me is the essence of Indigenous wisdom teachings and what leadership is about.

Native v Western knowledge

Every extreme position bears the seeds of its own destruction, and taking the scientific method full course,
Western science came full circle to a worldview that has been known for millennia in indigenous cultures.
That worldview recognizes that everything exists in dynamic flux – everything vibrates – and everything is
in relation to everything else. The spirit of the land itself is bringing back a resurgence of Native thought,
bringing, in effect, a “Turtle Island Renaissance.” And as with the European Renaissance, it is necessary to
look back ward in order to go forward – to draw on the wisdom of true indigenous thought that transcends
time. So while Western science considers the notion of nonlocality to be an exciting frontier to investigate,
this realm is a given in Native science. To Native people, thought, or spirit , is and always has been alive and
moving. We say ‘ something came to me’ when we have a flash of understanding. According to Indigenous
wisdom, that ‘something’ comes out of a greater intelligence that is beyond personal consciousness.
Similarly, knowledge is not something static that can be locked in a single individual’s brain, to be shared
only through books or computer files. Knowledge like thought and spirit is alive. And it may be that
knowledge originates in the land itself. Polly Walker, a Cherokee, says that “ knowledge is seeking us”-
seeking the right vehicle to carry its message. The correct vehicle is not always a human being. The animals
or plants are often better suited for carrying certain knowledge. Native science recognizes a reciprocal
relationship between knowledge, language, land and consciousness. The first languages are Sacred
languages. Speaking in those languages evokes something real in the land. There is a direct energy
transmission. In fact Native language emerges from the land and is inseparable from the land. The
Terralingua organization has done some fascinating research on the reciprocal relationship between
language and land. It turns out that where there is 85 percent of the linguistic diversity on the planet, there
is 85 percent of biodiversity. These pockets of logistic and biological diversity are primarily found in the
receding rain forest. When we cut down a rainforest, we not only kill the habitat for countless species but
also kill human habitat and the human- land interface( the landscape) with the living ecosystem.

Fusion
Having said all this, we could say what we need is dialogue! True dialogue. In dialogue both parties hold in
abeyance their own thoughts and beliefs while listening deeply to what is being said and endeavoring to
understand it fully. Listening is more important than speaking. Understanding is more important than
persuading another of one’s position… Talking about leadership! There is no agenda in dialogue, nor is
there an expectation of a result. What could be there is fusion!
Every world view is partial. It unconsciously includes certain types of experiences while unconsciously
eliminating others. Western science makes somewhat arbitrary decisions all the time about what is
permitted within the purview of science and what is considered pseudoscience. Native science considers
both the manifest and unmanifest reality equally, whilst western science has mainly focused ( till the
quantum era ) on manifest reality. What’s very interesting is that native languages are uniquely suited to
understanding the quantum realm as the science dialogue between David Bohm and Little Bear ( Blackfoot
tribesman) have tended to confirm.

www.thedynamicsofchange.nl Johanna van der Schaft M. +31 6 1515 2622 Falckstraat 37-3hg 1017 VV Amsterdam
Big Change ahead
“The world will be balanced when we are balanced. We are naturally bonded to the world: the elements
which make up the universe are within each of us. We carry this ancient lineage in our bodies, and we are
reflected in our families, our society and our planet.” (Tarthang Tulku, Tibetan Lama)

Right now we’re moving through a critical moment of change. The Universe has her critical moments of
change, we call them ‘phase changes.’ At present we, our planet, our galaxy, and the universe at large is
moving through such a ‘phase change.’ As the earth is turning around her own axis, the moon is turning
around the earth and the earth in her turn around the sun. These cycles we all know, the first one lasts one
day, the second a month and the third a year. Then there are the larger cycles which we hardly are aware
of because they last much longer then a life time. Our sun and planets for example describe an ‘orbit’
through the Milky way, which takes around 26000 years. Also the Milky way herself turns around her own
axis, which takes 225 million year… In a few years from now 2012/2013 some of these cycles come to a
head at the same time. Over the last five billion years the earth went through five of these changes, the last
one around 65 million years ago. We can no longer ignore that the current trends are building toward a
critical thresholds, toward some famous (or infamous) ‘planetary limits’ that in the ’70 and ’80 were said to
be the limits to growth . Whether they are limits to growth altogether is questionable, but they are clearly
limits to the kind of growth that is occurring today. As we move toward these limits, we are approaching a
point of chaos, a phase change. At this point, some trends will deflect or disappear, and new ones will
appear in stead. This is not unusual: chaos theory shows that the evolution of complex systems always
involves alternating periods of stability and instability, continuity and discontinuity, order and chaos. We
are living in an opening phase of a period of social and ecological instability – at a crucial decision window.
It is not merely a transition to a new level of existence but the start of a new ‘movement’ in the symphony
of human history.

Attractors
In the current decision- window our world is supersensitive, so that even small fluctuations produce large-
scale effects. The legendary ‘butterfly effects.’ The discovery of the butterfly effect is linked with the art of
weather forecasting, having its roots in the shape assumed by the first chaotic attractor discovered by the
US meteorologist Edward Lorenz in the ‘60s. He found a strange evolutionary path, consisting of two
different trajectories joined together like the wings of a butterfly. The slightest disturbance would shift the
evolutionary trajectory of the world’s weather from one wing to another. The weather it appears is a
system in a permanently chaotic state – a system permanently governed by chaotic attractors. These
attractors are applicable in some measure to all complex systems, above all living systems. Living systems
are remarkable systems; they do not move toward equilibrium, as classical physical systems do, but
maintain themselves in their improbable state far from chemical and thermal equilibrium by constantly
replenishing the energies and matter they consume with fresh energies and matter flowing from their
environment. Humans, as other complex organisms, are supersensitive dynamic systems permanently at
the edge of chaos, as are the ecologies and societies formed by living systems. These collective systems are
wider and more enduring than their individual members, but the dynamics of systems evolution applies
also to them. The evolution of individual and collective organic systems can usually be described with
differential equations that map the behavior of the systems in reference to the principal system
constraints. This is not feasible in regard to the societies formed by human beings; here the presence of
mind and consciousness complicates the evolutionary dynamics. The consciousness of its human members
influences the system’s behavior, making it far more complex than the behavior of nonhuman systems.
Fundamentally men’s nature is an open, constantly evolving system, a system that proceeds by quantum

www.thedynamicsofchange.nl Johanna van der Schaft M. +31 6 1515 2622 Falckstraat 37-3hg 1017 VV Amsterdam
jumps from one steady state system to the next through a hierarchy of ordered systems. The psychology of
the mature human being is an unfolding, emergent, oscillating, spiraling process marked by progressive
subordination of older, ‘lower-order’ behavior systems to newer, ‘higher-order’ systems as man’s
existential problems change. These systems alternate between focus upon the external world , and
attempts to change it, and focus upon the inner world, and attempts to come to peace with it. In the most
ideal situation then man changes his psychology as the conditions of his existence change. What we
unfortunately see most of the time is that we often settle into what appears to be a closed system. This can
be a system of thought, religion, politics, self-righteousness and so on.

Individual consciousness
In periods of relative stability, the consciousness of individuals does not play a decisive role in the behavior
of society, since stable social systems dampen deviations and isolate the deviants. But…when a society
reaches the limits of its stability and turns chaotic, it becomes supersensitive responsive even to small
fluctuations such as changes in the values, beliefs, worldviews, and aspirations of its members. We now live
in a period of transformation when a new world is struggling to be born. Ours is an era of decision – a
window of unprecedented freedom to decide our destiny. In this decision –window, “fluctuations”- in
themselves small and seemingly powerless actions and initiatives – pave the way toward the critical “chaos
point” where the system tips in one direction or another. This process is neither predetermined nor
random. It is a systemic process that can be purposively steered. As consumers and clients, as taxpayers
and voters, and as public opinion holders we can create the kinds of fluctuations – the actions and the
initiatives – that will tip the coming chaos point toward peace and sustainability. If we are aware of this
power in our hands, and if we have the will and the wisdom to make use of it, we become masters of our
destiny.

“It does not interest me who you are, what you are, what you do. I want to know if you have touched the
center of your own sorrow. If you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed
from fear or further pain! I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide
it, fix it or fade it. I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not a pretty day. I want to know if
you can live with failure yours or mine and still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full
moon.” ( free interpretation of ‘It doesn’t interest me ‘ by Oriah Mountain Dreamer, native American Elder)

Can we reinvent ourselves? Our ways of thinking determine so much how we act and perceive the world
around us.
There this great joke about Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson going camping. They wake up in the middle of
the night and Holmes says, “ Watson, what do the stars make you think of?” Well, Holmes, I suppose I think
of infinity, of the mysterious beauty of the universe , and of how much there is to discover. What do the
they make you think of?” Well, Watson, they make me think of that someone has stolen our tent.”

How would life look like at the other side of our conceptual frame?

Are we interested in changing and evolving and becoming a deeper and wiser individual? Then part of that
journey is finding out why we are the way we are. One of the things that we often don't take seriously
enough is the fact that our experience of being an individual, the structure of our personal sense of self, is
to a large degree formed by the culture, the place, and the time in history that we have come from. A big
part of philosophical and spiritual inquiry is about learning to look at our human condition and our own
particular experience of the human condition from a very objective vantage point, which requires us to look
at our own experience from a perspective that is infinitely greater than the merely personal orientation we

www.thedynamicsofchange.nl Johanna van der Schaft M. +31 6 1515 2622 Falckstraat 37-3hg 1017 VV Amsterdam
are accustomed to. Many of us claim to want to change and to be interested in the evolution of
consciousness. But we rarely tend to think about what it means to change in terms of seeing ourselves as
an expression of cultural structures. It can be profoundly enlightening to do so. When we only speak about
the evolution of consciousness, which is very difficult to conceptualize because consciousness is not an
object, it is all too easy to get lost in some kind of spiritual abstraction or fantasy. But when we make the
connection between the evolution of consciousness and the evolution of culture, we materialize it, we
make it real and practical.

Our power has gone ahead of us, has gone ahead of our consciousness.
In general we all, in our western society, are materialists and have no sense of large significances going
beyond this. In our materialistic western culture our fundamental concern is the individual and we have put
that at the corner stone of our civilization. The sky’s the limit, endless growth, money and success oriented.
Taking more then we need, than we can use, has been the result of such a consciousness. The general
western view of earth is that it’s just stuff, empty material, that we can use as we wish, any way we like.
We use anything the way we want it without any consideration to the community and the earth.. That
attitude is ripe for a Big change. Are we..? What’s needed? I would say‘ mindfulness.’
The core of the indigenous wisdom teaches us: ‘Everything is kin.’ Isn’t that a great place to start from, to
realize that ‘everything is kin?’

How would our politics, our organization, our team, our neighborhood look like if we would live from the
knowledge ‘everything is kin?’

Although the world has enough to provide for all people’s need, it does not have enough to cater to even
one person’s greed. (Mahatma Gandhi)

Did you know that we and everything else comes from hydrogen? Brian Swimme has the
wonderful short description of how our evolution took place: ‘Take hydrogen gas, leave it alone
and it turns into galaxies, rosebushes, humans, giraffes and so on.’ Isn’t that something to
realize? All the elements of our body are forged out of a star…talking about community and
kinship….
We have lost the importance of community and relatedness. At the root of things it is all about just that,
community and relationship, mutually enhancing relationships with all beings.
We are all helping to shape our world in every moment through the way we are participating, consciously
or unconsciously.

How could we organize our economy, our technology and our corporate world so that it enhances our
world-community?
Would that not be a great subject to talk about around the fire?

www.thedynamicsofchange.nl Johanna van der Schaft M. +31 6 1515 2622 Falckstraat 37-3hg 1017 VV Amsterdam
About Johanna
In the early eighties I had the good fortune to meet Archie Fire Lame Deer, a Lakota Medicine man and Sun
Bear, a Chippewa Medicine man. Their wisdom influenced me at the core of my being. A little later I studied
for quite some years with different Tibetan Lamas and shamans from Mexico and Guatemala. It’s the
wisdom of these traditions that inspired me, beside my other studies, to develop a down to earth, practical
integral coaching & training model. What inspires me is ‘ inspiring people in organizations to realize that
these times are asking for authentic leadership and a completely different way of being, based on reciprocity and co-
creation. It is up to us now to realize and that we have come to a time where it matters to go beyond the
personal orientation we are so accustomed to.
Johanna van der Schaft
Starheart White Wolf

www.thedynamicsofchange.nl Johanna van der Schaft M. +31 6 1515 2622 Falckstraat 37-3hg 1017 VV Amsterdam