So where are we headed?

The flight from Kuala Lumpur to Hyderabad was very much on time. Made me wonder if ‘late flights’ were purely an Indian phenomenon. Back home, it seemed so normal to have to wait, that one actually budgeted time for it.

As we huddled across the aerobridge Nama and Tharini caught up with me. They had been enjoying a cozy coffee. I had declined in favor of some extra reading. ‘The Courage To Succeed’, by a 3-time Olympian Ruben Gonzalez. There were many lessons to learn from sportspersons… especially from serious Olympians. The network marketing game is played on the inside. Abundance is a mindset… as is winning.

“What was your dream in college Sandeep?” Nama had asked as we settled down next to each other on the flight. We both had aisle seats and that gave me enough privacy to read or talk as I chose. At that moment we were into the JB spirit (no pun intended). Nama had no clue about how well defined my dream had become in those past few days… he was just starting at the start.
“To retire by 40. I’ve desired that since college… but life happened and it had stopped looking feasible till now” I confessed.

“Life happened.” Nama repeated. “Did you know life is a balance of 3 key things that each living being must master. And these three things are not biology, psychology and mathematics… which we painstakingly learn. These are Nature, Wealth and Empowerment.”

“Huh?”

“Yes, your Success depends on what you do with Nature, Wealth and Empowerment, and each lies in abundance in network marketing.” Nama continued authoritatively. “Nature refers to the preservation and growth of all that we are. The Body, Mind, Emotion, Thought and Spirit.”

“What is the connection?” I asked, seeming to miss the point totally.

“Well, if retiring was your definition of success, that was just a state of mind, which is driven by nature… plus wealth, because you need money to retire on… and empowerment, because someone you’ve trained needs to hold the baton you pass… else you can’t retire. The same is true of any success.”

“Tell me more Nama… this is tangential,” I said, suddenly perked up like a 4-year old before his grandma at bedtime. “Well,” Nama obliged with a smile. Secretly he’d been wanting to share this nugget all along for it was a great way to structure success. “In our context, the body is the grossest form of nature. It is the tangible. The obvious. And practically, quite useless. For example let’s imagine our body is like ice. You can feel it, hold it, lug it around, but it is mostly a liability. To make an asset of it, one has to work to make it subtler. Like a gymnast or ballerina… their bodies are subtle, light… and like good assets, put money into their pockets. Remember what Robert Kiyosaki says about assets and liabilities?”

“Sure, I’m with you… assets put money in the pocket. Liabilities take money out of the pocket” I beamed.

“That being the case, would you agree that there’s a difference between a mechanic and a sculptor?” I nodded. “Would you also agree that the sculptor is more of a creator than the mechanic? And that the creator is the one closer to nature than the other?” I nodded again. “If so, think about this… vis-a-vis your body, your doctor is a mechanic whereas you are the sculptor. And this is what the ‘wellness’ industry is all about, as opposed to ‘sickness’. The less you rely on the doctor for your body, the closer you get to whatever you want on this plane.”

“Ooo… far out… So how do you stop subscribing to the sickness industry of doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies?” I asked.
“By subscribing to the wellness industry of health coaches, gyms and organic supplements! You have to subscribe to one or the other… might as well make prevention better than cure! Though you may spend 5 times more on organic supplementation than you do on synthetic vitamins, minerals, and omega3s, you must know that by ingesting chemicals you are only fooling yourself… you’re not taking your body much closer to nature.“ Nama continued emphatically. “And remember your body is turned on by natural surroundings, so take time to deliberately get close to them… water your plants, holiday in the hills, walk in the park… you owe it to you!”

“Pretty good.” I was wondering about the other parts of nature by this time. The mind… yes, retirement was a matter of the mind… and of the body too, come to think of it.

As though he were reading my thoughts, Nama continued, “if the body was ice, the mind is water. It can go anywhere. Glide better than a ballerina over anything. And it can even cut through rock… making it quite powerful. So obviously, ‘naturalizing’ the mind calls for a higher degree of determination and skill, right?”

“Right!”

“I found a simple, practical way of doing this by looking at where the mind manifested its monkeydom the most. And you know what I found? It was in fuelling the ego. The mind is the ‘I’,” a triumphant Nama declared.

“But how can we consciously reduce the ego?” I asked innocently.

“By looking into our relationships. Ego does not work in isolation. It always needs a partner. There are a few great books that will help set this right for you, based on proven principles of relationships and visualization. The mind feeds on words. The words you use; the self-talk you indulge in; the benchmarks you set; can either propel you to achieve what you want… or equally easily detract you from getting there. Be careful what you say. Mean it fully or don’t say it. Again, don’t fool yourself… you will only sabotage your oneness with nature.”

“So the recourse lies in books? They will take me where the authors have been… to lead the life I dream to lead?” I felt a cynic rising in me, questioning the commerce of all this. But then I said to myself, calm down… it’s only your ego. Accept this and be open and willing to take small steps… they will not hurt you.

Oblivious of my thoughts Nama continued, “The mind is like a garden. We plant into it the weeds of murder, deception, rape, ignominy from the daily newspaper and expect roses to blossom. Is there a chance? Switch off your TV, cancel the paper. You will still know what you need to, while you read these books and move to the next level of oneness!”

“And what’s that?”

“Emotion. Moving from the ‘conscious’ mind, we are now attempting to tame the ‘subconscious’ mind. This is where emotions reside. Numerous studies, including Dr. Glen Doman’s extensive research on children, reveal beyond doubt that more than 80% of everything we learn is permanently hardwired in our minds before the age of 6. Scary, isn’t it? Even before we learn how to spell ‘knife’ we intuitively know that a knife is an object of ‘fear’. And it takes a lot of undoing to remove that instinctive emotion of fear and replace it with a ‘love’ for the knife… which is why many of us carelessly cut ourselves. This arises from the fear vibration. Why would anything we love harm us?”

“Whatever you resist, will persist” I pronounced trying to edge in something intelligent myself. Many people quote these wise words and I did too. Getting into emotional oneness with nature – like with the mind – is about getting into a state of acceptance. Being open and willing to ‘not resist’ and instead ‘go with the flow’ so that all the obstacles to what we want can be washed away just like water washes through rock.

Just then the airhostess started to announce flight safety rules and we sat upright in mock attention. It gave me a few minutes to ruminate over all I had been hearing. I realized the subconscious was far far bigger than the conscious. So the extent of work required to ‘accept’ was also far far bigger. And this was why emotional triggers such as “creative visualization” and “vision boards” were useful to direct our emotions towards where we really wanted to be. The power of these tools was enormous and though they appeared childish, were not. Now that the context was clear, I decided to search up resources for these and practice the techniques in conjunction with whatever I did for my mind and body. What could be the next thing I wondered?

Obviously the ‘unconscious’ area of the mind. Or thought. If the mind was the brain, and emotion the ‘heart’, thought was the ‘gut’. Yes. The umbilical cord connects to the gut. Everything we know about everything from this life and the previous one/s we know in our unconscious. And that’s why thought drives decisions faster than any other force. Thought is the subtlest form of the mind and therefore can reach inter-galactical and unimagined areas in a jiffy… something the body or the ego would never be able to do.

I can think a Mercedes Benz into reality. It just calls for an acute level of oneness of mind, heart and gut with nature. Working on thought can therefore be immensely rewarding… but for this we must appreciate its power and prioritize time to address its needs.

Fortunately, the ‘needs’ of thought are not many. In fact just one. And that is to be in awareness. To know at every moment what one is doing. To be in the ‘now’. To watch what we see… to watch what we say… to watch what we take in. Again I was reminded of the burka-clad women of the previous day. They were in sheer oneness.

As humans, we are experts at being in the past or in the future. The choice to keep oneness with thought is ours. Great sportspersons do just this. There is no other thought in their heads as they dash the 100 meters. Asafa Powell, the fastest man in the world and ambassador for Nutrilite would endorse this. For those of you who have seen ‘The Last Samurai’, a 2-word advice from the highly disciplined Japanese says all you’d need know about winning… “No mind.”

By now the airhostess was gone and we could talk again. “Hey Nama was ‘thought’ the next one you’d mentioned?”

 

“Yes… did you figure it or was that from memory?”

“I was just thinking… it flows so logically… in fact the book ‘The Secret’ speaks so much about the oneness of Thought with Nature. Louise Hay and several others have replaced medicine with thought cures. This is big Nama. It is an unexplained science and our talking about this is taking us into that level of consciousness required to fathom more.”

“I agree. You know this story of the ant and the elephant?” Nama asked.

 

“No, tell me.”

“Well, it’s a long and interesting one about this ant that lived on an elephant’s back. The summary is that the ant was representative of our conscious minds, in terms of size and capability, and the elephant it resided on represented the subconscious emotions and unconscious thoughts. Now the ego of the mind believed it was traveling west… but because the elephant was going east, like it or not, the ant was going east too!”

“Ha, ha” that was vivid, I thought as I laughed. “We are mostly like the ants… victims of our circumstances.”

“And the B-quadrant brings us out of victim mode and into limitlessness, which we are often unprepared for” chimed Nama equally pleased as he went on... “because this is where the most subtle part of our existence comes in. The ‘steam’ from our water analogy.”

I visualized steam as the powerful force that moved locomotives; that scarred planets; that transformed elements from one to another. “And that is the Spirit!” I exclaimed with raised eyebrows, “oneness with the divine is the level at which the spirit probably operates, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, though for it to operate effectively, it requires a oneness of the others with nature. But nature is very accommodating. Just don’t push it. We must align ourselves non-religiously but spiritually through any doctrine that works for us. The spirit is the ultimate form of nature and oneness with it is the purity we are born with. To stay with the child-like innocence and to love the child within us are means to this end. Ultimately it is about aligning your energy centers with the universe.”

“You mean the chakras? I asked.

 

“Yes.”

 

“But why is it important to align these five?”

“Because that enables us to tap into oneness with life. Remember it’s life we’re talking about? Retirement and all that?” Nama smiled earnestly.

“Hmmm… and the next is oneness with wealth, right?”

“Yes! Oneness with wealth ensures we get our inner barometer in synch with external impulses. The signals we generate and receive through our lives and interactions are exchanged through money. Like you know water finds its own level? So do we, based on our ideas of money.”

I had thought about this earlier, while thinking of energy. In energy terms also, money was water. Just as water found its own level, so did we, in whatever society we chose. Water leaked. So did money. I had actually studied my relationship with water (I mean really pondered over it) and resolved some money issues magically. For instance, once I was in awareness of the connection, I always attended to leaky taps around the house promptly!

What’s more, I had figured that the one essential requirement for success to manifest, was to be part of a Bquadrant support group. This was no big discovery. Spiritual enhancement happened in support groups like ‘Art of Living’. Mental enhancement happened in support groups like ‘Mensa’. Physical enhancement happened in support groups like ‘Gyms and wellness centers’. Emotional enhancement happened in support groups like ‘Alcoholics Anonymous’. Social enhancement happened in support groups like ‘Rotary Clubs’. So why would things be different when it came to Financial enhancement? Money would find its own level after all.

“Yes Nama, I get this. Wealth equal to success is easy to understand anyway and associating with wealthy mindsets makes it possible. What about empowerment?”

“Empowerment is about impact. Contribution. Purpose. Why are we occupying place on this planet? What are we doing for others? How are we transferring our uniqueness to society at large… or just to our kids… or even to our neighbors, friends and domestic help? What makes us important in this world is our ability to empower others. And the key factors for healthy empowerment include integrity, ethics and peaceful demeanor.”
“Right Sir! Reminds me of the story of the young man and his son who were on a bus and he bought two tickets. The ticket collector said, “it’s ok to buy one… kids below five are permitted free and nobody would guess that your kid is over 5.” “That’s ok”, the man replied, “give me 2 tickets because my son knows he’s over 5,” I narrated.

“Absolutely… that is a valuable lesson in empowerment. This kid would form permanent mental equations about a lot of aspects in his life through that episode. Self-worth, self-esteem, truth, compromise, money, abundance consciousness, ethics, justice… all this from his dad’s basic integrity to himself,” Nama thought out loud.

“And so, even before they got off the bus they would have impacted the world in a sense. The kid may grow up to become the President of the United Nations. And he’d operate from this very paradigm!” I added.

“Empowerment actually has 2 components… Leadership and consciousness.” Nama went on to explain. “The funny thing about leadership is that it is obviously not taught in ‘management’ school. Yet managers think they know it instinctively.”

I laughed! “Management and Leadership are subjects of the left and the right quadrants respectively and that’s what unlearning and relearning in the corporate world should all be about.”
“Sure, managers are given numerous hours of leadership training, but by whom? Not by leaders. But by other employees who have only read more and made more schematic diagrams in the wrong quadrant!” said Nama with a smile as he paused to accept the refreshments the inflight executive had brought us.

“So who is a leader?” Nama questioned rhetorically as he crackled some chips with gusto. “A leader is one who can empower others. In doing so, he or she inspires, envisions and works up a team. Nobody can make anyone else work for their selfish motives. They could enslave at one time, but not anymore.”

“So how does one empower?” I asked.

“Through my mentors in Network Marketing I have learnt that it takes 3 Es,” Nama said. “Envisioning, Edifying and Energizing.”

“Envisioning is the root of inspiration. For instance if Cortez could not have shared the vision, he might have ‘managed’ a trip like the others did… but not led a victorious voyage. Since the crew could envision the treasure for themselves, they were inspired.”

“Hmmm… and edifying?”

 

“Edifying is a strong underlying team-building principle.

Edification is loosely like ‘passing the ball’ - in football - by speaking well of and building up people on the team, especially leaders. What it does is, it creates an upward spiral of positivity across the rank and file of the team, which sucks entire communities into its powerful spin. An example is how NASA and JFK edified each other to result in a man on the moon!”

“Yes, I remember …” I interrupted, “Doug Wead often said, you can promote anyone and anything in the world except yourself. As the President’s right hand man he would know!”

“Correct,” Nama continued, “and energizing is what Churchill and Gandhi and Mao and Lenin have done with their famous words that manifested revolutions. A leader stirs up an energy that empowers. And this oneness with empowerment is what creates the leverage that enables work of the magnitude impossible for any single human being!”

That was a lot to munch on. But Nama was on a roll.

“While leadership would be the commercial way to understand oneness with empowerment, spiritually it is the surrender to a higher power that makes the impossible possible.”

“But,” I interrupted again, trying to understand the nuances, “this higher power has first to be empowered by the self, or the ego… by submitting itself… right?” “Quite true Sandeep, much like the leader has to take a servant position and let the team create victories of epic proportions,” Nama clarified through analogy. “It is not surprising therefore that we always hear of ‘spiritual leaders’ and never of ‘spiritual managers’.” We both laughed!

“As you observe B-quadrant leaders – like successful network marketers – you’ll be astounded to note the remarkably higher consciousness they operate from. Did you figure that?”

“Oh yes, for sure!”

“Look for their knee-jerk reactions. Impulsive reflexes. They will always be extraordinary… always thinking of the other person, not themselves. And this is because such people have designed their lives using empowerment principles. On the abundance side. Demonstrating Oneness with Nature , Wealth and Empowerment. Which are the keys to Success.”

“Is this about success in network marketing alone or success in general?” I asked.

“The fact that Success is a function of oneness with Nature, Wealth and Empowerment is a general life principle Sandeep. You know, there was this champion golfer… I forget his name… who was accosted by a woman outside the club and she told him she had a dying baby and needed help. The golfer on impulse handed his day’s winnings over to her. The next week someone told him that that woman was a fraud and he had got taken in… and you know what his instant response was?”

“No, what?”

“Oh wow, that’s great news… so there’s no dying baby you mean!” said Nama with equanimity. “That, my friend, is the mark of a truly successful person… who operates from a deep spiritual connection, abundant wealth and a forevergiving and forgiving attitude… get it?”

“Wow!” That was all I could articulate. Nama had been through everything I had in the last couple of months several times over. No wonder he spoke like a diamond himself. Wow.

*****

As I pushed my seat back and reclined for the long haul, my thoughts returned to what success meant to me. It was important to know this clearly… because we can’t get to a place that we do not define. Like one can’t buy a ticket for a journey when one doesn’t know one’s destination.

The key to achieving success therefore lies in defining it. And that was where Nama’s original question had came from… In my initial startup Mahesh had mentioned, “to pin-point your dream, think of what you imagined life would be when you were a child of five… you may have thought you’d be a fireman, or a doctor, a pilot or something exciting like that. Quite unlikely a manager or an accountant… but look at how many of us have wound up that way!”

Obviously he was joking, but his point was, we must revisit the impressions we create in our early years. Those were on an empty canvas, free of pre-conceived ideas of what was possible and what was not. In senior school, we might have imagined a big house, a fancy car, a respectable position, a magical spouse… and we may have rationalized that it was ‘not our thing’ by the time we got into work life. Or even if we had found a magical spouse (like I had), we’d create something to sabotage ourselves (like I did… I am still figuring out why… and that’s what my next book is on.)

And then, for some of us, the mid-life crisis comes! And that’s when we cement in our minds, our reduced definition of success… which we’d arrived at with completely inadequate knowledge of ‘how to achieve’ success anyway. To achieve is not taught anywhere… in school, home or at work. And that’s why the crisis arises.

But actually, let’s face it, those are our dreams. The ones in early life. And it is never too late – or too early – to start to pursue them.

Mahesh had also shared with me a card on which were 8 goals that people typically picked, when asked ‘what would you want in life’:

a/ Extra income (to buy the cars, houses, travel the world…) b/ Financial freedom (when income through assets is greater than expenses)

c/ Good health
d/ More time with family
e/ Personal development & relationships
f/ To be able to give to others
g/ Recognition
h/ To leave a legacy

“You can pick one of these too,” he had urged me, “and flesh it out in greater detail. For instance, Recognition might mean an excellence award for you at work. Now think deep… Which award? Why would that be important? What skills would you need to win it? Where would you need to go for the skills? Who would mentor you? Would it require extra time/ money/ health/ relationships/ grace/ or a combination of these? (There can be no other requirement). Where will that come from? How will you feel when you get recognized? I mean how will you really FEEL? What vibrations will your inner self emit? And so on… meditate on these aspects till you can actually attract that to you!”

*****

Thanks to the journey I took, making network marketing a way of life, I came upon this true purpose of my being. I had unveiled my dreams, strengths and passions. With them firmly in place all events and people started manifesting in my life like a divine cosmic dance. And life got exciting as never before.

Could one have identified one’s purpose and derived fulfillment by other means? Of course! Certainly! But none would have produced this result alongside one’s existing activity. Alongside one’s pre-set evolving definition of comfort; without doing anything out of the ordinary. It may seem like I speak utopia, but if progressive change is what we want, network marketing is the natural way to grow into it.

“It’s just small steps”, Nama was saying sometime later on the flight back from Malaysia, “like a baby trying to walk… when she falls it’s not the end of her attempts. She sees everyone on their two feet and realizes it’s possible. So she gets up and tries again. You and I have to create that social proof for everyone in the world to be able to walk as a network marketer. I see you are getting stronger now.”

It must have shone in my eyes. The eyes are the mirror of the mind. “Yes Nama, this meeting did me a lot of good. Thank you.”

“Ah, the attitude of gratitude. It is so fundamental to success and yet so underrated.” He was so right. I was so very grateful to have been taught the right things to do at the right time. To have been open to learn… I am thankful. I could have been living a life of quiet desperation, silently passing away my existence, oblivious of the possibilities I now exercise.

As the sun parked itself atop the Hyderabad horizon I could sense that we were descending. The sky flirted with every color from orange to purple as we rocketed towards the ground. A dull thud and mild screech told us we were home. We had landed. I had taken off.
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The Vibratory Scale Of Consciousness

Originally I had planned to reproduce the scale exactly the way David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D., had presented it in his book Power v/s Force, but his agents felt it would be an infringement on copyright. So I have here the next best option… please search ‘Map of Consciousness’ on the internet and look up the exact scale.

For a preliminary understanding I must share that the Vibratory Levels range from 25 to 1000, based on his involuntary muscle-movement studies. Each Level corresponds with a particular Emotion and a corresponding State of being. For instance the Levels 25, 50 and 75 correspond with the Emotions of ‘humiliation, blame and despair’ resulting in the States of ‘shame, guilt and apathy’ respectively. Imagine a world vibrating there… how terrible that would be!

As we go through rising States of ‘grief, fear, desire, anger and pride’ we reach a Level of 200, where the Emotion is ‘affirmation’ and the State is ‘courage’. That’s approximately where the world lies currently… with an optimistic hope for the future. Moving higher through the States of ‘willingness, acceptance, reason, love and joy’, at ‘peace’ we hit the 600 mark of Emotional ‘bliss’. And beyond that is the 700-1000 band of ‘ineffable’ Emotions that are found in the elusive State of ‘enlightenment’.
Consciousness In Network Marketing

I am not sure where the origin of the Paradigm Theory lies but I suspect it is in the book ‘A Course in Miracles’… since the thread is common to Colin Tipping (Radical Manifestation) and Bijan (Effortless Prosperity), both students of the ‘Course’. I’ve taken the paradigms from the ‘Experiential Guide To The Celestine Prophecy’ and added the third column from my experience with network marketing. It was these realizations which in fact banged me well and proper into the network marketing industry!

By way of a prelude put simply, the essential difference between the old and new paradigms is:

 

Old: We are human beings who have spiritual experiences

 

New: We are spiritual beings who have human experiences

Now, with this slight shift in perspective, everything of how we view the world, religion, politics, business and parenting among other things, changes. Dramatically.

And creating successful network marketers is probably the most effective way of empowering individuals in the way of the new paradigm. Here’s why:

Old Paradigm

 

Independence

 

New

 

Paradigm Inter
dependence
Intellectual
accomplishment Wisdom
Self-criticism Acknowledge strengths
Security Adaptability

Resistance to authority
Sharing
leadership

Emotional dramas
Self
actualization

Fear Love
Control Trust
Gaining approval Self-trust Relationship with Network Marketing

A network is disconnected by independence. Interdependence is the key to build one

Networks are B-quadrant and rely on cumulative wisdom. Intellect is an individual Squadrant trait

Network marketers operate in close knit teams that acknowledge and leverage each other’s strengths

Network marketing necessitates an openness and deep desire to change, which calls for
adaptability

Success in network marketing is achieved by creating leaders and sharing the mantle

Any B-quadrant business is built with a purpose beyond the self. Especially network marketing

Networking being a people’s business calls for deep-rooted love for all, to achieve success

In a network you lead an army of ‘volunteers’. Trust is key. Only a ‘paid’ army can be controlled

Networking being leadershipdriven mandates the leader to have self-trust and to keep
walking

Conformity Creativity

Family
entanglements Honest
commitments

Addictions Self-security
Overspending Healing
deprivation
Under-earning Being paid what you are worth