Perspectives and Possibilities: Riffs and Rants of a Vietnam Vet Turned Octogenarian

By Richard Bellingham

I have known Rick for over 30 years as a friend and professional colleague. He has lived his life and guided his clients according to a simple, yet powerful narrative align your spiritual, mental, physical and emotional energy with your lifes purpose. If you wake up every day, express gratitude and help others, your life will be meaningful. The chapters in this book give the reader guidance into this philosophy for a fulfilled life.

Peter M. Fasolo, Ph.D.
Chief HR Officer
Johnson & Johnson

The word Renaissance means rebirth. In my mind, when I think of this word, I have an image of a peony or a tulip opening over a week each day the bloom is reborn different and wondrous. I am always curious about what it became overnight. That is what it is like to read Rick Bellinghams Perspectives and Possibilities. Each musing is a chance to explore a new organizing framework and to be curious - curious about how we can lead more fulfilling and purposeful lives. It is a book to be picked up and put down with a deep sense of trust that the inspiration that is needed for renaissance will be found in these pages.

Pat Zigarmi, Ph.D..
Co-Founder, The Ken Blanchard Companies
Author, Situational Leadership II

This book both inspires and challenges you to consider how you might learn, grow, and love more! In his own self-effacing way, Rick always challenges me to think more deeply about how I conduct my life while inspiring and encouraging me! How fortunate we all are to be inspired by Ricks words and to know that lifes possibilities are ever increasing if we are only awake to them.

Julie Meek, PhD, RN
Former Founder & CEO, The Haelan Group
Now Clinical Professor, Indiana University

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781491771112

Richard Bellingham

Richard (Rick) Bellingham has over 30 years of experience as an organizational psychologist in executive coaching, strategic planning, organizational learning, and leadership development. He has consulted with over 200 organizations worldwide at the C-suite level. Rick has worked with executives in over half of the Fortune 100 companies during the course of his career. Rick is the CEO of iobility, a New Jersey based consulting group, and has been an adjunct faculty member at Harvard University where he co-founded the Forum for Intelligent Organizations. In addition, he has taught culture change, healthcare management, and leadership development at several universities. Rick has held executive positions within corporate settings including SVP of Human Resources at Parametric Technology, and VP of Organizational Learning at Genzyme, Additionally, he has provided pro-bono services at the Board level for the past 25 years for organizations including the YMCA, Visiting Nurses Association, and Homeless Solutions. As a consultant, Rick has provided executive coaching feedback, training, and leadership development in companies ranging from small businesses to large multi-nationals. Rick has worked extensively in Asia, Europe and Latin America. He has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed publications and has written 15 books on leadership, culture, and HR strategy. Some of his books include The Leadership Lexicon, Ethical Leadership, Leadership Myths and Realities, HR Optimization, Corporate Culture Change, and Virtual Teams. Rick holds an Ed.D. in Counseling Psychology.

Book preview

PERSPECTIVES AND POSSIBILITIES

Riffs and Rants of a Vietnam Vet turned Octogenarian

Copyright © 2015 Richard Bellingham.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4917-7110-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-7111-2 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 07/15/2015

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Spiritual Health

•   Spiritual Awakening

•   Conscious Dualism

•   Finding Meaning

•   Free Will… . . or Not

•   Possibility

•   Freedom

•   How and Why

•   Making Love

•   Old Friends and New

•   Science and Spirituality

•   Narratives

•   States and Stages

•   Two Dimensional Taoism

•   The Consciousness Solution

•   The Centrality Delusion

•   The Questions We Live In… . or Not

•   The Physics of Consciousness

•   THIS and that

•   Transcendent Possibilities

•   Being at Home in the Universe

Organizational Health

•   Building Trust

•   Corporate Spirit:

•   Creating Organizational Soul

•   Exploitation Masquerading as Engagement

•   Labels Limits, and Levels

•   Selection of Coaches

•   Step Back

Leadership

•   Ethical Leadership

•   Leadership Lexicon

•   Leadership Myths and Realities

•   RI3C7K’s Profiles in Leadership

Social Health

•   Integrated Educational Reform

•   History of Great Ideas

•   Inequality

•   Interdependence

•   Symptoms and Systems

•   Harmonious Inclusion

•   Abuse

Wellness

•   A Brief History of Wellness

•   Development or Deterioration

•   Getting distance on our problems

•   Holism

•   Positivity

•   Serenity AND Intensity

Conclusions

References

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Dedication

I dedicate this book to Bobbitt - loyal, dependable, steadfast love of my life and wife for 45 years - without whose unwavering support, I would never have been able to do what I do or be who I am.

Foreword

Here you can jump into the world and inside the head of a man who’s been teaching high level execs how to be better managers and people for decades. Glimpse some of how he’s done it—by staying chapters and volumes ahead of his students as a voracious devourer of texts and teachings on higher development and related themes.

You’ll be treated to highly informed, easy to read, and carefully thought through analyses on dozens of topics. They range from the latest spiritual challenges for people who are post-religious, to what only someone who’s been long in the corporate trenches can tell you about leadership, and what organizations private and public ought to be doing, but aren’t yet, to make for a better world.

As for taking care of yourself, who better to pick up some pointers from than a 70 year old who thinks nothing of a brisk 10 mile hike in far off places. And who holds his own through 18 holes of golf with much younger men. You can be sure he’s read much of what you haven’t, because high octane, get it done yesterday is just Rick’s normal RPM.

Partial disclosure: Rick and I are buddies and have been since after Vietnam. Only in recent years he’s volunteered to listen, support, and suggest in all kinds of ways to help me with a mature phase of my life work. Nobody absorbs more, faster, with greater reward for both me as teacher than the way he learns what I’ve got, the better to help me get it out to others.

Read him and you’ll find his youthful, bright, can do or what he calls Mr Possible spirit infectious. And, for sure, you will have picked up lots of ideas on how and why you, we, and the world can move on for the better.

In this book, he’ll update you on numerous current debates, and cutting edge spiritual issues. Here, distilled into a few dozen easily readable, crisp and unusually well informed pieces are digested, crisp essays and intelligent reports by a consummate teacher.

Now for the gold: All of us who are friends know Rick to be a deep, unwaveringly good man, doggedly dedicated to those he loves and the work he considers a calling. Ever humble, in a naturally modest way, for all the mix of mid West, nordic, younger brother with what is compared with most people a super powered ability to step up and maintain the pace at virtually anything he takes on, from physical exercise, to reading, writing, or responding to others.

Every one of these pieces is carefully thought through, like a presentation to a group of execs who’ve hired Rick to coach. You can tell that whatever the subject, he’s done the background reading, and digested the material so that he’s made available for you a series of power points, no more than 3 main points per slide.

A philanthropist, lover of humanity, raising his voice first and most volubly, to raise our spirits, as the ultimate comes first, as it truly does now with him and has for most of his lifetime.

But he’s been applying these constructs in workaday environments and watching good sense and lots of bad. This book has various neat, organized ways to sort out one from the other and travel paths to a better place.

And whom he’s speaking to are those who have, do, and will continue to seek him out and hire him. I sent one of his posts on leadership t to one of the world’s foremost exec coaches, Nadine Hack, who helped Nelson Mandela get out of prison, and she raved. Read this book, and so will you.

Introduction

After writing 16 non-best-selling books, my older daughter suggested that I should quit publishing books and start a blog with shorter posts. Why spend all that time writing books that few people read? So I did. In March of 2014, I created my blog http://www.chigrowsinbrooklyn.com/ and wrote my first post. Two years later, I realized I had published about 50 short articles on my blog. The posts weren’t exactly going viral, but my steadfast friends were kind enough to read them and respond with helpful suggestions. When I stepped back to take stock of what I had written, I noticed that the posts fell into several broad categories: Spiritual Health, Organizational Health, Leadership, Social Health, and Wellness. Not surprisingly, these categories corresponded to my areas of interest over the past 50 years.

While I took my daughter’s advice to start a blog, I am ignoring her advice about publishing another book. So here it is: Perspectives and Possibilities: Riffs and Rants of a Vietnam Vet turned Octogenarian I figured that I should be able to do whatever I want in my eighth decade on this planet. In some ways, this book is like blended whiskey. It is a highly distilled version of multiple ingredients – in this case, all the books I’ve written + 50 years of studying these topic areas. In other ways, it is like a fine wine – the ideas have aged well with time. As I get older, the ideas become more refined. So, the title of the book reflects my best intentions. It shares perspectives and possibilities for living a meaningful life in the face of relentless challenges.

And, yes, it contains the riffs and rants of a Vietnam Vet. When I was in Vietnam I saw suffering I never wanted to see. I heard screams I never wanted to hear, I felt fear I never wanted to feel.

With grace and luck, I made it back safely –only emotionally wounded and spiritually scarred. Since that time, with effort and luck, I have seen wonderful places I never imagined seeing, I have heard baby coos that I never would have believed could sound so good, and I have opened to a love and grace that I had never thought possible.

So this book is for sharing where I’ve come in my improbable transformation from a writhing veteran, scared of probabilities, to an inveterate writer, fearless of possibilities.

I can only hope that these perspectives open you to new possibilities.

Spiritual Health

This chapter reflects the dominant interest in my life. There are 20 posts in the chapter compared with less than 10 in each of the other chapters. While I made my living in the areas covered in the other chapters, I made my life in this chapter.

As you will see when you read this chapter, these posts emerged from multiple sources: theoretical physics, neuroscience, esoteric psychology, philosophy, theology, and eastern mysticism. What strikes me, as I edit these posts to flow in a book format, is the realization that all of these ideas boil down to some fairly simple principles: love, share, care, let go, open-up, let in, connect, and dance. It’s all about finding the music that moves your soul and spontaneously expressing yourself through a joyful dance with life.

Spiritual Awakening

On March 10, 2015, I joined 40,000 spiritual seekers in an on-line Master Class on The Next Level of Spiritual Awakening with Ken Wilber. He discussed the differences between spirituality and religion, the differences in hierarchies, and four frameworks for spiritual growth. During this 90 minute session, he provided conceptual constructs for growing up, showing up, waking up, and cleaning up. In this post, I would like to honor his contribution to spiritual development and share some tidbits I’ve picked up along my path related to those areas.

Ken Wilber was born in Oklahoma City in 1949. In 1967, he enrolled as a pre-med student at Duke University. He became inspired by Eastern literature, particularly the Tao Te Ching. In 1973, Wilber completed his first book, The Spectrum of Conscioussness, in which he sought to integrate knowledge from disparate fields. In 1982, he published the Holographic Paradigm and Other Paradoxes, which explored the ways in which holography relates to the fields of consciousness, mysticism, and science. Since that time, he has published over 25 books on Integral Psychology and Unity Consciousness. His work has been published in 30 languages. Clearly, Wilber has made an enormous contribution to the integration of multiple points of view and has demonstrated the interdependence among them. His work clearly deserves the honors and recognition it has received.

Since I have written extensively about the differences between religion and spirituality in other posts and in several books, I will not bore you with further pontification on that subject. Although Wilber articulates those differences more powerfully than I do, our views are similar.

I find Wilber’s simple construct on hierarchies very helpful. He discusses the differences between dominating hierarchies and growth hierarchies. In dominant hierarchies, people move up whatever ladder they are climbing in order to establish powerful positioning and to exploit and exclude the people they rise above. In growth hierarchies, the motivation for moving up the scales is to elevate your level of functioning and development so that you can include and help others. People who are attracted to dominant hierarchies tend to push people down. People who are attracted to growth hierarchies tend to lift people up. The spiritual implications are obvious.

In the master class, I particularly enjoyed the frameworks Wilber discussed on growing up, showing up, waking up, and cleaning up. Since I have a bias for 5 point scales, I have taken some liberty to modify his scales in the following grid. Below the grid, I offer explanations of the development levels and the corresponding scales.

*see www.energysway.com

Growing Up: The scale on growing up represents different levels of thinking at the various levels of development. If you are ego centric or narcissistic, you will likely engage in magical thinking which simply means that you will expect events to occur because you wish them to be so. It’s solipsism in all it’s glory. If you are ethno-centric, you will likely engage in mythical thinking, which means accepting all the beliefs and legends associated with your race. It’s racial politics at its finest. If you are tribal-centric, you will, at best, engage in rational thinking, which means you will be looking for ways to advance your religion or nation independent of ideology or dogma. It’s patriotism at its best. If you are world-centric, you are more likely to engage in inclusive thinking which means looking out for what’s best for the environment and the global economy. It’s progressivism with a peaceful and productive purpose. If you are cosmic or being centric, you are likely to engage in integral thinking which means understanding the inter-relationships of multi-dimensional systems. It’s interdependence with light, love, and power. As we grow up, we move through these phases and up this scale. Moving up and through is not dependent on age. There are many old people who are stuck in magical, mythical, or tribal thinking; and there are many young people who have already advanced to inclusive and integral thinking. If you are interested in further elaboration, Robert Carkhuff, Ph.D. has done an enormous amount of work on growth scales and on interdependent thinking.

Showing Up: The scale on showing up represents differences in orientation at the various levels of development. The simple question is, how do you show up? If you show up with a selfish and external orientation, you are probably most concerned with the it of life, e.g. money, power, status, achievement, educational degree etc. If you show up with an internal and intentional orientation, you are probably most concerned with the I of life, e.g. your feelings, thoughts, sensations, values, etc. If you show up with a relationship orientation, you are probably most concerned with the you of life, e.g. your spouse, partners, friends, children, customers, etc. You will likely be looking for mutually supportive and beneficial relationships. If you show up with a collective, cultural orientation, you are probably most concerned about the we of life, e.g. the norms, values, support systems of the groups in which you participate. If you show up with a cosmic being orientation, you are probably most concerned with the THIS of life, e.g. the experiences and transformational events that lead you and your loved ones to feel more at One with the Universe. We can show up differently in our lives depending upon the situation in which we find ourselves and on the capabilities we have developed over time. Artie Egendorf, Ph.D., in his soon to be published book, Spiritual Superfood, provides concrete ways to show up differently in our lives.

Waking Up: The scale on waking up represents differences in our levels of spiritual awareness. Clearly, if you go through life in a sleeping state, there is virtually no awareness. If you spend most of your life dreaming, then there will probably be few moments of alert, focused awareness. If you are awake most of the time, then you will be much more aware of your thoughts, feelings, and sensations. If you have been able to develop a conscious impartial observer or witness in your life, then you will not only increase awareness, but you will also be able to objectively notice the thoughts, feelings, and sensations that pass through your consciousness and be able to notice them, acknowledge them, and move on/let them go. If you have a unity consciousness, then you will always be looking for ways to align your energy centers and bring things together in interdependent ways. The Russian philosopher and spiritual teacher of the early to mid-20th century, G. I. Gurdjieff, taught that most humans live their lives in a state of hypnotic waking sleep, but that it is possible to transcend to a higher state of consciousness and achieve full human potential. Gurdjieff developed a method for doing so, calling his discipline The Work. Gurdjieff’s notion of humans having the