Self leadership
The idea of self leadership has gained relevance in recent years as a lot of experts have written extensively about it. Some even argue that there isn't another form of leadership.
If one discards the baggage of this knowledge and looks purely into facts, one finds that Self Leadership is a misnomer. It is so because who is leading whom? Which self is leading which self? Who is the leader and who is the led? Just how many selves does one have within each?
Do you see the division we are creating within ourselves? The division that there is a part of us, a higher self who will guide another part of us, the miserable self into some sort of nirvana. It's a fantasised existence. The self is leading the self for what?
From a desire to be someone of greater power, position, prestige or status, the need for leadership is born. This need in turn makes us follow others, worship success or successful people or any idea or concept that is believed to be the path. In this lustful existence, we lose the sense of inward reality and thereby also lose the sense of outward reality. We, then begin to live in these ideas and concepts like self leadership, believing them to be real as if there are so many parts within us and one of those parts can magically transform others to satisfy our lust.
With many parts of the self, we lose the whole, that is, we lose our individuality as it is now based on a search for power or leadership. Wherever there is division, inward or outward, there is conflict (as is evident in the modern day world).
Thus not only do we lose our individuality, we also create contradictions within us. On one side we have a hunger for power, prestige, position, success and on the other we want peace, happiness, harmony. It is a contradiction for two reasons. Firstly the desire to dominate or depend on another (which is an actual fact of leadership), has already put our perception of happiness on another. Secondly, how can something broken into pieces (or divided) find happiness as a whole?
If one sees what is actually happening, then is it possible to cut the root of one's search for power? Doesn't our search for power, position, prestige, status create division and conflict in the world? Is it possible to create a world or a society that isn't divided?
What is the action needed to do this?
We can see that there is division in the self (leader and the led) but who is the divider? Who is creating this division? Our thinking, which is based on all of our past knowledge, beliefs and tradition has created the divider and the division. That it is a delusion because the thought is both the divider and the division and then in operates within that field. Can one see that, not just intellectually but in operation? That seeing is the action. When you see it, within you, this delusion in practice, miraculously the delusion and the division ends.
The end of the division is the whole. The whole is you, not the fragments.
So you can either be the whole and undivided and thereby manifest that in the society, or be fragmented and delude yourself into believing that one fragment is leading the other and thereby create a conflicted world, which is as it is now.
Self leadership is a delusion. The reality is in being aware.
Certainly life is not the mechanical existence that the division creates. So why lead it?
