Lesson: Mastering Presence with Diana Chapman

Step #3 Being Model: Understanding the four contexts

There are four contexts from where we can lead. The first one is called To Me. Life is happening to me. And we see that most of the people around most of the world are still spending a lot of time in this context. And from the world of life is happening to me, my well-being is directly affected by what is happening out there. So if my relationship at home is going well, my job is going well, the economy is going well, I'm going well. But if any of those things change, now I'm not doing so well. And so I'm always at the affect of how it is out there.

The challenge with being at the affect of it when it's good is that inside, there is this subtle anxiety that's still going to rule in there because it's always going to know, if that changes, this isn't going to go well for me. So we do always live in a little bit of fear from this place of life is happening to me. And it's a place of disempowerment because I get to control my well-being only based on what I get to control out in the world.

And from this place I do look at the world as there are problems and there are people to blame. And I'm not open to learning here. I'm open to being right. That's all I'm open to. So there's quite a bit of suffering in this context.

But there's also some value. It's really entertaining. It makes for great drama. And we get a lot of adrenaline from it, which I see many, many people still very addicted to adrenaline. I used to be one. So I can spot them. It's not sustainable. It takes a lot of energy to stay in that context. And that's one of the things I'm really wanting to stand for is, if we're all individually living in a way that's unsustainable energetically, then we're creating a world now that is unsustainable energetically. And that's what I see happening.

So in my mind, the only way we're going to be able to change the world sustainable issue is we each have to do our own inner work and look at how we're living in ways that are unsustainable. And that matters a lot to me. I'd like to change the game and make sure we're all being sustainable.

The second context is, life is happening by me. I'm leading from a by me place of recognizing I am empowered. And I'm so empowered I'm actually empowered to create my own sense of well-being regardless of what's happening around me. Then I also recognize that if I don't like my job I don't have to stay here. I'm empowered to go create work that I love to do and get paid for it. And I recognize that there are certain things that I just need to do to go do it. So I'm no longer at the affect of my life. I take the reins of my life and I create my life the way I want to.

And in the world of life is happening by me, it is about me. There is a “me” that very much wants to go create exactly what I want. And I am maybe still attached to, not maybe. I am attached to, and I want my world to look certain ways. It matters to me that I have a certain amount of money in the bank or that I'm getting a certain amount of prestige for a job I'm doing. Those things are important to me. But in this place I take responsibility. And in the world of To Me, I don't take responsibility. I either take less than or a lot more than I'm supposed to.

Then from there we move over to life is happening through me. And in the world of Through Me I start to get much more not attached. And I start to say, what is life's greatest expression that wants to move in and through this person, so that I can give my gifts in a way that is deeply meaningful? And now not just to me but to everybody. I'm much more about the “we” and I'm much more about innovating with something greater than myself. It's a co-creative process with whatever you want to call that, universal intelligence, love, god, spirit, something that I recognize that is part of what I am. And that in a dance with that thing I can go and create things perhaps bigger than I could have when I'm just all about me. And in this place of non-attachment there's a deep sense of well-being here. Really deep. It's also there in the By Me. But in Through Me, my experience is that it gets even deeper.

Then the final context is life is happening as me. And in this place I'm really deeply connected to a sense of oneness and not just an intellectual understanding of it but a real physical experience of oneness. And in this place I'm living now in more of what's called a non-dual state. I can't see good, bad, right, wrong, up, down in the same kind of way. It's just all a continuum. And this is a place that people might find in a moment in nature or sitting in a temple or meditating or holding a baby. They don't usually last for a long time for most people. You'll know when you're there.

So what we like to think of is that these four contexts all have great value. They all have consequences, all of them. Conscious leaders know how to access any one of these contexts at any time and recognize which one would be most of service to me right now based on what I'm up to. There's no ideal one to sit in. It's a state of preference and it's a freedom to know that all of them are accessible. And when I'm conscious I know what tools I can use to move around and navigate through those four contexts.