The 5 Stages Of Achieving Radical Change In Human Consciousness

Leaders are liars, or so it seems. No, I am not talking about many political leaders who glibly manipulate the truth to create fictitious ‘realities’ we are supposed to believe and live in (can you spell Iraq and ‘Mission Accomplished’?).  I am referring to a completely different kind of leader, the kind of leader who is at the bleeding edge of human development and thought consciousness, the leader who sees so far into the future that to the rest of humanity he/she and his/her ideas seem like mere fantasies, delusions or lies, these are the leaders who truly matter.

One such leader is professor Dr. William Rees from the University of British Columbia who in 1992 ideated a term called ‘Ecological Footprint’. Sure, you may ask, where is the leadership in coming up with 2 words that do not seem to belong together. The answer is quite simple:

Taking a close look at my own life I freely admit that in 1992 I was living in a state of semi dormant awareness about our/my impact on the world’s ecology. I was living in a state of denial that said “Oh, come on, it can’t be all that bad now… yes, I do like nature but these ecology guys are taking it a little too far, aren’t they”. As we now are realizing all too clearly ‘these ecology guys’ were taking nothing too far at all: dwindling ice caps, record storms, unheard of rain patterns and geometrical growth in desertification rates speak a very clear language indeed, and all of a sudden the words ‘Ecological Footprint’ make all too chilling sense.

Facing The Firestorm Of Pushback

Much like Dr Rees you ,as a true leader, will often perceive deep truths while most people around you are in dormant denial. You will feel the need, the urge and the necessity to communicate your thoughts, to make an impact, crate change. Quite predictably the result of your initial efforts will be to be thought kooky at best and a liar at worst.

It is at this point that a true leader perseveres, facing his/her own self doubt and the massive pushback from the surrounding lethargic body of prevailing societal paradigms and gets ready for the mud slinging phase of creating a change in human consciousness. Think of society as a single organism, an organism that has a big comfort zone, and this organism likes it’s comfort zone. So if you, as a single person, come up and disturb this comfort zone get ready for the organism to fight back, to claw and scratch and spit, all in an effort to make you and your uncomfortable truths go away.

This is the very moment most give up, the pressure to conform can be like a vicious firestorm and to stand in the heat alone can be overwhelming.
However, the moment the words ‘nuts’, ‘impossible’ and ‘liar’ start popping up in the collective consciousness of society through it’s media channels and political commentators a leader has achieved the tipping point to succeeding. Allow me to elucidate on this using the wisdom of Mahatma Gandhi who explained the stages of true leadership breakthrough as:

Phase I. Big Idea

You have a big idea/vision

Phase II. Ignore

This idea/vision is so big/radical unsettling for the currently prevailing vested interest groups (in Gandhi’s time: free India from the British Raj, today: use less oil based products, wind down consumerist behavior, slash carbon emissions) that for the rest of humanity it is best to ignore it and pretend nothing happened in the hope you and your message will just fade away.

Phase III. Ridicule

You have no intention of fading away. You stand by your ‘impossible’ message (we want the mighty British Empire out of India without the force of arms, we have become personally responsible for the future of our planet and every time we turn the ignition on that big SUV we better be aware of that). Now you are becoming uncomfortable to the prevailing collective consciousness (or better unconsciousness) and the collective unconsciousness will start to fight back. The first level of this fight looks like ridicule (to Churchill Gandhi was nothing better than ‘that half naked Fakir’, to the logging lobby of Oregon ecologists looking to preserve the last vestiges of America’s temperate rainforests were nothing better that ‘tree huggers’ and to the entrenched consumerist oil lobby people like professor Rees are ‘bleeding heart liberals’ who do not understand the most basic underpinnings of economy).

Phase IV. Fight

Since you are secure in your knowledge that you are fighting for a worthy cause you will remain steadfast in your course, determined to make that difference. The collective unconsciousness now becomes seriously angry with you: why won’t you just shut up, let go, fade away, things are just fine they way they are and no one needed you to come and spoil the party thank you very much.
This is the moment the collective unconsciousness starts to feel seriously threatened and proceeds to fight back viciously to maintain status quo (here is where the British went from wielding police truncheons to using bullets, when Rush Limbaugh starts calling solid scientists and their findings ‘lies’ and ‘liars’). Yes it will get nasty and personal, you are entering the very phase of maximum pushback from the collective unconscious whose only desire is to remain in status quo.
As the pushback turns into strident tirades about how you and your ideas are totally off the bat, weird, dangerous and threaten the cherished status quo (another way of selling this is to refer to how your ideas are threatening ‘long established values’, the ’societal moral standards’ or any similar kind of coverall catchphrase) this very crescendo of ever more strident attacks rattles the first individuals out of complacency. These individuals start realizing that someone is going overboard now… that all these attacks on your idea may have gone too far. It is this initially dwindling minority who are now willing to examine your idea, it is this group who discover that you may just be on to something.

This is the tipping point: you have woke up the first evangelists from the common unconsciousness, these evangelists will now start the work of spreading your idea, self propelled by the knowledge that your idea is timely, necessary and unavoidable.

Phase V. Acceptance & Mainstream

Slowly but surely the evangelists chip away at the collective unconsciousness, replacing opinions with facts. These facts start shifting the common unconsciousness into a new level of realization: It is at this moment that you will transcend in the public consciousness from being a ‘liar’ to becoming a visionary who saw the tangible truth all along.

It used to be a long road from tipping point through acceptance and reaching the state of rewiring the consciousness of the mainstream. This time lag is shortening in drastically thanks to the accessibility of information and opinion on the net. Witness the rapid emergence of Skype into the mainstream consciousness. Free telephony, a seemingly unattainable dream just 36 months ago has become a totally real and expected reality in my life.

So has my thought process around Dr. Rees’ Ecological Footprint. From being a faint notion, a theoretical possibility, it has taken over a large part of my day to day consciousness, decision making and planning (recycling, using public transport whenever possible, judiciously monitoring my electricity consumption).Yes, I am living in a reality Dr. Rees foresaw 15 years ago, decided to make a stand and go through the 5 painful phases of leadership-thought-acceptance and become major influencer of human behavior.

These 5 phases may be one of the biggest ’secrets’ of why so few people persevere on their journey to meaningfulness. It is the ability to keep on track in the shadows of the valley of death during phase IV when the collective unconsciousness is starting to fight back in earnest, hitting you with everything it’s got. Just hang in there, the bigger your idea is the louder the screaming will be. Hang in there, counteract the flailing, fearful ‘beast’ of the common unconscious with calm facts, know that the first individuals are just about to open their eyes and truly examine your idea for the first time and come to their own conclusion: you have reached the tipping point and the world is just about to turn in your favor.