About the Blogger - The Story Behind the Facts

"It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards”.

(Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll)

This blog arises out of the synchronicity of three seemingly unrelated paths weaving through my life:

Mind + Meditation + Management

Or you could say,

Brain + Buddha + Business

Today I am a partner in The Clarion Group, a very unique management consulting firm. We are advisors to senior executives (leadership, strategy, structure, culture, etc.), primarily in large to mid-size business corporations, some not-for-profit organizations.

The route that brought me here has been a curious one. Years back, interviewing on Wall Street with my freshly printed Yale MBA, one bond trader scanned my resume, gave me a puzzling look and said: “the last guy I interviewed has been reading the Wall Street Journal since he was six; what are you doing here?” Good question.

For sure, I am one of those people who had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. Still don’t, though now I am too old to only look forward. And only by looking back does it seem to make any sense, much as the White Queen said to Alice (quote above). This quote is said to be a favorite of Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist who first defined Synchronicity to explain events that seem to happen by coincidence and not clearly linked by cause and effect. However, when recognized they appear to reveal an underlying pattern, a larger framework, a governing dynamic.

I went to Duke assuming I would go to law school and enter some arena of politics. But the impact of the Sixties did not propel me outward into social action but rather inward, intuitively sensing that real change starts within. The first day of Psych 101, the professor started by saying, “If you signed up for psychology to learn about yourself, you are in the wrong class.” I happily ignored this advice, got my BA in Psychology and went on to work three years in inpatient psychiatry. But what I was really trying to understand was the higher end of human performance: great leaders, heroes, the Ghandi’s, the Martin Luther King’s of the world. And the saints. How is it that ordinary people, like me, rise above their imperfections and human limitations?  How do they find their way beyond all the mental and emotional shortcomings to become such inspiring creatures?

After Duke I went to Yale Divinity School. I cannot tell you my reasoning was clear: it was not the perfect place for me. But looking back through a poor sort of memory, it was the perfect place for me to be.

To be continued, as time and backward memory allows…