The
Creators and the Organizers
Human beings are
psychological beings. You cannot fully understand why organizations
fail unless you understand a mechanism that has destroyed numerous organizations.
The simplest way to explain this mechanism is to start with the fact
that the human brain is divided into two halves. The right brain is
the more artistic part of the brain, and it looks at the big picture.
The left brain is the analytical part of the brain, and it looks at
the details.
Most people have a tendency to use one part of the brain more than the
other. They have a dominant side of the brain. One might say that people
who are left-brain-dominated are the Organizers. People who are right-brain-dominated
are the Creators.
If you want an organization to be successful, you must realize that
both types of people are needed in the organization. And you must realize
that both types of people are useful only when they are balanced.
The Creators are often the people who can start an organization, and
they can bring it to a certain point. They can also help ensure that
the organization remains vital and alive, so that it meets the needs
of its members. Creators can always come up with new ideas that will
help the organization adapt to changing times and to the changing needs
of its followers.
The Creators simply cannot run the organization on a daily basis. They
are not well-organized, and they quickly get bored with the mundane
details of the everyday life of an organization. In the business world
you often see that Creators can start a business, but that they cannot
ensure its survival. Virtually all of the people who founded a new religion
were Creators.
The Organizers are people who have a flair for organization and detail.
These people rarely start an organization, but they can run it with
constancy and consistency. However, if the Organizers are allowed to
run the organization, the organization will never change.
Times change, and the needs of an organization’s followers will
change. The Organizers are not able to adapt the organization to these
changes; they will keep running the organization the way they think
is right. If Organizers are allowed to run an organization, the organization
itself might go on forever, but the number of members will dwindle.
People begin to find that the organization is no longer meeting their
needs, and it is not willing to change either. Therefore, they quietly
leave. One might argue that this has already started happening to many
of the large churches of today.
It is essential to realize that successful organizations are those who
have a balance between Creators and Organizers. The Organizers give
the organization stability and endurance, and the Creators make sure
that the organization continues to meet the needs of its members.
The Rise
of Conflict: Rebels and judges
To fully understand why balance is so important, you need to look at
what happens when the Creators and Organizers move too far away from
the golden middle way and take their characteristics to the extreme.
The Creators will reason that to create something new, you cannot be
bound by what is already in existence. Organizers like to organize things
and maintain stability, and you cannot maintain stability if you are
constantly trying to go beyond what is already there.
To maintain balance, you must realize that there is a built-in tension
between the creative and the organizing tendencies in our brains. In
essence, this is precisely the creative tension that gives rise to the
universe. The ideal form of this tension is expressed in the symbol
of the Tai Chi in which the two creative forces are in perfect balance.
The Yang force represents the Creators and the Yin force represents
the Organizers. When these forces are balanced, the result is a creative
tension that creates a balanced and sustainable growth. While there
is constant change, this change never occurs so rapidly that it destroys
the stability of the universe.
As long as balance is maintained, you have harmony, and that is precisely
what takes place in the spiritual world. Some Ascended beings are Organizers
and some Ascended beings are Creators. The tension between them leads
to growth, but it never leads to conflict.
When you add the relativity of the carnal mind to the mix, the creative
tension is all too easily turned into an unresolvable conflict. A Creator,
who is not balanced, will reason that he needs to create without being
bound by any rules or regulations. He will see the Organizers as backward-looking
people who are trying to limit his creativity. He will resist these
restrictions, even to the point where he rebels against them or leaves
the organization altogether.
An unbalanced Creator often becomes a rebel who accepts no authority
above his own desire to create. This is obviously unbalanced, because
the rebel does not accept divine law. The rebel does not accept that
although he has a right to create, he should do so within the framework
created by God. This framework is not meant to restrict him, but to
channel his creativity in such a way that it does not lead to self-destruction.
In its extreme, the rebel becomes a person who is no longer concerned
with the mission of the organization. Instead, the rebel seeks self-expression
for the sake of self-aggrandizement.
An unbalanced Organizer reasons that the most important thing of all
is to maintain stability and continuity. In the context of a spiritual
organization, an unbalanced Organizer will reason that the most important
task is to maintain the purity of the spiritual teachings and rituals.
This must be done at all cost. When there is no balance, the Organizer
quickly becomes the “letter-of-the-law” person who sets
himself up as the judge.
The judge will often reason that it is his supreme responsibility to
maintain and enforce the letter of the law in its most literal sense.
Anyone who seeks to go beyond the literal interpretation of the law
is a rebel and must be shut down or restricted. In the extreme, the
judge becomes a person who is no longer truly concerned about maintaining
the stability of the organization. Instead, the judge is now consumed
by a desire to punish anyone who questions the authority of the judge
and his interpretation of the letter of the law.
A classical example of this phenomenon is the conflict between Jesus
and the Orthodox Jewish church. The church hierarchy had set themselves
up as judges, and they thought their supreme responsibility was the
upholding of the letter of the law. In doing so, they were willing to
kill the embodied Christ.
When they go to the extremes, the rebel seeks glamour and the judge
seeks power.
A recurring pattern
Most churches have gone through the classical struggle between the Creators,
who turned rebels, and the Organizers, who turned judges. If such a
conflict is allowed to continue, one of two things will occur:
- The judges will
gradually gain complete control of the organization, and they will
enforce that control by all means available to them. As a result,
the Creators will all leave the organization. The organization will
then become gradually more rigid, and many of the ordinary members
will also start leaving the organization. Many spiritual organizations
have dwindled in size after the founder left.
- The organization
will fragment into different factions. This is what happened to the
early Christian church. The Creators, turned rebels, will create a
faction of the organization and they will claim that they have sponsorship
from Above and that the old organization is simply stifled by the
judges. This faction represents the Gnostics. The judges will claim
that they must maintain the purity of the teachings, even if those
teachings (or the organizational structure and culture) no longer
meet the needs of the followers. This faction became the organized
and orthodox Christian church.
In either case,
the divine potential of the organization is lost in the ongoing human
struggle for power and control. If you step back from the situation,
do you really think the Ascended Host want either of these options to
come to pass? If you do not, then the question becomes: “How can
we prevent this from happening?”
Let No Man Take Thy Crown
An important question here is: “Are the rebels and the judges
willing to look in the mirror and admit that they have moved too far
into the extremes?” And if they come to this realization, are
they willing to do what is necessary to come back to the center of the
Christ?
The Ascended Host cannot interfere with this process, because they cannot
violate the Law of Free Will. They can only sit back and watch with
their fingers crossed, hoping that at some point in time a group of
people will actually decide to rise above the carnal mind instead of
simply watching that their organization slides into the abyss.
The only possible solution is that all members of an organization become
more alert and learn to expose the subtle mechanism that can cause people
to become spiritually blind. Your supreme responsibility on the path
is to make sure that nothing comes between you and your God. “Let
no man take thy Crown” means that you must not let anything in
this world take away your inner connection to your higher self.
The Key to Spiritual Growth
You must understand that the real key to your spiritual growth is the
realization that your spiritual growth stands and falls with the decisions
you make with your free will. These decisions should be made by your
conscious mind. Unfortunately, most people allow a lot of decisions
to be made by the subconscious mind, where they are almost always influenced
by, or completely controlled by, the carnal mind.
The key to spiritual growth is to realize that you must take back your
free will and your power to make decisions. You must also realize that
the only way to make right decisions is to have right knowledge and
right understanding. So before you can make right decisions, you must
make an effort to get a higher understanding of the topic at hand. With
all thy getting, get understanding!
What often happens to people is that they do not make the effort, and
in the beginning it can be a tremendous effort, to bring their decisions
about life into the conscious mind. Therefore, many subtle decisions
are made in the subconscious mind and the individual is not fully aware
of of what is influencing the decision. This explains why it is sometimes
very difficult for people to realize what they are doing wrong, even
though it might be obvious to many other people.
The more you identify with the carnal mind, the more that mind will
influence the decisions you make. What the carnal mind will do is to
create some kind of condition that seems to make it either impossible,
unnecessary or impractical for you to exercise your spiritual potential.
In other words, your carnal mind will tell you that because of this
or that condition, you either cannot be the Christ in action, you don’t
have to be the Christ in action or you don’t have to be the Christ
in action right now – you can do it in the tomorrow that never
comes.
In essence, your carnal mind is saying that because of this or that
condition, you do not have to change, and you can stay within your (or
rather its) comfort zone.
If a religious organization is to change, the individual members must
understand the mechanisms that will either make or break the organization.
People must consider if they are Creators or Organizers. If you determine
that you are a Creator, then you must ask yourself: “Have I become
a rebel?” If you determine that you are an Organizer, you must
ask yourself: “Have I become a judge?”
You must then consider if the tendency to rebel or judge is really just
an excuse, created by your carnal mind, that prevents you from exercising
your Christhood. Are you in reality saying to yourself: “My involvement
with my church and the issues at hand are so important, that I cannot
be the Christ until this is resolved!” If so, you need to realize
that the only way to resolve the issues at hand is to be the Christ.
Do not throw the Christ-child out with the dirty bath water of the organizational
struggle!
The formation of opposing sides
If the tension between rebels and judges is not resolved at an early
stage, an organization will often see the formation of two opposing
factions. One wants to bring change, and one wants to avoid change.
If the two sides have become unbalanced, there is seemingly no way to
resolve such a conflict.
What is happening here is really just a new version of the story that
was told in the fairy-tale about the emperor’s new clothes. Both
the rebels and the judges are completely convinced that their position
is the only right one, and that the opposite side is completely wrong.
In reality, both sides are wrong because both sides are (at least in
part) motivated by the carnal mind. What is needed is that a little
child, a little Christ child, in the organization will finally cry out:
“But they've got nothing on!”
In this respect, it should be pointed out that the outcome of this conflict
is not merely determined by the rebels and the judges. In all reality,
it is unlikely that the rebels and the judges will be able to pull themselves
back to the center. The move back to the center can only be instigated
by those who are already balanced. Therefore, the people who have a
healthy balance between the Creator and the Organizer within themselves
have a responsibility to speak up and state their case.
Unfortunately, history has proven that once the battle between the rebels
and the judges has started, it will often consume the organization to
the point where it is very difficult for the balanced people to have
a say.
However, it is still necessary for such people to speak up and try to
make the rebels and the judges realize that they have gone too far.
Unfortunately, making the rebels and judges come to this realization
can be extremely difficult. Because the more they go into the territory
of the extremes, the more convinced they are that they are right and
that they have to keep going in that direction despite the warnings
they receive from others.
It is important for the balanced people to realize that the rebels and
the judges are not bad people, and they are not willingly doing their
thing. They simply do not realize what they are doing (if they did,
most of them would be willing to change). In other words, it is important
not to create a new struggle between the balanced people and people
in either or both extremes.
The true spiritual potential of community is that people can help keep
each other balanced so that neither individual members, nor the community
as a whole, stray too far from the middle way. If this can be done in
love, conflicts can be healed rather than strengthened. Trenches can
be filled in rather than made deeper. So, the final question is: Do
you love something, be it your church, God or your higher self, more
than the human desire to be proven right?
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Copyright
© 2003 by Kim Michaels |
