Forbes Articles on Light
Part 1: A Radical Driver of Change for Radical Times (Published in Forbes, March 2, 2020)
Post Written by Pravir Malik
Over the last few decades, emotional intelligence and mindfulness have risen as alternative approaches to augment complex organizational change. The increasing complexity of environments — driven by globalization, information overload, easy flipping of prevalent political ideologies and the breaking down of corporate norms as younger and differently oriented generations enter the workforce — necessitates a holistic approach to augment complex change, perhaps one as revolutionary as the changing times.
To this end, I have been experimenting with an approach to enable change based on the power of light. I have conducted workshops both within and outside of my organization with people from diverse backgrounds, representative of all functions within a complex organization. Individuals and teams alike have participated and been tasked with using light to influence their respective areas of responsibility: change regarding personal assumptions, beliefs and reactions to circumstances, clarification, strengthening of individual actions and goals, and interpersonal dynamics. I believe there is no boundary to the type of change that can be influenced through the application of light.
I coach participants to approach the application of light in a scientific manner, by comparing results where light has been applied to areas where light has not been applied and becoming sensitive to how things may have changed along personal, interpersonal, team and organizational dimensions. I remind participants that while change may occur, the outcomes may transcend any limited view or expectations and yield surprising outcomes consistent with larger, more holistic dynamics that are natural to such a ubiquitous foundation as light.
The following introductory light maxims can be thought of as individual or team strategies to help facilitate ongoing change:
1. Learn to perceive light differently.
Light is in everything, and everything arises from light. Within the electromagnetic spectrum, light is the foundation for many technologies that drive the world. It is at the base of photosynthesis, and it enables the entire food chain — and, therefore, the growth of any living species. In its byproducts of optics and quanta, it will drive all developments of AI and quantum computing, and therefore arguably much of the future of the world as foreseen now. In its reality of photons, light is the carrier of an infinite amount of information that constantly streams into our eyes to create real-time images of the world.
Since we are ourselves built from it, it is each individual’s natural right and privilege to know and see all things in light. Light, hence, is an extraordinary device that is completely democratic and agnostic to the agent who begins to relate with it and use it. It is easily available, and its power can be applied to influence the most unexpected of circumstances.
To apply light is as simple as to re-see, imagine or visualize a circumstance filled with actual, illuminating light. At work, this can be done any time, silently, even when in a meeting. The license to use it is limited only by one’s perception of how everything has light in it.
2. Fluency in light dynamics is a muscle that needs strengthening.
The biggest obstacle to change is one’s own continued reinforcement of perceptions, beliefs and assumptions. In reality, each of us is highly creative. The only problem is that reality is always created using the same materials derived from our own limited perceptions, beliefs and assumptions. Therefore, the outcome is always the same, and it appears as though nothing is really changing. The only thing stopping change is one’s own programming.
For example, to contribute positively to a market opportunity, an alert organization may institute a series of real-time changes. Teams and individuals who believe they have been caught in the current of such change may feel victimized. This is because habitual programming may equate such change with the expenditure of personal and team energy without any requisite rewards. Such a mindset will already bias an effort to fail.
By contrast, actively using light dynamics, to the point where it is an automatic feature in individual processing of circumstances, can alter outcomes. This is because rather than allowing a victimization program to arise, if instead individuals and teams re-see everything in and as light, then not only would they halt a path headed for failure, but more importantly, they would positively influence information fields. This changes the real-time arbitration of possibility.
There are many ways to apply light in the above situation. One way I coach participants is to see a small sun of light shine above the project and all the participants or teams in a project. In their mind’s eye, they can envision that light pouring into the whole situation and filling the project and people involved.
3. Create a light sphere to help facilitate change.
At the heart of effective light dynamics lies the power to envision and nurture one’s personal light sphere. A light sphere is an imagined globe of light. To create your one light sphere, begin by focusing on the heart and visualizing it as a small sphere of light. This will allow a settling into light in a more intimate way.
Gradually, one can expand their light sphere to become larger than oneself. At each step of the expansion, it is important to try to experience the nature of light — its warmth, glow, dynamism, love. This allows a further letting go of any anchoring. Connecting with and nurturing this light sphere allows different participation in real-time dynamics. This is because light is dynamic with a constant computation. Possibility meets and is arbitrated in light.
The power for change starts here and now. The most important protagonist in change is not leadership, but the individual, who by virtue of an intimate connection with light can make change happen without permission and as the need to do so arises. This is the ultimate act of power and has to become part and parcel of each individual’s circumstance-processing capability.
Part 2: A Radical Driver of Change for Radical Times: The Necessity and Power of Light (Published in Forbes, March 27, 2020)
Post Written by Pravir Malik
As my previous article concluded, the most important contributor to change dynamics is the individual — not leadership, as is often assumed. In experimenting with light as a driver of change, individuals can create radical change as the need to do so arises.
In addition to the first three light maxims, the following can be thought of as strategies to help facilitate change:
4. Any person, situation or condition can be invited into one’s light sphere and be re-seen in light.
If an employee is experiencing a difficult relationship with their manager, for example, then once they create and expand their own light sphere — an imagined globe of light that can be stepped into — they can visualize their manager in it. Envision the light sphere as dynamic, a full body of flowing light. The employee’s sphere engulfs the manager so that the manager is re-seen in light. Visualize light flowing in and out of the manager. Such a re-seeing has to continue until the employee feels something in themself has shifted. This may be experienced as a sense of personal lightening, a sense of completion, or even a shift in their own bodily sensations.
It is important during this visualization to not have any expectations of the outcome. In light, situations can be processed differently. Any situation can be invited into one’s light sphere regardless of its size or complexity.
5. Light has its own logic and can change the information field of anything in one’s light sphere.
The simple act of re-seeing in light will shift the information field associated with the situation, and likely result in an altered outcome. When one connects with some image of light in oneself, one is essentially connecting with the full nature of light, whether it is felt or seen or realized or not. That is the power of re-seeing in light. It immediately brings the seer into full contact with the multidimensional power of light.
As a simple example, re-seeing a difficult situation as filled with light will likely change the information one has personally attached to the situation. In the example of the manager, the employee re-seeing them in light may alter the employee’s feelings of stress and create different filters in their own mind by which the situation is assessed.
But further, since light is in everything, and everything arises from light, and the act of visualization of light connects us with the ubiquitous light, actual information fields associated with a real situation can be altered as one’s ability to re-see in light gets strengthened. As quantum physics has proposed, intentionality is known to influence the outcome of experiments.
6. The power to positively influence change is limited only by the individual.
It is easy to resign to circumstance and to continue to see everything with the embedded lenses that we habitually use to see, think and feel. But the very repetition of the act of seeing, feeling or thinking in the same way is nothing other than a highly creative act in which past models of personal reality are reinforced in every new moment to recreate the range of effective dynamics in that moment.
Hence, the more one invests in dynamically re-seeing any situation, person, groups or object as light and flooded with light, the more one is able to see that light has its own logic and, therefore, that personal expectation and wanting of a particular outcome or result can be quite ineffective. The more powerful light dynamics within one’s own light sphere can become, the more effectively can circumstance — regardless of scale and complexity — be directly influenced to change into something better from a more global and impersonal perspective.
Being able to change things, then, comes down to developing a relationship with one’s own light sphere.
The turmoil that people experience in today’s world, whether personally, socially, environmentally, economically or politically, means that we are moving away from equilibrium. Note, though, that in a complex adaptive system, such a movement can, in fact, be beneficial. This is because it allows the often-hidden assumptions and perceptions that dictate things to come to the surface. If we react quickly as per force of habit, then a bad situation can spiral into a worse one. On the contrary, what can make it positive is a different and more measured response to it.
If we learn to see all the difficult situations in light and as light, as per the six maxims introduced here, then our holding of these difficulties can become nonjudgmental and allow light to influence the information fields of each difficulty with its fuller and more holistic logic, thereby easily creating the possibility of more beneficial outcomes.
Such a holding in light and as light then becomes a necessity. For as Einstein pointed out, a problem or difficulty needs to be solved with a different consciousness than created it. The dynamics and reality in light are nothing other than a radically different consciousness.
