As a child I had great difficulty accepting as dogma the various religious, philosophical, political and social ideologies that I encountered. I could not understand why I should blindly accept any specific ideology when I was ignorant of the others, which I knew existed but to which I was not yet exposed. At the time I did not really know why I was not as accepting as others wanted me to be. Still, I admired my fellow students who seemed sure of their belief in one religion or another, in one philosopher or another, in one political ideology or another. At the time, I assumed that they were more intelligent than I was or perhaps they were seeing more than I was. At times, I felt inadequate. But I was in no position to argue, for I did not have enough information. Perhaps I chose the biological and physical sciences for further study because of their greater precision and exactness. As I reflect on that early period of my life, I now see that I had developed a system of avoidance which kept me away from things that I did not fully understand. Thus, I succeeded in keeping myself in ignorance and drifted through a supposedly successful professional life without understanding humanity and the depth of my own spirituality.
However, as I travelled across the globe, I encountered humanity in its vast diversity and began to better under- stand the human being in its entirety rather than just within the scope of the limited dogma that was fed to me in early life. In time, I became a seasoned traveller and voracious reader of the diverse religious scriptures and the philosophical, social and anthropological literature. And that is how I discovered the Fundamental Principles, which is at the core of our humanity and the common thread that ties all 6.9 billion of us as the human brotherhood regardless of our religion, culture, race, ethnicity or political ideology. I have since devoted my life to helping people to better understand one another across the many man-made barriers that we have erected. Too much of our humanity lives in silos of ignorance and thus fail to recognise the tremendous commonality that we all share with one another. Sadly, most of the wars, past and present, are fuelled by our ignorance of the basic humanity of one another. In February 2005, as I sought to coalesce my deepest beliefs, free of the influence of others, I wrote the following:
I believe in the power of free will
I believe that I have the potential to think freely and to act according to conscience
I believe that I have human goodness-a goodness anchored in ethics and morality
I believe that my human goodness is my Inner Reality-my true reality
I believe that the expression of my human goodness is derived from my inner power
I believe that there is a universal spiritual power, by whatever name you may choose to make reference-God, Allah, Ram, Jah, or Universal Consciousness
I believe in the spirituality of the human being
I believe in humans' spiritual connectivity to the universal spiritual power, to other human beings and to the universal environment that we are part of
I believe that our free will and our human goodness are derived from our spirituality
I believe that I have the ability to grow my inner power so that I can better express my free will, my human goodness and my spirituality
I believe that I can grow my inner power through becoming more principle conscious, by discovering and living my purpose, by cultivating greater emotional mastery, through a better understanding of change and through being more knowledge empowered
I believe that in growing my inner power, I become stronger and more aware of the universal spiritual power, my own human goodness and my connectedness to other human beings and to the environment that I am a part of
I believe that in growing my inner power I become spiritually stronger and more inspirational to others
I believe that human development resides primarily in the expressed morality and spirituality of people
I believe that accelerated human development comes from cutting new paths, rather than mimicking what exists
I believe that spiritual poverty is the most widespread social disease of developing nations
I believe that a lack of understanding of self, and the potential therein, is the biggest problem in our developing countries
I believe that most of our countries, and more especially our developing countries, are trapped in a syndrome of self-deception, insecurity, dishonest self-representation, beggary, pretence, arrogance, greed, buffoonery, creative intolerance, dependency and outright stupidity
I believe the potential for greatness lies in all human beings
I believe that people will only develop when they are prepared to develop themselves
I believe that the world is a place of opportunity for all
I believe that those who are awake to their potential greatness are those who will lead the world
I believe that the so-called developing world has the opportunity to lead in the future development of the world
I believe that there is a moral line
I believe that right and wrong matter
I believe that human development is about moral progress
I believe that I have the power to redefine and remake my own life
I believe that I can undo my unwanted conditioning
I believe than I can let go of my external reality
I believe that I can be what life wants me to be
I believe that I can be the leader of my life
I believe that I can experience happiness every day of my life
I believe that I can only change others by changing myself
The leadership development programme, Leading From Above The Line, was developed out of my own personal challenge of growing the inner strength to overcome my own personal weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Leading From Above The Line can be defined as the continuous striving to live one's life above the moral line. Next week I will outline the key elements of the programme.