Dad's transcendending Death

So ... the story goes about 2 weeks before dad died Arthur was visiting it was late. He and I were playing cards or risk or stratego and Dad was pacing the hallway when he stopped us and talked about having a purpose after he dies in the afterlife if there was one and was that he wanted to come back and communicate the existence of the afterlife if it was in anyway a possibility and he said he would promise to make it happen. Neither Arthur or I had any impending sense about his very fast approaching death so we neither gave too much much attention to it, but then about 2 weeks later while home alone with him while my mom tended the liquor store in San sidro, he asked me to help him to the bathroom and after a couple of minutes I heard a crash from the next room came running in to find him slumped over the toilet in severe jaw clenching pain. I got him on the floor and cradled his head in my lap and then began to run my lists associated with just such a unprepared for disaster. After improvised CPR, chest pounding, hysteric pleading, during a moment of calm, I felt the heat draining from him and came face to face with his movement into ash, next I called my mom, and after that I began a serious wail. In the following year however, this conversation he had with Arthur and I kept popping up for me, especially during times of loneliness when his absence was most felt, it has for most of my life been an insult to the tragedy that I felt. 

Over time, I've simply moved on and forgotten his promise and the huge disappointment in his not being able to keep it. It was only until a few days ago that the true character of that man, his demonstrating leadership and being a leader, showed up for me in that last totally unselfish stand which he took for the benefit of his sons, which he did with total conviction against all odds. It's just breathtaking for me to consider it today and such a warm glow of pride wells up in my heart. Until this epithany a few days ago I would never have dreamed I'd ever be able to confess to this massive transformation and appreciation I feel towards him today. So it is .. and you the first person I've shared this with! I can't take full credit for this amazing shift in my relationship with him though, there was been a recent startup of some work with Werner Erhard in the domain of, you guessed it, Leadership ... and I'm going to find no resistance at all to returning to that lesson plan after having this initial resolution to a lifelong feeing of loss and abandonment and disappointment. Just within my own personal sphere I can't recall a greater leader than my father who was so magnanimous that he was calling out what he saw possible even after his death ... and his conviction and vision for that possibility was total ... I could spend 10 lifetimes I think and still not exhaust the inspiration that one moment of his leadership gave and continues to give me.

Talking about Leadership as spoken about by Erhard ... 

I quoted him as saying, "Leaders do not act from a plan, but plan from their action. The planning is really a conversation which gives other people access to the possibility to which you are committed."  The following is my latest post to a circle of interested systemic thinkers which as a conversation is based on this quote by Erhard:

Apologies for not responding sooner, I was otherwise occupied with a severe health issue which seems to be ebbing with a proper recovery now better each day. So many divergent angles and interpretations, exciting; and all very good observations. I've become accustomed to Erhard speaking with about as rigorous a commitment to revealing the exact distinction desired that I ever recall or know of. However, this one as some have pointed out seem to be taken out of context and in the act some damage has done to what ordinarily one always finds in Werner's work and that is an equal attention given to context. I'm going to take some liberty here to extend some substance for the purposes of this conversation directly into seeing the context for now as a model for leading others. I recall years ago when he firsts began the est training his rather unsophisticated  statement on leadership took the form of: A leader is the guy at the front of the line. So, if you want to be a leader in life, go to the front of the line.

Hard to argue with then but within the context of systems thinking, with such magnificient ideas and notions such as attractors for instance, but otherwise founded on principles we have forged over the years and now come to depend on as matter of fact as part of the quiver of anyone who is seen as a true modern leader of in life. For instance innovation ... going to the front of the line is the act of a bully not an innovator.

The quote for me is a comment about the paradigm of leadership which is possible and emergent today. The first context which appears for me in his quote is that leadership is an ontological reality one must come to terms with first in order to understand the possibilities or as Werner would put it the possibility of possibilities within leadership as it shows up for us in our experience moment to moment and not as collection of notions with correlating data and "science" organized for someone's new attempt at a doctorate. So, it is with Werner that his work and his expression of that work while providing for mastery in the world of phenomena really is focused in the world of ontology.

Peeling away a layer now to say a little about what he seems to be saying ... leadership opens possibilities actively by contextualizing their views of possibiiliteis relative to job at hand by engaging with what is not being listened to in their conversations about what by  default gets to be effective prescriptions but stale and static compositions. Keeping this awareness for its own sake produces an opening in conversation for the SYSTEM (all those involved or desired to be involved) access and be accessed together as a conversation which is an evolution over the notion of someone pointing with everyone else following that given mandate. He's transformed the ACT of leading into a conversation in which everyone's lead is accessible and lightening can strike at any point or moment in time.

Time to take a breath and ponder how much resistance may show up over the suggestion that in the paradigm being presented on leadership, the old sructure of following another is no longer relevant or operational. For myself, I see it as master stroke, resolving so much of the noise and clangor that went along with the real time missions aimed at making systemic change, through managerial input. All that is tranformed in the individual's perception with his being recognized as the real attractor, one that together with the rest ontologically speaking is the systemic underpinning accerssible to leadership and the only one really that counts when thinking about this sytemically.
yes? no? maybe?