 and welcome to the Matrix of Peace show brought to you by Think Tech, Hawaii. I'm your host, Phyllis Blyse, and the CEO of Peace Through Commerce. Our guest today is Nelima Bhatt, distinguished professor in gender and conscious leadership at the Technology de Monterey, Mexico. She's also the founder of the Shakti Leadership Mission and author with Raj Sasodia of the book called Shakti Leadership. We are discussing part two on the topic of terror, violence, and the impulse to destroy, which is the title of a post 9-11 union conference. Nelima studied its findings and has created a system for us to identify and manage our own destructive impulses and become agents of peace, or as she is going to be describing, the seeds of peace. Aloha, Nelima. Namaste, Phyllis. So happy to be doing part two with you. I know. And as a special gift to the audience, I wonder if you could offer a Hindu chant for peace and just a rounded out, of course, in Hawaii. The hula dance and the Hawaiian chant are the ancient ways that Hawaiians tell their stories, pay reverence to nature, and unite, like you do with Shakti Leadership, the mind, body, and spirit with all of creation. They celebrate the beauty of the heart of the Hawaiian people and their love and aloha. So would you begin your our show today with a chant from the Hindu wisdom traditions, which are one of the sources for the teachings in today's show? Thank you for the invitation, Phyllis. It's essentially a call to Shiva and Shakti, the divine masculine feminine principles that sit together in a sacred wedding and union in our hearts, and from where they embrace the whole world, which is us, right? So, and, as I said last time, I'm a Shakti Leader graduate. This is my medallion, memorializing our values of Shakti, and I've been through the rituals, the learning, and the embodying of what you teach, and I'm certainly looking forward to furthering today's show. In that regard, Nalima, do you mind just a brief recap in your own words of what we did cover in part one, which aired January 4th, and then what we will be covering today distinct from that? So last time we covered the long-term solution to overcoming our drives, which tend to create the psychology of violence. But in this call, I want to give us some very quick in-the-moment tips and tricks where you can catch hold of yourself and return to presence when you are upset. Okay. So in that setting, you just said your drives. What are those drives? I think we've got a slide like last time. These are human drives, right? And whether we like it or not, and you wanted to teach us how to engage with them in a conscious way. So if you could just quickly review that. Sure. So if you remember the first slide, we were talking about understanding our inner nature and the origin of a psychology of violence and terror. And there was a post-911 Jungian conference that came up with this amazing title, Terror, Violence and the Impulse to Destroy. And the following slide where we described the four drives, these are again coming from the Jungian wisdom, that we have somatic drives coming from our animal nature. We have the life drive, Eros, which leads us to mate. But we also have a death drive, Thanatos, which leads us to kill. And that's the necessary instinct in the animal world. As we become humans, we are also ruled by our psychic drives, psychological drives of logos and mythos, which is our rational self and our imaginative self also turning us and kind of conflicting each other. So we are charmed by these four drives of Eros, Thanatos, logos and mythos. They tend to come together in a conjunction. Either they confront each other in enmity, or they attract one another in love. And this inner conflict is really what gets expressed in the outer world as our wars. So the next slide was talking about Mysterium Caniuntionis that Jung wrote about. He was very fascinated with the idea of alchemy, saying, how can we separate these psychic opposites in alchemy and then transform them from their lower nature into their higher nature and then put them back together? Okay. And that sort of goes with your four-sided drives, the four fold self, where the lower nature is represented by the horizontal bar. It can be. The shadows. Not really. All of it can be shadow. Logos can be too rational. Mythos without logos can be quite chaotic and all over the place. Eros can be wild sexuality, which is uncontrolled. And Thanatos can be just the killer instinct, right? So all the four drives can express in an unconscious way. So what Jung was looking for and then what the yogis and the alchemists across all cultures were looking for, how do we transmute these four drives into their higher, purer divine principle? Right? And then how do we put them back together so we become as if from base metal to gold? Okay. And then we get into our color wheel for the present, for the present services of Shakti. If you don't mind, these are each one of these, we could take a whole show on, but we'll refresh that for the guests. Yes. So in the last call, we talked about the long-term solution to overcoming our drives and transmuting them into their higher principles. This came from the work of the mother and Sri Aurobindo, their integral yoga. The color wheel talks about these 12 conscious leadership qualities. I mean, I'm calling them conscious leadership qualities, but they're basically higher qualities or values that the mother invites us to cultivate in our life. If we can become sincere, humble, grateful, persevere, have aspiration for the divine, have receptivity to grace, have progress, courage, goodness, generosity, equality and peace. And we put this as practice, as behaviors in everyday life, then very naturally, instead of expressing the four drives in their unconscious shadow ways, automatically they will get expressed as wisdom, strength, harmony and perfection, which are the four Shaktis, the four goddess archetypes, so to speak, that are available to each one of us. So this is what we did on our last call and on today's call. I want to therefore say coming into our psychological wholeness requires coming together with this four fold self in a way that expresses each one in its higher aspect. So this is how we become the seed of peace and what I would call becoming the wise fool of tough love. Okay, so we're looking at what looks like a family on the slide with the four drives, but now they're the four powers. And I think what I've learned in getting into psychological wholeness, which you're expressing here, is that's really all, that's us, right? All three, our child, our feminine side and our masculine side. All four, actually. So what you're seeing on this slide is a map or a picture of psychological wholeness. So if each one of us, regardless of gender, wishes to be psychologically whole in order to express a peaceful behavior, then we need to integrate our parent self and our child self. This comes from the work of Dr. Eric Byrne and transactional analysis. We need to also integrate our inner masculine self and our inner feminine self, the anima, the animus that Jung talks about as the inner wedding, right? So this effectively is the parent-child integration and the inner man-inner woman integration, regardless of gender, right? These are just ways of using these terms that make it more mnemonical that you can remember. So the sweet sauce or the path or the secret is to become the wise fool of tough love anchored in this presence, in this center. It's at the center of the cross where the presence lies. And it is only in this fifth state where we can stand at the center of this cross, the state of presence, from where we are unattached to any one of these four, but we can situationally move to each one as needed. Okay, so to put myself out there and let the viewers see how this works, you use this model to, excuse me, diagnose what's going on in real time. So I remember there was a time when I was having a very difficult time with a person in a committee and you called me out when we were leaving. You said, Phyllis, that person stepped into her shadow parent and when she does that, you stepped into your shadow child. And so if we could keep reframing to step into presence, what is going on using your tool? It was so powerful for me even at the time and it can be for the viewers and you really explain this in your book on shock the leadership. You said, your choice when that person does that steps into her shadow parent and tries to run all over you, you have two choices. You can step into, or she does, use Phyllis, step into your healthy parent, not your shadow child. You step into your healthy parent, and she has two choices. She engages with you at her healthy parent self, energetic self, or she leaves. But the situation doesn't get, doesn't go into an unhealthy interaction which actually slowed the whole committee down. So when this drama is acting itself out, everyone's affected, the whole system is affected. And I just wanted the viewers to know how very practical or identification of these energies and powers. And so there were drives there that I was able to shift into power, at least I do now that I see myself. And I also want the viewers to know that this is your work. Coming up with this idea of the wise fool of tough love is quite uniquely your gift. And what I like about it is there's no shaming and blaming me for being in my shadow child, not really standing up to her shadow parent. When you talk about fool, I can be foolish. I can be childish. What you're inviting me and others to do is step into our wise foolishness. That's the best of both. There's no shaming and blaming. In fact, those energies of being childish and tough are healthy when expressed from a present place in ourselves. And yes, childish becomes childlike, innocent, curious, wandering, right? Yes, and wonder. So the child childish becomes childlike, which is a very necessary quality. And the full archetype is considered very sacred in many traditions, especially among the Sufis. We are meant to be innocent, you know, innocence on the other side of our maturity. Yes. And and what I love about where we're going is that as you you have been a board member and advisory member of Peace Through Commerce, which has developed this model of society called the Matrix of Peace Whole Systems Model. And we do believe that it contains within it both the necessary but sufficient conditions to maintaining and fostering societal peace, long term societal peace. And you said to me, you know, Phyllis, when we can develop our inner presence and become the wise fool of tough love, we become the seeds of peace in the world. We human beings, each one of us, a seed of peace. And the Matrix of Peace Whole Systems Model represents in a powerful visual way what the soil of peace looks like. If we could model it like the x-ray of a society, we have this model. And so today on the show, we're talking about how both to acquire our presence practice through shocky leadership and principles and become seeds of peace to this Matrix of Peace view of society. And I want to take a moment and just walk the audience through a few versions of the Matrix. First of all, the Matrix is just a Venn diagram. And it's basic three circles of the traditional Venn represent the three sectors of society that we show in the next slide. So it's the traditional public, private, and civil society sectors. It does not, that does not give us, if we have those sectors, it doesn't give us peace. What we really need is the intersections of those three sectors, which is in the next slide, which demonstrates how with a healthy private sector, working with healthy laws in the public sector, we can move into prosperity. And it shows how when we have a healthy public sector laws being moderated by civil society, being the watchdog of the public sector and government, we can move into justice, not harsh laws. And yet with prosperity and justice alone, we don't obtain long term peace. There's still been something missing over the over generations. It's another way of saying it. You can throw laws at war and terror. You can throw money at it. But in even laws and money, don't together settle society into a peaceful, sustainable state. That takes sustainability. And through modeling, we know that when the private sector, which is the primary actor in society, operates with sustainable practices, which civil society demands and models for the private sector, and which helps create laws that suggest that private sector needs to step up and be conscious, then we can get into long term sustainability. That when we have all three, we get into long term societal peace. What can happen, like today in the time of the border issues along the Hamas border with Israel, and I'm showing it in the next slide, and even with our indigenous peoples who are sharing territory with majority peoples, you have a split right down the middle from a modeling standpoint of the public sector. Two societies sharing one territory, and as Abraham Lincoln said, a house divided cannot stand. This model shows how very easily we can be living with the results of our actions on the ground, modeling them and showing how this view of a divided public sector cannot form the soil for a healthy society. And so that's how today on today's talk, we use the model as the soil of peace. And what we have one more slide, the model doesn't leave us not knowing how to get to the intersection of peace. There is an outside circle, which represents consciousness forces. The good, the bad, and the ugly, it's all of them. And the three sectors live within this consciousness sphere. And what we teach in the matrix of peace framework, and a book is coming out on that as well, is that in order to move from outside sector behavior into the intersections, you need consciousness, practices, beliefs, and what we call peace-optimizing values and beliefs. And so I'm going to shift back to your work, Nina Lima, to give the audience practices and beliefs, and a shocky path to peace-optimizing values to get into what we say is intersectionality. So can you share your next teachings with us? Yes. Thank you, Phyllis. And for the teachings on becoming the seed of peace and living from peace-optimizing values and behaviors, I'm going to share polarity-thinking work by Barry Johnson, who basically looks at all polarity's interdependent pairs, like inhale and exhale, and saying you need both. And we tend to fall below the line of, you know, into shadow behaviors when we fail to leverage one, you know, and we over-leverage the other. So for example... We have a slide for that, yes. We have a slide for this. So we will look at both the polarities. We said become the wise fool of tough love. So what is tough love? Basically, you want to flex between what you don't want is to block your Shakti, what you want is to fully release your true power. For that, you have to get the best of love, which is your feminine side, and the best of tough, which is your masculine side. Now, both have positive expressions and shadow expressions. So positive feminine is beautiful. You can read what's up there, you know, empathy, gentleness, inclusion, nurturing, openness, creativity, variety, flavor, trust, vulnerability, harmony, beautiful, peace-optimizing values and behaviors. But when we look at the masculine only in its shadow side, we tend to see it as aggressive, cruel, mechanical, arrogant, insensitive, violent, power-hungry, spiritually empty, right? And that's because we've had such a long patriarchy all over the world. This is how we see masculinity nowadays. We do not realize that the feminine do has its shadow side, right? The hyper feminine, done through the neglect of a healthy masculine, is smothering, sentimental, needy, dependent, exploited, unfocused, irrational, weak and manipulative. So hold that thought. So for those seeing or listening, we're showing a four a four-sector, four quadrant model where the two top quadrants are the healthy side of the masculine. And the bottom two quadrants are the shadow side or unhealthy expressions. And so take us from where we go to the tough, we're talking about the tough love now, how we pull that from this chart. So we could chart our own behavior or that in our own society onto this four quadrant map. So we have the positive masculine as well, all right? We have clarity, assertiveness, spoken direction, order, discipline, structure, discernment, strength, convergence. Now these are just qualities called out by participants in workshops. So this is not a complete list. And this is also a subjective list where participants what is considered more masculine and what is considered more feminine. Remember, nothing is, it's a spectrum, nothing is an absolute. There's always some feminine in the masculine and vice versa. Our job is to remain above the line in a healthy inhale and exhale between the two, right? So if we don't balance our masculine and feminine, we are doomed to fall below the line and experience the worst of both, right? So the way to work this is catch yourself when there is an early warning sign that you please identify for yourself. Are you falling below the line and becoming hyper feminine? Where do you tend to go? What is the behavior you tend to express? Like I become greedy. Now I know that's my early warning sign to insert pause, go across the board and then take an action step that returns me to healthy masculine. So I do some self care instead of waiting for someone else to take care of me. I meet my needs myself and I'm back to above the line because self care is healthy masculine. Equally, when I'm only working from my masculine side over time, I will fall below the line and I have to catch some early warnings that I've become hyper masculine. Now in my case, I notice I start becoming judgmental. That is my sign to insert pause and go across the board to the opposite top side and become in a way more feminine exercise a more feminine behavior in the moment. And in my case, I have identified that as compassion. So my action step is to be compassionate and it's the perfect antidote to being judgmental about somebody. So when I become judgmental, which is my hyper masculine, and I can become more compassionate, which is my healthy feminine, it's the perfect antidote for the bad behavior, right? Yeah. So as long as I can stay in an inhale and exhale kind of balance between self care and compassion, care for self and compassion for others, I remain above the line in my tough love. Yes. And I want we have another these are I just the viewers need to know that there's a term years of experience and work and this slide in the next one. And I just want to leave a thought that we can identify these qualities and whole societies. So there's a macro version and expression of this judgmental society needed to reach into its higher order feminine qualities and vice versa. And I would love to spend some time with that, but I need you to shift now into our next entire knowledge base here. So the next one is becoming the wise fool, the other polarity, right? The healthy parent, healthy child. So again, you do the work of Barry Johnson's polarity thinking. And then you say, how do I leverage the wise and the fool, the parent and the child, identify healthy parental qualities, identify unhealthy child qualities, identify unhealthy parent qualities, and identify healthy child qualities, right? If you want, you can pause here and read this carefully later, but we're short on time. So I will go straight into my example. Like I to stay above the line in the best of my healthy parent and healthy child, I have to make sure I don't fall below the line when I experience the worst of both, right? So for this, I have identified my early warning when I becoming when I become too parental, I actually become quite rigid, right? So now when I catch my rigid behavior, I make sure I take an action step that is more childlike. And my childlike quality, superpower is creativity. And it's the perfect antidote to being rigid in my thinking, right? And I go above the line. In the same way, when I become too childlike, I become childish because I've neglected the balance with the parent, and I start becoming inattentive. I become distracted. I know I get bored, for example. So now I know when I'm becoming inattentive, I have to insert pause, go across the board, and take an action step to be more healthy parental in my behavior. So in my case, I know a superpower of a parental self that I have is meaning making. I'm very good at making wise meaning from situations, tell a high quality story of a situation, you know, make me with wise meaning. And it's the perfect antidote to being bored or inattentive because it gets my attention back in the game and do some high quality meaning making. So in a nutshell, to become the wise fool of tough love, in my case, means exercising care for self, compassion for others, having a sense of creativity and curiosity, and remembering to make meaning from situations. All right. So I'm going to challenge you. Can you in about 15 seconds of offer that we have three more slides for how people do have resources to do just what you said. I think we've got a presence practice. We've talked about that. Yes. There are activities and interactions that they can get involved in at your website. Right. So we show some of those in the next slide. You just touch. I guess I'm doing what I asked you to do because I'm going to have to zero us out in about 10 minutes. But I want people to know that can join me, Lima, through her website, through long and short term workshops, take a nine month course to become a Shakti leader. And there are rich resources that are shown there. And then of course, there's her book. And that's called Shakti leadership. And the Lima, this has been rich, powerful, awesome. I'm going to have to leave it there for us today. I want the audience to know that you have been watching the Matrix of Peace show at Tinkta, Hawaii. We've been discussing the topic of terror, violence, and the impulse to destroy part two, which Nilema addressed with the transformational path and practice of Shakti leadership, helping us become seeds of peace to step into the Matrix of Peace model, showing the whole way of creating the soil of peace. I'm Phyllis Blyse, your host on the Matrix of Peace show and CEO of Peace through Commerce. Our guest, Nilema Bhatt, is co-founder of the Shakti leadership mission. Mahalo, Nilema for joining us today. And Mahalo to our viewers for tuning in. And we'll be back in two weeks for another edition of the Matrix of Peace show. Aloha.