Some communicators unarguably have talent and charisma, but many of them are trapped in this concept of talent and charisma. We perceive how “they are heard” when they speak. Their presence can be shocking, but they do not transform. This is because their presence, in a certain sense full of memory and void of creativity, evokes only one part of our being: the intellect. People usually admire this hemorrhaging of data and it could be said that people learn intellectually in these talks, but individual and collective transformation or internal growth of the group is not achieved.
It is true that in the early stages of life, this is almost inevitable, but as adults, mere repeated information is not much use to us. When we speak with our heads, we connect with the heads of our listeners. On the other hand, when we speak from our hearts, it touches the heart.
When spoken from presence, our words find the crack to deeply penetrate those who are present. We can question beliefs based on reason and empathize emotions, but only from the state of presence does a deep transformation take place.
We are in an era with 3.0 minds and our presence when communicating must go beyond the cognitive dimension. We are in a world colonized by reason, although thanks to this reason that has inundated us, we have been able to free ourselves from superstition and magic. Reason, with its deductive method, tries to objectify everything that surrounds us, including the process of communication. Reason allows us to leave behind the prepersonal stage to arrive at the personal stage; once here, there is another deeper stretch that we can name as the transpersonal dimension.
Suddenly, a flower opens and we begin to get a glimpse into something beyond thought and technical mode. In fact, we begin to experience ourselves from the point of view of consciousness. In fact, a rational technique issued by data and information collectors is not enough to communicate. Let’s keep in mind that it’s relatively easy to get to the fact of “understanding.” It is also very likely that we will understand everything that is communicated, but it may be the case that, by having understood everything, we haven’t understood anything. Understanding is an event of greater significance; it is the heritage of the deepest self.
What really transforms a human being is not only the fact of “understanding” things, but being fully present in that sudden inner lightning. All of a sudden, we experience an expansive and joyful sensation, we end up “understanding.” This event does not come from the intellect, but from the profound dimension of being. We often hear something we have already heard a thousand times without great internal consequences. However, that day, all of a sudden, it reaches our inner self and coagulates. The derivative of this comprehension is validated without external reference, since the experienced and understood is felt as completely personal; we end up interiorizing this new level. It is a process that occurs within each one of us, through which we convert what unfolds in the intellect into an experience in coherence with our heart.
When you get to that “ahaaa moment,” in other words, when you understand, you make a connection with a very deep sensation of certainty, and from there, it could be said that you communicate with the intelligence of the heart. This is a connection to the deep self that is closely related with conscious communication. It is something related to the deep meaning and purpose of life in which we commence the path of awakening. It is like poking your head out of the “cardboard box.” In order to do this, you must have courage and open yourself up in a vulnerable way to that essence of your inner self. A compassionate and cardiac dimension, full of primordial values that survive the universal law of impermanence.
We know that everything is constantly changing. As conscious communicators, we must accept the uncertainty that persists at every moment. Acceptance of such impermanence allows us to grasp the meaning of what emerges in our sudden inner message. The important thing is to realize what’s going on, to be aware. It is the key to the communication process. Realizing is, in fact, the click of awakening, the click that frees us from the automatic and predetermined. Being conscious allows us to have choices and to recognize, not only each message we give, but also from which part of us it emerges.
Realizing allows us to take options: the option to change the tone of our message, the option to change the rhythm of our message, the option to fine tune the “how” of our message. It is, in short, to live with the feeling that we can take the reins of communication so that everything is bathed in simplicity and can be fully understood. I reiterate that this “realization” is a sudden, flashing act that signals a movement emerging from the deep. This derivative of waking attention is a very powerful resource in the field of communication.
Underneath all exaggeration lies the “psychological shadow”: fear, lack of trust. Natural unconsciousness weaves an emotional carpet of buried and unresolved issues. Aspects often derived from the wounds of childhood that we all go through and that we can accept and integrate by making them conscious. This type of unrecognized shadow does not allow us to connect fluidly when communicating. It leads us to communicative make-up that does not allow us to transmit authentically.
Communicating is sharing. Communicating is bringing together. We need to be attentive to subtle registers, to the imperceptible stimuli that underlie the language of our verbal and non-verbal presence.
Let’s keep one ear in and one ear out when it comes to setting communication processes in motion. May we evoke transpersonal intelligence as the emerging source and metamodel of the 21st century. For this purpose, we must dethrone logical-mathematical intelligence and recognize other intelligences such as verbal, mathematical, emotional, musical, spatial, interpersonal and intrapersonal. These are the types of intelligence named by Howard Gardner, a Harvard University psychologist, in the 20th century.
We must keep these types of intelligence in mind and not idealize any of them. We must also bear in mind that we are not only valued through the famous IQ. In fact, in these measurements, this coefficient is the least significative of what we are. Little drawers and analytical arrangements support the consensual order of what we call reality, but the fact that everything we perceive is discerned and placed does not mean much in our fullness and self-realization.
How can we express and recognize the role of the human soul (not the religious soul) in communication? The soul that beats underlying that deep aspect that fills the person speaking with confidence. That attracts the interest and attention of those who are present. A trust not based on the control of concrete facts, a transpersonal and therefore transrational trust.
The culture of silence opens a deeper dimension in conscious communication, beyond reason and the memory of the communicator. In this sense, the practice of meditation and the discovery of the purpose of life are important. Why was I born? Who am I? What is the point of my life? These are glances that do not ignore progress and external technology, but rather inquire into a metatechnology of transformation itself that comes from transpersonal intelligence. Something that was and always will be in us, and that stays in spite of the constant changes of form. That which allows us to reconnect with the core of ourselves each time we communicate a message. Purpose, conciliation, inclusion, compassion, observation, inner look. A way to be in every moment and, from there, to communicate.
Transpersonal intelligence is something similar to spiritual intelligence, but from a transreligious approach. That is to say, beyond the beliefs, dogmas, religions and packages of thinking sectarianism that the previous mythical worlds have needed as a child bond of belonging and security.
We observe that we experience instability so that we can grow and leave our comfort zones. Life ensures that we discover new territories. These discoveries happen with every breath, with every step of life, with every cycle of growth. The hero of all myths has always been the person who left home and began their particular initiatory path that would lead them to broaden their horizons, to understand and to deepen their heart through the adventure of self-consciousness.
To speak in public is to throw oneself into the abyss. Even actors with many years of experience perceive it as a threatening situation that they soon turn into a noble challenge. Anyone exposed may experience restlessness, fear of rejection, judgment, criticism, evaluation… We have unconscious fears that what we are going to communicate may be boring or mediocre in some of its forms.
That is why it is important to learn to hold on to our emotions of threat and insecurity and to observe our fears, in other words, to recognize our unconscious fears. From there, our threat becomes, as I have already said, a challenge that deploys unsuspected resources. We must become aware of the rumination of thoughts, of the endless repetitive internal dialogs, so that we can manage to sustain our emotions and relocate ourselves in a state of presence as awake as it is creative.
Transpersonal intelligence works with that sudden inspiration that stems from intimate resonances. This intelligence makes it possible to connect with the part of oneself that is more intuitive than rational. A part that, at times, emerges in emotional pain, in growth crises, in existential moments when “life is at stake,” in the world where the limit is a fertile space in understanding, a space that does not emerge while we are in our comfort zones, in the world of the “controlled.”
From a transpersonal perspective, acceptance is not resignation. It is something deeper that, in turn, neutralizes the duel. In fact, the greater the acceptance, the less mourning; and the lesser the acceptance, the longer the mourning. The ability to accept that what happens passes through circuits other than the cognitive branches through which it is often desired that life be otherwise. This ability to accept without ignoring desires and objectives is integrated into the person in a nuclear way. It is an ability that does not come from specialized learning or from a master’s degree. There is a meta-science of self that is unrelated with a branch of knowledge. Such a dimension unfolds with the culture of interiorization and silence that has nourished sages and mystics throughout the ages.
The aforementioned culture of the deep self does not seek to accumulate information, but to bring forth deep wisdom as a heritage of the human heart. This capacity is very different from what we call knowledge. In fact, the term wisdom gives a sensation of conscious love and deep peace. This is a peace without a cause, which is not experienced precisely when we reach a certain achievement, such as an economic payment, or at times when we receive recognition, or when we are told that we are better after being ill…
The peace without cause of which we speak can be found precisely in the self, in a state of complete presence. A peace as a deep identity, which we are all in essence. That state that sometimes emerges and sometimes escapes us. A state in which, when it vanishes, we leave the way of being and return to the way of doing, often frenetic and evasive. Then fear and anxiety come; we live in threatening anticipation; memories come and once again we witness the historical film that the mind endlessly activates. We cling to our thoughts and begin to believe everything we think. They are moments when we should stop, breathe consciously, moments for bodily self-care; moments to remember our commitment to meditation.
In reality, the four pillars of self-care from the perspective of integral development are: sleep, conscious eating, physical exercise and meditation. Four pillars that should be taken care of to keep the bases clean and the house tidy.
Mindfulness is Jon Kabat Zinn’s proposal to deploy full attention. It is an enlightened orientation of attention to the now and the suspension of judgments and labels on the experience we are living. Mindfulness offers silent techniques of introspection whose roots lie in the Buddhist and Yogic culture of the East. Remember that yoga, which is 12,000 years old, has supposed an impressive practice of interiorization, in many cases through the body, such as Hata Yoga. Mindfulness works with the attention or focus of the inner look. In fact, when I say “I’m attentive, I’m awake, I’m realizing,” I’m not paying attention to the information and its data packages, but rather I’m rooted in self-consciousness.
The mindfulness of Jon Kabat Zinn has been raised from the neutrality and distance of religious influence. The concept of mindfulness refers to a naked set of techniques without beliefs, somewhat distanced from them and dogmas. And only in this way, and without religious justification, have universities, in their day, lowered their guard. Mindfulness is a beneficial tool for growth and learning due to its multiple neurological benefits such as, for instance, the increase of the gray mass and emotional, behavioral and existential derivatives, which generate impressive improvements in the meditators.
By studying the brains of experienced meditators, incredible positive results have been observed. For this reason, the business world has invested in large projects that monitor the effects of meditation in the world of work. In this field, we cannot ignore the health sphere; in fact, the most renowned hospitals recommend their patients to meditate in order to optimize their recovery process. The world of education has also made a firm commitment to meditation. In fact, 75% of schools in the developed world have mindfulness tutoring. It is an attentional subject, a subtle and conscious option to connect with deeper values that are found in layers closer to the being. May we live life awake, may we cultivate self-care that integrates the awakening of consciousness through interiorization practices that activate awareness and allow the fluid state of presence to emerge.
