Theory W
Theory W describes the journey every person should make. It is an integrated approach to transforming individuals, groups, teams, organisations; creating insights; unblocking barriers; unlocking creativity; energising innovation – building a better world for ourselves, for those around us and for future generations. It plots a pathway through two U’s that when combined form a W (double U). Leaders, for example, who lead from the ‘first U’, don’t know themselves and lead the world into trouble. True leadership comes from the ‘second U’, from people who know themselves, see possibilities and are free to create in ways that enhance humanity and build community. Theory W covers the following 3 areas within our lives.
Confronting Limitations
The wise and loving sages of the world describe one of the greatest challenges that each of faces in our lives, as ‘waking up’! What? The implication is that our ‘sleepfulness’ is one of the true limitations each of has to confront. There are others – like the limitations that come with our genes, our cultures, the economic and political systems into which we are born, like the moral, ethical and spiritual systems we inherit with our mother’s milk – all these can be limitations. They are also, of course, the very things that give our lives structure and meaning at certain stages – and for that we can be thankful.
These things that form us – the systems of belief, the environmental and social systems of our time – these are our context. The trouble is – for so many of us – we allow our context to control us, to lull us into a state of sleepfulness that we dont question.
Then the problem starts, because (and this seems to be true throughout the world) – context creates content! We become the content as set out by the context within which we live (or sleep, blissfully unaware that our lives are being written, so to speak, by the great context around us!)
The very gift our parents have given us – our context (our social, genetic and psychological inheritence) becomes our prison – the bed in which we slumber, forgetfully and sometimes fitfully – but from which, the great sages suggest, we need to AWAKE! Confronting our context and examining it – this is the beginning of the journey – a transformative journey each of us has to make.
To write the content of our own lives – ah, this is both the art and the start of freedom! Beware those who dream with the open eyes!
Sadly, not all dare, nor try.
Freeing Energy
Way back in the last century, Albert Einstein said that energy is the mass of something multiplied by the speed of light squared. He put it like this: E = MC2
Older traditions (going back 5000 years and more) say that it is this energy that is the essential life force within all things.
Modern scientists say that in the sub-atomic world of quantum physics, everything exists in a quantum-soup or an energy-soup. In this soup everything is actually waves of energy – parcels of information that we see as objects, NOT because they are objects, but because they are waves moving slow enough for our eyes to imagine them as objects. In truth, everything is actually wave-particles – everything is energy, moving and flowing and elegantly fluid.
All the spiritual traditions have their own way of describing and teaching about this energy, its role in the universe, its source and destiny; it purpose and usefulness. In the Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions, it was this energy (known in the sacred texts as the breath of God) gives life to humankind – in fact it gives more than simply life, it gives humankind a share in the very spirit of God. Humans are carriers of the divine breath – within each person there is a piece of the original flame!
In African philosophy, teachers have sought to convey the notion of ubuntu – which suggests that things only have meaning, purpose, reality, because they are in relation to other things. And so they teach that a person is a person because of other people. What this means is that we don’t live in isolation. No one does. Moreover, not only DON’T we live in isolation of others, but actually, we CAN’T! We live, as was suggested earlier, in a quantum or energy soup – fundamentally connected, interdependent, united through the air we breathe, by the blood that flows in our veins, by the very genes that make us human, by the same one spirit or energy that animates us and gives us life. All is One – say the theologians. All is Energy, say the scientists. All are Family, say the anthropologists.
If this is so – why all the sickness, the division, the wars, the violence, the loneliness, the breakdowns, the isolation, the seeming alienation and separation? Something doesn’t add up. Somehow, while our interconnectedness – this ubuntu – the energy-soup in which we live – while it IS the truth, the way it is designed, we don’t seem to live in that reality. Somehow, we occupy another reality – a paradigm in which the energy is blocked and in which we fight, we kill, we rape and pillage each other and the earth. And in this paradigm or reality, we disrupt the flows of energy – personal and collective and cosmic.
And this disruption of energy shows up – in us as individuals (as neurosis, as selfishness, as disease), in us as community (as poverty, as terror, as greed) and on the face of our Mother, the earth (as global warming, as environmental degradation, as pollution).
So, clearly we need to free the energy at every level – personally, collectively and universally. It isn’t an impossibility either. There is another way – a way in which the energy is free to be what it is – the essential life force of all things – animating us, enabling us to become who we truly are – individually, collectively and cosmically.
And it begins with me.
Creating Possibilities
We can be creative in so many ways. Artistically, vocationally, spiritually, physically, materially and mentally to name a few. But usually something blocks the creativity; defenses like logic, pain, fear and other left brain tactics strive to prevent us from writing the content of our own lives. We hide behind the fact that we are who we are, and create our own barriers to block the possibilities going forward.
Theory W gives us the language and tools to confront our own limitations, and free our energy to allow us to make a declaration to become consciously involved in re-writing our futures. We create possibilities by making a declaration to matter. So our definition of creativity is “Creativity is the self expression of a person who has made a declaration to matter”. This sets us apart from the notion that creativity is a talent. For example, we don’t succeed in business because we have a talent for business, we succeed because or our committment and determination to achieve a goal. So, making a declaration rather than a hope or wish is a turning point to creating possibilities.
But so often we have creative ideas and goals but can’t get past the idea stage. Making these possibilities happen is Innovation, which by definition is the application of creativity. Theory W provides the route map for creating possibilities and the sustainable application thereof.
Theory W 
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