Dispatch #2: The Vajra Cut
Trying to force innovation inside your organisation often means dragging peers who just want to stick to the script and be in their comfort zones. Releasing them isn't a failure of leadership. It’s a sovereign cut that frees vital energy to attract those ready to work.
The Field Note: I recently came out of a meeting with two close colleagues. We had spent years trying to evolve our capacity to regenerate living systems, even spending three years studying regenerative business development together. I desperately wanted our starving organization to become commercially viable. But as we talked, a hard truth finally surfaced: we were on completely different paths. They were drawn to community projects; I was focused on market value.
For a long time, I had been dragging them onto my specific bus, trying to drive them to a destination they hadn’t actually chosen . I felt like a failure for letting go—we even had a hundred books sitting in a warehouse in Rosebank, waiting for this grand vision to launch. But I finally wrote the email and executed the cut . I told them our paths had diverged.
To my surprise, there was no fight. They simply waved goodbye. In releasing them, the heavy, blocked energy instantly dissipated.
The Illuminating Spark: As I felt the relief of that release, I immediately thought of the internal innovators trying to drive change inside legacy organisations.
If you are trying to shift a corporate culture, you likely spend massive amounts of energy trying to get your peers "on board" with your vision. When you are met with a lack of will, or when your colleagues prioritize their comfortable routines over the mission, you probably feel like you are failing as a leader.
To understand why this is so exhausting, we can look through the lens of The Six Inner Obstacles to a Regenerative Life.
When we try to force internal innovation, we often fall victim to the obstacle of Attachment to an Ideal. We grip tightly to a specific picture of how our team should operate and how we are going to "save the system." This attachment breeds an arrogant assumption that our path is the only right path for our colleagues.
But pushing people toward an ideal they don't naturally gravitate towards doesn't create change; it just creates passengers. You end up exhausting your own vitality acting as a chauffeur for people who never actually wanted to take the trip .
Releasing your peers is not an act of cruelty or a failure of leadership. It is a sovereign act of respecting their right to travel at their own speed, on their own path. When you drop the heavy grip of your ideal, you free up the exact energy required to connect with the living current of your actual work. You stop managing resistance and start attracting the rare, resonant beings who are actually ready to build with you.
A question to reflect on that will help you see what I mean:
As you look at the internal projects you are driving, who are you currently dragging on your bus? If you dropped your attachment to an idealized team and gave your unaligned peers permission to step off, what new, vital energy would you suddenly have available to realize your true potential?
from a fellow insurgent, Ākāśaḍāka (AK)
