Here is the latest evolution of my thinking: a talk that I gave at the Saturday night program at the temple last night. I didn’t have time to structure it, so it’s a little loose. The presentation doesn’t have much preparation, but the content basically represents the realization that is the outcome of my activities so far.

Download Spiritual Family (mp3, 14MB)

Here is the first in our four week series on “The One Thing You Need to Know” - a powerful principle that enables you to deal with any situation with competence and confidence.

Now before I give you the link, I have to say this: I did not know that we would be moving on a new facility right now. I had planned to put all my energy into preparing for this series. I had meetings scheduled with other preachers to discuss the subject matter and do team preparation. Instead all those plans were thrown into disarray, and I spent the week trying to land the new digs.

So I didn’t actually get any time to do any preparation. I worked six days last week, and on my morning off (Sunday) I did the handout - an important communication to allay certain concerns that people had about the move.

So my preparation consisted, literally, of sitting down at the front of the Sunday feast at 3.30 pm on Sunday and hammering out some slides on Bhakticandrika’s computer to try to get a structure together, and then praying to Krishna.

I wanted so much to take shelter of sleep. I just wanted to go to sleep right there and then, and then just get up early the next day for a fresh start chanting the maha-mantra. But of course I couldn’t, so I had no choice but to surrender.

I stood up with absolutely no opening, a bare minimum of a structure, and no illustrations for my points. You can hear me riff off Vraja’s introduction as my opening, and then tell people they are not the body.

Anyway, because Krishna is God, I did my duty and He contributed something of value. If I could do that again I would like to have a story that runs through it, illustrating the points. I didn’t have time to find one. No time to think. Anyway, Krishna preserves what we have, and carries what we lack.

Here it is:

The One Thing You Need to Know 1 (16MB .mp3)
Slideset (including opening bhajans) (3.3MB .ppt)
Sunday Feast Handout (768k, .pdf)

Here are some slide presentations. I made and delivered these slide presentations with OpenOffice.org, a free open source office suite for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Download a free copy now and liberate yourself from Microsoft’s tyranny.

The first one is the presentation that I used to pitch the new facility. I made it on Sunday morning, and gave it for the first time Sunday evening. I then gave it to everyone I met for the next few days.

New Facility Presentation
Slides for OpenOffice.org (20 MB)
Slides for Powerpoint (20 MB)

The second one is the blatant recruiting pitch that I delivered thinly disguised as a report on our activities in Brisbane, at the recent retreat in Taupo, New Zealand 253 slides in under 20 minutes. I’d just put the finishing touches on the presentation the night before so I flubbed it a bit at the end (most people probably wouldn’t notice), but otherwise it went quite well.

Sita-pati’s Report on Preaching in Brisbane
Slides for Powerpoint (92 MB)
Slides for OpenOffice.org (92 MB)
Audio Recording in Ogg Vorbis (10 MB)
Audio Recording in mp3 (10 MB)

I was going to make it into a movie that can play automatically, such as a compressed flash movie, but I haven’t got the skillz or the time. If someone else could do that, that would r0ck! The purpose of this presentation was to inform, entertain, and inspire, as well as allowing me to showcase some of the techniques of slide presentation that we have picked up over 2005.

Sukanthi Radha, our resident photographer, gave a slide presentation this morning at Red Hill and it rocked. She is going to work on it a little more, and then deliver it at the Sunday Feast. After that I’ll put it up along with the recorded audio. Seriously - it’s way better than any of mine so far.

Yesterday my spiritual master, His Holiness Devamrita Swami dropped over for lunch. We invited a few people around, and Maharaja talked for about half an hour, casting vision about urban missionary preaching. I recorded it using the WCE6T microphone, both to get a good recording, and also to allow Gurudeva to get used to it before the Sunday Feast program today.

Here’s the recording:

Lunch time talk at Red Hill by H.H. Devamrita Swami

This Sunday we started our new series: Live to SERVE.

We’ve changed the format slightly. The opening kirtan was not getting much traction, so we’ve made it into a bhajan performance section. A lot of the people who come at 5pm are first time guests, and asking them to sing as soon as the walk in the door puts them on the spot a bit. When you are relying on them to sing and they don’t it puts you on the spot, and generally everyone feels a little uncomfortable. People are familiar with the “performance” format, and it allows them to relax.

The words are projected on the screen and different singers lead. Surprisingly we’ve found that this has actually increased people’s participation in the kirtan at the beginning.

The translation for the bhajans is in the handout that we debuted this week. Check it out here (.pdf, 184kb).

I gave the class “Service brings Significance“.

(.mp3, 16MB, 56kbps, mono)

It was the fifth time I delivered the class - the other four times were at the ashram. The development cycle was close to two weeks. Each time I gave the class we would sit around and discuss it, analyzing the different aspects. I recorded it each time and listened to it at least two times before giving it again.

The class weighed in at 40 minutes. I think that the next one I give will be 30 minutes. From the feedback I got from people the regulars were happy and would have been happy to get even more content, but I sensed the new guests wearing out.

This series is pitched squarely at our existing crowd, so it’s not intended so much for a first-time crowd. At the same time, we have to strike a balance. What I call the “logical chain”, the number of steps from the beginning of the argument to the conclusion was a little too long for a number of people. This can happen when their mind becomes overwhelmed with too many details, too much new information, or too many unfamiliar terms. People who are familiar with the philosophy could follow, and enjoyed it. For people without as much intellectual power or disadvantaged due to unfamiliarity, the class would have seemed like a collection of unrelated, random things, rather than a structured presentation. Intoxication, illicit sex life, meat eating, lack of austerity, and an unregulated lifestyle all conspire to destroy your intelligence as well.

Wherever I go I have people telling me: “People in this country are not intellectual. They don’t read, they don’t get into philosophy - they just like to chant and dance.”

Let me tell you something - 90% of the people in the world are like that. There is nothing wrong with pitching your presentation at the other 10%. Those are the people who are going to help you to make a massive prasadam distribution program for the other 90%. But if you don’t have some of those people on your team, and you just try to pitch to the 90% your movement will die out pretty quick due to lack of leadership.

Afterwards we discussed the class. I got some good feedback from Dhruva prabhu. Too many personal stories in one class. The logical chain was too long for a lot of people. Some people were really into it, however it left a lot of people behind. That’s ok, but I wasn’t expecting that, even after giving it four times with feedback each time and trying to find its weaknesses.

One thing is that as the test audience at the ashram are all experienced devotees they can’t see the class as first time guests will see it. They accept a lot of things whereas the mind of the first time listener is critically examining everything, which wears them out fast. Also, a pure lifestyle and study of scripture increases your intelligence. The other thing is that after hearing it three or four times you become blithely unaware of the impact on a first time listener.

Anyway, it was a ranging shot for calibration. Teach less for more. Teach less material for more comprehension. Teach less action points for more action.

Here is the class from Thursday morning. At the moment we are doing Text 4 of the Nectar of Instruction. Channell talked about “checking into the hospital” and taking off the bandaids that people are using as stop-gap solutions to the deep problems in society and in their lives, and entering the “school of love” to learn to love one another and to love Krishna.

Afterward we discussed the relationship between service to Krishna and love of God, and service to and love for others. Click the logo to get the goods.

(.mp3, 32kbps, 22 mins, 5MB)

It was the third and final part in the three part series that we did on “What is Krishna Consciousness?”. This final part was entitled “Your Unique Significant Contribution”.

The first part was an informative class entitled “Your Spiritual Nature”. The second part was an entertaining program entitled “Hare Krishna Network”, where we talked about our relationship with Krishna, and the third part was a persuasive presentation.

(If you read my comic book you’ll see that messages have one of four primary goals: inspirational, informative, entertaining, persuasive)

I did the whole thing standing up, as much by accident as by design. When we set up the space I simply forgot to set up a chair. When it came time for me to deliver, I realized that there was no chair, but it would have looked really dumb to put one out. We have to get a good chair.

For that space, the best kind of chair is one is a stool where you are at roughly at standing height when you sit on it. This means that everyone can see you, instead of peering around people to stare at the back of someone’s else head in front of them.

I didn’t have much time to prepare my message, but I spoke from my passion so I covered it, although not to my satisfaction. We’ll repeat this program every six weeks or two months, and I’ll have time to prepare for the next one. This is the vision cast for the Sunday Feast. When you come to the Sunday Feast, you are coming in contact with a group of people who are on a mission.

Our mission is to apply our skills, abilities and talents at the point of greatest need - providing spiritual nourishment for a starving world. We’ll get behind anyone and build them up, give them opportunities to express and develop themselves in line with that mission.

I interspersed my presentation with three pre-recorded “testimonials” of Sunday Feast volunteers. At the next one we will have more elaborate videos showing our teams of volunteers at work in different aspects of the program. For this one we simply had a monologue from each volunteer.

You can check out a couple of the videos here:

Alison (.wmv, 32MB)
Channell (.wmv, 23MB)

and you can listen to my presentation (including the audio of the testimonials) here: (.mp3, 28MB).

We videoed the whole thing, and an online version of the video will be available next week.

In the past week we have received a donation for a screen for the projector and have added a sax player to the kirtan at the end.

People give to vision, moreso than to need.

This is Vrajadhama das giving class on Bhagavad-gita 9.27 at the Red Hill ashram.

I also have a recording of Param Satya giving class on this verse, which I’ll post tomorrow.

Tomorrow we change to Bhagavad-gita 4.33. Everyone gives class on it in alphabetical order, then we go on to the next verse linked with the values in our ashram mission statement. Alison is first.

We’re in the new ashram in Red Hill now, cleaning like mad. Oh yes, there is a lot of cleaning to be done.

The process of changing house is pretty traumatic - a slight glimpse of the process of changing bodies. It’s very disturbing.

Here is an mp3 (26MB, 37 minutes) of the first Bhagavatam class at the new ashram, from yesterday morning. We are in the Seventh Canto, but the Bhagavatam was packed up, so Alison brought out the First Canto Part Three, which is what she is reading, and I chose a verse at random, from Dhrtarastra Quits Home SB. 1.13.54.

There is no scriptural context component in the class (that’s the part where you talk about the verse in the context that it appears in the Bhagavatam) for that reason, and also because what I really wanted to do was put our current situation in context.

Otherwise if I had been able to prepare more for the class, knowing which verse it would be etc., I would have included this. It would have fit nicely, Dhrtarastra’s preparing himself for the transition of death and our shifting ashram viewed as training in remaining committed to devotional service in trying times.

The class segues into an operational briefing. We usually have one operational briefing a week where we cover Ashram, Loft, Sunday Feast, Volunteer Program, as well as a more strategic meeting where we discuss vision and direction. In the past month we haven’t been able to have either or any of these, and we have been working in urgent mode, meeting as and when we are able to all get together to synchronize.

Reflections on the class

I’ve been listening to this class since yesterday, and analyzing it. It’s completely improvised, and it shows. At the beginning I am saying that “non-devotees experience no satisfaction”. Later on I explain that they do experience some type of satisfaction, but it is very meagre and temporary. You can hear how I develop the theme as I am going.

Of course, my audience is on my side in this case, but in future:

• It should be “Krishna Conscious persons” instead of “devotees”
• It should be clear from the beginning that everyone experiences some taste, but that the taste that persons who are lacking Krishna Conscious direction in their lives experience is of a relatively inferior nature.
• “Many people” is far and away preferable to “most people”, which is too generalized.

Those are the three main things that I am taking away from this one, as well as working on my pronunciation of “can” - the word is not “kin”.

If you are interested in getting some insight on successful contemporary urban preaching, here is a good conceptual orientation: a class given by His Holiness Devamrita Swami in Swansea, Wales, entitled The Organization.

Great pull quote: “There’s no harm in taking people’s conditioning into account when presenting Krishna Consciousness to them.”

Props to Candidasa for hosting this one.

I haven’t given class outside for the past couple of months. I have been working on a handful of classes that will be “the classes that I give”. I will only give these classes, and will work on perfecting them. By refining the content and giving the same class over and over again my idea is to perfect the delivery. By recording them each time I can critically analyze and improve it.

I gave the first one at the Sunday feast this past week. This one is “Passion, Purpose and Potential” (mp3: 21 mins, 15MB). It requires some further work on structure, and of course the delivery also.

This recording doesn’t have the questions and answers section. There was one challenge. I had prepared for two different styles of challenge, one on the basis of content, one on the basis of presentation. It was a content challenge, and I deflected it. Before giving the class I prayed in the Loft, invoking the mercy of my spiritual master:

“My Lord, please guide my hand, and guide this message to the hearts of those who need to hear it, in such a way that they are driven to action.”

I simply told the person: “I cannot give a presentation that will satisfy everybody. I have prayed that this message be guided to the hearts of those who need it. Therefore let me simply repeat what Jesus said in his preaching: ‘Let those who have ears, hear’.”

His charge was that I “had things backwards”. I simply repeated what Krishna said in Bhagavad-gita, using language that connects it with contemporary concerns. He didn’t have audience support. In fact one other person in the audience challenged him: “What do you do for a job?”

I was once challenged after giving a Sunday feast class with: “Your class sounds very egotistical. Can you tell us something about Krishna - you know, the little blue guy?” This is a presentation challenge. I have another reply to this one, but was not called upon to use it this time:

“I have a simple formula that I follow in order to keep focused on what is productive, and it is like this:

If you have a success story to share, then by all means tell it.
If not, and you know what to do, then earn some credibility - go out and do it.
If not, but you know someone who does, then follow them.
If none of the above, then whatever you do, don’t waste time fruitlessly criticizing others!”

As far as I am concerned, I am not interested in talking about “little blue guys” at the Sunday feast. If someone else wants to do that, all glories to them. Srila Vyasadeva and Sukadeva Goswami are also represented as being blue in traditional paintings. Blue paint is used to indicated an exalted personality, because previously blue paint was made from very rare and expensive ingredients. Krishna’s bodily hue is shyama - blackish - according to scriptural descriptions. Black like the rain clouds over Brisbane today.

Actually, that could be a good class. Why have people considered these personalities so exalted throughout history - for no reason? Or is it something that we should sit up and take notice of?

Anyway, the classes I have been working on are:

“Two Paths to Failure”
“The Power of Alignment”
“Passion, Purpose and Potential”
“The Will of the Lord”

OK, here is some goodness from John C. Maxwell. You can listen to the mp3 (52MB) here. This is a lesson from John C. Maxwell’s Maximum Impact club. Information on joining this club is available here. In the audio recording it makes specific mention that if you have borrowed the recording from someone else you can subscribe to the Maximum Impact club and receive these teachings each month.

Basically it is like this:

There are four core Leadership Aptitudes that represent different combinations of abilities. I believe that it is not possible for any one person to have all four without being clinically schizophrenic. They represent different areas of strength, which are in some cases mutually contradictory.

Effective leadership means having a leadership team that has the right mix of aptitudes. Too few and there will be missing elements in the leadership. Too many of one aptitude and there will be dysfunction of the organization, or of the leadership team itself. Wrong mixes may manifest as a harmonious but ineffective leadership team or a volatile leadership team that in characterized by internal strife.

Leaders will have a strong suit and a secondary strength. Very rarely a leader will be strong in three, and never in four. In their strong suit a leader has corresponding weaknesses, which represent the complements to the developed aspects that give rise to their leadership ability.

Maxwell’s advice is not to waste energy trying to develop your weaknesses. If you are 2 in one aptitude it is a waste of effort investing to become a 4 in that suit. You’re still sub-par. It would be better to increase your strong suit from a 7 to a 9, and team with someone else whose strength lies in your weak area.

Often leaders surround themselves with leaders of the same aptitude. For three reasons:

1. Leaders attract other people like themselves
2. Insecurity - diversity threatens us
3. Humanness - similar voices reinforce our sense of self worth

There is a productive tension when a leadership consists of all four aptitudes:

1. They see the issues differently
2. They approach the issues differently

Start building your leadership team today:

1. Know what you need
2. Train who you have
3. Start relating before recruiting
4. Always have room at the top
5. Value the different aptitudes
6. Teach your team to value the different aptitudes
7. Demonstrate the value of the different aptitudes
8. Lead according to the different aptitudes

Here are the four leadership aptitudes, with a brief description of each, their characteristics and their weaknesses. As an exercise, if you want to evaluate your own leadership aptitude, score one point for each characteristic that corresponds to a significant strength in your leadership character.

Directing leader

Loves to direct.

10 Characteristics

1. Casts a compelling vision
2. Does not spend time or energy in the details of the process
3. High motivational capacity
4. Effective speakers
5. Good listeners
6. Make people feel important
7. Intuitive decision makers
8. Air of confidence
9. Make tough calls
10. Seldom compromise

Weaknesses

1. Disinterest in the minutiae of the process
2. Little patience in discussion about detail
3. Great with large groups but not especially warm with individuals
4. Restless
5. Have short attention span
6. Favour action over reflection
7. May ignore financial limitations and realities
8. Have a high interest in making good things happen now

Strategic Leader

Leads out of a strategic strength. Loves the intellectual challenge of understanding and planning

Characteristics

1. Analyst of reality
2. Create practical ways of converting vision into action
3. View emotions and sensitivity as detrimental to the cause
4. Do not hesitate to ask the hard questions
5. Do not mind creating controversy
6. Content to remain in the background
7. More loyal to the vision than to the people
8. Take great pride in being knowledgable in their area of focus

Weaknesses

1. Useful but generally not popular
2. Usually portrayed as insensitive and robotic
3. Usually happier working with ideas than people
4. Often take a long time to arrive at decisions
5. Lean toward perfectionism

Team Building Leader

People People. Love team building

Characteristics

1. Enjoy organising people around a common cause
2. Rely heavily on their relational network
3. Charismatic
4. Generate high morale
5. Place high value on people
6. Ability to interact with a high variety of people
7. Receives loyalty and respect from the team

Weaknesses

1. Hate paperwork
2. Waffle on detail
3. Tendency to ignore agendas, action plans, and budgets
4. Allow relationships to hinder progress
5. Get hurt by people

Operational Leader

Characteristics

1. Provide stability to the organisation
2. Devise systems to make things run smoothly
3. They act as a hub through which people go in the organization
4. Often reports bad news, but is seldom responsible
5. Create new solutions to old problems
6. Often complement the other three aptitudes

Weaknesses

1. Easily slips from leader to manager
2. Dislike conflict
3. Fail to see the big picture
4. Lack motivational skills
5. Can be viewed as a hindrance to progress
6. Often lack the influence of the other three aptitudes