Rafia Morgan

relaxed confidence

In this episode of the Received Wisdom series, I will say a few words about Rafia Morgan.

I met Rafia through the Path of Love, which is a group process which he founded along with Turiya Hanover. And for me, this pair –  Rafia and Turiya – really exemplify group leaders. The Path of Love is an exceptional group process, and I've written about it on the website. You'll find a page there if you want more information. What I really want to talk about here is group processes in general and also the role of group leaders, and acknowledge what they've given me in my own growth.

For me, the spiritual journey is an intensely personal one. It's very individual. And as part of that individual journey, I encourage everyone to spend a lot of time alone, not just copying someone else's path, but finding their own way.

However, part of this journey is also to do with exploring what it means to be human. And that involves delving into our own emotions, the dark shadow side of our psychology, everything that is within us. And for this sort of exploration, we need to be interacting with other people.

Of course, in principle, we could do it in ordinary life, watching our own behaviour and reactions when we interact with other people. However, it's almost impossible to do this work in that way because we have blind spots. The shadow is mostly unconscious. We have huge parts of our psychology that we're not in touch with, consciously, we're not aware of. And those are the critical parts to uncover with this work, which really is about discovering who we are as a human being.

Now one-to-one sessions where therapists can help a lot, as long as we trust the therapist. And if they have good insight into human psychology, it can help. But much better, in a way, is to plunge into group processes. Because the participants in a group are on a level, they are peers. There's a facilitator or group leader, or perhaps several facilitators, who will hold to space and act as a therapist or guide. But it's this peer to peer interaction, that can happen in the group space, that brings the added benefit. There are other benefits, too, of course – the group energy, the resonance between people. But for all these reasons, group processes play an important part of the spiritual journey.

And Rafia Morgan is a quintessential group leader. When he's in that role, he commands a presence. He can hold the space. And the same goes for Turiya and other group leaders. I've picked Rafia more or less at random, because in a way he exemplifies the alpha male in a healthy way, at least by and large. And we certainly need examples of that. We need some role models.

But there's one particular thing that Rafia said, which really resonated in me. He was talking about the characteristics of a good leader, I think. And he used this expression, relaxed confidence, and that really resonated in me. For me, relaxed confidence is not only an attribute of a good leader, but it also somehow captures the feel of someone who is living in their buddha nature. I've taught elsewhere about how we relax into our buddha nature. It's a relaxed space, and we can only dwell in it if we are relaxed.

And there's a confidence that comes when we've seen the truth about life. It's not a pushy, assertive, dominating confidence. And it might be more accurate to say it's the absence of that self doubt. A lack of confidence is really a self doubt, and when that self doubt has disappeared, we are naturally in a confident state. It's a relaxed confidence, as Rafia says. It's not tense, it's not needing to prove anything. It's not needing to dominate. It's simply a state where we are not consumed with doubt.

So I thank Rafia for that expression, relaxed confidence.