Recently, Michael Basil and I presented at ZLOTC (Zen Leader Off the Cushion), hosted by the Institute for Zen Leadership. Our topic: Meta Energy, Elemental [FEBI(https://zenleader.global/resources/febi-assessment), and the *Essential Flip — From Controlling to Connecting.
We had fun, yes—but the true lesson revealed itself only afterward. The ZLOTC community learned from us, but I found myself being flipped in return.
The first Flip was From Reaction to Reflection. This one came not from Zen, but from our own. Jeremy McMillian—Aikido black belt, Site Reliability Engineer, and wise hermit-sage—once told me:
“If you’re stuck with something in Zen, sit with it until it makes sense, instead of reacting.”
That advice prepared me for ZLOTC’s deliberate pace—so different from the rapid, technical rhythm of Cloud Security Office Hours—yet also soothing. It echoed Ginny Whitelaw’s Flip From Driving Results to Attracting the Future—a shift from pushing to opening space where resonance can form. As Resonate notes, the first step toward flow is clearing interference—quieting enough to hear what wants to move through you.
The second Flip, From Let Go to Allow, came from Paul in ZLOTC. He shared that in meditation, “letting go” felt binary—either holding or not holding. But allowing was a gradient, a continuum of release, like breath deepening without command. This mirrors the Flip From Tension to Extension in The Zen Leader: when energy aligns through openness, control dissolves into flow. Allowing is how resonance sustains itself—movement without forcing.
The third Flip, From Me to We, came from Maureen in ZLOTC. She spoke of breaking silos in healthcare, where specialization divides people like languages that cannot translate. In that, I saw Agile and DevOps—different fields, same spirit—moving from isolated mastery to collective flow. It was the Flip From Local Self to Whole Self: seeing through separation into the system’s wholeness. As Resonate describes, when individual energy attunes with others, a shared resonance emerges—the sound of many frequencies becoming one.
These three Flips—Reflection, Allowing, and We—from what Michael Basil calls a MetaShift: the shift from Self in control to Self in connection. In Resonate, Ginny Whitelaw names this state Two Sides—where doing and being, sound and silence, leader and led, move as one dynamic flow.
Koichi Tohei expressed this same truth through Ki: “Be both pupil and instructor.” When we reflect, we align our inner energy. When we allow, we sustain its flow. When we connect, we extend that harmony outward—toward others, toward the Universal.
So perhaps the truest Flip I learned at ZLOTC was this:
From Teaching to Learning — From Circle to Spiral.
And in that spiral, control dissolves into resonance. Teacher and student, Self and Other, individual and Universal—each are two sides of the same flow.
⛩️🖥️
