1

© 2

007

Dr.

Tony

Ale

ssan

dra,

All

Righ

ts R

eser

ved

in A

ll M

ediatony alessandra

Genius ofMind,Body,& SpiriteBook

geniusseries

2

© 2

007

Dr.

Tony

Ale

ssan

dra,

All

Righ

ts R

eser

ved

in A

ll M

edia

In this eBook, I will ask you to take a step back from your daily routine and contemplate the state and well-being of your mind, your body, and your spirit. Are you a genius in these realms? I bet you’re a lot closer to being a genius of mind, body, and spirit than you ever thought—and if you’re not, this eBook will help get you there.

First, we will explore the realm of philosophical genius, using legendary Helen Keller and historic Socrates to help us open our minds. The hardships Keller over-came and the tough questions Socrates asked will en-courage you to do the same. Then, we will transition to the topic of physical genius, and see how Wayne Gretzky was not only a genius in physical attributes, but he was an equally great—if not greater—sports-man throughout his prolific career. Finally we will compare and contrast the two spiritual geniuses Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mother Teresa, and see how their personal sacrifices for the greater good will help you set spiritual goals in your own life. As you read this eBook, I encourage you to take the time to reflect on your own mind, body, and spirit not only as they are now, but how they could be in the future if you take these lessons to heart.

Philosophical Genius

The word philosophy literally means love of knowl-edge. This root has given rise to some of philosophy’s most basic questions, including what do we know?—what can we know?—and why is it even important to know anything? Although it may seem an unlikely choice for a philosophical genius, our model in this section will be Helen Keller. She was a woman who from childhood was deaf, blind, and mute but rede-fined our concepts of what a human being can learn, teach, and achieve.

The philosophy that Helen Keller evolved for herself wasn’t just an academic or intellectual way of look-ing at the world. It was a practical roadmap and plan for making the most of everything she had to work with—which was much less than has been given to most of us. When you see how Helen did this—and what it meant for her and for the people around her—I know you’ll be inspired to set your sights much higher in every area of your life. You’ll also gain some very practical ideas for setting important personal goals and turning them into reality, regardless of where you’re starting from, or how far it seems like you have to go.

In order to get the most out of this section, you’ll need to put yourself in the place of someone who experi-enced the world in a very different way. On the face of it, you might think that Helen Keller’s experience was very limited—and at the beginning, it almost certainly was limited. But slowly and painfully she developed hidden strengths that compensated for her obvious weaknesses. Try to imagine what this must have been like. Using your imagination in that way is a kind of em-pathy, and it’s a very philosophical concept. The root of the word empathy is PATHOS, the Greek word for feeling. SYMpathy means acknowledging the feelings of someone else, as in “I sympathize with you.” Em-pathy is a term for a deeper feeling. It means, “I feel what you feel. I can put myself in your shoes.” Sym-pathy results in kindness and sometimes pity. Empa-thy results in actually feeling the pain, or the joy, of the other person.

Empathy is a form of genius in its own right. There are great practitioners of empathy, as well as great teachers—and all teachers of empathy for others start with the same point: You cannot truly feel the pain or the joy or the emotion of another until and unless you’re able to feel the same thing in yourself. Do you acknowledge your own pain? Can you feel your own joy? Real empathy lies in simply finding the same place within yourself that the other person is experi-encing. You might not have had exactly the same ex-perience but you’ve known the sadness of loss or the anger of feeling cheated, or the sense of righteousness

Genius of Mind, Body, & Spirit

eBook

3

© 2

007

Dr.

Tony

Ale

ssan

dra,

All

Righ

ts R

eser

ved

in A

ll M

ediaat injustice. Some of us don’t take the time to feel our

own feelings, so when someone else expresses a feel-ing, we don’t have much to refer to. Sometimes we can share a deep feeling vicariously through reading a great novel or seeing a powerful movie. Those kinds of artistic experiences can be genuine opportunities for growth. But if you’re on a steady diet of action movies, they don’t usually dwell on individual feel-ings. You might want to take the time to broaden your reading and viewing habits.

Women have probably always understood the im-portance of this. And now men are being encouraged to express and share their feelings more these days through the efforts of the poet Robert Bly and others. And not just soft, vulnerable feelings, but feelings of anger and frustration as well. You might be concerned that expressing a caring approach toward another per-son will result in the other person manipulating you. This isn’t about abdicating your own needs or point of view. It simply means that you’re able to step into the shoes of another and acknowledge his or her feelings. Having that ability is an asset. You can always wear your own shoes, and you do most of the time.

* * *As a first step toward understanding philosophical ge-nius and what it can mean for you, we’ll need to go back to the foundations of philosophy and the effects it can have on people’s lives. More than anyone else, one historical personality represents the basis of phi-losophy in the Western world, and that is the Athenian Greek philosopher Socrates, who lived in the fifth century BC.

Not much is known about Socrates’ early life, but he seems to have been quite an interesting fellow—in-teresting, but not exactly likable to the majority of people. He enjoyed calling people’s ideas into ques-tion. He enjoyed poking holes in their assumptions. He liked to make waves—and in the end he paid for it with his life.

After Socrates served in the war between Athens and the rival city-state of Sparta, he worked as a stonema-son. He had also inherited a modest fortune from his

father, from which he gained freedom to wander the city getting into discussions and arguments.

One of the formative events in Socrates’ life as a phi-losopher was his visit to the sacred oracle at the city of Delphi. The oracle was actually a priestess of the god Apollo. For a slight fee, the oracle would give advice and answer questions on any topic or problem. The only trouble was, like most fortune tellers, the oracle would never give a straight yes or no answer. Often the questioner was more confused after consulting with the oracle than before, because of the riddles that the oracle passed off as answers.

In any case, there came a day when Socrates visited the oracle at Delphi. Maybe he paused a moment to look up at the motto that was carved above the door of the oracle’s temple: It read, “Know thyself.” This was certainly the basis of Socrates’ philosophy—and it may even have been the basis of the question that he addressed to the oracle that day. Maybe he said some-thing like, “I want to know myself—but who am I, anyway?”

The exact question that Socrates put to the oracle is not known, but the oracle’s answer to him is very fa-mous. Socrates himself was very shocked to hear it -- because the oracle told him, “You are the wisest man in Athens.”

Socrates’ reaction to this is very interesting, and it was really the basis of his method as a philosopher. When the oracle told him he was the wisest man in Athens, Socrates simply didn’t believe it. Not only was he in disbelief about being the wisest man, but he didn’t even really believe he knew anything. He saw himself as a kind of blank slate, someone who had a lot of questions, but no real answers.

On the other hand, the oracle was the oracle. This was a god speaking, and when it said something—especially when it said something that seemed fairly straightforward for once—some attention should be paid. So Socrates decided to take action. He thought about the oracle’s pronouncement in a logical way. He realized that if he wasn’t the wisest man, it must be because there were wiser men than him. So he started

4

© 2

007

Dr.

Tony

Ale

ssan

dra,

All

Righ

ts R

eser

ved

in A

ll M

ediathinking of who some of these people might be, and

he started dropping in on some of them and getting into some thought-provoking discussions.

On one occasion, for example, Socrates was talk-ing with a very important and successful citizen of Athens, a man renowned for his good deeds and his responsible behavior in all areas of life. So Socrates said to him, “I’m trying to understand what it really means to be a good person, and I thought you might be able to help me out. Do you by any chance consider yourself a good person?” And the man said, “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.” So Socrates said, “Well, why exactly do you think that? What is it that makes you a good person?”

At this point, the man hesitated for a second because he wasn’t really used to answering these very direct questions about his virtue. So he thought for a minute, and then he said, “Well, I served in the army, and I pay my taxes.”

When Socrates heard this, he was completely stunned. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. This man was saying that he was a good person because he had been in the army and he paid his taxes—and this guy was supposed to be one of the most accomplished citi-zens of Athens. His heart could be filled with hatred, he could be sneaking around at night setting fires or looking into people’s windows—yet he said he was a good person because he was in the army and he paid his taxes. Obviously this was someone who hadn’t given much thought to the meaning of good, or maybe even to the meaning of person. But he seemed quite confident in what he said. He gave the impression that he knew what he was talking about. Yet it was clear to Socrates that he didn’t know anything. Even more importantly, he didn’t know that he didn’t know.

This was the kind of experience that Socrates had again and again as he talked to people about impor-tant questions and ideas. Again and again he found that supposedly smart people were actually quite ig-norant—and they were ignorant without even realiz-ing it. And gradually, as if by default, Socrates began to wonder if maybe he really was the wisest man in Athens after all. Not because he had a lot of wisdom,

which he didn’t, but because he was at least aware of his ignorance.

There’s a lot more to say about Socrates, but his meth-od was always to question people’s assumptions and to reveal the sacred cows in their thinking. He kept this up to the point that he was viewed as a threat by the rulers of the city of Athens. Eventually he was brought to trial on some trumped up charges, and was sentenced to death. Socrates accepted this judgment with complete calm. After all, the rulers were just doing what they usually did, just like he was. As it was written at the temple of Delphi, Socrates knew himself—even if nobody else could honestly say the same.

Before we go any further in this discussion of philo-sophical genius, let me play the role of Socrates with you for a moment. Or first, let me play the role of the Delphic oracle. Suppose I was to tell you that you have much, much greater capabilities than you think you have. What would be your response? Would it be genuine disbelief, like Socrates? Or would it be de-nial—maybe in order to not get out of your comfort zone? I know the balance of this eBook will help you to move past your assumptions and your inhibitions. When you see what someone like Helen Keller was able to accomplish, maybe you’ll re-think your own limitations. You’ve created them yourself, you know. Or at least that’s what Socrates would tell you.

In a moment, we’ll start learning more about Helen Keller...and I’m confident you’ll also start learning more about yourself....

* * *As with other geniuses we’ve discussed in this pro-gram, there are really two very different ways of talk-ing about Helen Keller and what she achieved. There is what might be called the simple way, which is cer-tainly not without value, and which can be quite inspi-rational and uplifting. There is also the more complex way, which in my opinion can be even more inspiring, although it does call upon us to think of someone like Helen Keller as a complex human being, rather than as a symbol or a heroic icon. She had great successes,

5

© 2

007

Dr.

Tony

Ale

ssan

dra,

All

Righ

ts R

eser

ved

in A

ll M

ediabut she also had some disappointments. She achieved

more than anyone could have imagined, but she didn’t achieve everything she wanted. She never completely conquered the physical handicaps that were imposed upon her, but she did carve out a hugely rewarding life for herself within those boundaries. If she had lived at the time of Socrates, the oracle might have told Helen Keller that she had clearer sight than anyone else in Greece. And as with Socrates, the oracle would have been right, although not in the obvious way.

Helen Keller was born on June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, a small town in northwest Alabama. Her father had served in the Confederate Army. He raised cotton on the family farm and was the editor of a local news-paper. Helen’s mother helped on the farm and saved money by making her own butter, lard, bacon and ham.

When Helen was nineteen months old, she suddenly became very ill. The doctors called it “brain fever.” Actually, it was probably meningitis, and Helen was expected to die. When the fever suddenly subsided her family rejoiced—but it quickly became apparent that Helen’s illness had left her both blind and deaf.

In the next few years, Helen became a very difficult child. She smashed dishes and terrorized the family with her screaming and temper tantrums. Her parents were desperate for help, and they traveled to Balti-more to meet with a specialist in handicapped chil-dren. The doctor confirmed that Helen would never see or hear again. But he believed Helen could still learn to communicate, and he advised them to consult with a local expert. This turned out to be Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone. Bell was now concentrating on what he saw as his true voca-tion, the teaching of deaf children.

It was through Bell that Helen met a young woman from Boston named Anne Sullivan. Anne had lost most of her sight at the age of five. By the age of ten, her mother had died and her father deserted her. Even-tually, she began her education at an institution for the blind, where she also had two operations on her eyes that restored her sight to some extent.

When she met Helen Keller, a deaf-blind mute, Anne Sullivan had no experience in teaching of any kind—but she eagerly accepted the job of caring for Helen. Anne started teaching words to Helen by spell-ing them out with her fingers on the palm of Helen’s hand—first the word “doll,” and then “cake.” And one day, after a month of Anne’s teaching, a kind of mir-acle occurred. Helen had never really understood the meaning of words, but when Anne led her to a water pump on April 5, 1887, that was about to change. As Helen later described it:

“We walked down the path to the well, where Anne placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled the word water into my other hand, first slowly, then faster. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten, a thrill of returning thought, and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me.”

Helen immediately asked Anne to again spell the word “water” into her hand. She asked for it again and again. All the way back to the house she learned the name of everything she touched. Within the next few hours Helen learned the spelling of thirty new words, and Helen’s progress from then on was astonishing. Her ability to learn was far in advance of anything seen before in a person without sight or hearing.

It wasn’t long before Anne was teaching Helen to read, first with raised letters and later with Braille, and to write with both standard and Braille typewrit-ers. Newspapers began to write stories about Helen. She started to become truly famous. There were pho-tographs of her visiting with Alexander Graham Bell, and with President Cleveland at the White House. In the autumn of 1900, Helen entered Radcliff College of Harvard University. She was the first deaf and blind person ever enrolled at an institution of higher learn-ing. While in college, Helen began to write her auto-biography, which was published in 1903; the follow-ing year Helen graduated with honors from Radcliff College.

In a philosophical sense, what does the story of Helen Keller tell us so far? What does it tell us about know-

6

© 2

007

Dr.

Tony

Ale

ssan

dra,

All

Righ

ts R

eser

ved

in A

ll M

ediaing thyself as the basis of wisdom? What can we learn

by not buying into assumptions that seem so obvious and irrefutable? Well, we’ve seen how a person not only overcame the obstacles that were placed in her path, but actually used those obstacles as stepping stones to do things that had never been done before. In the early years of the 20th century, physical handicaps meant that a person would be permanently excluded from most areas of life. That was just the way things were, and for all anybody cared, that was the way they could have stayed. Helen Keller, with the help of Anne Sullivan and others, permanently changed that way of thinking, for herself and for everyone who came after her.

In 1909, Helen became a member of the Socialist Party of Massachusetts. In 1913, Out of the Dark was published. This was a series of essays on socialism and its impact on Helen’s public image was immense. Socialism at that time was a popular but radical view-point, and the idea of a deaf and blind woman espous-ing this cause was pretty extraordinary. Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan filled the following years with lecture tours, speaking of her experiences and beliefs to enthralled crowds. Helen’s talks were interpreted sentence by sentence by Anne, and were followed by question and answer sessions.

Although Helen and Anne made a good living from their lectures, by 1918 the demand for Helen’s lec-tures had diminished and they were touring with a more light-hearted vaudeville show, which demon-strated Helen’s first understanding of the word “wa-ter.” These shows were hugely successful from the very first performance, with Helen answering a wide range of questions on her life and her politics and Anne translating Helen’s answers for the enthralled audience. They were earning up to two thousand dol-lars a week, which today would be almost a million dollars a year.

Over the next four decades, Helen both contributed and collected money to better the living and work-ing conditions of blind people, who up to that time were usually badly educated and living in asylums. Her work has played a major role in changing those conditions. In 1953, a documentary film entitled The

Unconquered was made about Helen’s life, and it won the Academy Award® for best documentary. But Hel-en Keller’s greatest fame began in 1957, when The Miracle Worker was performed. First appearing as a live television drama, the play focused on Anne Sul-livan’s initial success in communicating with Helen as a child. Two years later it opened on Broadway to rave reviews, and in 1962 it was made into a film. The actresses who played Anne and Helen both received Academy Awards® for their performances. In 1964, Helen was awarded the Presidential Medal of Free-dom, the nation’s highest civilian award. She died on June 1, 1968.

All this may seem like the story of someone who to-tally triumphed over adversity, but it isn’t exactly that simple. Helen Keller did achieve great things by re-fusing to accept the assumptions that existed about people in her position—but there were also things that she didn’t achieve, and there were goals that she didn’t reach. For example, one of her lifelong dreams was to speak in a way that could be easily understood by everyone. She never succeeded in doing that de-spite great effort. The tragic thing is, today the tech-nologies exist that could have greatly helped her, and through the attention that Helen brought to deaf and blind people, she herself helped to bring those tech-nologies about.

If I were to isolate one lesson from the life experi-ence of Helen Keller and the philosophy of “knowing thyself” that her life represents, it would be the impor-tance of self-correction—the ability to change course when something difficult and unexpected happens. In Helen’s case, the correction was obviously necessitat-ed from outside. There may be times when this is true in your life also. But for the most part, self-correction is made necessary by our own decisions and actions.

Very simply put, self-correction is continuously eval-uating results and initiating change based on what you learn. Generally speaking, it’s based on negative feed-back. When things are going well, we generally don’t think about changing anything. It’s only when some-thing goes wrong, or we recognize the potential for it going wrong, that we decide to make corrections. This is the phenomenon of negative feedback, feedback

7

© 2

007

Dr.

Tony

Ale

ssan

dra,

All

Righ

ts R

eser

ved

in A

ll M

ediathat’s based on receiving negative information. A very

simple example is the big toe on your right foot. You probably weren’t thinking about it until I mentioned it. If you had stubbed your toe just now, and it was throbbing, you’d be thinking about it and how to take care of it. That’s the principle of negative feedback.

It seems unfortunate but true that we learn mainly by making mistakes. Buckminster Fuller was an archi-tect, inventor and philosopher whose most well-known contribution is the geodesic dome. In the many books he wrote in his later life, one theme was constant. Full-er emphasized over and over that human beings learn only through mistakes. The billions of human beings in history have made quadrillions of mistakes—that’s the only way we’ve arrived at the knowledge that we have. Fuller pointed out that humans might have been so mortified by the number of mistakes we’ve made that we would have become too discouraged to continue with the experiment of life. But fortunately, we have a built-in sense of pride in the fact that we can learn, and we have the gift of memory that allows us to keep somewhat of an inventory on our mistakes. That prevents us from repeating all of them over and over again. When you possess the trait of self-correction, or sometimes it’s called “course-correction,” you’re able to learn from your mistakes. You also get better and better at spotting the need for change before disaster strikes. It’s similar to being able to monitor symptoms of disease in your body before they turn into serious problems.

“I made a mistake.” “I went off on a tangent.” “I got off on the wrong foot.” Those are each ways of acknowl-edging that you tried something that didn’t work out as you planned. If you find that you’re not saying those kinds of things very often or at all, it might mean your versatility is low, or it might mean you’re not trying anything new. As Bucky Fuller says, it’s the reason we were given two feet—to make a mistake first to the left and then to the right and over and over again. It’s only by self-correcting at every step we take that we’re able to walk in a somewhat straight direction.

With the importance of self-correction in mind, let’s close this section on philosophical genius with a very important truth. You could even say it’s a great philo-sophical proposition: “If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always gotten.” And let’s add a corollary to that. If you keep doing what you’ve always done when conditions radi-cally change, you’ll get a lot less than you’ve always gotten. Let the story of Helen Keller be an example of how much you can accomplish when you really see things as they are—not with your eyes, but with all your heart and your soul.

Now let’s shift gears and explore the realms of physi-cal genius.

Physical Genius

In terms of physical genius, there are also two sides to the coin. Many great athletes were not outstanding to start with, and sometimes they were even physical-ly handicapped. The track star Wilma Rudolph, who won three gold medals in the 1960 Olympics, con-tracted pneumonia, scarlet fever, and polio all at the same time when she was four years old. She couldn’t walk normally, let alone run, until she was 11. George Foreman, who twice won the world heavyweight box-ing championship, was embarrassed to take his shirt off as a child because he thought he was too fat. And it’s a well-known fact that Michael Jordan, who led the Chicago Bulls to six NBA championships, was cut from his ninth grade basketball team for lack of abil-ity.

On the other hand, consider Wayne Gretzky, without doubt the greatest hockey player of all time. Some-how, he was both a prodigy and an overlooked physi-cal genius at the same time. When Wayne Gretzky was 6 years old, he was already competing in a junior hockey league for kids twice his age. At the age of 11, he scored 378 goals in 69 games—an average of more than five goals per game.

The first official notice of Wayne Gretzky was an ar-

8

© 2

007

Dr.

Tony

Ale

ssan

dra,

All

Righ

ts R

eser

ved

in A

ll M

ediaticle on youth hockey in a Toronto newspaper, which

ran on October 28, 1971. At that time, Wayne was 10 years old—five feet tall and 70 pounds—and he had already been playing organized hockey for five years. He was described as “a very modest young man who enjoys hockey and doesn’t mind playing every minute of the game if his coach asks him to.”

Other athletes have been better known, more visible, and have had more obvious physical gifts. But no one has put more distance between himself and the com-petition than Wayne Gretzky. At the same time, Wayne Gretzky has managed to avoid the many pitfalls that have always beset great athletes—from ancient Olym-pians to modern professional stars.

When an athlete is the greatest in his field and also retains his reputation and his integrity, his genius has an extra dimension. With the possible exception of Michael Jordan, no athlete in the past 50 years has dominated his sport like Wayne Gretzky, who was al-ways both dominant and exemplary during his career and beyond.

If hockey teams had been selected simply on the ba-sis of size, speed, and strength, Gretzky would never have gotten to play. That would have been a big mis-take because Wayne Gretzky had some skills that were very difficult to measure, but were very important for precisely that reason. He had an uncanny ability to an-ticipate where the puck would go, and when to pass or shoot. Although he wasn’t one of the fastest skaters, he could accelerate suddenly, which gave him decep-tive quickness. After 21 years in the National Hockey League, Wayne Gretzky held 61 league records at the time of his retirement in 1999. These include 24 game-winning goals, 4 goals in a single period, and 5 goals in a single game—a feat that he accomplished four times. He was most valuable player in nine dif-ferent seasons, and was twice most valuable player in the championship playoffs.

Wayne Gretzky was born the oldest of five children in 1961, in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. During the winters, Walter Gretzky, Wayne’s dad, flooded the backyard to create a practice rink, and Wayne started preparing for his career as a hockey player at the age

of 3. From then until he dropped out of high school to turn professional, the backyard rink was Wayne Gretzky’s real home. He skated there literally every free moment, for 12 or 14 hours a day when he wasn’t in school.

The best part of it was this is exactly what Wayne want-ed to do. His father didn’t force him to skate all the time. His father had to force him to stop skating. What does this tell us about genius in general and physical genius in particular? Thomas Edison described genius as one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspira-tion. I’m sure Wayne Gretzky perspired a great deal on that backyard rink, but not because he felt like he was working. On the contrary, this was what he was born to do. It was his calling. His destiny. His dharma, as the Buddhists say.

Maybe that’s why he did it with such style, grace, and class, all the way through. He won almost as many sportsmanship awards as scoring titles. Virtually no one ever had anything bad to say about Wayne Gretz-ky, and he treated others with the same high regard. Consider his relationship with Bruce McNall, the for-mer owner of the Los Angeles Kings who convinced Gretzky to move to California. At that time, Bruce McNall was one of the most interesting people in pro-fessional sports. Wayne Gretzky not only became a member of his hockey team, but also a close friend and business partner. Together they bought the world’s most expensive baseball card, as well as several race horses. But then things took a very bad turn for Bruce McNall. Within a few years, he was convicted of wire fraud and several other charges, and was sentenced to five years in federal prison.

Before McNall was released in 2001, he had been transferred to several different locations in California, Texas, and Michigan. Wherever Bruce McNall was, one person made the trip to visit him, and that was Wayne Gretzky. On one occasion, there was a sudden lockdown in the prison that interrupted the visit. Mc-Nall had to return to his cell for three hours, but when he went back to the visiting room Gretzky was there waiting. It’s not easy to imagine another professional athlete, let alone one at the highest level of stardom, who would sit around a prison waiting for anybody.

9

© 2

007

Dr.

Tony

Ale

ssan

dra,

All

Righ

ts R

eser

ved

in A

ll M

ediaBut this is really an important part of Wayne Gretz-

ky’s genius. Somehow he was able to combine tre-mendous physical ability, and at the same time avoid the arrogance and self-importance that seems to come with it.

In 1994, Wayne Gretzky broke the last important re-cord of his career, when he scored career goal number 802. In the same year, he won his tenth scoring title and the fourth of five sportsmanship awards. In 1996, he played for the St. Louis Blues, and the following year for the New York Rangers. Since his retirement, Gretzky has become part owner of the Phoenix Coy-otes of the National Hockey League, and helped coach the Canadian team for the 2002 Winter Olympics.

If there’s one word that seems to describe the genius of Wayne Gretzky, it would be effortless. This is an illusion, of course, because all those years of skating around the backyard certainly represent effort, even if it was enjoyable. There must also have been some effort involved in waiting three hours in a prison visi-tors’ room. But even if it is an illusion, this appearance of effortlessness makes it even more amazing.

In closing, let me suggest that you use Wayne Gretzky as a model for bringing this element of grace and ef-fortlessness into your life. This should certainly in-clude physical activities, but it’s not limited to that. There were other athletes who had great physical abil-ity, yet chaos entered their lives. Sometimes this may have been their own fault. Sometimes—as with Jim Thorpe—there may have been injustice involved. But Wayne Gretzky had some intangible quality that al-lowed him to escape that. It’s a form of genius that’s difficult to define or measure—just as it was hard to quantify Gretzky’s ability as a hockey player with a stop watch or a weight machine. Ernest Hemingway called it “grace under pressure,” and that kind of grace is something we should all try to develop. As Wayne Gretzky himself said, “None of the shots you don’t take can ever go into the net.” Can you be like Wayne Gretzky, as an athlete and as a human being? Well, give it your best shot!

Spiritual Genius

Now we’ll focus on one of the most powerful and important forms of genius—and also one of the most difficult to define. When we speak of a person who is deeply spiritual, a person whose consciousness reach-es past the boundaries of ordinary life, in short, when we speak of a spiritual genius, what exactly do we really mean by that?

Do we mean a good person? A righteous person? A saint? Or is the concept of spiritual genius something that can’t be encompassed in just one or two words? To explore these questions—although perhaps not to answer them once and for all—we’ll be looking here at two truly remarkable but very different people. One of them is Martin Luther King, Jr., whose name will forever be identified with the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, that fundamentally transformed Ameri-can society. The other person is Gonxhe Agnes Bojax-hiu—much better known as Mother Teresa—whose work with the poor in Calcutta made her a world-re-nowned icon of charity and pastoral love.

Both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mother Teresa have been celebrated and elevated to a status beyond that of flesh and blood human beings. This process began dur-ing their lifetimes, and it’s been made more complete since their deaths. Both of them were awarded the No-bel Prize for Peace while they were alive, and Mother Teresa has recently been proposed for canonization by the Catholic Church. If and when this takes place, she will literally be a saint, although she’s been known as a saint throughout the world for many years.

With this in mind, it wouldn’t be difficult to turn this session into an exercise in hagiography [haj-ee-og-rafy]—the reverent retelling of how two saints made their way through the world. But there are several rea-sons why that won’t be the thrust of our discussion of spiritual genius. First, it’s already been done. Both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mother Teresa have been idealized and sanctified, and doing it again would have little value, either as inspiration or as informa-tion. More importantly, our purpose here is not only

10

© 2

007

Dr.

Tony

Ale

ssan

dra,

All

Righ

ts R

eser

ved

in A

ll M

ediato show what spiritual genius is, but to show how you

can discover it in your own heart and soul. In order to make that possible, we need to reveal our models as genuine human beings—a man and a woman who wrestled with the same issues of good and evil that you yourself face today. To the greatest extent possi-ble, I want you to be able to identify with our models, not just admire them or worship them. Our intention here is certainly not to judge these two people, but it’s not to idealize them either. If the portraits that we cre-ate succeed, you’ll truly learn something about how the world was changed by Martin Luther King and Mother Teresa, and perhaps you’ll find that your own life has been changed as well.

* * *Several of the world’s great religious traditions un-derstand spirituality as a kind of ladder, a ladder upon which each of us stands on a certain higher or lower rung. Certain people, for example, are very low on the ladder. They have not advanced very far on their soul’s spiritual ascent. They are not necessarily evil at their core, but they are definitely the ones who do evil things. Spiritually, they’ve got a long way to go. And usually they realize this. In fact, they’re usually so aware of how far they have to go that they con-sciously decide to give up trying. They feel they’re beyond the possibility of change. The things they’ve said or thought or done have disqualified them from the possibility of transformation or redemption. So forget about it! Bring on the dancing girls!

At the other end of the ladder are the true saints—peo-ple with no trace of evil or negativity, people who are completely and totally good. Because of the purity of their nature, it’s literally impossible for this kind of person to act other than impeccably in any situation, no matter what it is.

The great majority of humanity finds itself somewhere between the poles of these two categories—between the people at the bottom and at the top of the spiritual ladder. Spiritually speaking, most people are engaged in a struggle. They have temptations that pull them down the ladder, and they also have aspirations that move them in an upward direction. Year by year, day

by day, minute by minute, they live with these ten-sions and doubts, and to the best of their ability, they try to find some way to resolve them.

So those are three spiritual categories: the bottom, the top, and somewhere in between. Just for convenience, we can call them the sinner, the saint, and the every-man (or the everywoman). Remarkably, each of them has a particular kind of genius. According to some theologians, through the miracle of sincere repentance even a sinner can be a spiritual genius. But we are going to focus on the two upper categories—the spiri-tual being who’s securely at the top, and the struggling spiritual being who has good days and less than good days. Theses people want to move in one direction, but aren’t absolutely sure how it’s going to turn out.

By the way, where do you see yourself on this spec-trum? Top, bottom, or somewhere in between? Just as importantly, where do you want to see yourself? Think about that as you read the rest of this section. At the end, we’ll return to these questions. You may be surprised by the conclusions you reach about yourself, and about the kind of spiritual person you really want to be.

Gonxhe Agnes Bojaxhiu (Mother Teresa) knew where she wanted to be on the spiritual ladder from the very beginning. She wanted to be at the top. She aspired to sainthood, and she accepted all the challenges that came with that aspiration. Furthermore, I don’t think there is much doubt that she succeeded in what she aspired to become. She really was a saint in the classi-cal, rigorous definition of that term. At every moment, she behaved the way a saint should behave. Maybe this came naturally to her from the start, or maybe she had to train herself to do it. But I’m certain that eventually it became intuitive and instinctive. But in order to understand what this really meant, in order to see why Mother Teresa really was a saint in the truest sense, we’ve got to free ourselves from our everyday notions of what a saint is like. Specifically, we’ve got to let go of the idea that a saint is a nice guy ... that a saint never rubs anybody the wrong way or gets in anybody’s face .

11

© 2

007

Dr.

Tony

Ale

ssan

dra,

All

Righ

ts R

eser

ved

in A

ll M

ediaShe was born in 1910, in Macedonia, north of Greece,

which at the time was a province of the Turkish Ot-toman Empire. Her parents were Albanians who had moved to Macedonia before Gonxhe, their daughter, was born.

A childhood friend of the future Mother Teresa recalls her saying in 1928, “I have decided to dedicate myself completely to God and to devote my life to going on missions and to serving souls.” She was 18 years old. Soon thereafter she joined the Irish Catholic order of nuns that operated missions in India. After spending some time in Ireland, she was sent to Calcutta, where she taught in a Catholic high school and later became the principal of the school. She also mastered several of the indigenous languages of India. In 1930, her or-der gave her the name Teresa, after St. Teresa of Avila, a Spanish saint of the 16th century.

In 1946, she contracted tuberculosis. While travel-ing on a train to a hospital for treatment, she received what she described as a “call within a call.” From then on, she decided to devote herself to the poorest of the poor, leaving the high school and working in the slums of Calcutta. Within a few years she had founded her own order, the Missionaries of Charity, whose work she described as providing “free service to the poor and the unwanted, regardless of caste, creed, nation-ality, or race.” In 1952, she established a hospice for the dying and her first orphanage. As she began to re-ceive monetary grants and awards for her work, she used the money to set up mobile health clinics, centers for the malnourished, rehabilitation hospices for lep-ers, homes for alcoholics and drug addicts, and shel-ters for the homeless. In 1979, she received the Nobel Peace Prize, “for work undertaken in the struggle to overcome poverty and distress, which also constitute a threat to peace.” Upon being told of the honor, she replied, “I am unworthy.”

By this time her order had grown to 1,800 nuns and 120,000 lay workers, who operated nearly 200 cen-ters and homes in different areas of the world. In later years she was hospitalized several times with heart and lung problems. She died in Calcutta in 1997. She was 87 years old.

At the time of her death, polls showed that Mother Teresa was the most respected woman in the world. Her name was and is synonymous with selfless dedi-cation in the service of humanity. But I want to say in the spirit of truth that the good Mother Teresa did for humanity was not her real spiritual genius. Her real genius—her real aspiration and her real achieve-ment—was for sainthood. The deepest intention of her life was to create herself as a being who deserved to be at the summit of the spiritual ladder. By means of that ascent, her life was dedicated to drawing close to God.

Once we understand that, we can begin to understand what this person was really like. Once we let go of the preconception that she was just a lovable old lady, we’re free to see her clearly. We don’t have to just worship her for the things she did that we approve of, nor do we have to criticize her for some things that might trouble us. Because she was doing what she set out to do, which might not be what we think she was trying to do.

When Mother Teresa received an award before a group of American senators and congressmen, she stunned everybody by her acceptance speech. Instead of of-fering a harmless sermon about charity, she delivered a fierce monologue about the evils of birth control. Although her organization received large amounts of money over the years, she never really made an effort to modernize her facilities or to attack the underly-ing causes of the poverty and disease they were meant to treat. Many other questions could be raised about her as well—and the fact is, Mother Teresa was much more complicated than we may have thought. Once again, the easy course might be to see her as a kindly old lady, above reproach or even scrutiny. But if there are things that seem controversial about Mother Tere-sa, they come from our expectations of her than from her expectations of herself.

Her spiritual genius was for sainthood, not for lov-ableness or sweetness or progressive views. When she won the Nobel Prize and she said, “I am unworthy,” that’s what a saint would say. By saying she was un-worthy, and meaning it, she made herself worthy of the goal she had really set for herself.

12

© 2

007

Dr.

Tony

Ale

ssan

dra,

All

Righ

ts R

eser

ved

in A

ll M

edia

The spiritual genius of Mother Teresa was really quite pure, linear, and consistent, once we understand what it really was. There weren’t a lot of doubts to deal with, or temptations to overcome. As we’ll see in a moment, Martin Luther King, Jr. was a different kind of person, and he saw himself as a different kind of person. It’s not that he was greater than Mother Te-resa, or that she was greater than he; each was great in a different way.

* * *Well, I don’t know what will happen now. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the moun-tain top. I won’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long time. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know to-night that we as a people will get to the promised land. So I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glo-ry of the coming of the Lord!

I’m sure this is not the first time you’ve heard the stir-ring speech Martin Luther King gave the night before he died. Comparing himself to Moses in the Bible, King felt he would be denied entrance to the world of racial harmony and social justice that he had devoted his life to creating. But though he is not being allowed to enter the Promised Land, he doesn’t express any bitterness about that fact, and I don’t believe he felt any. We’ve seen how Mother Teresa described herself as unworthy to receive the Nobel Prize, but what else could a saint say on such an occasion? In a sense, her statement was a kind of official pronouncement.

I believe Martin Luther King’s situation was very dif-ferent. I think he really did feel unworthy to take part in the completion of his dream. For many years, he had taken upon himself an almost impossible role. He was the leader of one of history’s great transforma-tions—following in the footsteps of Mahatma Gandhi in India, and laying the foundation for Nelson Man-dela in South Africa. Yet he was not a perfect human

being. He was not morally impeccable. Unlike Mother Teresa, he was not absolutely consistent in his words and deeds—and he knew this. He knew he was not at the top of the spiritual ladder. Yet he accepted the chal-lenge of striving to be what people needed, though he knew that wasn’t always who he was.

During the 1960s, Martin Luther King was a target for enemies both inside and outside the US government. He was threatened by racist enemies ranging from the Ku Klux Klan to radical African American orga-nizations—and he was the subject of an unrelenting surveillance effort by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. He was accused of Communist sympathies, financial improprieties, and personal misconduct. At the same time, he subjected himself to even more intense scru-tiny. Was he really worthy of leading a massive move-ment for social change? Was he the perfect symbol that such a movement demanded? Was he someone who could survive under the microscope he was put under by the world and by himself as well?

The answers that Martin Luther King gave to those questions may not always have been in the affirma-tive, though he never shirked the leadership role he had taken upon himself. But unlike Mother Teresa, there was a degree of inner tension—a pulling in two directions of the spiritual ladder—that led him to be-lieve he would suffer a martyr’s death. And perhaps to accept that destiny as well. As he said, “Certainly I don’t want to die. But if anyone has to die, let it be me.”

Martin Luther King, Jr., was born in 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. As a child he loved both reading and public speaking, and he enjoyed watching his minister father deliver weekly sermons. When he entered Morehouse College in Atlanta at the age of 16, King was consider-ing a career in medicine, law, or teaching, and he ma-jored in sociology. But in his junior year he decided he would enter the ministry like his father. On the subject of education, he once wrote, “Its function is teaching us to think intensively and critically. But education that stops at that point may prove a great menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but deprived of morality.”

13

© 2

007

Dr.

Tony

Ale

ssan

dra,

All

Righ

ts R

eser

ved

in A

ll M

ediaAfter graduating from Morehouse College in 1948,

King entered a theological seminary. While there he at-tended a lecture on the Indian pacifist leader Mahatma Gandhi. That meeting set the direction of King’s life. “The message was so profound and electrifying,” he said, “that I immediately left the meeting and bought a half dozen books on Gandhi.”

King graduated from the seminary and entered Bos-ton University as a doctoral student. He received his degree in 1955, and then became pastor of a church in Montgomery, Alabama. There he joined the support-ers of Rosa Parks, a black woman who had been ar-rested in Montgomery for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white person.

On January 14, 1957, King’s home and his church in Montgomery were bombed during a campaign of vio-lence against black activists. After this bombing, King began to sense that he might someday have to die for the cause he had chosen. Like anyone else, there were times when he found this very difficult to accept—but he also worried about what he regarded as inadequacy for the destiny that God had given him.

Though himself a nonviolent person, King was sur-rounded by violence and by allies who preached vi-olence on his part. In Harlem he was stabbed while autographing copies of his book, Stride Toward Free-dom. He was frequently jailed, but he regarded this as a way of expressing his willingness to suffer and sac-rifice for the common good. Nonviolence “may mean going to jail,” he said. “If such is the case the resister must be willing to fill the jail houses of the South. It may even mean physical death. But if physical death is the price a man must pay to free his children and his white brethren from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing could be more important.”

King’s life was filled with confrontations. He was al-ways ready to rush to a city or a scene where he could help demonstrate the power of nonviolence. He was the most watched civil rights leader of the time, and the one from whom the most was expected. Again and again he used stirring oratory to insist on non-violence: “If you don’t go,” he said of one proposed march, “don’t hinder me! We will march nonviolently.

We shall force this nation, this city, this world, to face its own conscience. We will make the God of love in the white man triumph over the Satan of segregation that is in him.... The struggle is not between black and white, but between good and evil.”

Gradually his language began to grow more visionary. At the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Wash-ington in 1963, he spoke the words for which he is best remembered:

...I have a dream that my four little children will not be judged by the color of their skin, but the content of their character.... Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

In 1964, Martin Luther King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the youngest recipient ever. In the next few years, he led marches and protests all across the country, from Selma, Alabama to Chicago, Illinois. His efforts were not always successful, and at times even his closest friends began to feel that King was becoming so visionary as to be ineffective. His wife, Coretta Scott King, once said, “My husband was what psychologists call a guilt-ridden man. He was so con-scious of his awesome responsibilities that he literally set himself the task of never making an error in the af-fairs of the Movement.” In the spring of 1968, Martin Luther King was in Memphis to support a strike by garbage workers. He had once said: “If a man hasn’t found something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.” On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinat-ed on the balcony outside his motel room.

The two people we’ve spoken of in this section were not only spiritual geniuses, they were spiritual giants. While it may seem difficult to see yourself in those terms, there is a lot to be learned from them—a lot that can be applied in your own life, starting now. Some people think about money all the time, not just about what money can buy or what it can do, but about mon-ey itself, just as a concept. Spirituality is something like that, but with a completely different medium. It’s looking beyond the material dimension of your life and discovering something that’s intangible but very important. For a spiritual genius, that intangible something becomes supremely important. It becomes

14

© 2

007

Dr.

Tony

Ale

ssan

dra,

All

Righ

ts R

eser

ved

in A

ll M

ediawhat mathematics was for Einstein or electricity for

Edison. Without expecting yourself to take that leap into genius, I want to emphasize the importance of at least connecting with the spiritual power in yourself, especially because, in the world we live in, that isn’t something that will happen by itself. We’re used to thinking about the material realm, and there’s a lot to think about. There are bills to pay and planes to catch and children to educate. But despite the way it may seem, that’s not all there is. There’s a reason why you’re here and a spiritual purpose you need to ac-complish, and one of your life’s most important tasks is finding out what that is.

For Mother Teresa, it was successfully living up to the highest possible standard of virtue. For Martin Luther King, it was trying to live up to that standard, even while wondering whether he was capable of it. With this in mind, what are the spiritual goals you can set for your own life? All of us have goals about what we want to accomplish with our families or in our careers, but what do we want to accomplish at the level of our souls? The first step is just consciousness that there’s more to life than the material concerns that seem so pressing every day.

* * *

This eBook has traced the lives of several geniuses who were deeply in touch with the philosophical, physical, and spiritual dimensions—and I hope our discussion has helped ignite that same awareness in you.

15

© 2

007

Dr.

Tony

Ale

ssan

dra,

All

Righ

ts R

eser

ved

in A

ll M

edia

Tony Alessandra, PhD, CSP, CPAE Building Customers, Relationships, and the Bo�om Line

Dr. Tony Alessandra helps companies build customers, relationships, and the bo�om line. Companies learn how to achieve market dominance through specific strategies designed to out market, outsell, and out service the compe-tition. Dr. Alessandra has a street-wise, college-smart perspective on business, having fought his way out of NYC to eventu-ally realize success as a graduate professor of marketing, an entrepreneur, a business author, and a keynote speaker. He earned his MBA from the University of Connecticut and his PhD in marketing from Georgia State University. Dr. Alessandra is president of Online Assessments (www.OnlineAC.com), a company that offers online assessments and tests; co-founder of MentorU.com, an online e-Learn-ing company; and Chairman of the Board of BrainX, a company that offers online digital accelerated learning programs.

Dr. Alessandra is a widely published author with 14 books translated into 17 foreign languages, including Charisma (Warner Books, 1998); The Platinum Rule (Warner Books, 1996); Collaborative Selling (John Wiley & Sons, 1993); and Communicating at Work (Fireside/Simon & Schuster, 1993). He is featured in over 50 audio/video programs and films, including Relationship Strategies (American Me-dia); The Dynamics of Effective Listening (Nightingale-Conant); and Non-Manipulative Selling (Walt Disney). He is also the originator of the internationally-recognized behavioral style assessment tool The Platinum Rule™ (www.PlatinumRule.com). Recognized by Meetings & Conventions Magazine as “one of America’s most electrifying speakers,” Dr. Alessandra was inducted into the Speakers Hall of Fame in 1985. He is also a member of the Speakers Roundtable, a group of 20 of the world’s top professional speakers. Tony’s polished style, powerful message, and proven ability as a consummate business strategist consistently earns rave reviews.

To learn more about Dr. Alessandra and his services, visit www.Alessandra.com.

16

© 2

007

Dr.

Tony

Ale

ssan

dra,

All

Righ

ts R

eser

ved

in A

ll M

ediaOther products from Dr. Tony Alessandra

Email SeriesThe Platinum Rule 52-week Email Series

Sales Skills 52-week Email Series

VideosAstounding Customer Service Complete DVD Package

The Platinum Rule Two-Hour DVD The Platinum Rule Video Training

CDs10 Qualities of Charismatic People CD Version

New Relationship Strategies CD version Secrets of Ten Great Geniuses CD Version

MP3sAlessandra on Collaborative Selling downloadable mp3Alessandra on Customer Driven Service downloadable mp3Alessandra on Nonverbal Communication downloadable mp3Alessandra on Platinum Rule downloadable mp3Alessandra on The Power of Listening downloadable mp3Astounding Customer Service downloadable mp3 Dynamics of Effective Listening downloadable mp3 How to Gain Power and Influence with People downloadable mp3Mastering Your Message downloadable mp3

New Relationship Strategies downloadable mp3Non-Manipulative Selling downloadable mp3

PeopleSmart downloadable mp3

Simplicity downloadable mp3 The Edge downloadable mp3

Powerful Presentation Skills downloadable mp3Resolving Conflict downloadable mp3

eWorkbooksCross-Selling 25-page PDF eWorkbookThe Platinum Rule 50-page PDF eWorkbook Power of Listening 54-page PDF eWorkbook

Goal Setting Strategies 38-page PDF eWorkbook Customer Driven Service 53-page PDF eWorkbookCharisma 35-page PDF eWorkbook

Time Management 37-page PDF eWorkbookFlexibility 25-page PDFeWorkbook

Paper versionsThe Platinum Rule Workbook Paper VersionThe Platinum Rule Self-Assessment Paper Version

The Platinum Rule Scoring Matrix Paper Version

17

© 2

007

Dr.

Tony

Ale

ssan

dra,

All

Righ

ts R

eser

ved

in A

ll M

ediaeReports

Conducting Powerful Meetings 33-page PDF eReport Time Management 37-page PDF eReport

Using Space and Time 15-page PDF eReport

Versatility 27-page PDF eReport Writing Skills 24-page PDF eReport Telephone Skills 8-page PDF eReport

Resolving Conflict 23-page PDF eReport

Presentation Skills 19-page PDF eReport

Speaking With Authority 17-page PDF eReportSending Out Your Best Silent Message 19-page PDF eReport

Personality Chemistry: Preventing Conflict at Work 13-page PDF eReport

Nonverbal Communication 10-page PDF eReport Maximizing Your Adaptability 20-page PDF eReport

Listening Attentively 14-page PDF eReport

Interpersonal Communication 37-page PDF eReportExpanding Your Vision and Ideas 14-page PDF eReport

Flexibility 25-page PDF eReport Becoming More Persuasive 13-page PDF eReport Conducting Powerful Meetings 33-page PDF eReportThe Art of Asking Questions 8-page PDF eReportThe Art of Communicating at Work: Making Sure with Feedback 10-page PDF eReport

eBooksThe Platinum Rule 163-page PDF eBookThe Platinum Rule® for Sales Mastery 118-page eBook

Street Smarts 75-page PDF eBook

PeopleSmart 269-page PDF eBook

Non-Manipulative Selling 179-page PDF eBook Collaborative Selling 133-page PDF eBook

Assessment ToolsOnline Assessment ToolsPlatinum Rule AssessmentTrue Colors AssessmentLeadership AssessmentListening AssessmentSales Effectiveness AssessmentSocial Styles AssessmentTime Management Assessment

Paper Assessment ToolsThe Platinum Rule Self-AssessmentThe Platinum Rule Observer Assessment The Platinum Rule Scoring Matrix Platinum Rule Reminder Card

Other Alessandra Products The Platinum Rule Reminder Card The Platinum Rule Training Student Kit

The Platinum Rule BrainX Digital Learning System (So�ware)

Dr. Alessandra’s company, Platinum Rule Group LLC, offers seminars, workshops, and on-site training to corporations and organizations in the areas of sales, one-to-one marketing, customer service, and interper-sonal relationships. For more information, call: 1-330-848-0444 x2 or email: info@PlatinumRuleGroup.com.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmit-ted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including pho-tocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without wri�en permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. ISBN-13: 978-1-933631-69-1