Relationship Zone #8… “MasterMind” Groups Are Meditations

Last Updated on March 19, 2021 by Paul Farrell, MRP, JD, PhD

Here’s one my wife and I have been practicing for many years. I first read about the “Mastermind” in the first motivational books I ever read, the early classics of Napolean Hill, Think & Grow Rich, and Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude. Both were inspired by Hill’s mentor, billionaire Andrew Carnegie.

Your “Mastermind” is an Active Social Meditation

Hill’s Mastermind concept is the single most powerful of his “Secrets of Success” principles. In today’s business world you might call it networking, building relationships. But it is far more, far deeper. Hill describes a Mastermind as “an alliance of two or more minds blended in a spirit of perfect harmony and co-operating for the attainment of a single purpose.”

An alliance, harmony, focus, purpose: That sure sounds like an ideal and effective relationship. That’s also what every meditation is about. In other words, focusing on a single purpose makes a Mastermind group a natural opportunity for meditation.

For example, Andrew Carnegie said his Mastermind was his fifty-man staff. Carnegie even “attributed his entire fortune to the power he accumulated through his Mastermind.” Today we can see Mastermind groups operating in our lives in so many ways, evolving naturally. Although typically known by other names, the idea is what’s important, people in action, working together, in harmony, focused on a common goal. Remember, meditation is that simple.

In Global Forums and Quiet Lunches

Mastermind groups take many forms. Friendships like the one between Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. A retreat for your company’s top executives. Or the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland attended by leaders from government, business, academia, religion, the media and others from more than a hundred countries to support the goals of an organization “committed to the improvement of the state of the world.”

It may be a simple as a next lunch date with a close friend and confident. A meeting with mentor is also an obvious Mastermind – an opportunity to share values, challenge and debate, plan and support – with someone you trust.

Can a Mastermind group operate solely on a commercial level? Perhaps, but Hill says the all the Mastermind groups he researched drew their energy and strength from an source beyond the commercial arena, and even beyond the individual people in the group: “No two minds ever come together without, thereby, creating a third, invisible, intangible force which may be likened to a third mind.”

The Power of Your Mastermind Network

Moreover, as Hill got to know each of the hundreds of successful men who helped him develop his Science of Success principles, he “discovered that each of them had received guidance from unknown sources.” Every one of them admitted that a higher power was guiding them personally in their business ventures, even though they may have been unable to identify the source of the power.

We saw an example of this guidance in action in The Relaxation Response. Benson identifies Sir John Marks Templeton, the founder of Templeton Funds, as one of his mentors and supporters. Templeton ran his financial empire and his life as a Mastermind group, there was no separation between the secular and spiritual, the financial and metaphysical.

Templeton opened every business meeting with a prayer: “If you begin with prayer, you will think more clearly and make fewer mistakes.” In fact, “whatever you do in life – whether you get married, bring a case to a law court, operate on a child, or buy a stock – you should open with prayer.” You dial into the power of your mastermind!

 

“You Are Not a Human Being Having Spiritual Experiences,

You Are a Spiritual Being Having Human Experiences.”

– Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

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