1. Orchestrator Imprinting

If we are doing the Orchestrator expression at the imprinting level, we believe that only we can see the larger picture and only we can insure that plans are implemented. We believe that our ability to discriminate, differentiate, and not accept ‘second best’ is what attracts people to us. We believe in our capacity to effectively oversee others and effectively delegate tasks to them. Our courage and sense of what is right drives others to imitate us, which we encourage. We like to torque people who are inflexible, haughty and arrogant by outdoing them. We believe that we were born to express our will in ways that others will be attracted to and conform to. However, we hate do-gooders with high intentions who only get in the way when the chips are down. Everything is negotiable, and only we know how to do it. The only thing we demand from people in our projects is deference. Unfortunately, we frequently make mistakes in assigning others to tasks they cannot complete. Our assumptions and perspectives, in terms of the sequencing of activities, frequently proves to be inappropriate or ineffective. It is recommended that Orchestrator imprinted individuals not create jobs or take on too many new projects (or spread themselves too thin) without strong financial backing.

Level One Orchestrator Imprinting (Society’s Social Imprinting Process)

When we have Level One Orchestrator imprinting, we are known for our assertiveness and for our attempts to have people defer to us. The experience others have around us when we are a Level One Orchestrator imprinted person is that we are a tightly wound spring that could unravel at any moment and that, therefore, they need to pay constant attention to us. Other people experience level one Orchestrator imprinting as being condescending and arrogant. What is actually going on is that we feel we are suppressed in our natural creative expression and therefore we attempt to be seen as being capable and in charge. We always experience this in level one. In this process, whatever action we use to distract ourselves and control a repressed experience will be projected onto others and will be reflected back to us.

While Orchestrators expect the deference and respect of others, paradoxically, we do not like “yes people.” This reminds us too much of how others compromise themselves to appear interesting to us. Level one Orchestrator imprinting makes us believe we are more influential and powerful than we are. We try to appear to be self-generating and as though we are the best ones to be in charge. We release ourselves from this imprinting when we realize our true power to influence others is not based on external control.

Level Two Orchestrator Imprinting (Keeping Others From Being Right)

Level Two Orchestrator imprinting is best identified by a more outgoing, selfish and “separative” relationship framework. Operating from the assumption that the world owes us a living, we believe that people should perform to meet our needs. Many people react against this imprinting because they feel it is vain and heartless. Actually, a second level Orchestrator imprint is trying to regain an emotional connectedness and feels isolated and impotent. We are try to confirm our importance by getting others to follow our advice but then feel impotent when they don’t.

Behind this level of imprinting lies our desire to hold ourselves accountable to a higher level of connectedness with people, while feeling incapable of getting people to like us. Because secondary Orchestrator imprinted children typically had domineering parents, it feels to the child that the only way they can recover their power is to be domineering in return. Therefore, as adults we believe that our being in control makes others feel more safe and secure. We use this viewpoint to imagine that we contribute to others by dominating them. We just don’t get how badly others feel about how we work with them. We heal ourselves when we realize we can be sensitive and creatively powerful, simultaneously.

Level Three Orchestrator Imprinting (Lost In Our Imprinting)

Level Three Orchestrator imprinting is operating when we believe in our own greatness to the extent that we want others to agree with it. We want others to reinforce and acknowledge our impressiveness, not realizing how much of it is actually made up. We believe our grandiosity of spirit should be acknowledged, which paradoxically is what we are trying to suppress in others. Consequently, we are threatened when others have Orchestrator imprinting or primary or secondary Orchestrator expression. This level of imprinting is identified by our illusions about our skills and capabilities. Real Orchestrators, even in their worst moments, do not have to overstate their past accomplishments.

We want others to fall in love with our unique power to implement projects. We then lose our inner distinctions between personal and divine will and believe that everything we do is divinely sanctioned. Anyone who questions us is threatening and we counterattack to put that person in their place. While we think we are charismatic, actually people have a hard time being around us, tending instead to avoid us. How we heal this process by discovering our true humility and sensing what can help ground our truth in a way that helps others to want to engage us.

Anti-Orchestrator Beliefs

1. We turn “defer to me” into I will never defer to you. By being afraid to lose ourselves in others, we tend to make any authority over us wrong and we cannot honor that there may be a naturally appropriate way of interacting with authority. In this circumstance, we find it difficult to work for others because we believe they are going to ask us to compromise ourselves in a way that would be destructive. This belief keeps us from actually learning and growing with others and even denies our ability to find our place in the world. Instead, our beliefs push us into being apart from everyone, which ends up creating immense isolation and loneliness.


2. “Perform to meet my needs” becomes You will never meet my needs and I will never meet yours. In this situation we end up denying the possibility of having creative engagement with others in any way that deepens us. Instead, we limit our contribution to them and their contribution to us so that we can safely neutralize the impact they could have on us. We end up believing that if someone has an influence on us, it will be automatically negative because it will deny or compromise something that we feel is critical to us. The challenge is to remember that who we are is not deniable and that we can never lose anything that is real in us. Only the unreal can be attacked.


3. “Exaggerated self-importance” becomes No one will ever see me for my own importance. This means that others always have the upper hand. This is the one of the deepest issues that we deal with in organizations. We believe that somehow our importance increases the higher the position we have in the organization. Another way of looking at this is to recognize that the higher we go, the more people we have to serve or the more we have to be responsible. When people arrogantly believe that this means something, that it sets them apart from others, they create a repression where people aren’t creatively engaged with them. As we become able to see the difference between being important and being creatively powerful, we start to understand how it is not outer issues that make us feel important, but our inner ability to connect to others. Therefore, true importance is determined by our internal creative connections and how this enables us to connect with those outside of us.