I grew up in California at a time when swimming was a part of the high school curriculum. A life guard was a full-time faculty member, whose only responsibility was to insure the safety of the students in the water. Well, in a moment of negligence on his part, I almost drowned! Although that moment occurred some 47 years ago, I can still viscerally recall those moments. Death literally stared me in the face!

For many years after that I would not get close to a swimming pool. Perhaps the school waived the state requirement for me so that my family would not press charges. As the years went by, I watched many of my friends enjoy swimming pools and days at the beach while I was frozen with fear.

During all of those years, I had a deep seated longing to become friends with the water. It wasn’t the water that was my enemy; it was my fear of the water that immobilized me. That same water that represented death to me represented profound joy and pleasure to many other people.

So year in and year out I was tortured with a calling from within: I must conquer my fear, or continue to let my fear conquer me.

And so it is for each of us with the “swimming pools” of our lives. The objects themselves are neither good nor bad: they just exist. It is our fear or our willingness to learn how to swim that determines whether or not we will get from the starting point to the finish line.

So, finally, at the age of about 53 I learned how to swim. I had some wonderful teachers  — who were like children to me (“And a little child shall lead them”) — but they taught me how not to be afraid of the water. One of the most important aspects they taught me was to relax and float on my back. I could not do that if I had any amount of tension and/or distrust. It is imperative that I let go and trust the water. The water really will take care of me, but only if I let it. That is perhaps the most difficult aspect, because, as a leader, I am so accustomed to being in control. The more I try to be in control, the more I will sink.

Now my fear of the water was not unjustified. Fear has its place in our lives. Its function is to warn us of possible harm. If a child just gets in the ocean without knowing how to swim, they will drown. My teachers were my angels that surrounded me with love and guidance, showing me the things I needed to do to make the water my friend. What is more, they let me know that they would always be there to protect me, in case I got in trouble.

[CNN News]  Google co-founder Sergey Brin on Friday said he’s optimistic that his search engine will not have to pull out of China over hacking and censorship issues.

Brin maintained that his Mountain View, California, company never entered China to make money. He said Google wanted to spread information.

“Perhaps people don’t believe this, but throughout all of the discussions of entering China our focus has really been what’s best for the Chinese people,” he said. “It’s not been about our revenue or profit or whatnot.”

He said the company will not continue to politically censor search results in China, which is one of the world’s largest markets for the Internet. But he did say that Google would agree to censoring pornography and other potentially objectionable material.

This particular story causes us to think about a much bigger issue: that of the unbiased spread of information. The Internet, coupled with search engines such as Google, has radically changed the way news events and other information is consumed by the public.

There are major consequences for this brick and mortar shift. On the one hand, the gatekeepers of the information industry, such as major daily newspapers and network TV anchors, have witnessed a dilution of their power in the delivery of news. On the other hand, this shift has resulted in an “opening of the gates” to a flood of information from any and every source — some trustworthy and some not trustworthy, but all with a bullhorn.

Much has been written about the demise of the major newspapers, which were once the pillars of their respective communities. Using news as their vehicle, they wielded political power that dictated the form and substance of the community. The economic fortunes of the newspaper families are the stuff of which legends are made. Today, those powered elite have been replaced by bloggers and Y-cams. Op-ed pieces have become the flavor of the day in print media, and “news shows” have taken stride to leave the anchor desk in the dust.

The unwary consumer, then, is left to do detailed searches in order to find the truth, because all of the news has become a point of view. The consumer must know whether what she or he is viewing or reading is from the neoconservative, theoconservative, economic conservative, conservative liberal, libertarian, social liberal, or anarcho-liberal point of view!

One of the greatest fears that people have always held was that their government would keep information from them. In a free democracy, the free and honest sharing of information (and news) is a cornerstone upon which the whole democratic system is built. People expect the information they receive to be accurate, objective and universal. The multi-faceted information products of today make it clear that what appears to be absolute truth in news is not, in fact, absolute truth — or news. It is, in fact, filtered through somebody’s point of view.

Racism stems from a broader context of social transactions that are often termed “prejudice.” What I find interesting is that while that word immediately stimulates negative feelings in the ears of most people, we are all prejudiced! It is impossible for us to operate in the world without being prejudiced. Prejudice is the mechanism that enables us to discriminate among an unmanageable number of variables to make choices. Most of us have limited resources and must make quick choices. Prejudice is, in fact, a very useful tool in assisting us in the process of discriminating among a large number of variables.

“Prejudice” really simply means “prejudgment”. It means that we have used certain characteristics to help us efficiently sort among variables of an unknown and assist in our decision making. We use prejudice in all kinds of shopping decisions to help sort among variables. In today’s world, those of us who spend time on the Internet are quite familiar with the sorting devices that the social networking platforms give us to discriminate among our viewers and contacts. We need to be clear, then, in our understanding that to be “prejudiced” is not a bad thing. In fact it is a vital protective and selective device.

So where does it turn from being a useful social device to becoming a destructive and hateful device? Terms such as “all Black people are lazy” are phrases that characterize inappropriate, hateful and non-factual uses of the concept of “prejudice.”

Both within and without the GLBT community this has been a troublesome social phenomenon. It is troublesome because, while members of the GLBT community have been victims of prejudice and discrimination, they have also been perpetrators. One would expect that their victim status would make them extremely intolerant of prejudice and discrimination, and yet they go on inflicting the social disease on others (of course, without intending to do so).

Anyone who understands social dynamics is really not surprised, because people who have been wounded typically will wound other people. Nevertheless, the cycle of woundedness must be broken. The first step in breaking the cycle is creating awareness. We must become aware of how our behavior is hurting each other – on a very practical, day-to-day level. Whether we are part of an oppressor group or an oppressed group, we participate in prejudice in destructive ways that range from unconscious to intentional.

Many people have no awareness of the repeating patterns of their relationships. They never see the macro view. No healing can occur, because they are limited to the micro view. The solution may be as simple as finding a process observer. A process observer is a person outside the relationship (such as a close friend) who can observe behaviors and events over time. That person can provide objective feedback to the participant(s). There is a scripture in the Bible that says, “Physician heal thyself.” What that means is that the best doctor in the world cannot heal himself – it takes intervention from another doctor. We all need a process observer.

Racism is very insidious. Most people would not want to be racists. Like the serpent in the Garden of Eden, it creeps up on people in insidious ways. A process observer can show each of us how racism is evident in our relationships. Individually, each of us should have a goal to discover who we are at core level. Once that is achieved, we will not need to diminish another in order to elevate ourselves.

Only we can decide what discriminators are useful for our decision making and which represent hateful bias in our lives. The Henry Louis Gates issue was useful in calling our national consciousness to one aspect of this broad and deep issue. His high profile status brings a face that could not be brought by thousands of other nameless, non-cached individuals.

Down here on the ground we can see all the differences that divide us — race, gender, age, religion, social class – but from a view atop the mountain, we are less able to see those differences. At the leadership level, we must be blind to race and other divisive characteristics. We need to listen to reasonable voices from good people without regard to their gender, race, social class, or other demographics. The voice of wisdom may come in unlikely packaging. Scripture says, “Be careful how you entertain strangers, for some have entertained angels unaware.”

Emotional abuse is a major problem in our culture today, whether experienced in our private relationships or in our public discourse. From parents verbally and physically abusing their children to spouses abusing each other, our homes often are places of emotional scarring, rather than places of refuge and repose.

And what happens in our private domain gets mirrored in our public forum. We have all witnessed the shameful tension around the health care debate. That debate is no less vitriolic than the discourse around issues such as national security, the housing crisis, the national debt, education, and a host of other critical issues. While no one will debate the importance of these issues — or the passion that they deserve — what is sad, and even frightening, is the emotional abuse that we bring to our handling of these issues.

The character attacks (including racial assaults and even death threats) go far beyond healthy political discussion, and reach a level of emotional abuse at a mass group level.

Whether emotional abuse occurs at the family level or the mass group level, it stems from a struggle over power relationships. In our October 13, 2009 post, Why Do We Fight? we discussed the innate tendencies toward fighting to resolve conflict. Ultimately, we can stay stuck at this level, or we can choose to move to a new level of conflict resolution. It is the level that all the great masters tried to teach us: the way of Love.

Although this sounds simple — and it is — it is not easy. Embracing love as the way to resolve conflict is the most robust skill we can master. We must begin by mastering our own internal enemies (our ego), and along the way, being able to embrace the foibles of the other person — or group. When we truly know who we are, then we can accept others just as they are — without trying to change them.

We spend tremendous energy trying to change other people, which simply does not work. Even if a person is going to make changes, they will do so because they are ready to do so. Our inspiration may be one of many influences in their change process, but their change is a work of spirit — not our genius or judgment.

Rather than abusing each other, by tearing each other down, we need to spend all of the energy we can muster building each other up. My mother was a very wise person, although she was a high school drop-out. One of her very wise sayings was, “If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all.” So many times I have learned to look for the good in everybody by forcing myself to say nothing until I had something good to say.

Rescue workers struggled to clear rubble and bodies from the streets of Haiti's "flattened" capital, where a government official said the death toll from the 7.0-magnitude earthquake may exceed 100,000. This tragedy makes my heart go out to all the people who have lost loved ones. As a father and grandfather who has suffered near fatal tragedies, I can empathize with the gutt-wrenching pain and agony these families face. There is a passage in the Old Testament of the Bible -- Jeremiah 31:15 --that says, "There was a voice heard in Rama, Rahel weeping for her children...because they were not." This prophecy, tied to the Christmas season, which we just celebrated, calls us all to honor the least among us and care for the defenseless. When we recognize the poor, the needy and the despised among us, we bring life, healing and hope to the whole of humanity. If we neglect those less powerful, we breed the seeds of our own defeat.

So often when we look at the big problems in our relationships or society, the answers are quite simple — but doing what it takes is not easy.  Although we could give many examples, we want to focus on one specific issue: fighting.  In a previous post we explored the basis of fighting in our nature, and how it impacts us at a personal level and affects our national discourse.

It is no secret to anyone who has been reading newspapers or watching TV that fighting and aggression have become far too common in our national discourse and character.  In much of the recent political fighting, each party suggests when the other party is in power that the other party has an underlying agenda to dissolve our democratic form of government in favor of socialism or a dictatorship.  Both sides use deliberately provocative, misleading and inflammatory language to confuse and enrage the public against the other side.  Here is a quote from Alexander Fraser Tytler (1748-1813) that provides an interesting perspective:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.  It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.  From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.  The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.  These nations have progressed through this sequence: ‘From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.’

What if the alternatives were moving from fighting to love, rather than moving from abundance to selfishness?  It’s simple, but it’s not easy.

Tiger Woods, on his Web site Friday, admitted to infidelity and said he is taking "an indefinite break" from professional golf to focus on his family. This story is a major "water cooler" conversation. People love to gossip and render opinions about these kinds of situations. I have even heard news commentators suggest that we must "forgive" Tiger for what he has done. This is -- in part -- responding to his statement of contrition. Still, I find it amazing for me to think I have anything to forgive. After all, whatever did or did not happen is really a private matter between him and his wife. Whatever forgiveness there is to be done, must be done between Tiger's family, himself, and his God. I must stay clear of the situation. Too often, we spend an inordinate amount of energy and attention on weighing in on the private struggles of other families. This energy could be better spent in humility, recognizing that whenever a member of the family of humanity is weakened it points to the weakness of us all. My spiritual energy is best spent, therefore, in self-examination: what personal struggles -- spoken or unspoken -- should I be dealing with?

A resolution that has a list of ten covenants has been drafted by one of the U.S. political parties.  Each of its members must agree to at least eight of these covenants or be denied party support.  The requirement for concurrence with only eight out of ten is intended to show an allowance for diversity.  However, the entire notion of explicit standards for membership raises interesting questions about true allegiance.  Although almost all groups and societies have their creeds or organizing documents, it is not clear that written standards establish loyalty or belonging.

In the Christian faith, Jesus the Christ came along and challenged the Ten Commandments, which had long held the position of being the foundation of the faith.  Instead, he said, “If you love your creator and love all created ones just as you love yourself, you will have reached your goal.”

Anyone who has been in love knows that you cannot capture the qualities for love on a checklist.  Oh, you can write up a checklist, but when you meet the right person, you will throw the checklist out the window.  Why?  Because love in its essence cannot be captured on paper.  The energy that fuels and maintains love is not two-dimensional or even three-dimensional; it has more dimensions than could possibly be captured in physical space.

And so it is when we extrapolate people’s loyalty to a group.  The true essence of loyalty cannot be captured on two-dimensional paper or based on explicit standards.  If we try to reduce membership to such criteria, we miss the point.

Actual belonging — whether in a one-on-one relationship or in a larger group — is a function of the heart.  It happens at soul level.  That can never be put on paper.

Core Value System© Training Program

IFL Partners are people who have been uniquely selected; many of whom have gone through a rigorous process to help implement the robust vision of The Institute for Living.

Additionally, anyone who has become part of the Institute for Living “family” — by following this site and participating in the discussions — will have a future  opportunity to enroll in a formal Core Value System© Training Program.

More information will be posted about this program in the future. At this time, we hope you will begin to “catch the vision” and seize the opportunity to think differently about the true values of  your life.

Rise of the Super-Rich Hits a Sobering Wall

by David Leonhardt and Geraldine Fabrikant
Friday, August 21, 2009

provided by

(excerpts)

The rich have been getting richer for so long that the trend has come to seem almost permanent.

They began to pull away from everyone else in the 1970s. By 2006, income was more concentrated at the top than it had been since the late 1920s. The recent news about resurgent Wall Street pay has seemed to suggest that not even the Great Recession could reverse the rise in income inequality.

But economists say — and data is beginning to show — that a significant change may in fact be under way. The rich, as a group, are no longer getting richer. Over the last two years, they have become poorer. And many may not return to their old levels of wealth and income anytime soon.

The relative struggles of the rich may elicit little sympathy from less well-off families who are dealing with the effects of the worst recession in a generation. But the change does raise several broader economic questions. Among them is whether harder times for the rich will ultimately benefit the middle class and the poor, given that the huge recent increase in top incomes coincided with slow income growth for almost every other group. In blunter terms, the question is whether the better metaphor for the economy is a rising tide that can lift all boats — or a zero-sum game.

Just how much poorer the rich will become remains unclear. It will be determined by, among other things, whether the stock market continues its recent rally and what new laws Congress passes in the wake of the financial crisis. At the very least, though, the rich seem unlikely to return to the trajectory they were on.

Bill Gates, Warren E. Buffett, the heirs to the Wal-Mart Stores fortune and the founders of Google each lost billions last year, according to Forbes magazine.

In one stark example, John McAfee, an entrepreneur who founded the antivirus software company that bears his name, is now worth about $4 million, from a peak of more than $100 million. Mr. McAfee will soon auction off his last big property because he needs cash to pay his bills after having been caught off guard by the simultaneous crash in real estate and stocks.

In 2007, Mr. McAfee sold a 10,000-square-foot home in Colorado with a view of Pike’s Peak. He had spent $25 million to buy the property and build the house. He received $5.7 million for it. When Lehman collapsed last fall, its bonds became virtually worthless. Mr. McAfee’s stock investments cost him millions more.

One day, he realized, as he said, “Whoa, my cash is gone.”

His remaining net worth of about $4 million makes him vastly wealthier than most Americans, of course. But he has nonetheless found himself needing cash and desperately trying to reduce his monthly expenses.

The Prayer Guarantee, which is showcased in the sidebar on the right, says this on page 77:

It’s all about value perception. All of our lives we have been

conditioned to place value on material things. We evaluate ourselves

and each other on the basis of material possessions. Look at the

overarching statement that we use to describe the most successful

people in our country. We will say that Mr. X is “worth” four

billion dollars! Our language has betrayed our true feelings…we

have literally said that Mr. X is “worth” the dollar value of his

accumulated assets minus his liabilities. We have not said his worth

is the number of grandchildren he has, or his years of marriage, or

how many smiles he caused on other people’s faces last year, or how

many sick people he has visited the last ten years….Perhaps there

was someone who was ready to commit suicide and he talked to

them and was an instrument in their recovery, but we don’t use that

to measure his worth. Our concrete, definitive way of measuring

people’s value is very clearly based on material assets.

Perhaps these challenging economic times provide all of us with a marvelous opportunity to examine our values. We can continue to hold on to things made of Teflon, or we can try to find something that is really permanent.

What is success? Really…