Love makes a leader a Leader.

August 7, 2017

Being a Leader is the commitment to face reality and restore sanity by establishing foundations of common ground to take us into the future. Common ground is the depth of our humanity that is Unity in Diversity. We only create Unity in Diversity for the Greatest Good, when we are in conscious Union with our Spirit-Soul, with our Self, our Truth and Freedom within. Being a Leader requires Self-Respect, Self-Awareness, Self-Love, and Self-Realization. Being a Leader means emotional-psychological-spiritual Maturity and Integrity as a Human Being. Being a Leader means personal and societal conscience and consciousness of Responsibility for the Dignity and Well-being of the Whole of Life. Being a Leader means relinquishing all notions of certainty, status, privilege, superiority, and control. Being a Leader means creating the space for possibilities and potential — the insights, inspiration and innovation inherent within each individual and the group — to emerge and unfold for the benefit of all. Being a Business Leader means dropping the false idols and agendas that the purpose of business is profit and wealth accumulation, the unholy grail of supply-side economics. Profit is an outcome not purpose. Business owners and executives are not leaders. Being a Political Leader means no longer clinging to party affiliation and adhering to partisan ideologies and agendas. Politicians are not leaders. Leaders embody, make decisions and take action from decency, honesty, maturity, morality, ethics, and integrity as Human Beings without regard for partisan ideologies, agendas or influence by or use of special interest groups. Leaders focus on Equality, Equity and Justice. Being a Leader means eliminating the need for debate and compromise by creating and enacting a Third Point or Way that elevates, unites and integrates apparent polarities. This is the Higher Intelligence of Integrated Wholeness of Shared Power, Wealth and Resources so that ALL flourish and thrive. Being a Leader is the simplest and the most challenging profession. By conscious Choice and Commitment, Being a Leader is enacted through all other professions, careers and roles. It is this Courage that brings day-to-day life into alignment with Life and anchors the Truth of Spirit and Freedom of Soul. Being a Leader is Living Truth and Freedom in every moment. When we abandon the Truth and Freedom of Life, we reject Being a Leader that this world desperately needs if we are to survive. Being a Leader fosters Human Development that revitalizes and renews the Human Spirit bringing Shared Abundance to ALL through Purpose and Meaning, Connection and Contribution, Self-Determination and Choice, and Growth and Self-Actualization. Being a Leader means having the strength to be vulnerable and to stand out in front to meet the coming unknowns as Life unfolds. We can’t and don’t Lead if we follow and obey preconceived labels, ideologies and agendas based in the past. Being a Leader means designing and birthing new forms of social systems, structures and organization that are in harmony with Life. Anything that is not based in Love that actively moves us towards Universal Equality and Equity, Shared Power and Resources, Justice, and Dignity and Well-being is failing and collapsing. Both individually and collectively, we are in breakdown for break through. By committing to Lead and preparing ourselves now, we are here for everyone to build the future. Being a Leader means that we make choices to transform our culture and society for the sake of our children, grandchildren and all children yet to come so that they Live in a world of social, economic, political, and environmental justice. The old ways will not work. Love will find its way. Being a Leader is Love in Service to Life. Love amplifies our commitments and actions towards Truth and Freedom for all. What about you? Do you Commit to Be a Leader and Serve Life? I Serve Life by working as a spiritual mentor-partner with anyone who Commits to Be a Leader, who has the Courage to Be Real as a Human Being, face reality and restore sanity. With deepest appreciation to Margaret Wheatley who continues to challenge and inspire me to Lead Life.

Yesterday I had lunch with friends who are leaving Connecticut. During our conversation, they reminded me that I have been championing Leading is Love in Service to Life in various forms for decades. In reflection, early on I hid behind business and mainstream language and concepts, keeping “spirituality” separate. I avoided politics like the plague. It was living a lie.

Truth is, we cannot address business leadership without understanding and addressing governance. And we cannot address governance without understanding business leadership. They are not the same and one cannot substitute for the other. They are mutually interdependent and must work together in synergy in Responsibility for the Whole of Life.

I now KNOW that anything not based in Love, in the Unity of Spirit, is coming undone. It is out of Integrity with the Integrated Wholeness of Life. The corrupt debacle in DC is a perfect example. The collapsing financial solvency of the State of Connecticut is another.

Love enhances and expands Life as the Unity of Spirit for ALL, our conscious awareness of our Responsibility to the Whole, for our individual and collective growth, actualization and Realization as Human Beings, from the inside-out, bringing the Truth-Freedom of our Heart-Mind to action and manifestation.

We Have to Look Deeper

Here in Connecticut we are coming undone because our focus is external on what *seems to work* to achieve results, but in Reality is damaging to our humanity because we have committed to and enact the illusion of our culture that only money matters:

We support and applaud the Defense Industry and new jobs at Pratt & Whitney and Electric Boat when what they do is furnish death and destruction.

We support and applaud the Financial Services/Insurance Industries when what they do is amplify and accelerate wealth extraction for the elite.

We support and applaud the Hospitality/Tourism/Entertainment/Gaming Industries when what they provide are minimum wage jobs for those employed and keep the rest of us entertained and continuously numbed and distracted from what we have created and the Real Work of Being Human: Knowing our Truth of Spirit and Freedom of Soul.

Take a step back and look deeply at all businesses and industries. For most, you will see how they keep us from ourSelves, from our Souls, and externalize all costs onto society. As Joel Bakan says, corporations have the same behavioral profile of psychopaths, without conscience or consciousness. Other research shows that having hierarchical power deactivates the mirror neurons required for empathy. “Practicality” is really the science of fear.

What is evident at all levels of government is that our politicians and the rest of us simply don’t care about Leading or Governance that benefits ALL with harm to none. We care about personal advantage and gain, accumulating wealth, and consolidating and intensifying power for ourselves and the elite. We use and succumb to predatory marketing of lies for unfettered capitalism and privilege for the few: “I got mine, screw you.” This directly undermines our humanity. Focus on maximizing profits and wealth accumulation is the failure to Love, our epic failure in Life. Decadence, the moral decline of self-indulgence, heralds collapse.

What’s on the inside shows up on the outside. Our inner lack of Integrity with Life, with Love, results in societal breakdown. AND this same breakdown is the catalyst and allows for our expansion of conscious awareness. We can’t solve our “problems” with the same egoic thinking that created them. We all can learn to look deeply, at root cause, beneath the surface features that keep us stuck, going round and round with the same useless, ineffective “solutions.” We only find the answers within our Hearts.

Think With Your Heart — Love With Your Mind

Leaders Know the Truth of the Heart: There is MORE than enough to go around. Leaders ask:

How can ALL Share in this Privilege of Life’s Abundance for everyone’s Dignity and Well-being?

How can each and every person have food, clothing and shelter?

How can each and every person have the same high quality of health care?

How can each and every school district provide, and each and every person have, the highest quality of education? This is the foundation of our future. The quality of education in Waterbury, New London, Bridgeport, New Haven, Hartford should be equal to that in Westport, Kent, Darien, Greenwich. Public higher education should be without cost to students.

How can each and every person belong and actualize their fullest potential as a Human Being, as a Soul, in their Contribution to Life, to the Dignity and Well-being of All? Leaders are Warriors for and Champion Our Human Spirit.

This is my Vision for Life. No one “wins” unless EVERYONE WINS.

All industries and companies have a Core Essence and Service that Benefit Life: A deep Purpose and Meaning that connects and contributes to Enhancing Life for all. It’s not just about jobs and “economic growth”; there are no winners if we just keep manipulating the score in our favor.

Messages Are Everywhere

Bottom-line: Life is Giving us Messages about our need for Course Correction. If the intent is primarily profits, wealth and power, we will fail. As we used to say to executives at Aetna, people don’t get up every morning and come to work because they are contributing to 15% ROSHE. If the intent includes enhancing and expanding our Human Consciousness through Purpose and Meaning, Connection and Contribution, Self-Determination and Choice, and Growth and Actualization that we can believe in and generate Fulfillment in the Flow of Integrity of Life, WE ALL will Flourish and Thrive.

The Messages will keep coming faster and stronger until we pay attention and enact Love. Leaders Create Love, from Love, with Love, as Love, for Love to Serve Life. Love Makes a Leader a Leader.

We already Know How to Enhance and Expand Life that is Love: Equality, Equity, Shared Power, Justice, Truth and Freedom for the Dignity and Well-being of All. It is happening in many places.

THE ANSWER TO HOW IS YES. This is Awakening. This Is Leadership. This Is Love. This Is Service to Life. What about you? Do you say, “YES”?

July 4, 2017 U.S.A. Stands For Ultimate Self Awareness as Love, as Truth and Freedom, that is our personal Leadership in Life, of Love in Service to Life. Independence is the Truth of Unity (Spirit) and Freedom of Diversity (Soul). Independence is the consciousness of Wholeness, both within ourselves and with and among all others. Our Declaration of Independence guides our connection with and participation in Life. Self-Respect allows for, brings forth and creates Self-Awareness. Self-Awareness activates, sustains and maintains Self-Love. Self-Love establishes, anchors and embodies Self-Realization, our Truth and Freedom of Being as We The People. Our Constitution guides our participation as citizens in democratic, societal-economic-political actions and systems. Equality allows for, brings forth and creates Shared Power. Shared Power activates, sustains and maintains Justice. Justice establishes, anchors and embodies our Dignity and Well-being: Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness. These are our common, shared Centerpoints for Being of co-creative intention as citizens of this nation and this world as human beings. Remember that You Are Truth of Unity of Spirit and Reclaim Freedom of Soul. Let each and every one of us Declare and Celebrate Independence, our Sovereignty without manipulation that subjugates, oppresses and exploits us in the name of wealth and power. Declare Your Soul’s Independence from labels, ideologies, rules, and agendas governing and dictating your life. In liberating and empowering ourselves we liberate and empower everyone. These are the Blessings of Independence.

This is a story of how we got where we are.

We are born into this world as a human being free of societal programming and conditioning.

Very early the programming starts. If we are nurtured and held, we feel safe and secure. If not, we learn that life isn’t safe.

Then we learn gender differences, programmed what it means to be a “girl” and a “boy” and our place in society. We take on these rules for approval from our parents. Many are taught that women are “less than” and subservient to men, so women give, give, give seeking approval. Sexism is alive and well.

Then we are programmed for race and what it means to be white, black, Asian, etc. and our place in society. We take on these rules for approval from our family, friends and teachers. Many are taught that being white means that you are privileged and better than others.

Then we are programmed for nationality and religion and we take on these rules. We take on these rules for approval from our family, friends and ministers/priests/rabbis. We are taught that our nationality or religion is the “right” one and better than the others which are “wrong.”

Then we are programmed for conformity and compliance by our schools; trained to get a job to feed the economic system for approval from our family, friends, teachers, and bosses. We are programmed to believe that money and status are the measures of our worth and that being poor, or black, or the “wrong” nationality or religion is a sign of some kind defect and so undeserving. Women were steered into lower paying, supportive careers such as waitressing, teaching and nursing; men towards “leadership” roles of executives, business owner, etc., but they aren’t leaders.

We are not supported in learning to be human beings; we are not supported in being ourselves and reaching our full potential; we are not supported in learning how to learn and grow, to truly educate ourselves; we are not supported in learning to lead.

As some point, we are programmed for politics and we take on these labels and rules and seek to impose these rules on others that feed the wealth, status and power of the social-economic-political system.

Then we get married and take on the labels of wife and husband, our gender programming kicks into high gear and when we have children we pass this and all our labels and rules onto them. We repeat what our parents modeled for us. We repeat how they conditioned us in all our labels and the wounds we received. Most are not free; we are a product of our conditioning unless we consciously commit to Truth and Freedom. So, the cycle continues.

With each of our labels we put on this mask or that costume that we consciously or unconsciously change each time we take on a different label or role. If I am a woman, then I must… If I am a man, then I must… If I am white, then I must… If I am Jewish, then I must… If I am Republican, then I must… Our labels govern and control our lives.

Our labels are our default identity that we use to create our life experience. Layer upon layer the labels accumulate and with continued reinforcement and defense, we no longer know what it means, and are completely separated from ourselves as human beings. And those who are different from us, including those who truly live as human beings without labels and rules, are not to be trusted and become the “enemy” to be ignored, dismissed, avoided, or oppressed: “right” is what our rules tell us; “wrong” is anyone else’s rules.

And our conditioning through modelling, approval and punishment actually gets encoded in our DNA through epigenetics and is passed down from generation to generation, compounding itself with each successive generation. So what we have today is what we ALL have created by our accumulated and compounded participation that has reached the incestuous extremes of a closed system so we are literally destroying ourselves and this planet. This separation from our humanity is the root cause of heart disease, cancer, addictions, mental illness, depression, suicide, genocide, war, etc. because we have continued to violate who and what we are as human beings. We’ve become inhuman and inhumane, programmed robots to feed the money machine. We only know how to follow rules. We do not know how to respond to life with thoughtful maturity, intelligence and heart. So, what we enact is irresponsible, immature, ignorant, unintelligent, unethical, immoral, corrupt, and cruel. Reinforced by predatory marketing, we endlessly pursue material accumulation, status and doing things to fill the emptiness inside.

Our Labels Are Lies

Our labels give a false identity, false senses of ownership and belonging because we are separated and alienated from ourselves, so one another as human beings. They keep us in echo chambers with those who have the same labels, denying our uniqueness and the unique contributions we are here to bring to Life. We each have only one piece of the picture of a thriving life for all; we need to foster both this diversity and our interdependence for survival. We don’t see our human uniqueness inside our labels and their agendas that we work to enact and maintain. Life has been about image and approval, security and support, domination and control.

And we die doing our labels, never having truly or Fully Lived as a human being. Our humanity has been oppressed our entire life. The only way out is to peel away all of the layers of labels and the fear-based wounds and traumas that they have generated. Our humanity is what we universally share; our labels separate. Leaders are those who have jettisoned all labels so they can bring us out of our closed-system, endless feedback loops, ending the cycles of both conditioning and epigenetics, Freed of the burden of our labels.

Chaos and Anarchy

And I can hear some of you: “Without definitions and rules we will have chaos and anarchy.” This is exactly what the fullness of Life as Love is: Chaotic-Anarchy; Anarchical-Chaos.

Life is Chaos: Without form. Love is Anarchy: Without hierarchy.
Life is Anarchy: Without hierarchy. Love is Chaos: Without form.

The origin of Chaos means emptiness, being wide open; it is the process of becoming Whole, of coming into Being. The origin of Anarchy means without a ruler, of order without power. Chaos and Anarchy are Foundations for Life’s Fulfillment and the Source of our soul-utions: The relentless Commitment to Truth and Freedom.

Chaotic Anarchy-Anarchical Chaos is Our Beingness, allowing Mystery, the Unknown and Unknowable, to emerge and unfold from within without distortion or control.

Life is Love. Love is Life… All without the burden of labels.

The Reversal: Right and Wrong

“Right” is what enhances and expands Universal Life as Love.

“Wrong” is what violates or denies Truth: Our Oneness/Unity AND our Uniquenes/Diversity; our Humanity AND our Divinity; our Integrity as Human Beings.

When experience is defined by labels and agendas being “right” is Wrong for Life as Love.

We all need to be honest with ourselves about how we have participated through our conformity or complacency. Silence isn’t kind or compassionate. Only we can change our story by changing ourselves and each of us taking Responsibility for the Whole of Life through Care, Understanding, Respect, and Accountability to one another as human beings for Truth and Freedom.

This is what it means to be a Citizen. This is what it means to Lead. There is only one label that has meaning and Matters: Human Being.

We are in a “course correction.” Those with the Courage to drop all labels for Truth and Freedom will initiate and foster the change and transformation needed for human survival and Be Leaders.

Leading is Love in Service to Life: Living your Centerpoint for Being.

End of story.