Here are the questions I ask the families I…

Here are the questions I ask the families I serve. 1) As a family of affinity, is the family community founded on the virtues of fusion, altruism, beauty as harmony, and love expressed as joy? Are family members connected in all their relationships to the principle of seeking to enhance each other's happiness, and are they prepared to embrace the proverb as a friend, as a mantra? Are they prepared to ask themselves today and every day during the lives of current family members how they're doing as a family and as individuals in avoiding the prediction? What positive steps are members taking to help one another flourish and to flourish as a family? Is the family seeking to establish a process that helps each future genera-tion ask itself the same questions? 2) Is the family seeking to grow dynamically the human and intellectual capital of each member, today and every day? Is it seeking to instill in the family a process of enhancement that will achieve this same goal for the next five generations? Is it committed to the goal of each family member achieving the highest order of happiness, that is, the highest level of self-awareness and the freedom ofself that grows from it? Does the family appreciate that this is the process most likely to lead to the dynamic preservation of a family as a whole for the next five generations and the one most likely to help it become a tribe that can ward off the proverb? 3) Do family members understand that by assisting in the individuation and differentiation of each member of the second generation and by helping each of them discover and fulfill an individual dream, they make it possible for that entire generation to learn to become dynamic steward-conservators of the dreams of the previous generation? Does the family understand that this is the critical jour ney each member of each succeeding generation must take, so that all members are forever part of a virtual second generation-meaning a dynamic generation? In this way, the family will never face the plateau and stasis of energy in its second generation that leads to the dissipation of energy in the third, as ordained in the proverb. 4) Does the family encourage all members to become excellent steward-conservators of all of the financial assets they inherit and to learn to be stakeholder-owners of all forms of family enterprise? Do family members recognize that this responsibility is secondary to their responsibility to discover the work they're called to do individually? Their task as an apprentice in that work is to find the men-tors and teachers necessary to master it. In this process of mastering work, does the family actively encourage family virtues of individual discovery, creativity, curiosity, and seeking fulfillment of the spirit? 5) Does the family understand that a family system in which one generation tells the succeeding generation, "Do this for us and we might do something for you" represents enslavement and is therefore profoundly unfree and unattractive to potential new members? Saying instead, "How can I help you without and before seeking anything from you?" represents a free system, one that positively attracts members. In this process, a family acknowledges altruism as one of its virtues and practices it in all of its dealings inside and outside the family. This choice increases the family's store of social capital, so that it has larger amounts of it to share with everyone with whom it interacts. 6) Does the family embrace the principle of fusion in all ofthe interconnected multiple relationships that make up the family systems of affinity, with a goal of gently evolving and growing the sphere of energy that encompasses the family? Does it seek to avoid the fission leading to entropy and inertia in those relationships, which will cause them to fail? Does the family understand that the family's best hope for success lies in the principle of affinity and the positive connections it represents and fosters? 7) Does the family recognize that its future depends on successfully managing multiple long-term transitions in a family of affinity's evolution? Does the family recognize that no short-term transaction will make a difference to the success of the journey unless that transaction can be successfully integrated into and positively enhance the successful completion of these transitions? 8) Does the family recognize that its family systems are webs of multiple interconnected relationships of incredible complexity, which for the family's well-being must constantly organically evolve toward higher orders of complexity? And does the family understand that if those relationships are not promoting this process of growth, the family is likely to be in entropy, leading to its demise? 9) Does the family recognize that the practice of a family of affinity's system of governance, its system of joint decision making, is fundamental to its well-being and that each joint decision it positively engenders is a fundamental step in achieving its long-term dynamic preservation? 10) Does the family seek to encourage great elders who will act to mediate its disputes; remind the family of its history by telling its stories; intermediate toward the family's spiritual well-being, especially in helping members successfully navigate the stages of their lives; and exercise the authority the family grants them to choose its leaders, especially leaders for peace, leaders from behind? 11) Does the family hold as a virtue the practice of beauty as harmony? Such beauty does not require the dimming of individual energies but rather grows from individuals' evolving to higher orders of happiness. Each member flourishes as an individual tile in a more and more beautiful mosaic composed of the tiles of all those who've gone before and those living now amid virtual space for those to come. 12) Does the family cultivate a beginner's mind leavened with seventh-generation thinking as the needed practices for long-term successful family survival and flourishing?

— from The Air Traffic Controller (God)

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