George Kinder, His Path to Mindfulness & Mission for a Golden Civilization
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by George Kinder
George Kinder is the founder of the Kinder Institute of Life Planning and launched a global grassroots conversation movement, Golden Civilization Conversations, aimed at sparking participative democracy across the globe and bringing about a Golden Civilization within a generation. His objective is to bring greater levels of freedom everywhere. George is facilitating a weekend retreat September 25-27, 2020. Reserve your seat.
From the moment I was born, I was aware that there was a difference between the depths of spiritual experience and the hardest edges of our material life including the complicated boundaries of ourselves in the world. It was from birth that I was launched on a path of spiritual exploration in the material world. My mother was a Christian teacher and encouraged my explorations. In college, I began to study world religions along with their formal meditative practices. In my twenties, I attended retreats of the Buddhist, Sufi, Jewish, Christian, and Hindu traditions. Each of them fed my passion to learn and to be more. It was the more secular practices that drew me in and I’ve practiced meditation now for 50 years, 3 hours a day. For over 30 years I’ve been a teacher, leading retreats and small sanghas in Europe, New England, and Hawaii.
Having practiced and reaped the great benefits of mindfulness for the whole of my adult life, I find profound joy in teaching the practice to others. There is mutual satisfaction felt as my students grow in their practice and experience the positive effects that it has on their mood, resiliency, and physical and emotional health. My wife Kathy and I enjoy teaching together and value the opportunity to share one of our mutual passions.
With the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, I have had the opportunity to expand my mindfulness teaching through Zoom meetings that connect a global audience. I’ll often gather audiences that span the US, the UK and Europe, and parts of Asia and Africa. The audience is constantly growing and evolving.
My professional life has been dedicated to delivering freedom and trust throughout the financial planning industry worldwide. I started as a tax advisors and financial planner and that led me to develop the Life Planning methodology that puts client’s life, their aspirations and dreams, ahead of any discussion of their resources. It is the only way advisors can be true fiduciaries to their clients. My current mission, an extension of my professional, is to put the aspirations of humanity into a vision of a Golden Civilization and begin to foster freedom—sustainable and vital—across all of Mother Earth and within each of its human creatures. I was driven by the realization that in the 250 years we have had to develop capitalism since the start of the Industrial Revolution, we have yet to systematically see wisdom and the very best of humanity at the top of every hierarchy of power and filtering all the way down to their base.
I am on a mission now in the second half of my life to end war, inspire participative democracy, and bring about a Golden Civilization within a generation through the mechanism of turning the inner listening skills we use in meditation outward. In this divisive world we live in, we have only to gain from reaching across the aisles that separate us and remembering the one thing that makes us all the same—our humanity. It is my sincere hope that through having these conversations and making commitments to live out the vision we want, we have the power to change the world and to each feel greater trust and more freedom within it.
Over the past few months, I have been hosting online Golden Civilization Conversations, where participants rethink civilization and develop a non-hierarchical, collective roadmap to deliver the vision of “A Golden Civilization” within a generation. Anchored strongly with a meditative frame, these conversations have proven to energize, inspire, and give hope to disillusioned and diverse communities and provide direction to participants who long to bring about change but don’t know where to start. By opening these conversations with a 15-minute meditation, the attendees are primed for the participative, values-based conversation about bettering civilization.
I’ve been inspired by the intermingling of spirits during these conversations. The conversations remain a place free of judgement and of listening for all participants who feel compelled to share (no matter their differences). They are a balm to the disengagement and disillusionment that we feel when faced with the seemingly uphill battle of numerous changes that seem necessary for political, social, and economic reform. Instead of getting overwhelmed by how far we have to go, these conversations allow people to get energized by what could be, by beginning with a vision unencumbered by obstacles. We already have the communication skills necessary to enact change; it is the energy to keep fighting for our vision that I have found we lack. These conversations build energy and help participants find allies who share the same desires. I am proud to have found a way to share this model and teach the necessary mindfulness skills to augment them to new audiences every month!