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The effect of the mutual activation of tuning bowls and the overlapping of similar-coloured spheres in a group of people as mentioned above can easily be observed in seminars: Many companies and organizations allow their staff - and in particular management staff – to participate in further training courses. It is always amazing that in such seminars moral and ethical aspects are also tackled with great vigour and plans for solving such aspects are drawn up. People resolve to do many things, but later in their daily life back at the workplace, they actually do not translate any of this or at least extremely little of it into action. External forces are very often cited with great regret as reasons for this, which had the effect that the discussed themes could not be implemented by the person concerned. This person naturally hopes that all the other participants in the seminar will not find themselves stuck with such unpleasant constraints.
To examine the validity of the basic rules of existence we can also carry out certain experiments. We will go through such experiments in our thinking quite soon. Another test option for us as human beings is that each one of us tries for himself to feel whether the basic laws of being are valid. Since we too are part of the cosmos, this truth must be known to each of us. Through your intuition try to feel whether the abovementioned basic rights of existence are valid or not.
We have seen that we can compare human development with the achievement of virtuosity in a particular activity (for example making music, sport, handcrafts etc.). The basic rights of existence (the equal right of all beings to be on the earth, to develop and to carry out their tasks) must be so strongly internalized that in every situation we automatically act according to these rights without having to think about it. If we wish to pass through this development stage, our subconscious - amongst other things with subjective perception (glasses model) - will help us to eliminate the causes of violating the basic rights of existence. We learn step by step and hence build our own pyramid of human development. Within the scope of our personal development our perceptive ability with respect to everything around us and the important interrelationships in life also increases. In particular our abilities to intuitively perceive and evaluate important information for the respecting of the basic rights of existence also increase.
In the advertising field this longing, which is deeply embedded in every one of us, is exploited in more and more refined ways: By linking a service or product with a blissfully happy person or a harmonious situation, it is suggested to the viewer that thanks to the use of this product you will become successful, beautiful, desirable, rich or whatever – and this will (also) make you happy. We have already dealt with this briefly in the section on the needs of humankind.
In many cases therefore sooner or later arises the desire to convince other people of his path. This person also wants to help others to find the «right» path. This often ends in great disappointment if the closest people such as his life partner, his children, parents, good friends etc. react negatively. Especially if they don’t wish to know anything of the «only correct» way, the best path or goal.
In other words: According to the needs which we wish to satisfy, we should select our goals from the corresponding hierarchical level. What sounds so simple and logical is however frequently a cause of disappointment in our personal development: Needs and objectives don’t correspond but often even contradict each other in a flagrant way.
It is not that difficult to see as an observer what we or others should actually do in order to live the basic rights of existence in a given situation. However it is exactly what we really should do which is generally the main difficulty. The difficulty doesn’t lie in the theory or in the strategy but in carrying it out in practice.
"There are no knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns - that is to say, there are things we now know we don't know but there are also unknown unknowns.
There are things we do not know we don't know. So when we do the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then say well that's basically what we see as the situation, that is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns. And each year we discocover a few more of those unknown unknowns."
The glasses model of subjective perception is automatically used for every random objective by our subconscious for the development of the corresponding capabilities. It is therefore tremendously important that we set clear priorities for our objectives.
The term «personal development» normally comprises a very wide field: Physical and psychical development from childhood to a grown up person, knowledge-oriented education, training of abilities, collecting experience as well as developing personality and character of a human being.
On timeforchange.org, we primarily focus on the personal growth for a higher consciousness, i.e. the development of personality as well as the consciousness of a person . This is sometimes referred to as inducing consciousness or developing awareness. Since we could not find a precise English expression for this, we call this process simply «personal development». Of course, we could have called it (personal) spiritual growth or spiritual development instead.
Personal development as the meaning of life
What drives us as human beings? Why do we exist? What do we strive for?
On the pages which follow we would like to offer subjects for thought and information on these and other questions. We set out the bases for all existence on the earth and discuss the consequences for life in private and business areas.
Amongst other things we describe how we can achieve constant harmony and inner peace. The right choice and deliberate pursuing of our own, self-selected goals take on a key role in this so that we can achieve our own goals and not let ourselves be manipulated by others.
- What drives us as human beings?
- Why do we exist? What is the purpose of life?
- What do we strive for?
«Time for change» is about your life, your objectives and your decisions. We are convinced that basic human needs are the same everywhere and finally we all strive for the same thing:
In no other branch of industry are the needs of human beings so intensively investigated than in advertising. If it is known what the potential consumer group which purchases a given product or service really strives for, where these people set their highest priorities, it is possible to respond exactly to these needs in the advertising and hence earn lots of money!
The striving for harmony and happiness, for a life spent in love and peace is therefore frequently exploited in advertising: First we see a suffering person who has an affliction, an illness or a problem, then a product (pill, ointment, food, drink, car, washing powder, software, computer, telephone, holiday place etc.) and finally we see the same person who – thanks to the use of the product shown - is happy. Often too the happy person is shown together with the product. Just try sometime to deliberately observe how frequently the advertising messages are set up in this way regardless of the product on offer.
Our own objectives are difficult to hide since in fact we constantly «radiate» our objectives all the time. In reverse we frequently feel the objectives of other people without even knowing anything about that person and without having spoken to them.
Here you can download the complete book "ABC of awareness" in the Adobe pdf-format. All you need to read it is the (free) Adobe Acrobat reader. If the Adobe reader starts up after selecting the file, press on the "SAVE" button to locally save the file. Click here to open the document for reading.
You can then read or print the book offline. This is probably more convenient than reading all chapters online.
BTW: The German version can be found here.
As we will soon see, we often also make the choice of which objective we will use as a guideline in making a decision in interaction with our surroundings. Other people, institutions, animals, plants, nature etc. can all have an influence on the selection of our goal in making a decision.
We generally define personality as the individual characteristics of a person that determine his or her perception, motivation and behaviour. Sometimes this is also called the character of a person.
However, on this website, we talk about personal development or personal growth , which for us means exactly the same as developing personality traits.
Those who deny those occurrences or characteristics in their lives which cannot be rationally explained, automatically shut themselves off from all considerations about the meaning of life, about the reason for and the objectives of our existence and that of other beings.
We do not see our environment and the events around us as «objective» or neutral (perceptive reality). Instead it is rather like looking through a pair of glasses, which determines our interpretation of a picture. I hold these glasses myself in front of my eyes. According to the way these glasses change what is really a neutral picture of an event, the picture makes us feel for example fear, joy, anger or it makes us sad. We feel the picture to be good or bad, negative or positive, meaningful or senseless, dark or light, correct or false.
We can use the model of a bright lamp to represent our level of awareness or level of higher consciousness: Our body represents the lamp which is lit ever more brightly as our awareness increases (higher consciousness). The brightness of our awareness lights up our surroundings so that we can see and hence perceive additional aspects of ourselves and our surroundings.
The model of the awareness sphere is extremely appropriate for discussing some of the characteristics of our personal development or spiritual growth: