Time for change

Global warming is a typical global phenomena, where the causer of the emission does not automatically suffer from it himself. Cause and effect are separated both in time as well as with regard to geography.

In the past, there was a more or less direct relation between the energy consumption (mainly fossil fuels) and the welfare of a country.

This makes it very difficult to reach consensus between the countries about the required steps to solve the problem. The Kyoto protocol shows that the following of the agreement will be doubtful at best if no automatic sanctions take into effect for countries violating it.

Given the severe consequences of global warming, the above sounds quite hopeless for our future. Read on to see how we all are involved in this and how we can benefit from taking our personal responsibility.

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  In one of the previous sections we discussed the mutual activation of tuning bowls. During this discussion we saw that the tuning bowls corresponding with our objectives vibrate and hence radiate energy at the corresponding frequency. In the case of other people who have a similar tuning bowl, this can lead to activation of this tuning bowl. Possibly because of this the other person thereby selects the corresponding objective as the guideline for his next decisions. This in turn poses the question as to whether individual people cannot be consciously manipulated by this means.

Could for example someone with a high awareness help other people unnoticed to select the basic rights of existence as their guideline for decisionmaking? Would it not be possible in this way to improve the whole world?

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 Since in principle every conceivable task can (and should) serve the further personal development of a person, in the next section we want to consider the acceptance of tasks from this point of view. Everyone can decide for himself whether he wants to accept and carry out a given task. Before someone accepts a task however, it is essential that he checks that the task is suitable for him, i.e. on the one hand whether it is compatible with his personal goals and on the other hand whether he has the necessary abilities for carrying it out. Here we mean not only manual skills or intellectual abilities but also especially awareness. He who takes up a task is responsible for making sure that he has the abilities to solve it.

This is a consequence of self-responsibility: Everyone must be able to freely and independently decide whether he wants to take on a given task or not. It is after all impossible to force someone to carry out a task and then afterwards to make that person responsible for the consequences!

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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.

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Spiritual information should serve to understand our life and our life's tasks better and thereby to achieve our purpose of life more easily. A contact to the spiritual world can be in particularly helpful to sense and confirm one's goals and tasks of life. In addition, this spiritual contact can be a tremendously important guide and assistance in our daily life.

Spirituality and its related information should always be integrated in our daily life, in everything we do or do not do. Read on to understand why this is the case and to learn about some stumbling blocks and common misconceptions about spirituality. Information is available, you just have to read it!

 

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The soul designates the immortal essence of a being. The soul is the seat of the personality and true character of a person.

Most of the large religions accept the soul as the most important and ethereal substance of a human being. However, there are - depending on the respective religion - different concepts about what happens to the soul after the death of a person.

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Personal development and growth

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.

Personal growth for a higher consciousness

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.

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  In the previous chapter we saw that tasks do not simply appear of their own accord. They are not «simply there», but result from a certain objective in the personal or professional area. The tasks can therefore also be just as diverse as the goals. The nature of the tasks correspond with a concrete plan, showing how a goal or partial goal should be reached.

There are usually different options for how to achieve a given goal. In selecting our tasks we plan our personal route to the goal for which we are striving. It will however certainly not be the only possible way of reaching this goal but it will simply be the best way in our own eyes. The criteria we use to select this best route are naturally very individual.

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The foregoing discussion calls in the question as to who then establishes this law if it «may» or must not be established by human beings. Who disciplines the «wrongdoers»? This question is all the more interesting because we all presumably violate this law several times a day. Let us leave open this question of a judge and consider what happens when a being violates this law:

In observing the needs of people we have seen that first we try to safeguard our physical existence and only at the highest level do we seek total happiness, self-fulfilment, internal harmony and peace - or whatever one may consider the highest objective of all. We can probably assume that there is an analogous needs hierarchy amongst animals and plants, in other words that they too aim for a state of total fulfilment.

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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.

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Returning to the question put at the outset as to how the respect for the basic rights of existence can best be learned. Actually we are all ready to practise this – however we are not normally aware of it. Let us therefore consider the development of human beings:

In our everyday life we are confronted with many situations in which we can observe or violate the basic rights of existence and the resulting laws. It is not necessary to look very far for such situations, every action, even every thought offers us this opportunity: What shall we buy, how do we cook, how do we treat our fellow human beings (partner, children, colleagues, boss), how do we treat animals and plants, nature etc.

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The nice thing about subjectivity is the possibility of influencing the situation ourselves. If my perception is subjective then I – and I alone – have all the options of influencing or being influenced in a given situation. I alone decide whether I feel that something is good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, cold or hot, beautiful or ugly!

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.

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  In past chapters we have emphasized again and again how important it is to set your own personal goals for life. In addition of course it is also necessary to carry out regular checks on, or to monitor, whether we are also really getting closer to our goals. In the case of most companies for example objectives and budgets are set for one year and the achievement of these objectives is periodically reviewed, at least once each year. What has proved to be useful for companies can also be very helpful for us personally.

The monitoring of our progress must thereby be adapted to the selected goals. We must be clear about how we want to measure our development, according to which criteria we wish to make the assessment of whether we have got closer to our goal. The goal and the respective assessment criteria for progress on the way to the goal belong closely together. If we have set ourselves the goal of learning to play the piano, then we can for example measure our progress by using pieces of music which we are able to play. Our body weight or the state of our savings account have little to do with this, and are hence unsuitable as assessment criteria for progress in piano playing. What appears so obvious in this example however often leads to difficulties and problems in our daily life.

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Personal development and growth

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.

Personal growth for a higher consciousness

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.

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As a result of the current discussion how further global warming could be prevented or at least mitigated, the revival of nuclear power seems to be in everybody's - or at least in many politician's - mind. It it interesting to see that in many suggestions to mitigate global warming, the focus is put on the advantages of nuclear power generation, its disadvantages are rarely mentioned.

Below is a short summary of arguments for and against nuclear power plants.

 

 

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Often we reduce the role of children to reproduce the society, to keep the number of people at the desired level. Children need to learn our language, understand our behaviour, culture and rules, etc.

Who could transfer this knowledge better than professionals, people educated to teach exactly this? - If you look at it from this point of view, it would be most economical to give your children away for education after birth as soon as possible.

There is of course another point of view: What is the most important role of children?

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There is yet another explanation as to why the basic rights of existence really have to be lived and that it is insufficient to simply not violate this law:

If we always have to watch out that we don’t violate the basic rights of existence in order to reach the permanent state of total harmony, we live in continual fear that we will violate the law in spite of trying not to. This would be a negative form of motivation: I learn swimming so that I don’t drown; I take part in a dancing course so that I don’t step on my dancing partner’s toes; I practise a musical instrument, so that I don’t produce wrong notes etc.

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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:

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As multifaceted as we human beings may be, once our existential needs are covered, we all finally strive for the same thing: We want to be perpetually happy and satisfied and we want to be able to live our lives without worries and cares. This search for harmony and inner peace, for self-realization, or however we like to describe this state, as our top objective in life, is practically the same in all the different methods of representing human needs. Not least the advertising industry also frequently attempts to make use of this striving for happiness and harmony.

From our experience we know that wherever we are or whatever we do certain rules prevail. On the roads these are the traffic regulations, in football the rules of play, in nature there are the natural laws. For those that respect these rules the corresponding activities or deeds are easier to accomplish than for those who violate these rules and therefore have to be reprimanded in one way or another.

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We have so far mentioned many times that we are confronted «by life» with situations which permit us to learn the ability to live the basic rights of existence. If for example we are to learn to let things go, then we are constantly put into situa­tions where we have to decide whether we want to cling on to something or let it go. In reality these things could be for example articles, money, dear friends or relations, or the results of current or earlier activities. It is in no way necessary for us to know ourselves on which lesson we are currently working. «Life» already knows!

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