Inner Development


Book Description

The focus of this book is the spiritual work in the "school"--the community--of Michael. What does this mean? At the end of the eighteenth century, the Archangel Michael revealed the new mystery that has manifested on Earth as spiritual science, or anthroposophy. Its essence involves the renewal of our knowledge of the mysteries of karma and human destiny. Those who are drawn to this school have a special relationship to the human faculty of thinking--their inner feeling for truth has the strength of iron. This feeling for truth helps them to become companions of Michael at the threshold of the spiritual world. These talks deal with the spiritual path of anthroposophy in its Christian Rosicrudian aspect. Tomberg speaks openly and honestly about meditation, the various stages of consciousness (imagination, inspiration, and intuition), the "guardian of the threshold," and the esoteric trials one encounters along the way. He concludes by describing the life of Rudolf Steiner as the life of a Christian initiate.




First Steps in Inner Development


Book Description

How much practical time do we usually devote to the general art of being human? This practical guide to self-healing consciousness--it is both a spiritual psychology and a contemporary manual of the inner life--begins by laying out clearly the unhealthy, unfree nature of today's consciousness. Methodical, self-observation leads to discovering the key to liberating consciousness from its habitual blind spots and automatisms--realization of the universal primacy of cognition and the universal availability of its ground, the free attention. Through the use of attention, a person practicing the exercise given here begins to expand the range of one's possibilities to understand and act. The exercises--based on the Eightfold Path of the Buddha and the cognitive spiritual path of Rudolf Steiner--lead to a new life in which superconscious intuitions gradually replace superconscious formations. This new life is a universal human life of improvising, living thinking--a life of presence and pure joy, which is health for a human being. "I believe that our central problem is that we do not know what or who a human being really is. We lack this knowledge because we have no valid picture of the human WORD, no image of human language, of words in general. This is why we have such trouble with words, why we hit upon the right word so rarely. Everything we do to, for, and against each other is speech of some kind, or ought to be. Yet we are interested in anything but words, these very words by means of which we do everything else. Because we don't know what words are we don't know what humans are" (from the foreword).




Growing Within


Book Description

The selections in this compilation provide an overview of the meaning, nature, and processes of inner development. These include the first awakening of consciousness, the basic requisites and initial stages of inner growth, the individual means and methods to grow in consciousness, some of the difficulties and pitfalls along the way, and the eventual new birth into a spiritual life that comes from a reversal of consciousness. The focus of the book is inner growth as an experiential process based on certain universal psychological elements and principles, and its purpose is to help seekers understand and recognise the processes and experiences of inner development and foster its growth in their lives.




Community Life, Inner Development, Sexuality, and the Spiritual Teacher


Book Description

This collection of lectures contains Steiner's strongest statements on the issues of human relationships within a spiritual community. Occasioned by a scandal involving people influenced by psychoanalysis, these lectures are Steiner's comprehensive assessment of Freud's work and psychoanalysis as a whole. Steiner shows, our physical life, including human sexuality, has spiritual roots; and that looking to sexuality for the explanation of human behavior is therefore looking in the wrong direction. He also makes clear that becoming part of a spiritual community, such as the Anthroposophical Society, entails special responsibilities and a new way of being.




First Steps in Inner Development


Book Description

Rudolf Steiner is perhaps best known for his influence and wisdom in the fields of education, agriculture, medicine, science, and art. It is often forgotten that it was as a spiritual teacher that he made these contributions. Unfortunately, while his immediate students had the advantage of Steiner as a personal guide to their inner lives, later readers have had only his written works to guide them. Steiner, however, did give a few lectures on inner development--especially on beginning a path of practice. This book now collects these lectures--some of which have never been in English--for the first time. It also contains a number of the basic meditations and exercises shared by Steiner with his students. Here readers will find descriptions of various practical exercises, including exercises for the moral qualities that students must develop, and for the various qualities of consciousness that inner development requires. This book is not only for beginners. Wherever you are on the path, this book will be your companion. CONTENTS: Introduction by Christopher Bamford 1. The Inner Life 2. The Path 3. First Steps 4. Ways to Inner Development (extracts) Six Essential Exercises The Three Ways The Christian Way 5. How Does the Soul Find Its True Being? Bibliography




Effortless Cloud-Native App Development Using Skaffold


Book Description

A practical guide to solving inner development loop problems in cloud-native applications by automating build, push, and deploy boilerplate using Skaffold Key FeaturesLearn how to build and deploy cloud-native applications quickly with KubernetesCreate a production-ready continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline for cloud-native appsDiscover ways to create a GitOps-style CD workflow for cloud-native applicationsBook Description Kubernetes has become the de facto standard for container orchestration, drastically improving how we deploy and manage cloud-native apps. Although it has simplified the lives of support professionals, we cannot say the same for developers who need to be equipped with better tools to increase productivity. An automated workflow that solves a wide variety of problems that every developer faces can make all the difference! Enter Skaffold – a command-line tool that automates the build, push, and deploy steps for Kubernetes applications. This book is divided into three parts, starting with common challenges encountered by developers in building apps with Kubernetes. The second part covers Skaffold features, its architecture, supported container image builders, and more. In the last part, you'll focus on practical implementation, learning how to deploy Spring Boot apps to cloud platforms such as Google Cloud Platform (GCP) using Skaffold. You'll also create CI/CD pipelines for your cloud-native apps with Skaffold. Although the examples covered in this book are written in Java and Spring Boot, the techniques can be applied to apps built using other technologies too. By the end of this Skaffold book, you'll develop skills that will help accelerate your inner development loop and be able to build and deploy your apps to the Kubernetes cluster with Skaffold. What you will learnOvercome challenges faced while working in an inner development loop using SkaffoldAccelerate your development workflow using SkaffoldUnderstand Skaffold's architecture, internal working, and supported CLI commandsBuild and deploy containers to Kubernetes using the Skaffold CLI and Cloud CodeDeploy Spring Boot applications to fully managed Kubernetes services such as Google Kubernetes Engine using SkaffoldExplore best practices for developing an app with SkaffoldAvoid common pitfalls when developing cloud-native apps with Skaffold in KubernetesWho this book is for Cloud-native application developers, software engineers working with Kubernetes, and DevOps professionals who are looking for a solution to simplify and improve their software development life cycle will find this book useful. Beginner-level knowledge of Docker, Kubernetes, and the container ecosystem is required to get started with this book.




Integral Development


Book Description

Alexander Schieffer and Ronnie Lessem introduce a groundbreaking development framework and process to address the most burning issues that humanity faces. While conventional top-down, outside-in development has reached a cul-de-sac, a new, integral form of development is emerging around the world. Integral Development uniquely articulates this emergent approach, and invites us to fully participate in this process. The integral approach has been researched and framed over decades of in-depth experience in transformative development education and practice all over the world. It uniquely combines four mutually reinforcing perspectives: nature and community; culture and spirituality; science, systems and technology; and enterprise and economics. Conventional development theory and practice has prioritized the latter two perspectives, neglecting the former two. This has caused massive imbalances in today’s world. The four interconnected perspectives allow for a transformative and integrated engagement with core development issues in a way that is locally relevant and globally resonant. Throughout, the practical impact of Integral Development is brought to life through highly innovative cases from around the globe, drawing on the authors` first-hand experience. This makes the book a living demonstration of the power of this pioneering approach. Integral Development shows how individual, organizational and societal developments need to be interconnected to release a society’s full potential. It shifts the responsibility for large-scale development from often-distant experts and organizations to each individual, community, enterprise and institution within the society. It is essential reading - and a call to action - for everyone concerned with the current state of local and global development.




Green Witchcraft III: the Manual


Book Description

Positive, practical, and easy to use, Green Witchcraft brings together the best of both modern Wicca and the author`s family heritage of herb craft and folk magic. Green Witchcraft explores the fundamentals of the Wiccan religion, providing magical training for the independent thinker. Step-by-step instructions on a wide variety of magical techniques as well as basic rules of conduct make this the ideal book to get you started. Green rituals for self-initiation, rites of passage, seasonal celebrations and activities provide an excellent foundation for your own magical tradition.




Dalai Lama


Book Description

This selection of addresses, interviews and biographical essays is intended to convey a picture of the Dalai Lama`s personal life, his wide-ranging interests, and his thoughts on issues of global concern. It is hoped that this combination will give the reader who is relatively unfamiliar with the Dalai Lama a deeper appreciation of this man of peace. He emerges as a highly pragmatic man, dedicated to the establishment of non-violent solutions to human problems in the personal, environmental and political arenas. This book is admittedly of an introductory nature. Many of the topics introduced here are explained in much greater detail and depth in other books by the Dalai Lama.




A New Science of Suffering, the Wisdom of the Soul, and the New Behavioral Economics of Happiness: Towards a General Theory of Well-being


Book Description

New developments in positive psychology have evolved into the 2nd and 3rd waves, going beyond the individual and positive focus towards complex systems, multi-cultures, and the existential positive psychology of transcending suffering. The present project aims at developing a general theory of well-being that integrates all the above changes as the new frontier of positive psychology. At a time when humanity is threatened by all kinds of existential crises, from climate change to nuclear war, from ideological polarization to a widening income gap, we need to develop a big-picture theoretical framework showing that happiness is not just for those living in peace and prosperity, but also for those struggling in dire poverty and war-ravaged countries like Ukraine, not just for the self, but also for others, not just for the present, but also for future generations. This broader approach towards wellbeing opens up new vistas for research and interventions.