User:Pooley09

Realize2actualize

Welcome to the philosophy and practice of "realize2actualize" dedicated to the exploration and practical application of knowledge, truth and wisdom.

Introduction

Evolution is a natural process

Everything in life evolves, you, me, every life form, animal and plant, our whole society, life as we know it, time, this planet and the universe continuously goes through the marvelous and perfect process of evolution. This is difficult for us to recognize because we are so focused on the outcome of our behavior that we are not aware of the natural laws which lie at the foundation of this process.

If we take a brief look at the early beginnings of history we find that we human beings up until about 6000 years ago lived in natural harmony with our environment, when we, just like all the other animals roamed the world and lived off the earth as hunter-gatherers. This was before we humans opened our eyes and by doing this became aware of ourselves. Slowly over time we invented and learned to use tools, discovered fire, developed agriculture, and so we learned to manipulate our environment and by doing this upset the natural order of things.

Just the way the world has changed since the first human beings have set foot on this planet we can observe similar changes on a personal level from the time of our birth through the different stages of our conditioned upbringing.

During the first few years of life we all lived with initial oneness, with full awareness of our higher Self, being able to freely give and receive love, to be unconditionally happy, curious, blessed with an amazing sense of imagination, interest and creativity, but as we grew older we had to lose our natural connection with this, our higher Self because of the requirements of the cultural, social and economic conditions of the world we were born into.

The process of our un-natural development

We came into this world as spiritual beings, innocent and pure, free from judgment, hate, ignorance and fear, completely able to give and receive love, endowed with an infinite amount of natural interest, happiness and creativity, with a natural desire to learn about ourselves and the world around us on our own terms. While this is our natural state as human ‘beings’ we all have to face the harsh reality of our production and consumption oriented society where we are required to do what is expected of us and fit the mold imposed onto us from our parents, our teacher and preachers, the government , our culture and the socio-economic system we grow up in.

Around the time we were old enough to enter the school system we were forced to compromise our natural inward tendencies for the ways of our modern world, and as we had to submit ourselves to the rules and guidelines imposed onto us our spirits were broken against the standards and expectations set by an omnipresent external authority. The realities of our world with its emphasize on obedience, conformity, production, consumption and competition require us to replace our natural tendencies as human beings for the sake of fitting the mold imposed onto us from the outside. Slowly over time we ceased to be amazed about life, and as external pressure replaces internal activity and interest we eventually became completely alienated from our innate human natural endowments. Our natural wonder and curiosity which we all possess as children, our desire to understand and to explore the world on our own terms gets lost in the process of formal education with its emphasize on obedience, conformity and living up to external expectations.

Since we are required to live up to and are measured against a great number of external rules and guidelines we begin to look for what we need or want in the world outside of ourselves. An overemphasize of external goals and rewards, on achievement, producing, consuming, competing and performing, all of which are essential elements of our marketing society instills within us the dangerous and misleading idea that life is not only about the pursuit of happiness and meaning, but also the accumulation of more and more things and possessions. As a result of that, many of us develop very early in life an identity that is based upon what we have, what gives our lives meaning like certain beliefs, values, viewpoints and opinions, a life style, prestige, social status, level of education, material possessions or outward appearance.

From that moment on we basically remain unchanged, do not question anymore our views and opinions since we are busy defending that which we stand for. It is then that our primary focus about personal change has developed: We seek to change that which we do not want or like in our lives such as our jobs, earn more money, gain a higher degree of external success, find friends who are less annoying and make us feel better about ourselves, and live in a more stimulating and positive environment where we have the freedom to live our lives the way we want to. In other words, our main focus in to seek change in the external.

The power of realizations

Realizations inspire our feelings, stir our thoughts and trigger our (re) actions. During a lifetime of unique experiences, learned behaviors and conditioned responses we have developed a certain outlook on life, a way of looking at ourselves and other people. It is those views or realizations which have created the world, the reality we live in. Most of those realizations we hold within are negative, destructive, self-limiting and irrational, but since they are the result of our emotional, mental, spiritual and intellectual response to experience they are deeply ingrained in our personality structure.

It is a very difficult task to become aware of our subconscious programming and change the patterns which lie at the foundation of the person we have be-come, yet it is this active awareness which lies at the foundation of effective personal transformation.

A paradigm shift of tremendous proportions

True and lasting change is not to be found in the world outside of us but is the result of our inner activity and productivity, and therefore is to be generated from within. What we fail to realize is that life is an art to be learned. During the process of growing up we learn a lot; we are taught to follow external rules, guidelines and expectations, we are instructed in subjects such as biology, mathematics, chemistry, and history, learned that life is about competion, production and consumption but we never learned how to develop our genuine and unique individuality and humanity in such a way as to become a fully functioning, emotionally secure, reasonable, rational, balanced, happy, creative and alive human being.

Because of that we tend to look for those qualities outside of us which are part of natural human predisposition.

Love for example is not just a feeling which comes over us once we meet somebody who stimulates that emotion within us, but instead love is a power, an attitude towards ourselves, other people and life in general. The same it is with freedom (which is the best sense of the word is free) as well as happiness, success and peace, all of which are not to be attained in the world outside of us but instead are qualities to be developed from within ourselves so they can become part of our general personality orientation.

Biography

My name is Christoph P. Ebert, and I am an ongoing student and aspiring teacher in the School of life. I was born in 1966 in Mainz, Germany. My parents were both professional artists. My father was an accomplished pianist, conductor and composer of classical music, and my mother an actress, painter and dancer. I grew up with the love for music and the performing arts, and I was fortunate to have spent a lot of time as a child in great theater houses across Europe seeing wonderful performances, opera, classical music and musical, and so fell in love with the the arts.

I always have been a very sensitive, shy and intuitive individual who greatly empathized with the suffering of others, always asking myself why I had the good fortune of growing up in a pretty comfortable home in Germany instead of living without regular food and shelter somewhere in a 3rd world country. Seeing images of starving children my age provided me with lots of heartache, pain and angst as I was wondering how God could allow for those things. Without knowing it at the time, but I took on a great amount of the suffering I saw in the world and put it on my own shoulders for it made me feel extremely bad inside. How could I have fun and enjoy life knowing that every day thousands of children, women and men are falling victim to malnourishment , war, violence and mass genocide? Of course I could not even begin to understand the reasons for why all of those atrocities are happening, so without telling anybody about how I felt I began wrapping myself up more and more within myself. I began disliking the world I was living in and the people in it for their seemingly superficial nature, selfish motives and limited understanding, and because of that I was never able to develop any genuine, healthy and intimate relationships with others.

As far as I can remember I had intense desire to grasp the meaning of life, the reason for why people do what they do, the underlying motives behind their behavior, but I became very early frustrated over the realities of 'growing up'. While I was extremely eager to learn I felt that my curiosity was less important than me doing what I was required to do, so I turned into quite the rebel who had a deeply rooted problem to follow orders. I also become very aware of and sensitive to the cruelty children exhibited in school, picking on others and making fun of them for being different or not wearing the right clothes, or just having glasses. All of this pained me a lot since I began to see that not only the realities of school and authority required me to be a certain way in order for me to fit a certain mold, but that also on a more personal level children exhibited a very interesting tendency to look at others not in terms of who they are, but rather in terms of how they want them or need them to be.

When I first heard about the concept of God around the age of 6 or 7 I tried to imagine what this God figure is all about, curious to understand how the father of life could allow for all our suffering, injustice, violence and war. This marked the beginning of quest towards the ultimate truth, and I embarked on a journey towards finding the answers I was looking for.

Like many children I was full of wonder and curiosity about life, but I always developed the sense that society was more focused on me doing what I was supposed to do than helping me to understand what this thing called life was all about. My mind was always filled with a lot of things; images, voices, ideas, concepts and especially questions. I had lots and lots of questions about life, the meaning of all things, trying to find the underlying reason for suffering, war, for why things are they way they are, for why people behave the way they do.

Eventually I began shutting out those countless external voices which told that I have to be a certain way for others, be it sit still in school, clean up my room or study for a test. Whatever it was, if it was against my inner will I did not feel like doing it. During this time I developed an almost hostile reaction against anybody who told me that I have to do something. I had the most difficult time paying attention to something that was of no interest to me, so I quickly fell behind in school. This feeling of not being allowed to be who I wanted to be, to learn and live according to my own inner pace and interest left me drained, frustrated and angry. Required to go to school for 6 hours every day, being told what to think and how to behave was torture to my inner sense of reason, curiosity and interest which was already highly developed, even as a young child.

Feeling extremely isolated and restricted during the years of my formalized education I began to follow my inner conscience and bliss, which naturally propelled me in the direction of asking more and more questions about the meaning, purpose and reality behind all things. When I was about 8 years of age I asked my mother a questions which signifies my deep compassion, caring and empathy towards all of life. Seeing a picture of a starving girl who was around my age on the front cover of a magazine I asked her the very simple and naive question, "why am I me and not her?" .

The realities of life provided me with much angst, pain and sorrow for a variety of reasons. For one I felt extremely restricted in my natural development, not being allowed to take time for natural contemplation and learning. Required to sit still for 6 hours and listen to a teacher go on and one about a certain subject caused me a great amount of grief and heartache. As my natural response I withdrew more and more within myself and my inner world of ideas, thoughts and questions. I began having a difficult time falling asleep at night. After hours and hours of the voices inside my head talking to one another from all directions I had to actually tell myself to stop from thinking, which was quite a challenging undertaking since those voices were extremely strong and persistent.

I became an extremely bad student because I needed all my questions answered in order to move along in a certain subject, and since I was always pretty shy and insecure I never asked those kind of questions. I became quickly bored and frustrated over the monotone, non-stimulating and structured ways of formal education, even though I was extremely eager to learn. Eventually I turned into quite the rebel who had a deeply rooted problem to follow orders. I had issues concerning discipline, doing homework and paying attention to something I was not interested in.

Without anybody being aware of what was going on for me I tried very hard to be a good student, but I failed miserably because I could not keep up with the pace set by my fellow classmates. While I felt inadequate, not being able to perform well in school I began getting the sense that there was something about me which was very different and unique, and instead of rejecting and punishing myself for it I learned to fully accept myself for the person I was. My parents could not possibly understand what was going on for me, and my class and schoolmates were all too busy having fun and being kids that I never had the opportunity to open up to anybody, nobody to share my real thoughts with.

A main influence and catalyst for change during my younger years took place during the 80s, when I was 14. The music during that time spoke to me very clearly. Pink Floyd, Genesis, Supertramp, The Alan Parsons Project, and of course the rise of MTV, the introduction of videos, of computers, the first video game, which all introduced a very important period in German culture, the rise of the 'Neue Deutsche Welle', the new German wave of music, which all came out during this amazing decade, a very revolutionary time for new horizons, amazing advances, crazy music and a whole new cultural climate.

After I finally graduated in 1983 I attempted to continue my scholarly education in a higher technical school, but failed miserably due to my lack of motivation and interest.

Not knowing what to do with myself and lacking any real focus, passion and interest I began my mandatory service in the German army, an experience that changed my entire outlook on life. Being away from my sheltered home and living with people who displayed a more than negative attitude towards life got me thinking about lots of things. I was surrounded by people who reminded me very much of how I have lived my life up until this point, and eventually I found that most of them were basically just as non-caring, disinterested and disillusioned as I was up until this point. Over the next few months I began to do a lot of soul searching and self-examination, and slowly I began to realize that my rebelliousness during my school years did myself a lot of harm, and that I missed out on a lot of opportunity to learn and to improve on myself. For the first time in my life I understood that you learn for nobody, not for your parents, not for your teacher, not for anybody but only for yourself, and so it dawned on me that the only person I really cheated with not wanting to learn was myself. After having completed my army service I left an entirely different person, very motivated and ambitious, determined to make something of myself and make up for my rebellious period during my younger years.

When I completed my service in 1987 I found myself a completely changed person, ready to open up a new chapter. A few months later I began my apprenticeship in merchandise and sales at a German fashion store. After that I worked in promotions and marketing for about 2 years, and while I still did not like people and felt uncomfortable around most of them this was not really a concern anymore since it was my dream to become successful and rich in order to enjoy and live life to the fullest.

This constituted a new phase in my life. The next several years I turned into a learn/- and workaholic. I became so motivated that I also became very selfish, self absorbed and arrogant, my goal being to become successful and rich, and I was right on track to achieve my goals if it weren’t for an incident a couple of years later which should change my life completely. After I completed my apprenticeship in 1988 I worked in promotions and marketing for about 2 years. This was truly a dream come true, working in a high pace environment was just what I was looking for. During this time I was residing at a youth hostel due to the fact that it was located very close to where I was working. One day, after returning home from a long day at work I took some time to relax in the TV-room, unwinding from the stress at the office when I heard somebody talking in a very loud and animated matter on the telephone. Not thinking much of it, rather being a little bit annoyed over her loud demeanor I soon returned to watching television. A few minutes later my solitude was interrupted by somebody sitting right across from me at the table. As it turned out it was the person who I noticed a few minutes earlier talking on the phone. When I looked up I encountered the beautiful, warm and alive features of an African American lady. As it turned out she was stranded in the hostel due to the fact that she got mugged a little bit earlier. A taxi driver recommended the hostel to her since she now had to figure what to do.

Her name was Eunice, and she was from the United States. I was instantaneously fascinated by her very alive and refreshing personality, but also was very intrigued by the fact that she was a performing artist. We spent only a month together before she finally had to leave for Kansas where she was attending the University of Kansas, being only a few hours away from her PhD. During our time together in Germany we developed a strong affection towards one another. When she had to leave, we were both in tears. But something inside of me told me that this was meant to be more than just a brief encounter, so against my family's strong suggestion not to make the biggest mistake of my life I packed my bags and left for Kansas in January of 1991, only 2 month after I met her in Germany.

My wife was a very outgoing, alive and set-in-her-ways kind of person, and I was a very insecure, shy, immature but also very much an introvert , and so we were having problems from the beginning. Every time my wife was behaving in irrational and irritating ways (during the end phases of our marriage she was analyzed with bi-polar dis-order) I immediately confronted her and tried to change her behavior which I could not understand nor approve of. This resulted in us having countless arguments which many times escalated into physical altercations. It is very difficult to describe how angry I used to get during this time, let me just say that my buttons were pushed (or rather I allowed for them to be pushed) in the worst possible way, so we were arguing and fighting all the time.

When problems in our marriage started the huge family of my ex wife, as well as all of her friends turned their back on us, saying that now that I am married to her that she is my responsibility, so, being faced with such difficulty I was overwhelmed with what was going on for me. I did not know at the time of our marriage is that my now ex wife had, and still does have some serious emotional and mental problems; she was analyzed with bi-polar, drinks a lot and her overall personality was uncontrollable and very dangerous when she did not get her way. Of course we had wonderful moments together and were very close at times, but sad to say, this was more the exception than the rule.

Despite all of that, exactly on year after we got married our first dauhter was born, and 14 month later our family grew with the birth of twins, a boy and a girl. Let me just say here that moving to another country and getting married into a whole new culture and ethnicity was an amazing and life transformation experience in itself, but it was nothing compared to becoming a father and developing a close bond and love for my children. Still, and that is the most sad part of my story is that I was lacking the maturity and strength to create a loving and stable home for them, and so they were in the middle of a very instable, dramatic and stressful situation.

In addition to all the problems here in America I received a very sad phone call from my mom in October of 1992, informing that my Dad, who said that if I left Germany I would never see him again had suffered a fatal heart attack.

A couple of years later I began working a job where we could use headphones while doing repetitive data entry work. Since I was very quick and efficient when it comes to multitasking I soon began utilizing my time at work to explore the radio culture of the new world I just moved to. I loved listening to everything from political programs, religious broadcasts, talk shows, and eventually I became a member of the library and so I began checking out books on tape. I began listening to biographies of famous people, books on history and the future, politics, writings on the economy, business, management, philosophy, spirituality, and eventually personal growth.

When I learned about the idea of personal-development I became instantaneously fascinated by the idea. It was like a light went on in my head because everything made sense, but then when I returned home from work I was still facing the same situation which triggered me and brought out the worst in me. About a year later I started using a voice recorder to practice short presentations and talks because I felt inspired to express some of their ideas in my own words, and eventually I developed the intention to one day do the very same thing those amazing people where doing and work as motivational speaker, teacher and writer.

I worked a regular 9-5 during for about a decade, and during the first several years I absorbed an average of 3 books on tape per day, and during coffee, lunch and afternoon break I went outside and recorded my newly inspired thoughts and ideas. At first I only used the recorder to practice giving presentations and lectures, but took me quite some time before I was even able to hear the true me beyond the mode of lecturer and public speaker. This was very difficult to look at because in the realities of my life there was constant fighting, arguments, conflict and pain. Through my daily recordinds I began hearing my own anger and repetitive complaining about the person I was married to.

This ultimately allowed me to look at myself more clearly and honestly, and I eventually came to find how I have contributed, if not created all of the problems in my own life. After years and years of blaming everything on my wife and her erratic behavior I learned to take more responsibility for myself and accept her for the person she was and not expect her to be who I wanted and needed her to be. Now, instead of focusing on my wife and what was wrong with her I began to look at myself and what I needed to be doing in oder to improve my situation. Eventually I gave up my need to change her for my own sake. Over years and years of blaming everything in my marriage on my wife I slowly began to realize that it was actually me who has the power to make a change.

While I began to consciously transform myself during the next several years as the result of my daily studies I noticed that things around me basically remained the same. My wife still acted in the very same irrational and destructive ways, while basically holding me responsible for how she was feeling and acting. Her family and friends was no help to us, nor were any of the counselors and therapists, so I was utterly and completely left alone with in a situation I did not know how to deal with for the longest time.

After countless counseling and therapy sessions and continued problems with the police because of disruptive behavior on her part I decided in March of 2000 with the help of a social worker to send our 3 children to San Francisco to spend some with my wife's sister so we could try and work out the problems in our marriage without the children present. The ideas that they would only spend a couple of month in San Francisco so they could return to us after we would work out our problems, but it took me more than 2 years for me to finally muster up enough strength to file for divorce on my birthday in June of 2002.

It took about 6 month for the divorce to be granted and finalized. Since my wifes sister never really accepted me into the family she was not willing to return my children into my custody so I was forced to move to San Francisco in order to file for visitation with my own children. I then received some money out of the divorce settlement, so I quit my job of 10 years and purchased a used car in order to drive to San Francisco with my personal possessions. The same evening I went to a local club in Kansas to celebrate a new beginning a new life in California when after leaving the club I got hit by a fast and apparently drunken driver in my left leg, thrown up in the air, and without losing consciousness and laying in the middle of the street with the most excruciating pain I saw all of my plans for a new future go down the drain.

Within a month the money I saved in order to move to San Francisco was used up with paying rent and living expenses, and since I was not able to work with a broken leg in a cast I eventually became penniless and homeless (the 2nd time around if you consider me leaving my home in Germany ), but I soon realized that there was a higher purpose for what was happening, and that this was part of my education, just like my marriage and everything else in my life.

I finally moved here in December of 2003, thinking that it would be only a matter of a few month or maybe a year tops that I would establish myself as public speaker and life coach (considering my personal situation I realize now how presumptuous and unrealistic that was) I did not care that I only had about $100 in my pocket, knowing that everything will work out. After about 3 days and my money was used up I looked into the possibility of staying in a shelter, which I did for about 4 month. During this time I went almost daily to the library here and posted ads in regards to study groups, dating (yes, believe it or not, I dated a few women while I still stayed in a shelter, how bold is that..lol ) and in regards to me finding a place where I could stay for a while. I had a great amount of enthusiasm about changing my life for the better, and so after a couple of month my efforts paid off.

Around April of 2004 I a very generous and kind soul named Caverly responded to one of my countless ads looking for a place. He invited me to be his guest in his small one bedroom apartment in the Haight Ashbury area of San Francisco which is where I stayed for more than 2 years. This allowed me for the first time in my life to get a break after the crazyness, drama and pain of my past, and to focus on the future. Shortly after I moved into my new living situation I met the 2nd woman of my life, a relationship which took much of my energy and focus and directed it in many different ways, just not where it needed to be.

Eventually this had to end since we were just too different people, and so did my living situation in my tiny room next to the kitchen after I found a regular job in telemarketing. For the next year I moved around quite a bit, about 8 times where I stayed in a couple of roommate situations which for one reason or another never lasted for longer than a couple of month, and then later on I stayed in several different hotels and hostels since I was not able to find a regular place to stay for my very limited budget.

In regards to money I never really saved up anything but basically lived from pay check to pay check, so eventually I exhausted all my funds and needed a place to stay. Not knowing what to do I called a friend of mine, Ted, an older gentleman in his early 80’, a retired MD, highly intelligent, accomplished, somebody in very good financial standing and with a large social circle, and so I figured that he might know somebody who might know somebody with a place for me to stay. I once visited him in his apartment and once went downstairs to sit in his beautiful garden, but I did not know at the time that next to the garden was a guest house which has been vacant for many years. After I shared with him my dilemma he invited me to come by the same night and see if this guest house might be something I would be comfortable. After only having stayed in small rooms, cheap hostels and hotels it was quite a change for me to be in this huge room with looks like a cabin or farmhouse with very high ceilings, an upstairs loft, fireplace and access to a beautiful garden right outside the screen door.

When I moved in I was quite overwhelmed by the beauty, peace and amazing presence of this place, but I also began feeling very lonely since I became confronted with my own isolation. I lived there day after day, week after week and month after month without sharing this place and without sharing myself with anybody. I mustered up enough focus to organize a few meetings, but nothing ever really came of it since I recognized my inability.

The day after Christmas something very unexpected and sad happened; I received a phone call that Ted passed away. What a great loss for he was such a wonderful friend, but I supposed that is was just his time since he was always complaining about and suffering from low energy and being always tired. After his death I continued to stay here but was always worried about not having and written agreement about me legally being here. Ted was the executor of a trust which owned the building, and so after his death the building had to be sold as part of the trust requirement. I was able to stay until the end of September but then had to move out.

Since then I moved to Fairfield where I am now working in the invention business, a sign that it is time for me to re-invent myself in order to be -come the change I want to see.

It is curious for me to find that I have developed the natural ablity to attract wonderful people and opportunities into my life as I allow for life to show me the way, but when it comes to taking charge and making things happen I have a lot to learn and work on.

My goal is and has been since I first began studying about self developing in the mid 90's to develop my practice as motivational speaker, inspirational teacher, writer and life coach, andI would greatly appreciate your advice, feedback and support to help me reach this dream.

Basic Learning Concepts

-Life is learning. -Perception is NOT reality. -The tone makes the music. -Patience will always be rewarded. -What you focus on creates your reality. -Every problem contains its own solution. -You dont even know what you dont know. -The opposite of de-pression is ex-pression. -Time is like money. It is about how you use it. -Life is what happens while you make other plans. -Whatever happens is meant to be and happens for a reason. -Life is not about getting your way but about leading your way. -God is not a power over man, but a symbol of mans own power. -Whatever energy you bring forth to the universe simply mirrors back to you. -Wherever you are you need to be, and what you will be you are now becoming.

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Outcomes Of The Concept Of Realize2actualize

realize (become aware of) and actualize (manifest) your passions and dreams,

listen to and follow your own inner guide, teacher and con-science,

recognize, honor and learn the lessons contained in all experience,

deal better with those things in life which ultimately cannot be changed,

improve on your ability to communicate effectively, openly and honestly,

nurture qualities such as patience, humility acceptance and appreciation,

develop a more positive attitude towards yourself, other people and life in general,

uncover, face and overcome dysfunctional patterns of thinking, feeling and re-acting.