7 Principles of the Affluent Soul - Raymond Aaron, David B. Bryan

7 Principles of the Affluent Soul (eBook)

Exploring Consciousness, Science & Philosophy to Discover Inner Affluence

Raymond Aaron, David B. Bryan (Autoren)

eBook Download: EPUB

2018 | 1. Auflage
200 Seiten
10-10-10 Publishing (Verlag)
978-1-77277-251-7 (ISBN)

True Affluence Does Involve More Than Material Wealth Find Your Inner Affluence With The 7 Principles! David B. Bryan has been on a journey of discovery and it led him to The 7 Principles of The Affluent Soul: Exploring Consciousness, Science, & Philosophy to Discover Inner Affluence Beyond What Money Can Buy. This book describes that journey, along with the benefits of opening your awareness to expanding beyond the realm of your physical reality. You, and so many others, are often focused on what you can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. Your world is often defined by the expectations of society and its definition of happiness. David encourages you to look beyond material affluence, to create your own inner affluence. How? The key is changing how you use your conscious awareness. David leads you first through a consideration of life's big questions, and second, through an exploration of new ways you can think about conscious awareness. Part Three focuses on each of the 7 Principles, outlining what they are and how you can bring their richly rewarding benefits into your life. If you want to explore the 'something more' that can take your life to new dimensions of affluence, then begin the journey in The 7 Principles of The Affluent Soul.

True Affluence Does Involve More Than Material Wealth Find Your Inner Affluence With The 7 Principles! David B. Bryan has been on a journey of discovery and it led him to The 7 Principles of The Affluent Soul: Exploring Consciousness, Science, & Philosophy to Discover Inner Affluence Beyond What Money Can Buy. This book describes that journey, along with the benefits of opening your awareness to expanding beyond the realm of your physical reality. You, and so many others, are often focused on what you can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. Your world is often defined by the expectations of society and its definition of happiness. David encourages you to look beyond material affluence, to create your own inner affluence. How?The key is changing how you use your conscious awareness. David leads you first through a consideration of life's big questions, and second, through an exploration of new ways you can think about conscious awareness. Part Three focuses on each of the 7 Principles, outlining what they are and how you can bring their richly rewarding benefits into your life. If you want to explore the "e;something more"e; that can take your life to new dimensions of affluence, then begin the journey in The 7 Principles of The Affluent Soul.

Chapter One

WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?

You and I find ourselves in a peculiar situation.

Like every other human being, we find ourselves born into a human body on planet earth, an arrangement we never asked for but find ourselves in nonetheless. We find ourselves on a big rock, hurtling through space at tremendous speeds. The big rock spins on its own axis, at close to 1,000 miles per hour; at the same time, the big rock is also orbiting around the sun at about 67,000 miles per hour. It is a wonder that with all this high-speed spinning, we don’t get thrown off the big rock and end up floating in outer space. But we don’t end up that way, because the big rock is equipped with gravity that keeps us stuck to its surface, even with all the high-speed spinning. We manage to survive because our big rock, unlike many other big rocks, comes equipped with a breathable atmosphere that keeps us alive. Our big rock, unlike many other big rocks, also provides us with water and sources of food, without which we would not survive.

We didn’t ask to be put into these circumstances; we simply find ourselves in them, and we were not given an instruction manual on what to do about it. The situation presents us with many challenging opportunities and demands, and we figure out ways to handle the challenges, as well as choose what to do about the opportunities. Since we weren’t given an instruction manual, we need to make it up as we go along. It seems natural to ask ourselves questions about how best to do that.

A Child’s Brilliant Question

I have a young niece, Isabella, who is a very bright, perceptive, and curious child, like her siblings, Juliette and Xavier. One day, when Isabella was about ten years old, my partner, Rosie, came home from visiting her, and said to me, “You’ll never guess what Isabella said today. She asked, ‘What is life for?’”

What a brilliant question. What is life for?

When I heard that, I thought, “That is one of the most important questions a person could ever ask themselves.”

That question goes right to the core of the situation every human being finds themselves in, including you, dear reader. You and I find ourselves in the physical environment presented by this earth, in all of its incredible variety of both beauty and ugliness, and delights and dangers. We find ourselves with a physical body we can use to navigate our way through this physical environment. We also find ourselves experiencing conscious awareness, and we find ourselves surrounded by other human beings who are also experiencing conscious awareness. A number of questions seem to naturally arise:

• What shall I do with this physical body I have been given?

• What shall I do with this conscious awareness I have been given?

• How will I navigate through the physical environment I find myself in?

• How will I navigate through the social environment of all the other conscious humans I find myself among?

Isabella began asking herself, “What is life for?” at about age ten, and my recollection is that I started asking myself similar questions at a similar age, probably soon after I first became consciously aware of two basic and important facts about my life:

I became aware of birth, and understood that I had been born a few years ago, and I became aware of death, and that all human beings eventually die, meaning that I, too, would eventually die at some unknown time in the future.

Once a child has become aware that human life begins with birth, and eventually ends with death, perhaps it is simply natural for them to ask a question like, “What is life for?” Perhaps you have asked similar questions of yourself.

I am now 58 years old, and I am still asking myself these kinds of questions, as I have done throughout my life. At various stages of my life, I have come up with some answers to the questions, “What shall I do with this body?” and “What shall I do with this conscious awareness?” Some of the answers include:

• I shall pursue this education in this school.

• I shall work this job.

• I shall work to build this career.

• I shall settle in this place.

• I shall build a relationship with this person.

My own experience has been that the answers I have come up with to the “What shall I do…” questions often turn out to be temporary rather than permanent. The course of education comes to an end. The job comes to an end. The career path changes. I move from where I had previously settled. Some relationships come to an end, while others continue. My answers to “What shall I do…” questions often serve temporarily but not necessarily permanently.

In contrast, Isabella’s question, “What is life for?” seems to be more fundamental, more essential, and even more basic than questions on the order of, “What shall I do…?” Other very fundamental questions can include:

• Who am I?

• What am I?

• What is the nature of this reality I find myself in?

Now that I am 58, it is clear to me that I am likely closer to my death than I am to my birth—a fact that makes these questions seem even more important, and in a sense, more urgent to me than ever before.

I am not certain whether definitive answers to these questions are possible, but I feel convinced that there is not a more important project I could undertake than asking these questions and making my best effort to explore them as well as I can. Perhaps to some extent, you might sometimes feel a similar impulse.

My purpose in writing this book is to share with you some of the thoughts that have occurred to me over the decades I have spent exploring and experimenting with these questions. If anything that I mention here turns out to be helpful to you in any way, then my purpose will have been served.

Perhaps along the way, if we explore deeply and sincerely enough, we might shed some light on Isabella’s question, “What is life for?”

Questions of Identity, Purpose, and Action: Who, What, and How

The types of questions that you and I can ask ourselves, as we try to figure out what on earth is going on, can include questions of identity, purpose, and action:

The fundamental questions, “Who am I?” or “Who am I really?” address the essential issue of our identity.

Questions, such as, “Why am I here?” or “Do I have a purpose, and if so, what is it?” address the very meaningful issue of personal purpose.

Questions, such as, “How do I successfully fulfill my purpose?” address the issue of successful action.

Finding clear answers to these questions is neither obvious nor easy, and contemplating them deeply can call for a considerable investment of time and energy. Indeed, one way of looking at such questions is to regard them as an ongoing, lifelong pursuit. At times, considering these questions can seem to be both daunting and confusing, and it is certainly an option to simply bypass or ignore these questions in order to avoid the considerable amount of effort that contemplating them calls for. No one is forced to spend their time and energy contemplating these questions if they do not wish to do so, but my own experience has been that making the investment in considering these big questions can open up a pathway to a much richer, rewarding, fulfilling, and satisfying experience of life. My own experience leads me to feel that serious consideration of these kinds of questions is one of the most rewarding projects that I have the opportunity of undertaking.

Creating Affluence as a General Purpose

With respect to the notion of a person’s purpose, I consider that this can be thought of on two different levels. On the one hand, it may be possible for each individual to clarify for themselves a highly specific sense of personal purpose that is unique to them. On the other hand, it is possible to conceive of a more general sense of purpose, expressed in terms broad enough that they are applicable to everyone.

For a person to come to a clear identification of a sense of their own individual purpose, which is unique to them, usually calls for investment in a considerable period of inner reflection and self-examination. Specific ways of undertaking this project are discussed in Part Three of this book, as part of our discussion of the fifth principle of the affluent soul, Expressing Authenticity.

But for the purpose of our current discussion, let’s consider the notion of a general purpose, sufficiently broad to be applicable to everyone. I suggest that creating affluence, where affluence is considered to mean the flow of good things, can be considered to be an appropriate and rewarding general purpose applicable to everyone, because we all want to experience good things in our lives. Indeed, as we will discuss in the next chapter, our modern consumer culture is heavily focused on the pursuit of affluence, and I propose to discuss in some detail what that means, and some of the issues it...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	18.12.2018
Vorwort	Jack Canfield
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Esoterik / Spiritualität
ISBN-10	1-77277-251-8 / 1772772518
ISBN-13	978-1-77277-251-7 / 9781772772517

Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt?

EPUB (Ohne DRM)
Größe: 642 KB

Digital Rights Management: ohne DRM
Dieses eBook enthält kein DRM oder Kopierschutz. Eine Weitergabe an Dritte ist jedoch rechtlich nicht zulässig, weil Sie beim Kauf nur die Rechte an der persönlichen Nutzung erwerben.

Dateiformat: EPUB (Electronic Publication)
EPUB ist ein offener Standard für eBooks und eignet sich besonders zur Darstellung von Belletristik und Sachbüchern. Der Fließtext wird dynamisch an die Display- und Schriftgröße angepasst. Auch für mobile Lesegeräte ist EPUB daher gut geeignet.

Systemvoraussetzungen:
PC/Mac: Mit einem PC oder Mac können Sie dieses eBook lesen. Sie benötigen dafür die kostenlose Software Adobe Digital Editions.
eReader: Dieses eBook kann mit (fast) allen eBook-Readern gelesen werden. Mit dem amazon-Kindle ist es aber nicht kompatibel.
Smartphone/Tablet: Egal ob Apple oder Android, dieses eBook können Sie lesen. Sie benötigen dafür eine kostenlose App.
Geräteliste und zusätzliche Hinweise

Buying eBooks from abroad
For tax law reasons we can sell eBooks just within Germany and Switzerland. Regrettably we cannot fulfill eBook-orders from other countries.