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Interactions with our surroundings

  We have emphasized many times that we cannot pass off the responsibility for our decisions to our surroundings or to «others». The reasons for our decisions are always ours alone. We ourselves are responsible for ourselves. This cannot be changed.

In spite of this the question will certainly arise sooner or later whether we can positively or negatively influence our surroundings, i.e. our partner, our children, the neighbours, our work colleagues, nature etc. The question also arises as to what extent our decisions influence our surroundings. Although we alone are responsible for our decisions it is of course possible that in spite of this there will be some influence in one direction or another.

Abilities and objectives influence one another

 

Right at the start of this chapter we established that abilities and objectives clearly mutually influence each other. If expressed according to our two models, we considered the relationship between the light sphere, which represents our abilities and the tuning bowl, which represents the corresponding objective. Apparently the tuning bowl and the light sphere cannot be considered independently of one another. There is mutual influence between them1.

The model of the tuning bowls

  Have you already had the experience where you find someone very likeable without knowing anything about them and without even having spoken to them? As you get to know this person later you often find that you have many things in common. In particular you will normally find that he has similar objectives in his life. Or, since we often prefer to speak about experiences, you have both had similar experiences in your lives. Pure chance – or perhaps more likely not? Similar life experiences mainly point – according to everything we have previously discussed – to the fact that we are working on similar development steps. Since we do not develop by ourselves this finally however indicates similar objectives for our lives.

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.

The interaction between objectives and abilities

  In our day-to-day lives we find that someone who is already good at playing football in most cases also likes to play football very much and would like to constantly improve his football skills. If a good programmer has the choice between jointly working on a forward-looking software project and working in a vegetable shop the chances are usually significantly greater that the programmer will stay true to his line of business and would like to develop further within it. The same is true for practically all abilities: If we can already do something well the motivation is greater to use this ability and to improve it.

It is therefore worthwhile investigating the relationship between our abilities and the corresponding objective. We have already established earlier that we don’t develop our abilities without reason, but rather we develop them specifically to be able to achieve a certain goal. From the above examples it is however clear that a stimulation also occurs in the reverse direction: Already-existing abilities lead us to continue to pursue the corresponding goal – and under certain circumstances even more strongly than before. We will therefore now introduce a model to demonstrate our objectives:

Download “ABC of Awareness”

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My personal contribution

 

The expansion of our awareness is only possible through solving those tasks which are matched to the actual status of our training. The tackling of tasks which are «too difficult» does not lead to any kind of acceleration of our development. In fact it is the opposite, it leads to a slowing down or even to a standstill or to steps backwards. The same is also true where the demands are insufficient.

This is immediately obvious in virtually every other form of training: A music student who learns a piece which is too difficult for him during his training will not make faster progress in his learning process than another musician, who only plays pieces which are matched to his actual abilities. If a good piano player only ever plays quite simple pieces with one hand, in time he loses his ability with the second hand: He takes steps backwards or forgets what he has learned about two-handed piano playing. A car driver who also drives a formula one racing car, will not become a better car driver because of this. A sportsman who trains to run over a length of 5 km will obtain no advantage at all for his 5 km stretch by completing a 42 km marathon, even if he finishes the marathon in a very good time.

Co-responsibility

What about the situation where tasks are carried out by a group of people? Who carries the responsibility for the decisions? Is there such a thing as collective responsibility? How far does the responsibility go within a group in the event of a causal chain of consequences? Can responsibility be shared?

To deal with the most important question here first: There are no changes to the responsibilities. Every person is responsible for the consequences of the decisions which correspond with his awareness, or in the case of the model of the sphere, for all those consequences which take place within his awareness sphere. The co-responsibility in a group or in a company therefore does not primarily depend on the individual employee’s position in the hierarchy, but on his personal development. To return again to the example of supplying war equipment components, it would be theoretically conceivable that the cleaning lady carries co-responsibility and the company directors do not – assuming here that the cleaning lady is personally further developed, in other words she has a higher level of awareness than the members of the board of directors.

The consequences of being overtaxed by a task

 

By carrying out a task which is too demanding, the person carrying it out in the first place impedes his own development. In considering the development of humankind we have seen that further development is only possible in stages. Just as for a pyramid the individual stones and layers must be symmetrically placed on top of one another one layer at a time. If someone is overtaxed by a given task, he is attempting to insert stones into a pyra­mid in which the lower stones are still missing, or are not correctly fixed. It is not possible to leave out individual building stones and then insert them later! Such an attempt is a pure waste of time.

Consequences from the acceptance of tasks

 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!