Abundant Life: Co-create Your Destiny by Peter Gruenewald, MD

Abundant Life. Co-create your destiny. Choose, love and manifest your goals through connecting with the two sources of abundance.

Anybody, who lives with the conviction, that we as human beings are responsible co-creators of our destiny, may also live with many burning questions.

Here are some of those questions:

• How can I make sure that “my requests” to the universe, my wishes, and desires, are not just a projection of who I already am, into the future? Like in the fairy-tale of Christian Anderson, “The Emperor without clothes”’ our life may change externally, but these changes may not be backed up with by inner growth and personal development.
• How can my “requests to the universe” become an act of a genuine creation?
• How can we align the choice of our goals with the the needs and the life of our family, working colleagues, friends, neighbours, communities, country, world community, humanity ,and nature?
• How can we make sure that what we wish for, will not (unintentionally) damage ourselves, our loved ones, our neighbours, competitors, friends and enemies, nature, and/or humanity to an extent that is unacceptable to us and others?
• How can we learn to contribute actively and effectively to build a brighter future of ourselves, our communities, nature, and humanity whilst fulfilling our own self- defined needs?

Becoming increasingly capable to change the trajectory of our own lives, the lives of others and the life of our planet, comes with an increasing responsibility to extend our awareness, our love, and our desire beyond ourselves to let our growing insights, our care, love and compassion and our deeds serve an ever-growing circle of people. In this process we may embrace not just single people, groups, and humanity, and the life of our planet.

Growing power without growing global responsibility may easily lead to corruption and ultimately to destruction.

The saying: “Be careful what you wish for,” has an even deeper meaning, considering the growth in will power through inner techniques (NLP, hypnosis) and outer technology.

Here are a few examples of challenges we are confronted with:

• We live with knowledge that the world’s nuclear power can destroy the earth.
• We are aware that the economic and social inequality, based on the greed of a few, destroy the fabric of our society.
• We are in the process of destroying the earth through global warming, intoxication of our land, air, rivers, and seas, with enormous consequences, for global warming, climate change, flooding, reducing of the biodiversity. Industrial farming may contribute towards an increasing risk of virus infections passing from animals to humans.  an increasing passing of allowing virus to pass the barrier between animals and humans, possibly preparing the ground for further pandemics.
• Digital technologies replacing direct human interactions (screen time, social networks, computer games) from earliest childhood onwards, with significant negative consequences for the development of the consciousness of the child, their social skills and physical, emotional, and mental health.
• Principles of collaboration and social responsibility are being replaced by Darwinist principles of adaptation, ruthless competition, and the survival of the fittest.
• Fake news has replaces striving for compassionate truth.

From this backdrop, let us revisit this statement: ‘Be careful what you wish for’, once again.

If individual and collective selfishness and egotism has a potentially destructive effect on society, humanity, and our planet, then the resulting question may be:

How can we apply the “law of attraction” in an ethical and sustainable way, that doesn’t ultimately harm ourselves and others?

There are several answers to these questions:

To extend our conscious awareness, our compassion, and our benevolence beyond ourselves and our loved ones, including our neighbours, community, country, world community and ultimately our whole planet, allows us to transform selfishness into altruism.

It’s not so much about the overcoming of our ego, but more about making our ego wide enough that it ultimately embraces the needs of the whole world, and responds to them in a knowledgeable, authentic, truthful, compassionate, and benevolent manner.

As we move away from a “me” perspective to an “us” approach, we experience a widening of our consciousness and conscience that can become over time more global and inclusive, without losing the touch for our next and the details.

Including others into our goal setting, affirmations, visualization, and meditation can help us to grow in our capacity to transcend our ego and connect with our true self and the true selves of others.

Contemplating about our goals in a courageous, inner conversation with ourselves, by sincerely exploring what impact our potential goals and values have on our loved ones, communities, country, the world at large, can help us to careful select our goals, before committing to them.

This exploration is not retrospective, rooted in the past; it is a prospective and creative process: it allows us to design and pursue a future.

It also allows us to explore, what we want to achieve for ourselves, others, and the earth. It also makes us aware why we want to achieve our goal; and how achieving it will impact on others; what inner and outer obstacles we may face in implementing these goals; how we will mitigate identified risks and obstacles through collaboration and concrete actions.

Such a prospective and truly socially inclusive thinking is not purely abstract; it is an ethically creative thinking that involves our higher feelings, such as passion, compassion, enthusiasm, love, and gratitude, and our good will to serve others.

This contemplation, practiced regularly, can fundamentally change the trajectory of our lives, the life of others and that of our planet. It is a skill, which we as individuals must acquire for the sake of the future of those generations following us. (i)

Connecting the results of this contemplation process, our life goals, with an understanding of abundant life, can take the process of co-creating our destiny in conjunction with the destiny of others, humanity, and the earth, to a next level.

What does abundant life mean for us and for the world?

“Abundant Life” is not only about the status of our power, influence, reputation, and possessions in the world.

“Abundant Life” should rather be understood as a creative process on all levels of our existence, encompassing health, wealth, social engagement, purpose, and sense of fullfilment, widening the scope of the law of attraction and the idea of creating our own destiny in harmony with our and other people’s and our planet’s needs.

As our questions, that we ask ourselves in our courageous conversation with ourselves grow deeper and wider, including our heartfelt and genuine sense of responsibility for others, community, country, world, and earth, our goals, motives of our actions will lead us to results, that are born out of love, and can contribute towards the betterment and survival of humanity and earth.

Altruism is not just about others; it also includes our own personal and developmental needs; otherwise, it may turn into co-dependency.

An abundant life ultimately means abundance for everyone, and it would not be true abundance if the abundance of the universe could not be potentially accessed by everyone.

Summarising, let’s look in this context at three elements of abundant life:

1. Abundant Life” meets our and our companion’s needs on all levels, but not as something given, but as a process, which is being brought into existence through manifesting our personal goals to fulfill our holistic needs in harmony with the goals that further consciousness development and life of humanity and the life of our planet.
2. “Abundant Life” is the source of creativity within us, an expression of our higher Self, that creates life goals and purpose and manifest them through our personal development and our conscious and responsible actions, co-creating our destiny.
3. “Abundant Life” is the source of all creation; human, earth, and cosmos; containing the architectural plan of creation as ultimate wisdom; the love for all creature and the power of manifestation. It is what ancient cultures described as the “Word that became Life”, TAO, Prana, or VRIL, a universal form of life that constitutes all existence. (ii)

In our Abundant Life Meditation we encourage people to use two affirmative mantras that allow us to daily connect with the source of our inner “Abundant Life”, which is our Higher Self, which can access all our developmental potential in free choice, embrace it with love and manifest it through visualisation and actions, creating new life circumstances. And with these affirmations we also deeply connect during this meditation with the other source of creation, the source of creation of cosmos, nature, and humanity. It’s also the creative universal spirit of nature and human destiny, to which we connect in our meditation.

In the “Abundance meditation” two mirroring mantras are being silently repeated, during inhalation and exhalation: “Abundant Life lives in us.” as we inhale; “We live an Abundant Life” as we exhale. With every breath these mantras allow us to connect consciously to these two creative sources of abundance: the one within us and the other within the world.

The contemplation process helps us to explore our goals in a socially inclusive and responsible way, and to embrace our goals with love and passion.

Through creative visualisation we impregnate the subconscious part of our will with our freely chosen motives and intentions.

By aligning our goals with the ‘Abundant Life’ within us and within the outside world, we align our goals with the life goals of others, embracing all levels of needs and development: physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and social.

Let’s summarise the steps of this process once more:

1. We explore our goals and conscious motive of our actions, chose them and embrace them with love and enthusiasm.
2. We apply the technique of creative visualisation, imagining how we conduct ourselves to achieve our goal, and picture what it looks like and feels like, when we will have achieved our goals, picturing the future, and all this, as if it is happening now.
3. We develop a concrete strategy to mitigate risks and overcome obstacles.
4. We commit to the actions required to implement our goals.
5. Finally, we approach our meditation, and conceptually, emotionally, and intentionally link our goal to the two mantric affirmations, that relate to the inner and outer abundant life. We link this goal purposefully to the two sources of inner and outer creativity.

Having taken in account during our goal exploration the developmental needs of others, communities, humanity, and earth, manifestation can become an integrated part of self- actualising, leading us to thoughts, feelings, intentions, and actions, that are sustainable, truly responsible, highly effective, and impactful.

The meditative techniques that can lead to the results described above are outlined in practical instructions on my website “Abundant Life”:  www.wisdom-love-power.com.

The meditation combines coherence breathing, dynamic visualisation, mantric affirmations, and silent awareness. Associated contemplation and creative visualisation are also introduced on this website in a step-by-step guide.

Two further complementary exercises show, how we connect on a deeper level with our fellow human beings and with nature.

www.wisdom-love-power.com

(i) Rudolf Steiner. Philosophy of Freedom. (Philosophy of Spiritual Activity). 1983. GA 004.

(ii) Rudolf Steiner. The Temple Legend. Lecture 20: The Royal Art in a New Form. Berlin, 2nd January, 1906.

Dr. Peter Gruenewald, MD is an internationally recognized expert in the field of adaptive resilience, stress, and performance. Peter is an associate fellow at SAID Business School, Oxford University, and runs workshops in adaptive resilience for professionals, senior leaders, and managers in the private and public sectors. Peter is the author of the books The Quiet Heart: Putting Stress into Its Place, 2007, and Manifesting your Best Future Self, Building Adaptive Resilience, 2020. He is a founder and managing director of London Integrated Health Ltd. and Adaptive Resilience Ltd. He is also a cofounder and Chief Medical Officer of RCube Health, a digital health start-up company that has developed a mobile app for stress management and resilience (RCube). Peter works as an Honorary Clinical Specialist in Sleep Medicine and General Medicine for the University College London Hospital (Royal Hospital for Integrated Medicine) and in private practice (London). Over many years he has practiced meditation and has followed the spiritual and highly practical methodology of ‘Anthroposophy‘ and the ‘Philosophy of Freedom”  as founded by Rudolf Steiner. Peter is a member of the Anthroposophic Medical Association and the Christian Community.