Inner Development

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.