* God is a symbol of your higher Self, of what you potentially are or ought to become.

* The meaning of life is life itself, which is an activity, an Art to be learned.

* Whatever happens to you, it is your response which ultimately creates your reality.

* Your circumstances don't make you, they reveal you.

* What you focus on creates your reality.

* Peace cannot be kept by force, but only achieved by
understanding.

I became interested in the idea of personal development in the mid 90's, a time during which I was going through some radical changes and challenges in my life. On January 19, 1991 I left my home in Germany, moved to Kansas, and became integrated as husband and father into a whole new culture and ethnicity.

My marriage of 12 years was overshadowed by a great amount of conflict and drama, an experience which put me face to face with my own personal limitations and shortcomings, but also opened me up to a great amount of introspective learning.

In 1993 I came across the subject of personal-improvement, something which was very new to me at the time. I became instantaneously fascinated by the whole idea of working on myself, especially since I was facing some very serious challenges in my own life.

A few months into my studies I was lead to Stephen Coveys The 7 Habits of highly effective people. In it I found the concept which opened my eyes to the essence of effective personal transformation:

Between what happens to you, and your response to what happens to you lies your ultimate freedom to choose your response.

Once I began to understand the tremendous implications of this principle I became motivated to learn as much as I could on the subject.

After studying countless writers and public speakers such as Dr. Wayne Dwyer, Deepak Chopra, Leo Buscali, John Bradshaw, Dale Carnegy, Anthony Robbins, Peter Drucker, Tom Peters, Ken Blenchard and Earl Nightingale I became extremely inspired by what they had to say, but I began to understand that most of them are pointing us to the same awareness; that we cannot control the circumstance and people outside of us, and that lasting change can only be generated from within once we begin to work on the only person over whom we have ultimate control over, namely ourselves.

While I realized the tremendous value of this information, and most all of us who have read a book or attended a seminar on the subject feel that this awareness has the power to transform, but then after the initial hype is gone and we get back to our regular life most of what has been said and learned gets lost in the same old routines, habits and patterns of life.

I then came to find that the missing link is how put all of this awareness into practice, an outlet which can allow us not only to be reminded of those universal and timeless truth, but a way for us to learn how to apply this knowledge into how we live life.

Out this awareness I developed the concept of realize2actualize, a philosophy (realize) and practice (actualize) of life and learning dedicated to the exploration (realization) and practical application (actualization) of knowledge.

This significance this concept can be explained with the piece of advice a friend gave to me years ago in response to me wanting to teach workshops and seminars: Christoph she said, "Dont just talk about how to walk on water, actually walk on water."

My long term intention is to develop a school for inter-active learning and create a radio program to inspire and motivate people to look at their problems as opportunity for growth, help those who are lost, confused, frustrated and need constructive advice with their personal challenges.

To begin on a dialogue I would like to invite you to participate in a virtual meeting in my voice enabled chat room on www.paltalk.com. If you have access to a computer with speakers and possibly a microphone (but not required) so you can engage in the dialogue verbally then I would love to meet you in 'A room for conscious rEvolution', located under the category Social Issues and Human Rights.

Please also join my online forum @ groups.yahoo.com/group/realize 2actualize where you can interact with like minded individuals, read, respond to and post discussions, ideas, comments, pictures, questions, related weblinks and articles.

If you live in the Bay Area and are interested in becoming part of a physical meeting then I would like to invite you to an online group which I created specifically for this purpose. This much smaller group consists only of people who live in and around San Francisco who want to exchange ideas and get to know each other a little bit before gathering as a group at some point. If you are interested in that please view and join: groups.yahoo.com/group/ consciousrevolution_Bayarea/

I live in Fairfield CA, but to provide for a wider range of possible locations we could also arrange for a meeting in Berkley, or even San Francisco, but lets get to know each other a little bit through this forum and then arrange for a specific time and place to meet.

Thank you for being here, I hope you enjoy my videos and I would love to hear your feedback, comments and ideas..

Christoph
aka realize2actualize