Living Deliberately: The Discovery and Development of Avatar®
AUD 27.50
Live the Life You Choose.
Living Deliberately: The Discovery and Development of Avatar
by Harry Palmer (Paperback – 1994)
Many people are trapped in mind-numbing routines.Their lives carom through a changing landscape of directions, rules, wins, and losses.
THEN, occasionally, someone wakes up and realizes, “Hey, I am alive.” This is an extraordinary moment. When it is examined, a seeker is born: “Life! What’s this all about?”
LIVING DELIBERATELY is the story of the birth of a seeker, Harry Palmer. Wake up. Read this book.
Excerpt
“Have you ever thought about the subject of consciousness? Where would the universe be without consciousness? If you began eliminating things from the universe—suns, planets, spaces, energies—the last thing you would eliminate would be consciousness!
Could you even eliminate consciousness? Who, or what, would know if you did?
Have you ever been curious, or maybe even concerned, about the momentary experience of some unexpected or unusual mental ability or extra-normal state of consciousness. Maybe you were more than curious; maybe you sought to experience the mysterious state a second time.
Our religious faiths, and more recently our sciences, abound with references to extraordinary consciousness phenomena: enlightenment, turning point experience, holographic consciousness, quantum transformation, cosmic awareness, bliss, nirvana, samadhi, grace, universal harmony, spontaneous healing, alpha rhythms, heavenly rapture, OBE (out-of-body experience), ESP (extrasensory perception), levitation, the glory of redemption, the peace of salvation, satori, godhead, Christ consciousness—and this is only a small sampling.
The growing list confirms that more and more people are encountering phenomena that do not fit with their normal waking moments. Is something going on with consciousness? Is it experiencing its own evolution? A cosmic awakening?
Extraordinary consciousness phenomena occur spontaneously and do not always fit simple cause-and-effect explanations. People are unsure how to describe nonphysical events. Most of the terminology tends to be esoteric or vaguely fluid in meaning. Comparisons and categorizations are closer to art or analogy than to science. And just when an understanding seems imminent, the event, like a rapidly forgotten dream, fades into a haze of doubt. For a moment there was something unusual…wasn’t there? Word descriptions are a pale substitute for the real thing.
Instructions or practices that attempt to re-create the phenomena usually condense to some sort of backward be-do-have ritual that says, “Have faith, do this over and over, and maybe something might happen that you could describe as….” Unfortunately the universe does not work backward and the only result, from such rituals, are self-degradation, hypocrisy and pretense.
So people learn to live with the uncertain memory of a few moments, hours, or days of an extraordinary experience for which the cause is unknown: a euphoric moment of love, an omnipotent moment of invulnerability, an omniscient moment of crystal clarity, a moment of grace, a moment of premonition, a moment so real that the rest of life seems dreamlike. How can one recover these moments? What combination of thought and event will create them? This is a quest into the quintessential realm of consciousness. The prize is beyond any amount of fame, wealth, or power.
Extraordinary moments! Awe-full moments! Experiences that cast even life and death in minor perspective! They leave unexplained magic moments and hint of a thread which, were we able to pull it, might utterly unravel and redefine what we are and what we are becoming.
For some, the demands and desires of life erode such moments into forgetfulness, and they escape back into the safety of plain vanilla reality: paychecks and bills. Probably by now, they will have laid this book aside and continued with the struggle they call their lives.
But you still read. For you, a nine-to-five life, while maybe necessary, is not an answer. You’re on some sort of quest. Are there some fascinating memories hovering near the edge of your imagination? Would you like to have one more look?”
Contents
Prologue
Part I
Author’s Preface Extraordinary Moments, page 11
Chapter I The ‘60’s, page 15
Chapter II Incubation, page 25
Chapter III Tanking, page 33
Chapter IV I Am Still Floating, page 41
Chapter V Notes From The Tank, page 45
Chapter VI The Rapture, page 53
Chapter VII The First Avatars, page 57
Part II
The Preamble, page 67
Chapter VIII The History of Belief Systems, page 69
Chapter IX Orders of Belief Systems, page 73
Chapter X Recovering Your Mental Blueprint, page 79
Chapter XI A Private Talk On Honesty, page 83
Chapter XII Viewpoint and The Nature of Being, page 89
Chapter XIII The Great Divide, page 95
Chapter XIV Creativism & Reality, page 99
Chapter XV Designing Your Own Reality, page 103
Chapter XVI Relative Truth and Existence, page 109
Part III
Chapter XVII Expansion, page 115
Chapter XVIII The New Civilization, page 123
Harry’s Epilogue Alignment, page 127
Intended Audience
Seekers
Spiritual Teachers
Explorers of consciousness
Reviews
Harry Palmer has discovered the secret of how to live life in a deliberate way. In this delightful, entertaining narrative of his own explorations in consciousness he tells how he discovered the insights to develop a course that offers experiential tools that everyone can use to create the life they prefer.
The book is easy to read and offers much food for thought. I have read and reread it. Every time, I take away a new “word” lesson, which deepens my understanding of my self. Very worthwhile reading for anyone who is searching for a way to create happiness in their life.
Jan L. Nadeau (Covert, MI USA)
• • • •
If you’re through with the psycho-babble-du-jour bunch and are tired of esoteric incantations that only the initiated can mumble or pretend to understand, boy are you in the right place! You’ll love this fast-paced, provocative new gem of a book by consciousness researcher Harry Palmer.
With a clarity attainable only by someone with an absolute command of his subject matter, Palmer masterfully takes what could easily have become a dry, complex drone of philosophic musings and turns it into a ringingly clear, engaging and usable book. You’ll see yourself on nearly every page — Palmer calls you by name and warmly invites you into his exploration.
It’s been a busy nine years for Palmer and his staff. In l986, he released the Avatar Course for the first time. Since then, his work had been translated into 12 languages, while more than 44,000 people in 46 countries have experienced the speed and effectiveness of the course. Now, at last, he has released this chronicle of his own search for an operating manual for life — the journey that led him to create Avatar.
The book begins with the story of Harry’s days as a hippie seeker in the sixties and tells of his various encounters of a familiar kind with institutions of higher indoctrination, as well as his explorations of the belief systems of those who were supposed to have “the answers.” He learned that for those in search of more evolved states of consciousness and freedom, any number of story-telling impostors are ready to tie disciples’ hands and point them towards a “new, improved” movie screen. Sadly, what’s playing is a different set of assertions for the student to believe. Palmer determinedly walks out of the theater, ready to do his own resear ch. Off we go with him into sensory deprivation tank experiments and the formative stages of his new technology. And we are there for the first demonstration of its awesome power.
Part two of the book presents the principles that illustrate the structure of belief systems, the effect of one’s perspective on experience, the anatomy of honesty and the relationship between belief and reality. Here, you’re bound to find questions for all of your answers and a fresh enthusiasm for considering new viewpoints—most notably, your own.
In the last section of the book, Palmer describes the initial spread of Avatar and takes us through an overview of the kinds of experiences that await in the confidential procedures of sections II and III of the course. The course equips people with the tools to explore consciousness to its very limits — from the most fixed, opinionated reality to the broad expansiveness of source awareness. With these very practical tools, one can create the reality he or she prefers — moment to moment.
The availability of Living Deliberately has caused a sharp up-tick in the growth of the Avatar network, because it gives the curious a secure foothold from which they can launch their own explorations, free of indoctrination. Do yourself a favor and savor Living Deliberately, as well as its companion workbook, Resurfacing®.
Reviewed by The Village Wordsmith/Linda Decker, freelance writer.