1 The history of this website

The history of this book

Thank you for starting to read this book.

With this book I share ideas regarding spirituality, psychology, society and the future.

Curiosity

When I was 10 years old, I was ill for about three months. I had to stay in bed a lot of time. So, I was reading books from the public library. I wanted to read about history, health, machines, physics, and space-exploration. After some time I wanted to learn more details. The public library did not have such books. My father was a librarian at a university. So, I asked him to bring me some books from that library. My father said I could best start with a book with a lot of images. The first book was explaining the basics of mechanical engineering. After a week I understood the basics of a gear-box in cars. This was the start of gathering knowledge about many topics.

Growing up

The best definition of being a grown-up I know is “Self-responsible Self-determination”.

In simple words “You take full responsibility for the effects of all your choices”.

You are responsible for what you do with your circumstances. These circumstances include other people, things you can touch, your health, feelings and thoughts.

When I grew up, I had to deal with loneliness, sickness, pain, violence, death, fear, sorrow and anger. The only thing preventing me from killing many others and then myself, was imagining my parents at my funeral. So, I had to find a way to deal with my own fear, sorrow and anger. That search helped me delay that day of destruction, my personal apocalypse.

I grew up in a liberal Christian community. My mother had learned me to pray, inside my mind, before going to sleep every evening. During one of these “conversations with Jesus” I asked Him to help to me to overcome my feelings of fear, sorrow and anger. Over time my “conversations with Jesus” grew towards a kind of imaginary “walking with Jesus” outside our town . There were farms and forests.

After some weeks I wanted to read about Jesus. The words that gave me the key to escape from the darkness in my 10 year old mind was 1 Corinthians 13 (Theme: Love Is Indispensable).

1 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
5 It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.
9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part,
10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.
11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.
12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Because I liked to be alone often, I had time to think about my own life and the people around me. As a trick to understand the books meant for students of the technical university where my father worked as librarian, I created in my mind a visual version of the car that was explained in a book.

In the same way I started to see how I could use this chapter of the Bible as a set of tools. In my mind I saw how this chapter was a kind of spiritual car, using expressions of knowledge and love as gears in a gearbox. From the spiritual point of view, I started to see my body as a kind of very complex car. That car needed fuel to let my spirit drive with my body as a car on the highway of life. After several of such mediations, I understood my travel in a mortal body needed the fuel of love. I wanted to learn more from this symbolic similarity of a car and our travelling on the highway of life. Fear made my faith (trust) weak and sorrow blocked hope for a better future. Together fear and sorrow created my angry destructive thoughts. During the years that followed, my emotional wounds of fear, sorrow and anger were gradually replaced by faith, trust, hope and love.

Virtual library

When I was 25, I created a virtual library in my mind, to organise that knowledge. This helped to communicate with others and to integrate new packages of knowledge in that library.

This library had sections of a virtual global society:
1 Coordination
2 Economy and nature
3 Education
4 Housing, neighbourhood and recreation
5 Health and social care
6 Public relations, marketing and advertising
7 Spirituality and philosophy
8 Coaching and consultancy

The sections were the same at every scale, from individual to global.
This can also be applied to every larger scale, from our Solar system to the Omniverse.
In my meditations, I visualised the interactions of the information within and between all parts of this system.
I used this method all the years that followed.

Learning from life about life

a. Having conversations with people who asked me to help them deal with topics that evoked fear, sadness or anger in them.
b. Gathering knowledge on how to deal with fear, sadness, or anger. The sources of this knowledge were:

Stories of people how they transformed fear, sorrow and anger to trust, hope and love.
Professionals or skilled volunteers, who helped people to transform fear, sorrow and anger to trust, hope and love.
Formal Education
Books
Scientific Journals
Documentaries

Processing collected knowledge

a. Writing notes with text
b. Creating lists with keywords for each topic and sub-topic
c. Creating information diagrams that showed the interaction between the keywords such as:

cause and effect
feedback loop
processing of information internal
processing of information external
d. Creating sub-diagrams if a part of a diagram needed more details
e. Meditating on each diagram. This created a balanced integration of all the physical, emotional, rational, and spiritual aspects of all the keywords. Sometimes, new keywords and (sub) diagrams emerged.

Field-tests

I used this knowledge in the world that we can touch and improved each diagram based on its successes and failures.

Using the diagrams in my work as personal coach and management consultant

The name of my company was “Aquarius Balanced Progress Consultancy & Coaching”.

Personal coach

As a personal coach I had conversations with people who asked me to teach them how to deal with fear, sadness or anger.
The text of the brochure was:

Personal development

When the path of your life becomes unclear on the horizon, a coach can help clear the fog.
Aquarius Balanced Progress can offer coaching, restoring a series of balances.
This will give you a clear picture of the possible future time flows of your life, from which you can make a choice. You can then receive guidance in realizing the flow of time you have chosen.

Balance Certainty – Creativity

Aquarius Balanced Progress helps you gain insight into the tension between certainty and creativity.
Fixed patterns, material certainty and fixed rules of life can provide a sense of security. But they can also be a pitfall in unexpected situations. Lack of adaptability then damages actual security. In crisis situations, dealing creatively with what is (still) possible gives the greatest chance of survival.
Searching together for the balance between these extremes creates an optimal basic strategy for the rest of your life.

Balance Self-control – Enjoyment

Self-confidence is important. Without having developed it sufficiently, others will dominate you and you will not be able to manifest yourself in society.
When people have too much self-confidence, they become arrogant and dominating. They isolate themselves from other people and from the reality of the world can touch. This creates in them the fear to loose control. This causes them to create what they fear by self-fulfilling prophecy: Chaos and rejecting the people they need the most.
Together we look for the balance between self-confidence and modesty. This creates an optimal social space for the rest of your life.

Balance Self-confidence – Modesty

Balance Giving Trust – Protection of Own Interests

When establishing and maintaining social connections, the concept of trust is the central key. Agreements are made in the confidence that both parties will adhere to them. Yet conflicts still arise too often.
These can be prevented by communicating clearly regarding the interests of both parties. So, evaluating and adjusting agreements at the right time prevents economic and social failure.
Protecting your own interests must be just as important as giving trust. Aquarius Balanced Progress helps you to find balance between giving trust and protecting your own interests. This achieves an optimal long term result in negotiations.
In your personal life, you can enter into lasting relationships with people based on mutual trust.

Balance Speaking – Silence

Speaking is silver, silence is gold. An old proverb, but still relevant. Knowing when to speak, what to say and what not to say, finding the right choice of words. Those who master this can build a strong social life. The smooth talkers are not always the most effective people. A silence at the right moment, a facial expression like a smile or a serious look can be of decisive importance. Aquarius Balanced Progress helps to find the balance between speaking and silence. Training of non-verbal communication is trained with role-playing. So choose silver and gold.

Balance Thinking – Intuition

People who’s decisions are rational-based, see the intuition-based person as stupid.
People who’s decisions are intuition-based, see the rational-based person as short-sighted.
Both do not understand that thinking and intuition together give an optimal result. Aquarius Balanced Progress helps to find the balance between thinking and intuition. If both instruments are used optimally, a better insight into your life will arise.

Balance Surrender – Control

When people ask the big questions of life, the answers often come from the corner of religion and philosophy. These kinds of subjects are difficult for many to interpret and apply. Concepts such as insight, surrender and control play a key role in this area.
For centuries we have assumed that we must control ourselves, others and our environment. Surrender to the flow of things was seen as weak or even dangerous. But, people who want to hold too much control over their fate, act out of fear. It is precisely because of that fear, that they make strategic mistakes, which makes their fears come true. This mechanism is called “self-fulfilling prophecy” in psychology.
In response to a fear-driven way of life, many felt the need to surrender to something greater than themselves. Surrender to God, out of love instead of fear, was the breeding ground for the growth of new movements of Christian and Hindu origin in the late 1960s. In these movements, surrendering to direct divine guidance, instead of the written word, was the central theme.
During the decades that followed, the extremes of surrender and control became more moderate. More and more people are realizing that a balance between control and surrender with regard to our destiny in life yields the best results.
Aquarius Balanced Progress helps you to respond to the coincidence of circumstances by surrendering to the love for life, but also stay in control where necessary. In your personal life is room to grow as a person in both material and spiritual aspects.

Management consultant

As a management consultant I guided organisations, such as foundations, companies and governmental organizations, regarding start-up, expansion, improvement and change.
The text of the brochure was:

Management Consultancy

Aquarius Balanced Progress offers you a wide range of support services. Topics such as computers, financing, personnel policy and market analysis are discussed. A broad but focused approach is the strength of Aquarius Balanced Progress. Striving for balance in all aspects of policy is the key to the consultancy process.

Balance Long term – Short term

Make a big profit this year or still exist in five years? How often do organizations get stuck because they have either looked too much at long-term planning or too much at short-term planning? Many organizations want to quickly achieve a return on their investments, resulting in a quick end of the organization. Other organizations have a fully developed long-term vision, but never get around to the actual start in the short term.
Aquarius Balanced Progress guides the entire process:
-creating a long-term vision
-analyzing the available resources
-developing the medium-term policy
-making short-term plans for the actual implementation of the policy
With the right balance you achieve an optimal return.

Balance Nature – Economy

Environmental interests and business results can be combined very well in the long term.
Some leaders of organizations still think that things like climate change, natural resources, rain-forest and endangered species have little influence on the course of their organization. Yet this is only thinking based on the short-term economy.
In the long term economy, these topics are of crucial importance. Our natural environment, the Earth, is the source of materials for everything that lives on it, including humans and their economy.
So every leader of a organizations has to develop their policy based on:
The short-term economy. (Seconds, hours, days, weeks, month, quarter)
The middle-term economy. (Year, 3 years and 5 years)
The long-term economy. (10 years, 25 years, 50 years, 75 years, century,3 centuries, 5 centuries)
The very long-term economy. (Millennium, 3 Millennia, 5 Millennia, 10 Millennia)
Aquarius Balanced Progress is based on the concept that humans can evolve into an effective link in the ecosystem of Earth and beyond. With all our knowledge, it is possible to optimize the production and distribution of goods and services (economy) by making proper use of the balance between nature and economy. An ecologically responsible organization, if well balanced, can actually be the source of lasting economic success.

Who gets priority, the people or the organization?

Who gets priority, the people or the organization?
You are all familiar with the tension between caring for the people within the organization and the organization’s objective. Economic factors in particular often displace human interests. Yet every policymaker knows that one cannot function without the support of highly motivated employees. The interests of the employees are therefore an important factor that the organization must respond to. If too much weight is given to them, the end of the organization will soon arrive.
Aquarius Balanced Progress examines with you how the interests of people and organization can merge into a balanced organizational interest. We also involve the connection with processes on Earth at a global scale. After all, you are also depending on the rest of the global economy. An example: Ending poverty now is creating new sales markets for the future. Use this strategy you also can stop the violence caused by poverty. And peace is the best condition to create lasting economic success.

Balance Automation – Manual

Automate information processing or just write it down? Something to think about.
In the present, an organization can no longer ignore the need for a careful automation policy. So, they need things and services from suppliers of hardware and software. In this process, a situation can arise, in which too many or too few processes in your organization are automated.
The concept of periodic updates and upgrades, or buying a complete new system often cause disruptions in the information processing. It also costs a lot of money, that you could invest in others things.
The interaction between people and machine needs a permanent strategy to create and maintain the best possible flows of information. You need to evaluate and optimize your system of people, machines and computers every day.
You need a hybrid model of the “Commercial information systems” and “Open source information systems” in combination with a hybrid of “Human Resource Management” and ”Humanware Engineering”.
Together with Aquarius Balanced Progress you can develop a information processing policy that is static and dynamic. A static core and a dynamic evolving shell is the best future-proof model for each organization. My book “Global Society, A Proposal – The Federation” is an virtual example of such an organization.

Balance Expansion – Restriction

Increase or reduce market, more office buildings or use a shared dynamic office system. Expand or restrict? A dilemma that every organization is confronted with again and again. Expanding too quickly or too much causes problems regarding logistics and economics. Restricting too quickly or too much causes missing opportunities. Postponing this choice leads to the downfall of an organization.
Aquarius Balanced Progress analyzes the possibilities and limitations together with you. You develop a flexible model in which you can always adjust the course together with your network of individuals and organizations. A constantly alert approach to this issue helps you to find and maintain the balance between expansion and restriction.