There are so many people doing great work in our neighborhoods. Do we know who they are? Do we utilize their skills and talents or do we spend our day in front of the television and on our electronics, viewing and complaining about what isn’t going right thousands of miles away?
If we try, we find what we’re looking for. It might take days or years, but in the end, we connect with that which lives within us – whether it’s love, fear, success, or the desire to do good in the world. And most of the time, we find it in our backyards. Myself, I keep connecting with people who are interested in improving their lives and the lives of those around them. They want to raise consciousness, knowing that that would lead to a healthier and kinder humanity.
Bestselling author and yogi Sadhguru said that if we want a better society and not just better laws, we have to create a more stable life for our youths. We need to find profound thought-out solutions and not simply react with one violent act against another violent act. The world will not change with stricter laws and more protests, he said, but with individual transformation. A transformed person lives in a cultivated way not because they fear the law, but because they have magnificent ideas about themselves that go beyond their physical nature. Each time a person transforms, they then can help someone else transform, and so on. Then violence would go down considerably.
I truly believe in that, and I also believe that we don’t do the world any justice by constantly holding up negative images for people to see. Yes, there’s a dark side that should not be ignored, but the way to heal our earth from that and shift it to a better direction is by creating conscious solutions. This is why I love organizations such as Avatar.
Avatar is a series of self-development courses founded in 1986 by Harry Palmer. It enable you to rediscover your self and align your consciousness with what you want to achieve. It’s a way to experience your own unique insights and revelations. In this program, no one will tell you what to believe or who you are. It’s you finding out about you.
“One of the best parts of working with Avatar is that it is tailored to people’s own interests,” said Derek Stottlemyer. “People work on areas that are meaningful to them.”
Derek had attended one of my talks at the Theosophical Society last year, and during the fall, I saw him again at the Unity Church of Farmington Hills. That’s when he told me about Avatar. Derek has been a licensed Avatar® Master for 4 1/2 years, delivering the material to students locally as well as at four International Courses each year in Orlando. He is active in many groups locally and is promoting the development of Conscious Cafe’s in the area.
Derek is involved in the Compassion Project, often working at expos and events to share the compassion exercise and invite people into further explorations with the Avatar tools. This effort takes the compassion exercise (one of 30 in Section 1 of the Avatar Course) and makes it available on a folding card that is easy to share. The original goal was to reach 1 million people, and now we are going for our 6th million. It has been translated into 34 languages and has been shared all over the planet.
Prior to Avatar, he had been a Peace Corps volunteer, spending a little over three years in the Dominican Republic working with small farmers on sustainable practices. Upon returning home he taught himself programming by creating software for guitar players which introduced him to web-entrepreneurship. He has been the tech lead for several startups as well as global projects.
“The Avatar organization believes we can create a better world by raising human consciousness one person at a time. In alignment with this goal, The Avatar Course is a nine day, non-religious course that allows a person to reconnect with their true spiritual self. And along the way, students on this course discover the source of their issues, problems and concerns, learn ways to resolve and eliminate those issues, problems and concerns, and as a consequence gain the ability to create the life they want. This is known as living deliberately.” — R. S.
Derek had me do the Compassion Exercise during our interview and it’s really something you should take the time to do, especially as you prepare for the New Year.
If you would like to know more about Avatar or to schedule a free info hour (by phone or in person) feel free to contact him at (248)635-8216 or at derek@explore-avatar.com