The following is Part One of an excerpt from Peter Gruenewald’s new book, Mastering Life: Rosicrucian and Magical Techniques for Achieving Your Life’s Goals.

Using magical symbols for the achievement of goals and success is not only empowering but also fraught with risks. It should therefore be practiced with caution. A magical mastery of life needs to go hand in hand with mastery over oneself as well, including personal moral development. Exerting power without enlightened moral development can easily lead to an abyss of abuse and destruction. However, these risks should not hold us back from seeking to master ourselves and life, in close connection with those spirits that serve the ascendance of humanity.

This book is a guide that helps identify our life goals in harmony with the goals of the ascending evolution of humanity – the development of inner freedom and selfless love. These harmonic goals are supported by the spiritual world, serving the development of everyone. They are enhanced by the meditative use of magical symbols and mantras. In this inner work, we can call upon the assistance of spiritual beings and masters, including members of the hierarchies of angels that serve the ascending development of humanity towards inner freedom and love.

This book is a practical guide that introduces a comprehensive and effective training to better meet our spiritual and personal developmental needs, including the needs of family, friends, society, humanity, and nature. A spiritual symbol and mantra for meditation are introduced that can enhance our personal and spiritual development and speed up and our capacity to manifest our harmonic goals through strong action and the attraction of favourable outer circumstances.

Combining goal contemplation, visualization and symbol and mantra meditation can lead towards the development of – and control over – spiritual forces and skills. These work within us, in nature and in our destiny.

To harmonize one’s own goals with the developmental needs of other people and humanity (harmonic goals) is an important process to safeguard against the abuse of occult power. Use of occult power for purely selfish means or to harm others is a path of black magic that ultimately guides us away from the developmental goals of inner freedom and love, and into the abyss of dependency to dark occult powers. The path described here, on the other hand, intends to strengthen the development of wisdom, beauty and goodness within ourselves and others. Unfortunately, any gain in power can also be abused for dark purposes.

The meditative practice and the process of goal realization are supported by resilience building techniques, active listening, mindful nature observation and the contemplative work with the initiatory Temple Legend. In many ways, these techniques are an important preparation for actual meditative work, as they strengthen selflessness, love, imagination and the capacity to focus our mind and growing willpower.

Have you ever experienced that, despite your best intentions, you lack the strength to manifest your life goals into reality? Do you feel the pain of not being able to bridge the gap between your ideas, ideals and your everyday life? Have you been confronted with inner and outer powerlessness due to being unable to develop the inner discipline and outer strength required to see your goals through to their realization? Have you asked yourself how to become more effective in helping yourself and other people? If these questions live within you, with the burning desire to transform yourself and the world around you – inspired by the will to help yourself, others and humanity – then this book is for you.

My sense of disempowerment and my inability to bridge the gap between my ideals and goals and my life’s reality led me to embark on the path of anthroposophy and Rosicrucian white magic. It led me to write this book, sharing my insights and experiences on the path towards a life of empowerment and alignment with my true self. It also helped in my work as an integrated physician, anthroposophic doctor and resilience and leadership coach.

This book is a guide to assist you in your personal and spiritual development and goal achievement. It supports the manifestation of individual, communal and global goals through highly developed imagination, aligned with empowered will. Meditative use of spiritual symbols and mantras can train and enhance the power of our imagination and the power of our will to the point where we can transform our intentions into reality more speedily and comprehensively.

This should be done in an ethical and holistic way, avoiding binding others into dependency (achieving power over others for the sake of exploitation and personal gains) as this may lead ultimately to an entrapment in materialism. instead, personal, communal, and global goal manifestation work should aim to extend egotism beyond its boundaries and transform it into altruism. This can be achieved through widening our self-interest and fully embracing increasingly larger circles of influence – from family, friends, and colleagues, to community, country, continent, humanity, the earth and universe. I will from now on call those personal goals that are aligned with the developmental needs of individuals and humanity, harmonic goals.

Connecting our harmonic goals with a distinct spiritual symbol and mantra can help develop skills that instrumentalize spiritual forces, allowing one – more speedily and comprehensively – to manifest goals to advance our own as well as others’ development. Harmonic goals can concern anything from personal and spiritual development to personal, social and communal health and wealth; personal and professional success; to charitable goals that compassionately address the ills and misfortunes of others, assisting the general development of humanity. To be harmonic, our goals must serve the spiritual development of the individual, of groups and of humanity in our development towards freedom and love, truth, beauty, and goodness.

Of course, none of our goals should conflict with the integrity and personal and developmental needs of others. It requires a careful process of selection to assure that our goals do not only support our own development towards self-determination (freedom) and love, but also the development of others, in the sense I have described above.

For more information about online workshops on Deep Trance Meditation, Deep Relaxation Training and Self- Hypnosis for physical and emotional health, spiritual development, and personal transformation please visit Peter’s website: www.mastering-life.com.

See also the video interview with Peter, “How to develop adaptive resilience and build your leadership skills.”

Dr. Peter Gruenewald, MD is an internationally recognized expert in the field of adaptive resilience, stress, and performance. Peter works as an Honorary Clinical Specialist in Sleep Medicine and General Medicine for the University College London Hospital (Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine) and in private practice (London). He is an Associate Fellow at Said Business School, Oxford University, where he conducts Adaptive Leadership Resilience workshops for senior civil servants and major project leaders of the Cabinet Office. He also provides workshops and trainings for senior civil servants and lawyers at the United Nations. Over many years he has practiced meditation and has followed the spiritual and highly practical methodology of ‘Anthroposophy‘ and the ‘Philosophy of Freedom”  as founded by Rudolf Steiner. 

Peter is the author of the books:
Mastering Life. Rosicrucian and Magical Techniques to Achieve your Life’s Goals. (Clairview Publishing 2022)  Amazon UK  US
Manifesting your Best Future Self (Building Adaptive Resilience, 2020) Amazon UK  US
The Quiet Heart: Putting Stress into Its Place (Floris Books 2007) Amazon UK  US