Spiritual Growth: the Spiritual Challenge of Modern Times

To grow spiritually in a world defined by power, money, and influence is a Herculean task. Modern conveniences such as electronic equipments, gadgets, and tools as well as entertainment through television, magazines, and the web have predisposed us to confine our attention mostly to physical needs and wants. As a result, our concepts of self-worth and self-meaning are muddled. How can we strike a balance between the material and spiritual aspects of our lives?

To grow spiritually is to look inward.

Introspection goes beyond recalling the things that happened in a day, week, or month. You need to look closely and reflect on your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and motivations. Periodically examining your experiences, the decisions you make, the relationships you have, and the things you engage in provide useful insights on your life goals, on the good traits you must sustain and the bad traits you have to discard. Moreover, it gives you clues on how to act, react, and conduct yourself in the midst of any situation. Like any skill, introspection can be learned; all it takes is the courage and willingness to seek the truths that lie within you. Here are some pointers when you introspect: be objective, be forgiving of yourself, and focus on your areas for improvement.

To grow spiritually is to develop your potentials.

Religion and science have differing views on matters of the human spirit. Religion views people as spiritual beings temporarily living on Earth, while science views the spirit as just one dimension of an individual. Mastery of the self is a recurring theme in both Christian (Western) and Islamic (Eastern) teachings. The needs of the body are recognized but placed under the needs of the spirit. Beliefs, values, morality, rules, experiences, and good works provide the blueprint to ensure the growth of the spiritual being. In Psychology, realizing one’s full potential is to self-actualize. Maslow identified several human needs: physiological, security, belongingness, esteem, cognitive, aesthetic, self-actualization, and self-transcendence. James earlier categorized these needs into three: material, emotional, and spiritual. When you have satisfied the basic physiological and emotional needs, spiritual or existential needs come next. Achieving each need leads to the total development of the individual. Perhaps the difference between these two religions and psychology is the end of self-development: Christianity and Islam see that self-development is a means toward serving God, while psychology view that self-development is an end by itself.

To grow spiritually is to search for meaning.

Religions that believe in the existence of God such as Christianism, Judaism, and Islam suppose that the purpose of the human life is to serve the Creator of all things. Several theories in psychology propose that we ultimately give meaning to our lives. Whether we believe that life’s meaning is pre-determined or self-directed, to grow in spirit is to realize that we do not merely exist. We do not know the meaning of our lives at birth; but we gain knowledge and wisdom from our interactions with people and from our actions and reactions to the situations we are in. As we discover this meaning, there are certain beliefs and values that we reject and affirm.  Our lives have purpose. This purpose puts all our physical, emotional, and intellectual potentials into use; sustains us during trying times; and gives us something to look forward to---a goal to achieve, a destination to reach. A person without purpose or meaning is like a drifting ship at sea.

To grow spiritually is to recognize interconnections.

Religions stress the concept of our relatedness to all creation, live and inanimate. Thus we call other people “brothers and sisters” even if there are no direct blood relations. Moreover, deity-centered religions such as Christianity and Islam speak of the relationship between humans and a higher being. On the other hand, science expounds on our link to other living things through the evolution theory. This relatedness is clearly seen in the concept of ecology, the interaction between living and non-living things. In psychology, connectedness is a characteristic of self-transcendence, the highest human need according to Maslow. Recognizing your connection to all things makes you more humble and respectful of people, animals, plants, and things in nature. It makes you appreciate everything around you. It moves you to go beyond your comfort zone and reach out to other people, and become stewards of all other things around you.

Growth is a process thus to grow in spirit is a day-to-day encounter. We win some, we lose some, but the important thing is that we learn, and from this knowledge, further spiritual growth is made possible.

You can say thanks for the articles by giving us a link back at http://www.imtiaztips.blogspot.com on your links page./ http://imtiaztips.co.nf/

Step by step plan for marketing or promoting PLR

A set of private label rights, whether it’s an e-book or a set of articles, has unlimited untapped potential. There are many creative ways to approach it. Generally, the more creative you become, the stronger your brand will be. For example, one client of mine purchased e-books in bulk and hired a writer to create synopsis’ of these 80-90 page e-books into 30 minute audio format tapes.

Marketing PLR with Multimedia – CD/DVD/MP3s

Recording your private label e-book and repackaging them into audio tutorials, courses, and transcripts is branding genius. Suppose you have a PLR e-book on ’30 Ways to Seduce Women” written by scientific researchers of pheromones and psychologists. With this, you could *repackage* and *rebrand* the e-book to produce a series of audio tutorials on “The Love Boss (you): Picking Up the Love of your Life,” complete with a fictional character (see Rich Jerk series, one of the best selling e-books ever) and a new voice.

Burning your recorded files onto CDs/DVDs and MP3s is easy with cheap equipment and packaging with software case levels is easy through an office store. A cover could include the front cover of your online e-book complement with a fresh logo. To jumpstart your multimedia campaign, you could introduce a sign up page on your website and offer a free recording with it to build a consistent list of opt-in subscribers.

Ever notice how many sales letter sites have recordings by the site’s owner explaining the new product? You can do it too by adding either 1) an audio sales pitch, 2) an audio version of your PLR content, or 3) a combination of both to your site. There are many freelancers at elance.com that can do the job but the cost may be high.

Introducing the Photoshop 3D Workspace

New world of 3D in Photoshop! Whether you are a seasoned Photoshop user who wants to learn a little
more about the new 3D environment in Photoshop CS3 Extended or a 3D designer looking to improve your creations by using the tools in Photoshop, this book has something for you.

The 3D environment in Photoshop is limited compared to the 3D environments that can be found in modeling programs. That’s because Photoshop isn’t meant to create, redesign, or even animate 3D objects or scenes. What it is meant for is what it already does an incredible job of doing: using its powerful filters, styles, and other paint tools to improve the way a 3D image looks dramatically and to create fantastic composites. I’m going to start at the very beginning, showing you the basics of the new 3D workspace, and how to manipulate objects in the workspace. Then I’ll show you how you can change the look of a 3D object by editing its textures or applying filters and styles to it. I’ll wrap up by showing you how you can use all these tools in conjunction with masks to create image composites using 3D objects.

Because I want you to be able to follow along, and to some extent create the same effects that I create, I use the 3D models that come with your Photoshop installer DVD. If you didn’t buy Photoshop in a bundle, these
bonus content files are contained on the same DVD as the Photoshop application. If you did buy Photoshop in a bundle, with Design Premium for example, you received a content DVD as well as an application DVD that includes the 3D models. Every time I use a model provided by Photoshop, I will remind you that you can find it in the bonus content, and I will tell you how to browse to it.


Working with 3D objects in Photoshop will soon become second nature for you. The 3D models provided by Photoshop are well done but very basic, especially in the textures (or lack of textures) provided. This makes them perfect for learning how the tools in Photoshop can really enhance how they look. As you learn new concepts, please play around with other models provided by Photoshop or some of your own. The techniques I am going to show you will work just as well on sophisticated 3D models as the simple ones you’ll be using in this book. First things first: Before you can have fun with 3D models, you have to start at the beginning. This chapter covers an introduction to 3D basics, including 3D file types, the 3D environment, and an in-depth overview of the Layers palette.