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Maximize Your LIfe

My Story page one

My Published Books online page two

Help with Your Career page three

Building Relationships page four

Spiritual and Inspirational page five

Wandering Traveler
Home: About Me

Dr. Robert H. Schram's Story

Experienced Executive Director, Mediator, Meditator, Expert Witness, Consultant, published author, proud husband of Jeanlu Ryersbach, proud father of Aaron, proud father of Justin of blessed memory, proud stepfather to Liselotte and Yael, proud uncle to Alison and Shawn, proud Great Uncle to Micah Wren, Juniper Bridge, and Rebecca Ann, proud son of Dr. William and Fay Schram and proud brother of Lynne


This website Maximize Life comes from the title of my first published book: Maximize Life by Living for Peace Harmony and Joy. I intend to offer topics that will be of interest to many people. Maximize Life contains the following areas as you scroll down:

        My Published Books;

        Help with Your Career;

        Building Personal-Business  Relationships;

        Spiritual & Inspirational

Any organization (profit or nonprofit) that needs help with any of the following areas will find that assistance here (a work in progress on the "Building Personal-Business Relationship"): 

Fund-Raising (capital campaigns, events, programs, grant writing, planned giving);

Residential Life-Time Care;

Financial Analysis and Budgeting;

Pension/Trust Fund Management;

Public Relations and Marketing;

New Program/Business startup;

Staff Training; (internal and external);

Staff Super­vision and Human Resources;

Conflict Management;

Strategic Planning

Contact schram@verizon.net

Home: About
Bridge Over River

My Published Books

Available online at Xlibris.com, Amazon.com, and BarnesandNoble.com

Maximize Life by Living for Peace, Harmony, and Joy

We all have two guarantees in life…living and dying. It is not just about being alive but about HOW we live the years we are given. This book is about that journey and how each of us can be positive change agents…insuring a life full of peace, harmony, and joy. Living can be a meditative daily experience in which the individual strives to be present, to know truth, by experiencing life and from that experience feel our universal connectiveness and essence. Difficult circumstances can challenge you, but they cannot stop you. Only you can stop you. Others can give encouragement, can teach you and help you, or they can conspire against you to hold you back. Only you can decide what to do with it all, and what to make out of what you have been handed. There are some roads that lead to success and others that lead to despair. The road you are on depends entirely on the road you have chosen. The reader will see my maximizing life journey to learn and detail theirs in 152 two page chapters.


Company Management…Policies, Procedures, Practices

A guide for both entrepreneurs initiating their own business and top managers of more established companies. It covers all the critically important aspects of governance and supervision necessary for success including: meeting management techniques; fiduciary and financial responsibilities; strategic planning; legal and risk management; initiating and embracing health and safety committees; developing and utilizing an effective human resources department; creating and implementing a position rating manual; fostering public relations; crafting updating, and employing employee handbooks. 

Life is but a Dream!

Over ten months I awoke each night in a fugue state to relieve myself and record the dream I was having. The dreams are categorized into chapter titles and are analyzed to reveal details about who I am. Dream interpretation is a tradition dating back many thousands of years. Joseph interprets Pharaoh’s dreams and prophets Samuel, Solomon, and Daniel interpreted Divine missions and future events.


"Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream; and let him who has received My word report My word faithfully" (Jeremiah 23:28).

The Zohar, the book of Jewish mysticism, expresses that in a world in which there are no longer prophets and no longer even wise sages, Divine wisdom is revealed to the righteous through their dreams.

The Israelites were warned: "If there appears among you a prophet or diviner of dreams and you are given a sign or a portent saying, ‘Let us follow and worship another god’—whom you have not experienced—do not heed the words of that prophet or dream diviner. For the Lord God is testing you . . ." (Deuteronomy, 13:2-4).

Worldwide Human Corruption

Corruption is in every venue of human activity and is listed as the ‘top problem in the world’ by the majority of people in a 65 nation poll dwarfing the gap between rich and poor, unemployment, the environment, and religious fundamentalism. Transparency International annually publishes the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) that ranks countries from least corrupt to most corrupt. India ranked 94th of 177 countries in the World-wide Corruption Index with a score of 36; sixty-six percent of the countries had scores below 50 out of 100 meaning they have a serious corruption problem. The book focuses on the higher-ranking corruption (e.g., cronyism, electoral fraud, embezzlement, kleptocracy, etc.) without going into any significant detail in regard to the lower-hanging corrupt fruit such as making decisions that only serve a political purpose without consideration for the greater good. Global criminals are big business fueled by supply and demand and motivated by high profit and relatively low risk.

Illusafact…the Inevitable Advance of our Technologies and Us

Illusafact is a future when facts and illusions will be merged creating a new omniscient reality. The collective quantity of information in the world is beyond comprehension and is growing at a compound annual rate of 60% (speeding up every year). Information created by machines and used by other machines is growing faster than any other form of data. The only way to efficiently access the gargantuan quantity of data is by utilizing machines. Google is the king of the gargantuan data collectors with its audacious mission to “organize the world’s information.” We have been very significantly impacted by ‘the rise of the machines’ in every venue of human endeavor. Some impacts have had mostly positive results (medicine, discovery, exploration) while others have had serious negative results (economics, safety, homeland security). ‘Business as usual’ seems to have always been the way civilizations have operated . . . it just seems that the stakes are much higher now! Nine chapters examine the impact of our incredible technology: Prophetic or Insane; Governance and Democracy; Technology; Hollywood and Science Fiction; Proliferation; Economics and Business; Artificial Intelligence; The Industrial Revolution and the Luddites; Summary and Conclusions.

Mixed Marriage . . .Interreligious, Interracial, Interethnic

The book documents how mixed marriages continue to rise in spite of deep historical biases. Biblical prohibitions are documented along with intermarriage among Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhist. Ethnic and racial Intermarriage is also covered.

Musings of an Inveterate Traveler

The four-year personalized experiences of a pleasure traveler to Thailand, Vietnam, Peru, Machu Piccu, The Amazon, New Orleans, LA, Key West, FLA, Princeton-NYC-Rockport-Boston-Lenox MA, Boston Labor Day, Australia, New Zealand, Arizona -The Grand Canyon, an Orthodox wedding in Brooklyn Heights, NY, Omega Institute in NY. It includes: text referenced pictures; personal comments and insights about people, places and experiences with living; history; travel snafus; animals; plants; humor; ironies. Spirituality and connectedness is also a theme.         

Musings of an Inveterate Traveler II

The four-year personalized experiences of a pleasure traveler to: Alaska; British Columbia, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Israel. It includes: text referenced pictures; personal comments and insights about people, places and experiences with living; history; travel snafus; animals; plants; humor; ironies. Spirituality and connectedness is also a theme.     

Musings of an Inveterate Traveler III

The personalized experiences of a pleasure traveler to: Costa Rica, China, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Slovakia, and Hungary. It includes: text referenced pictures; personal comments and insights; history; travel snafus; animals; plants; people and places; humor; ironies. 

Musings of an Inveterate Traveler IV

The personalized experience of a pleasure traveler to: The Netherlands, England, Scotland, Norway, and Denmark. It includes: text referenced pictures, personal comments and insights; history; travel snafus; animals and plants; people and places; humor; ironies. The sheer joy of traveling is one of life’s greatest gifts.

Oh My God it is all the Same!

My journey back to the world of the spirit began anew through meditation and yoga at first in the Kundalini tradition and then in the Kripalu Hatha tradition. By daily meditation I was able to connect with what was always mine . . . me! It is all about the journey, not the destination. We come from formless energy and will return to formless energy. God created everything and is the life-force of everything. We are eternally interconnected with all collective truth. The symmetry of everything, from such vastly different cultures, religions, and sciences is miraculous. The reader should experience an ‘Eureka’ since the conclusions about the universe are the same in every culture and religion. 

Zohar - The Book of Radiance Revealed

Professor Daniel Matt’s translation, explanations, and notes on the Zohar in his first seven volumes inspired me to write this book.


Comprehension of mystical traditions takes dedication and perseverance but the more meaningful and powerful impact is being able to feel its full heartfelt effects. There are a number of

meditations and prayers toward this end. The mystical secrets come from God and come through self-discovery. Each person’s grasp of the mystery is in proportion to one’s efforts and the refinement of one’s spiritual nature. At the beginning of time, the universe was created from nothing in a series of stages initiated by an intentional act of desire or will, with a burst of conventional fire expanding dramatically outward from a microscopic point called the Resheit. The book covers: manifestations of God (Sefirot), prophets, demons, devils, Satan, evil, angels, numbers, colors, letters and words, characters, places and things, circumcision, souls, reincarnation, and resurrection.  

Similarities with the Five Books of Moses and Other Ancient Beliefs 

The Hebrew Bible contains 613 commandments that are divided into 34 categories in the four Books after Genesis: Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The commandments are explained and compared to other ancient Middle Eastern  Civilizations. The Commandments are listed in each book by line and verse followed by similar practices in other ancient Middle Eastern civilizations: Egyptian, Greek, Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite, Amorites, Ammonites, Moabites, Mesopotamia and the city-state of Babylon.

The 613 Commandments

The Commandments are described in 34 Categories to make their comprehension more accessible:

Prophecy, Clothing, Prayer and Blessings, Injuries and Damages, The Firstborn, Lepers and Leprosy, Signs and Symbols, Torah, Treatment of Gentiles, Vows Oaths and Swearing, Criminal Laws, Agriculture and Animal Husbandry, The King, God, Nazarites, Property and Property Rights, The Poor and the Unfortunate, Love and Brotherhood, Business Practices, Ritual Purity and Impurity, Wars, The Sabbatical and Jubilee Years, Employees Servants and Slaves, Marriage Divorce and Family, Punishment and Restitution, T'rumah Tithes and Taxes, Forbidden Sexual Relations, Dietary Laws, Kohanim and Levites, The Temple the Sanctuary, Sacred Objects, Times and Seasons, Court Judicial System, Idolatry Idolaters and Idolatrous Practices, Sacrifices and Offerings

The Nation State of Israel

Israel has archeological evidence of the earliest migration of hominids out of Africa and Canaanite tribes in the geography since the Middle Bronze Age (2,000–1,750 BCE). The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah emerged during the Near Eastern Iron Age I (1,200-1000 BCE). After emerging from Egyptian slavery c. 1300 BCE Joshua led the tribes across the Jordan River into the Promised Land. The book covers Israel's geography, environment, economy, culture, demographics, the government, the legal system, and history since Abraham and Sarah.

Jews...Small Population Vast Variety

The population of Jews in the world has always been quite small reaching a high of about 16.6 million in 1939 before the Holocaust and 13.5 million in 2010. The vast variety of Jews throughout the world includes:  Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, Humanistic, Renewal, Jews for Jesus, Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Karaites, Samaritans, ethnic subgroups, and mixed groups. 










INTRODUCTION

Home: Welcome

Help with your Career

Help for Your Life

I offer a variety of life coaching services that will nurture your spirit, help you overcome personal challenges, and allow you to achieve your individual life goals. I cater to each of my client’s personal needs in order to unlock their full potential. Contact me to start your proactive journey today.

Wheat Field

Career Coaching

Listen to podcasts by professionals in various careers to gain insight into career choices and learn the keys to success.

Howard Greenberg on Career Truth and Honesty at work https://www.buzzsprout.com/922417

Linda Felt VP Development Doylestown Hospital

https://www.buzzsprout.com/922417/2975548

Scott Kulp Director Vocational Services and Development at BARC Developmental Services 

https://www.buzzsprout.com/922417

Julie Asplen Special Education

https://www.buzzsprout.com/922417

Susan Gumpert Special Education Teacher Emeritus

https://www.buzzsprout.com/922417/2975539

Dr. John Pfeiffer Director Emeritus Early Intervention and Development BARC 

https://www.buzzsprout.com/922417/2975308

Dr. Diane Mann Clinical Psychologist

https://www.buzzsprout.com/922417

Ivan Winegar Psychiatric Nurse emeritus

https://www.buzzsprout.com/922417

Dr. Liselotte Schuster Chiropractor

https://www.buzzsprout.com/922417

Joan Feldman Plumb Massage Therapist 

https://www.buzzsprout.com/922417

Arnie Gold Mechanical Engineer in aerospace

https://www.buzzsprout.com/922417

Yael Schuster Actress

https://www.buzzsprout.com/922417

Ted Ryersbach Chief Probation Officer

https://www.buzzsprout.com/922417 

Barry Johnston Quality Resources Director

https://www.buzzsprout.com/922417

Jen Garrett Investment Manager Advisor

https://www.buzzsprout.com/922417/2975470

Howard Greenberg State Analyst in Taxation 

https://www.buzzsprout.com/922417

Ralph Gumpert Industrial Hygienist https://www.buzzsprout.com/922417

Rich Greenfield COO SPIN

https://www.buzzsprout.com/922417/2975662

Art Finkle finance personnel mediation

https://922417/2975608.buzzsprout.com

Mary Sautter Executive Director BARC Developmental Services

https://www.buzzsprout.com/922417/2975584

Ken Gibat Sr. Executive Director Senior Person Directed Supports

https://www.buzzsprout.com/922417/2975380

Ken Gibat Jr. Executive Director Junior Person Directed Supports

https://www.buzzsprout.com/922417

Meg Eubank Executive Director Welcoming the Stranger

https://www.buzzsprout.com/922417

Natalie Kaye Entrepreneur Owner in Marketing, Promotions, Events

https://www.buzzsprout.com/922417

Eric Matzkin Entrepreneur CEO U.S. Medical Staffing 

https://www.buzzsprout.com/922417

Jerry Gumpert Founder Owner Film Specialties Inc.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/922417/2975512

Herb Cohen Founder-Owner Executive Leaders Radio

https://www.buzzsprout.com/922417/2975350

View of Meditation Garden

Building Personal & Business Relationships

Watch videos to learn the best methods and techniques to build and retain personal and business relationships. Learn how to approach and follow-up with others for your social and/or business life. Learning how is just the beginning...implementing and doing is entirely up to you!

Home: Services
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The following Podcasts are with people

from different backgrounds, religions, and beliefs

providing spiritual inspiration for everyone:

Dr. Robert H. Schram on Depression, Joy, and Maximizing Life

https://www.buzzsprout.com/922417


Julie Asplen Kol Emet Congregation President of the Board

https://www.buzzsprout.com/922417 

J's Spiritual Journey

  https://www.buzzsprout.com/922417

Healing/Meditative Sounds – bells, bowls, tingshaws, dorje, shawns, gongs

https://www.buzzsprout.com/922417

Samadhi is the point at which one transcends the self and completely obliterates any distinction between subject and object. This wholeness can happen in the blink of an eye, be momentary or longer lasting. Obstacles in the way of true Samadhi include sickness, laziness, self-doubt, inattention, over-indulgence, inability to concentrate, lack of perseverance, false knowledge, lack of mental effort.


Sound is a physical phenomenon, and the perception of sound takes place in accordance with principles that can be explained in physical and biological terms. That means it is possible to describe exactly how sound works, why it is the way it is, and how it produces its effects. These natural laws are, in fact, the secret which lies behind everything and which every religion tries to explain. It is striking that the various explanations often use similar fundamental principles, sometimes corroborated by recent scientific discoveries. Nevertheless, even the laws of nature have a secret core. Secrets guard themselves well and eventually only reveal themselves to people who are prepared to find their own way through the labyrinth of phenomena and explanations. The path they follow will only lead to an understanding of the mystery through their own experience and intuition.


The sounds produced by the musical instruments form the counterpart to the inner sounds that can be observed in the body in a state of total stillness. If one shuts out the sounds from the outside world, one can hear the murmur of the circulation of the blood, and after a while, also the rhythm of one’s own heartbeat. Because they can direct their concentration inwards for a long time, experienced monks and yogis are able to clearly detect the most subtle vibrations generated by organic processes in their own bodies. The characteristics of the sounds they hear are described with great accuracy in Tibetan aesthetics on music. These texts describe singing, beating, thumping, clashing, tinkling, complaining and blaring sounds. The musical sounds that serve as the counterpart to these organic sounds are produced by the instruments which constitute the temple orchestra. The ‘rustling’ is represented by the sound of the conch, the ‘beating’ is produced by hand drums, the ‘thumping’ by the big drums, the ‘clanging’ by cymbals, the ‘tinkling’ by bells and the ‘groaning’ by the sound of the ‘shawms’


Among Buddhist lamas it is strictly forbidden to talk about the rituals or the singing bowls themselves. This is because a knowledge of sound carries with it great power. It allows one to travel without moving. It is possible to encounter planets and their spirits, with the subterranean kingdom of Aggartha and with Shamballah, the earthly center of the Immortals. If you ask a lama with a singing bowl in his hands, whether it is true that they are used for psychic, psychological, and physical purposes, he will smile and reply” ‘perhaps.’



Types of Meditation (external, internal, mantra, passage)


Mystics often compare the mind to a lake. In most of us, the surface of this lake is so agitated that we cannot see the beauty and resources that lie below, waiting to be tapped. Yoga, as Patanjali defines it, is nothing more or less than stilling the mind, so we can see that longed for beauty and let our life be flooded with those largely unsuspected resources.


1. External object meditation focuses on objects like a candle, or the breath

2. Internal meditation focuses on something within us

3. Mantra meditation focuses on a charged word, phrase or prayer that is silently repeated going deeper and deeper at the expense of those pesky thought waves.

4. Passage meditation was introduced in America by Ekanth Easwaran in 1959 and focuses on any number of wonderful inspirational passages from any of the world’s great spiritual traditions. The prayer of St. Francis is one:


Lord make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

Where there is sadness, joy.


O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek

To be consoled as to console,

To be understood as to understand,

To be loved as to love,

For it is in giving that we receive,

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.


Easwaran Eight Point Program:


1. passage meditation

2. using mantra of our choice during the day as much as possible

3. slowing down and avoiding hurrying in working, eating and being – being more simple

4. training our attention (refrain from multitasking)

5. training the senses (carefully choosing what we eat, read, watch and listen to)

6. developing an innate concern for other people’s welfare

7. cultivating spiritual companionship (spend time with others who promote your growth)

8. reading spiritual and inspirational literature every day.

 


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