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We meet via zoom every weekday for 15 minutes to support each other in our practice of the 6 Basic Exercises as described by Rudolf Steiner. Everyone is invited to join us, as you are able.

Weekdays from 12pm to 12:15 ET via Zoom

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/266986103?pwd=bXU4a0EvMmJkMDZTR0Rqcm0xZ0pUZz09

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if you need help, email Angela afoster@thirdbody.net

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Orientation Video Part 1: If you are new to the group, here is a little backstory and some explanation of what we do

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Orientation Video Part 1: If you are new to the group, here is a little backstory and some explanation of what we do

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https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/s8NAYeODaG4XayVAjtzMCoxgi7b1ApsDJbGLWcQSkk1xay0gaf-ohFMd1xhKZsdD._bN26yrRy2-cPfBu?startTime=1695312198000
Passcode: M1N.H.y6

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Orientation Video Part 2: Four Friends talking about the group

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Orientation Video Part 2: Four Friends talking about the group

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https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/play/gINB4IRFF5M4pXvkePJxWMHb4FvckaWBcK_UsAELkJ_IVPxJ26rtpuGd8VrIfodsu-I_88KZVNfs_TmD.eCJnDJ1EVrLb3df8
Passcode: G7f3*2Rt

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This is a short video showing how to add a post to this Padlet

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This is a short video showing how to add a post to this Padlet

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https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/play/n21lc9P9ek9YVsJ2_zQjQY58KF3gq18l9sBq5-lJFj_HWu93Xb1wmmAa9vh8U0xe1-bD1ao13UiNgi5n.SMqoaC2hJwDnIs57
Passcode: d*4VmKLL

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Leo Tolstoy’s Calendar of Wisdom February 18th resonates with our current research on thinking. How important is personality to thinking?

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A Collection of Quotes About Attention from Simone Weil

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A Collection of Quotes About Attention from Simone Weil

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“Rather than the contracting of our muscles of concentration, attention involves the canceling of our desires;…to turn away from our blinding self…ready to be penetrated by the object of our attention.  To attend means not to seek, but to wait; not to concentrate, but instead to dilate our minds.”

“Setting our hearts upon our object of attention, yet not allowing ourselves to go out in search of it… This expectant waiting is the foundation of the spiritual life.”

“This more mysterious dimension we penetrate is a moral dimension.  It is the space where, by our act of attention, we grasp what has always been the real mystery—the lives of our fellow human beings.”

“Even if our efforts of attention seem for years to be producing no result, one day a light that is in exact proportion to them will flood the soul.”  - Simone Weil

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Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov: Chapter 41

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Greedy Peasant on Instagram. The Rebounding Arrow-a Michael deed from book on Saints.

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THE EFFECTS OF ANGER IN OUR BODY

I have known many cases where people have got internal blood poisoning simply because of their anger. One can become so angry, especially if one becomes angry quickly, that through this anger one secretes a superfluous amount of bile – actually first a lot of cyanide, then bile. Then you get a terrible mixture of poison in your blood, and there you ruin your blood. You get a terrible blood poisoning from the anger. From this you see how necessary and how harmful can be in man what any organ of his body does. For everything that happens is connected with the soul. Anger is something of the soul, the secretion of bile is something physical; but there is nothing in man that is not at the same time psychic, and everything psychic has somehow a physical form.

Outbursts of violent temper hinder the right development of the emotions and also the will, and also have a far more extensive influence, as we can see at once. Now, anger is something that a person does not by any means have under his control. Only gradually can he master the habit of becoming angry, and one must have patience with oneself. To anyone who believes he can achieve this with a turn of the hand I must repeat the story of a teacher who took very much to heart the task of ridding his pupils of anger. When he was faced by the fact, that after constant efforts, a boy still became angry, he himself became so angry that he threw the ink bottle at the child’s head. A person who permits himself to do such a thing must think for many, many weeks about karma.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 130 – Esoteric Christianity and the Mission of Christian Rosenkreutz – Lecture 2 – Leipzig, 5th November 1911 Michael Painting kwest

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collected in Ates Baydur's Six steps in Self developmemt

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from Ates Baydur's collection: 6 Steps in Self Development

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from GA 266/1

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free podcast on Not-Doing a Deed: Anger & Michael
https://www.kristenawest.com/podcast/episode/2cb877c7/michaelmas-time-for-deeds-of-courage-overcome-your-dragons

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Orange Simple Podcast Poster Landscape (3) (1)

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PROTECTION BLUE CRYSTAL MEDITATION kwest

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PROTECTION BLUE CRYSTAL MEDITATION kwest

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Wall von Kristall
All-überall,
Überwille mich,
Überforme mich.
Lass nichts herein
Als Licht allein.

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From Florin Lowndes' Enlivening the Chakra of the Heart (thanks to Nisha for bringing it forward)

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From Florin Lowndes' Enlivening the Chakra of the Heart (thanks to Nisha for bringing it forward)

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Another attempt to understand Michael

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From 12 Aspects of Michael, Christoph-Andreas Lindenberg and David Newbatt, Wynstones Press, 2006

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SHOW & TELL on Friday Oct 20 after the regular call! 

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SHOW & TELL on Friday Oct 20 after the regular call! 

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Since Friday Oct 20 is the end of the first month of working with the thinking exercise, you are invited to stay after the call and participate in a show & tell. Bring the item (or items) that you have been attending this month & we can take a fun screen shot together. You might want to share an interesting thought or observation that occurred for you this month!

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SOUL EXERCISES: WORD & SYMBOL MEDITATIONS 1904-1924

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SOUL EXERCISES: WORD & SYMBOL MEDITATIONS 1904-1924

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MORNING
Thinking on a Star, which is over your head:
By the shining of the star over my head I will hold the power in my heart to help the powers of my soul.
3-4 minutes

EVENING
Thinking the Christ comes to you from the sun, and the Christ speaks to your heart:
I give you my graceful word
and my loving power
and you will make progress
in your soul and in your I.
4-5 minutes

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Nov 2 All Souls Invocation with Jordan & Orland

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Nov 2 All Souls Invocation with Jordan & Orland

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RSVP to jordan@newformsproject.org

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God bless scissors, eye glasses, corrective plastic lenses, candles and candle extinguishers, pencils, binder clips, matches, spoons, paper clips, toothpicks, hair band and all the other incredible objects that help us grow!

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The Green Mountain Branch is delighted to be once again hosting Michael Lipson for a lecture and workshop! Michael, a clinical psychologist and lifelong student of Buddhist, Christian and Jewish mysticism, teaches the arts of meditation, blessing, and engagement with the living universe.

Space is limited, so reserve a spot soon. If cost is an issue for you, reach out to us at greenmountainbranch@gmail.com to enquire about scholarships.

Cost:
Friday evening lecture $25 - $15
Friday evening lecture & Saturday workshop $200 - $75
Lunch included on Saturday

Location: Old Meeting House, 1620 Center Rd, East Montpelier, VT

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Lead Together - A resources exchange for news and exploration of waldorf education

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The Six Exercises for Basic Esoteric Development of Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Steiner gave six exercises which are fundamental to his meditative work.

No. 1 - The Control of Thought
The first exercise has to do with the control of thinking. It is designed to keep our minds from wandering, to focus them, in order to strengthen our meditative work. There are several versions of this exercise. Here is one version:
Select a simple object - a pin, a button, a pencil. Try to think about it exclusively for five minutes. You may think about the way the object is manufactured, how it is used, what its history is. Try to be logical and realistic in your thinking. This exercise is best if practiced faithfully every day. You may use the same object every day or a new object each day, as you choose.

No. 2 - The Control of Will
Choose a simple action to perform each day at a time you select. It should be something you do not ordinarily do; it can even be a little odd. Then make it a duty to perform this action at that time each day. Rudolf Steiner gives the example of watering a flower each day at a certain time. As you progress, additional tasks can be added at other times.
This exercise is as hard as it is simple and takes a very strong intention to complete. To start you might think of it as you think of a dentist's appointment - you do not want to be late. It can be helpful to mark your success or failure on the calendar each day. If you completely forget at the time, but remember later, do it then and try to do better the next day.

No. 3 - Equanimity
The third exercise is the development of balance between joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, the heights of pleasure and the depths of despair. Strive for a balanced mood. An attempt should be made not to become immoderately angry or annoyed, not to become anxious or fearful, not to become disconcerted, nor to be overcome by joy or sorrow. Rather should your natural feelings be permitted to be quietly felt. Try to maintain your composure. This leads to an inner tranquillity and purer feelings of the soul.

No. 4
This exercise is the development of a positive attitude to life. Attempt to seek for the good, praiseworthy, and beautiful in all beings, all experiences and all things. Soon you will begin to notice the hidden good and beautiful that lies concealed in all things. This is connected with learning not to criticize everything. You can ask how something came to be or to act the way it is. One way to overcome the tendency to criticize is to learn to 'characterize' instead.

No. 5
For this exercise, make the effort to confront every new experience with complete open-mindedness. The habit of saying, "I never heard that" or "I never saw that before" should be overcome. The possibility of something completely new coming into the world must be left open, even if it contradicts allyour previous knowledge and experience.

No. 6
If you have been trying the earlier exercises of thinking, will, equilibrium, positivity and tolerance, you are now ready to try them together two or three at a time, in varying combinations until they become natural and harmonious.

For more information see Guidance in Esoteric Training, by Rudolf Steiner:

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The Six Basic Exercises for Esoteric Development by Rudolf Steiner - Lead Together

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The Six Exercises for Basic Esoteric Development of Rudolf Steiner Rudolf Steiner gave six exercises which are fundamental to his meditative work. No. 1 - The Control of Thought The first exercise has to do with the control of thinking.

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taken from Florin Lowndes

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from Florin Lowndes' Enlivening the Chakra of the Heart.

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For international friends, please note that most of the US has changed our clocks back one hour, so what was 1pm is now 12noon… essentially saying we are meeting one hour later if you are not in a community that changes time!

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A new culture out of the I's centre of love

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A new culture out of the I's centre of love

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Before the future can be fulfilled through the forces of the will, the past needs to be raised to consciousness. Our future being can only be realized if we assume full responsibility for our past.

Iftach Ben Aharon

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Thy will and subconscious shown for context of where our conscious will can be experienced at various levels

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Day 33 : the thoughts today were read from Arthur Zajonc's Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry

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Day 33 : the thoughts today were read from Arthur Zajonc's Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry

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really good book!

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The What/How/Why, Who outline as shared on 19 October

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The What/How/Why, Who outline as shared on 19 October

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Bits from the Will sharing on 26 October

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Bits from the Will sharing on 26 October

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On the 26th, I closed with Meditation number III out of Start Now on page 124-125. This tried my sharing about the will and rhythms together... It went like this:

(morning)

In the world' divinity

In the world's spirit

In the world's soul

I will find myself

To rest in it

To live in it

To be in it

(evening)

I will be

I will live

I will rest

I will find myself

In the world's soul

In the world's spirit

In the world's divinity

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Bits from the Will sharing on 2 November

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Bits from the Will sharing on 2 November

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This is the quote from Bastiaan Baan's book entitled: "Ways into Christian Meditation". The remainder that discussed the Etheric elements of time can be found in Florian Lowndes' book called "Enlivening the Chakra of the Heart"

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11/13/2023 Monday Wk4 DOING

Of the six basic exercises number one, and number two are the most fundamental. Number one, Thinking, seems to not exist in the physical world at all. Number two, Doing, seems to only exist in the physical world. There is something basic in the human experience that seems to contradict both of these statements.

…MRichter

RS - Book- Truth and Science, Section XIII

CONCLUDING REMARKS: PRACTICAL

The aim of the preceding discussions has been to throw light on the relation of our personality, as knower, to the objective world. What does it signify for us to possess knowledge and science? This was the question to which we sought the answer.

We have seen that it is just in our knowing that the innermost kernel of the world manifestly reveals itself. The harmony, subject to law, which reigns throughout the whole world, reveals itself precisely in human cognition.

It is, therefore, part of the destiny of man to elevate the fundamental laws of the world, which do indeed regulate the whole of existence but which would never become existent in themselves, into the realm of realities which appear. This precisely is the essential nature of knowledge that in it the world-ground is made manifest which in the object-world can never be discovered. Knowing is—metaphorically speaking—a continual merging of one’s life into the world-ground.

Such a view is bound to throw light also on our practical attitude towards life.

Our conduct is, in its whole character, determined by our moral ideals. These are the ideas we have of our tasks in life, or, in other words, of the ends which we set ourselves to achieve by our action.

Our conduct is a part of the total world-process. Consequently, it, too, is subject to the universal laws which regulate this process.

Truth seek we both—

Thou in the life without thee and around;

I in the heart within.

By both can Truth alike be found.

The healthy eye can through the world the great Creator track;

The healthy heart is but the glass which gives Creation back.

RS

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Blessings on our dear friend Michael. Sending light and warmth,

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Blessings on our dear friend Michael. Sending light and warmth,

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Sharleen shared this for us

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Echo is a wonderful dynamic sound ‘effect’ reminiscent of your childhood, your voice, calling out into the Canyons of the World, evoking wonder and surprise .

However, like any bad ego trip, if your voice is all you hear (especially delayed by half a second) the capacity to speak ceases to be a natural interaction with the world. It signifies an echo chamber of disintegrity with the world.

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The "health" verse from Rudolph Steiner, and as translated by Ernst Katz

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The "health" verse from Rudolph Steiner, and as translated by Ernst Katz

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I am attaching a couple of pages from Ernst's book. There are various translations avaialable, and in my version read, I used the word "truth" instead of "trust" as seen in the verse. I see these interweaving with each other. I will attach multiple pictures of what I pulled from the book.

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No meeting the week of November 20 (thanksgiving in the U.S.) We return to start Equanimity on Nov 27

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No meeting the week of November 20 (thanksgiving in the U.S.) We return to start Equanimity on Nov 27

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schedule for the year on this doc

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If you need or want a study buddy- post here! Lots of friends available to talk with!

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If you need or want a study buddy- post here! Lots of friends available to talk with!

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The development and perception of Freedom - in our Thinking-Will - Nisha

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2 prayers/verses for someone who took their own life - in Danish translation - and now in English

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2 prayers/verses for someone who took their own life - in Danish translation - and now in English

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Sjæl i sjælelandet,

søg Kristi nåde,

som bringer dig hjælp,

hjælpen fra åndens lande,

som også skænker fred til den ånd,

som lever i

fortvivlet ensomhed.

Soul in the realm of soul,

seek the grace from Christ

which brings you help,

aid from the realms of spirit,

providing peace, even to the spirit

who lives in

desperate loneliness.

Rudolf Steiner (source unknown)

Din vilje var svag.

Styrk din vilje.

Jeg sender dig varme for din kulde.

Jeg sender dig lys for dit mørke.

Min kærlighed være med dig.

Min tanke være med dig.

Vord videre.

Your will was weak.

Strengthen your will.

I am sending you warmth for your coldness.

I am sending you light for your darkness.

May my love be with you.

May my thoughts be with you.

Keep on becoming.

Rudolf Steiner (given to F.G. when a friend had chosen death)

Perhaps this last one was the one Kristena recited?

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Frank Chester & Jordan Walker presentations/conversations on the Temple of the Heart

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Frank Chester & Jordan Walker presentations/conversations on the Temple of the Heart

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From the eurythmy course in 1924. The gestures of mood which I describe, and others, are described here.

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A few of us ended up in the 6BE Zoom during the week of Thanksgiving, mistakenly. We did a little improv and someone read the Calendar of the Soul and I read this verse. One person in the group asked to post it in the Padlet. Here it is. A group I am part of, the Central Ohio Friends of Anthroposophy (COFA) group has been working with this verse a bit!

-Kerry

​For This Michaelic Age

We must eradicate from the soul

All fear and terror of what comes towards man out of the future.

We must acquire serenity

In all feelings and sensations about the future.

We must look forward with absolute equanimity

To everything that may come.

And we must think only that whatever comes

Is given to us by a world-directive full of wisdom.

It is part of what we must learn in this age,

namely, to live out of pure trust,

Without any security in existence.

Trust in the ever present help

Of the spiritual world.

Truly, nothing else will do

If our courage is not to fail us.

And let us seek the awakening from within ourselves

Every morning and every evening.

Morning:

O Michael, under your protection I place myself;

With your guidance I connect myself

Wholeheartedly, so that this day may become

An image of your destiny-ordering Will.

Evening:

I carry my sorrow into the setting sun,

Place all my worries into her radiating womb.

Purified in love, transformed in light,

They return as helping thoughts,

As strength for self-sacrificing deeds

- attributed to Rudolf Steiner

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Equanimity

November 27 – December 22

~ Break for Holy Days ~

Positivity

January 8 - February 2, 2024

Open-Mindedness

February 5 - March 1

Harmony

March 4 – March 29, 2024

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The first light of Advent is the light of the stones,

That live in the seashells, crystals, and bones.

The second light of Advent is the light of the plants,

That reach up to the sun and in the breezes dance.

The third light of Advent is the light of the beasts;

The light of hope that we may see in the greatest and in the least.

The fourth light of Advent is the light of humankind

The light of love, the light of thought, to know and understand.                                                                                                                                                              -Rudolf Steiner

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Hello sweet beings.  When we logged on today some of us were talking about this video, so I said I would put the link here. The news is, Spikenard won a local award for exceptional non-profits.  Part of the prize is a branding and marketing package from a local organization, and part of it is this mini-documentary, featuring never-before-seen (by humans, at least) footage of views of the sanctuary from the sky above.

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Hello sweet beings.  When we logged on today some of us were talking about this video, so I said I would put the link here. The news is, Spikenard won a local award for exceptional non-profits.  Part of the prize is a branding and marketing package from a local organization, and part of it is this mini-documentary, featuring never-before-seen (by humans, at least) footage of views of the sanctuary from the sky above.

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BUZZing about Spikenard Honeybee Sanctuary

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The Power of Soul: Living the Twelve Virtues by Robert Sardello

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The Power of Soul: Living the Twelve Virtues by Robert Sardello

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Picture from Katrina Hoven at the Natural History Museum in NYC.

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Grateful Musings for the Mineral Kingdom by Jordan Walker

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Grateful Musings for the Mineral Kingdom by Jordan Walker

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The consciousness of stones is like the deepest ancestors, stretching back before memory and unfolding at a geological pace.

The smallest stone a drop of the Mountain and the mountain but a wave on Earth’s mantle.

At the molten core of our Mother,

life giving warmth,

life supporting consistency,

crystals carrying the coded information holding galaxies together….

The intelligence of soil.

The still,

vast,

power of unconditioned Love.

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“The Guest House”—Rumi

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

From The Bhagavad Gita

The law of karma states unequivocally that though we cannot see the connections, we can be sure that everything that happens to us, good and bad, originated once in something we did or thought. We ourselves are responsible for what happens to us, whether or not we can understand how. It follows that we can change what happens to us by changing ourselves; we can take our destiny into our own hands.”

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A weaving of Anthroposophy with Nonviolent Communication--what I call Practical Anthroposophy.

1. All of our actions, our deeds, our WILLING, are attempts to fulfill our longings, values, intentions, needs. These are Universal for all people.

2. Whether our needs are met or unmet gives rise to FEELINGS. FEELINGS are the signposts which point to what we value, long for. These FEELINGS do not arise on their own; they are stimulated by our actions, our WILLING, something we do or think.

3. Once FEELINGS arise, there are two options.

OPTION 1:

WILLING to FEELING to WILLING. This is the Unconscious Will/reaction.

OPTION 2:

WILLING to FEELING to THINKING back

to WILLING.

By adding THINKING we can gain specific Understanding of the source of our FEELINGS. This offers the possibility to return to action, to WILLING with awareness, the birth of the Conscious WILL. We then have the possibility to live in alignment with our values.

We can choose to modify our behavior, to change to transform.

We are free!

We can choose EQUANIMITY!

Sherry Jennings

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"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."

"In trying to understand we become free, in reaction we are unfree."

Viktor E. Frankl

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Chapter 4 it’s the last chapter

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Chapter IV: The Path of Knowledge

Knowledge of the spiritual science that is aimed at in this book can be acquired by every man for himself. Descriptions of the kind given here present a thought picture of the higher worlds, and they are in a certain respect the first step towards personal vision. Man is a thought being and he can find his path to knowledge only when he makes thinking his starting-point. A picture of the higher worlds given to his intellect is not without value for him even if for the time being it is only like a story about higher facts into which he has not yet gained insight through his own perception. The thoughts that are given him represent in themselves a force that continues working in this thought world. This force will be active in him; it will awaken slumbering capacities. Whoever is of the opinion that it is superfluous to give himself up to such a thought picture is mistaken because he regards thought as something unreal and abstract. Thought is a living force, and just as for one who has knowledge, thought is present as a direct expression of what is seen in the spirit, so the imparting of this expression acts in the one to whom it is communicated as a germ that brings forth from itself the fruit of knowledge.

Anyone disdaining the application of strenuous mental exertion in the effort to attain the higher knowledge, and preferring to make use of other forces in man to that end, fails to take into account the fact that thinking is the highest of the faculties possessed by man in the world of his senses.

To him who asks, "How can I gain personal knowledge of the higher truths of spiritual science?" the answer must be given, "Begin by making yourself acquainted with what is communicated by others concerning such knowledge." Should he reply, "I wish to see for myself; I do not wish to know anything about what others have seen," one must answer, "It is in the very assimilating of the communications of others that the first step towards personal knowledge consists." If he then should answer, "Then I am forced to have blind faith to begin with," one can only reply, "In regard to something communicated it is not a case of belief or unbelief, but merely of an unprejudiced assimilation of what one hears." The true spiritual researcher never speaks with the expectation of meeting blind faith in what he says. He merely says, "I have experienced this in the spiritual regions of existence and I narrate my experiences." He knows also that the reception of these experiences by another and the permeation of his thoughts with such an account are living forces making for spiritual development.

What is here to be considered will only be rightly viewed by one who takes into account the fact that all knowledge of the worlds of soul and spirit slumbers in the profoundest depths of the human soul. It can be brought to light through the path of knowledge. We can grasp, however, not only what we have ourselves brought to light, but also what someone else has brought up from those depths of the soul. This is so even when we have ourselves not yet made any preparations for the treading of that path of knowledge. Correct spiritual insight awakens the power of comprehension in anyone whose inner nature is not beclouded by preconceptions and prejudices. Unconscious knowledge flashes up to meet the spiritual fact discovered by another, and this "flashing up" is not blind faith but the right working of healthy human understanding. In this same healthy comprehension we should see a far better starting-point even for first hand cognition of the spiritual world than in dubious mystical contemplations or anything of a similar nature, in which we often fancy that we have something better than what is recognized by the healthy human understanding, when the results of genuine spiritual research are brought before it.

One cannot, in fact, emphasize strongly enough how necessary it is that anyone who wishes to develop his capacity for higher knowledge should undertake the earnest cultivation of his powers of thought. This emphasis must be all the more pressing because many persons who wish to become seers actually estimate lightly this earnest, self-denying labor of thinking. They say, "Thinking cannot help me reach anything; the chief thing is sensation or feeling." In reply it must be said that no one can in the higher sense, and means in truth, become a seer who has not previously worked himself into the life of thought. In this connection a certain inner laziness plays an injurious role with many persons. They do not become conscious of this laziness because it clothes itself in a contempt of abstract thought and idle speculation. We completely misunderstand what thinking is, however, if we confuse it with a spinning of idle, abstract trains of thought. Just as this abstract thinking can easily kill supersensible knowledge, so vigorous thinking, full of life, must be the groundwork on which it is based.

It would, indeed, be more comfortable if one could reach the higher power of seeing while shunning the labor of thinking. Many would like this, but in order to reach it an inner firmness is necessary, an assurance of soul to which thinking alone can lead. Otherwise there results merely a meaningless flickering of pictures here and there, a distracting display of soul phenomena that indeed gives pleasure to many, but that has nothing to do with a true penetration into the higher worlds. Further, if we consider what purely spiritual experiences take place in a man who really enters the higher world, we shall then understand that the matter has still another aspect. Absolute healthiness of the soul life is essential to the condition of being a seer. There is no better means of developing this healthiness than genuine thinking. In fact, it is possible for this healthiness to suffer seriously if the exercises for higher development are not based on thinking. Although it is true that the power of spiritual sight makes a healthy and correctly thinking man still healthier and more capable in life than he is without it, it is equally true that all attempts to develop oneself while shirking the effort of thought, all vague dreamings in this domain, lend strength to fantasy and illusion and tend to place the seeker in a false attitude towards life. No one who wishes to develop himself to higher knowledge has anything to fear if he pays heed to what is said here, but the attempt should only be made under the above pre-supposition. This pre-supposition has to do only with man's soul and spirit. To speak of any conceivable kind of injurious influence upon the bodily health is absurd under this assumption.

Unfounded disbelief is indeed injurious. It works in the recipient as a repelling force. It hinders him from receiving fructifying thoughts. Not blind faith, but just this reception of the thought world of spiritual science is the prerequisite to the development of the higher senses. The spiritual researcher approaches his student with the injunction, "You are not required to believe what I tell you but to think it, to make it the content of your own thought world, then my thoughts will of themselves bring about your recognition of their truth." This is the attitude of the spiritual researcher. He gives the stimulus. The power to accept what is said as true springs forth from the inner being of the learner himself. It is in this manner that the views of spiritual science should be studied. Anyone who has the self-control to steep his thoughts in them may be sure that after a shorter or longer period of time they will lead him to personal perception.

In what has been said here, there is already indicated one of the first qualities that everyone wishing to acquire a vision of higher facts has to develop. It is the unreserved, unprejudiced laying of oneself open to what is revealed by human life or by the world external to man. If a man approaches a fact in the world around him with a judgment arising from his life up to the present, he shuts himself off by this judgment from the quiet, complete effect that the fact can have on him. The learner must be able each moment to make of himself a perfectly empty vessel into which the new world flows. Knowledge is received only in those moments in which every judgment, every criticism coming from ourselves, is silent. For example, when we meet a person, the question is not at all whether we are wiser than he. Even the most unreasoning child has something to reveal to the greatest sage. If he approaches the child with prejudgment, be it ever so wise, he pushes his wisdom like a dulled glass in front of what the child ought to reveal to him.*

* One can very well see, precisely from what is stated here, that in the requirement of "unreservedly laying oneself open" there is no question of shutting out one's own judgment or of giving oneself up to blind faith. Anything of that sort would quite obviously have no sense or meaning in regard to a child.

Complete inner selflessness is necessary for this yielding of oneself up to the revelations of the new world. If a man tests himself to find out in what degree he possesses this accessibility to its revelations, he will make astonishing discoveries regarding himself. Anyone who wishes to tread the path of higher knowledge must train himself to be able at any moment to obliterate himself with all his prejudices. As long as he obliterates himself the revelations of the new world flow into him. Only a high grade of such selfless surrender enables a man to receive the higher spiritual facts that surround him on all sides. We can consciously develop this capacity in ourselves. We can try, for example, to refrain from any judgment on people around us. We should obliterate within ourselves the gauge of "attractive" and "repellent," of "stupid" or "clever," that we are accustomed to apply and try without this gauge to understand persons purely from and through themselves. The best exercises can be made with people for whom one has an aversion. We should suppress this aversion with all our power and allow everything that they do to affect us without bias. Or, if we are in an environment that calls forth this or that judgment, we should suppress the judgment and free from criticism, lay ourselves open to impressions.*

* This open-minded and uncritical laying of ourselves open has nothing whatever to do with blind faith. The important thing is not that we should believe blindly in anything, but that we should not put a blind judgment in the place of the living impression.

We should allow things and events to speak to us rather than speak about them ourselves, and we also should extend this to our thought world. We should suppress in ourselves what prompts this or that thought and allow only what is outside to produce the thoughts. Only when such exercises are carried out with holiest earnestness and perseverance do they lead to the goal of higher knowledge. He who undervalues such exercises knows nothing of their worth, and he who has experience in such things knows that selfless surrender and freedom from prejudice are true producers of power. Just as heat applied to the steam boiler is transformed into the motive power of the locomotive, so do these exercises in selfless, spiritual self-surrender transforms themselves in man into the power of seeing in the spiritual worlds.

By this exercise a man makes himself receptive to all that surrounds him, but to this receptivity he must allow correct valuation also to be added. As long as he is inclined to value himself too highly at the expense of the world around him, he bars himself from the approach to higher knowledge. The seeker who yields himself up to the pleasure or pain that any thing or event in the world causes him is enmeshed by such an overvaluation of himself. Through his pleasure and his pain he learns nothing about the things, but merely something about himself. If I feel sympathy with a man, I feel to begin with nothing by my relation to him. If I make myself mainly dependent on this feeling of pleasure, of sympathy, for my judgment and my conduct, I place my personality in the foreground - I obtrude it upon the world. I want to thrust myself into the world just as I am, instead of accepting the world in an unbiased way, allowing it to assert itself in accordance with the forces acting on it. In other words I am tolerant only of what harmonizes with my peculiarities. In regard to everything else I exert a repelling force. As long as a man is enmeshed by the sensible world, he acts in an especially repelling way on all influences that are non-sensory. The learner must develop in himself the capacity to conduct himself toward things and people in accordance with their own peculiar natures, and to allow each of them to count at its due worth and significance. Sympathy and antipathy, pleasure and displeasure, must be made to play quite new roles. It is not a question here of man's eradicating them, of his blunting himself to sympathy and antipathy. On the contrary, the more a man develops the capacity to refrain from allowing immediately by a judgment, an action, the finer will his sensitivity become. He will find that sympathies and antipathies take on a higher character if he curbs those he already has. Even something that is at first most unattractive has hidden qualities. It reveals them if a man does not in his conduct obey his selfish feelings. A person who has developed himself in this respect has in every way a greater delicacy of feeling than one who is undeveloped because he does not allow his own personality to make him unimpressionable. Every inclination that a man follows blindly blunts the power to see things in his environment in their true light. By obeying inclination we thrust ourselves through the environment instead of laying ourselves open to it and feeling its true worth.

Man becomes independent of the changing impressions of the outer world when each pleasure and pain, each sympathy and antipathy, no longer call forth in him an egotistical response and conduct. The pleasure we feel in a thing makes us at once dependent on it. We lose ourselves in it. A man who loses himself in the pleasure or pain caused by every varying impression cannot tread the path of spiritual knowledge. He must accept pleasure and pain with equanimity. Then he ceases to lose himself in them and begins instead to understand them. A pleasure to which I surrender myself devours my being in the moment of surrender. I should use the pleasure only in order to arrive through it at an understanding of the thing that arouses pleasure in me. The important point should not be that the thing has aroused pleasure in me. I should experience the pleasure and through it the nature of the thing. The pleasure should only be an intimation to me that there is in the thing a quality capable of giving pleasure. This quality I must learn to understand. If I go no farther than the pleasure, if I allow myself to be entirely absorbed in it, then it is only myself who lives in it. If the pleasure is only the opportunity for me to experience a quality or property of the thing itself, I enrich my inner being through this experience. To the seeker, pleasure and displeasure, joy and pain, must be opportunities for learning about things. The seeker does not become blunted to pleasure or pain through this. He raises himself above them in order that they may reveal to him the nature of the things. By developing himself in this respect, he will learn to understand what instructors pleasure and pain are. He will feel with every being and thereby receive the revelation of its inner nature. The seeker never says to himself merely, "Oh, how I suffer!" or "Oh, how glad I am!" but always, "How does suffering speak? How does joy speak?" He eliminates the element of self in order that pleasure and joy from the outer world may work on him. By this means there develops in a man a completely new manner of relating himself to things. Formerly he responded to this or that impression by this or that action, only because the impressions caused him joy or unhappiness. Now he causes pleasure and displeasure to become also the organs by which things tell him what they themselves really are in their own nature. Pleasure and pain change from mere feelings within him to organs of sense by which the external world is perceived. Just as the eye does not act itself when it sees something, but causes the hand to act, so pleasure and pain do not bring about anything in the spiritual seeker insofar as he employs them as means of knowledge, but they receive impressions, and what is experienced through pleasure and displeasure causes the action. When a man uses pleasure and displeasure in such a way that they become organs of transmission, they build up for him within his soul the actual organs through which the soul world opens up to view. The eye can serve the body only by being an organ for the transmission of sense impressions. Pleasure and pain become the eyes of the soul when they cease to be of value merely to themselves and begin to reveal to one's soul the other soul outside it.

By means of the qualities mentioned, the seeker for knowledge places himself in a condition that allows what is really present in the world around him to act upon him without disturbing influences from his own peculiarities. He has also to fit himself into the spiritual world around him in the right way because he is as a thinking being a citizen of the spiritual world. He can be this in the right way only if during mental activity he makes his thoughts run in accordance with the eternal laws of truth, the laws of the spiritland. Only thus can that land act on him and reveal its facts to him. A man never reaches the truth as long as he gives himself up to the thoughts continually coursing through his ego. If he permits this, his thoughts take a course imposed on them by the fact of their coming into existence within the bodily nature. The thought world of a man who gives himself up to a mental activity determined primarily by his physical brain looks irregular and confused. In it a thought enters, breaks off, is driven out of the field by another. Anyone who tests this by listening to a conversation between two people, or who observes himself in an unprejudiced way, will gain an idea of this mass of confused thoughts. As long as a man devotes himself only to the calls of the life of the senses, his confused succession of thoughts will always be set right again by the facts of reality. I may think ever so confusedly but in my actions everyday facts force upon me the laws corresponding to the reality. My mental picture of a city may be most confused, but if I wish to walk along a certain road in the city, I must accommodate myself to the conditions it imposes on me. The mechanic can enter his workshop with ever so varied a whirl of ideas, but the laws of his machines compel him to adopt the correct procedure in his work. Within the world of the senses facts exercise their continuous corrective on thought. If I come to a false opinion by thinking about a physical phenomenon or the shape of a plant, the reality confronts me and sets my thinking right.

It is quite different when I consider my relations to the higher regions of existence. They reveal themselves to me only if I enter their worlds with already strictly controlled thinking. There my thinking must give me the right, the sure impulse, otherwise I cannot find proper paths. The spiritual laws prevailing within these worlds are not condensed so as to become sensibly perceptible, and therefore they are unable to exert on me the compulsion described above. I am able to obey these laws only when they are allied to my own as those of a thinking being. Here I must be my own sure guide. The seeker for knowledge must therefore make his thinking something that is strictly regulated in itself. His thoughts must by degrees disaccustom themselves entirely from taking the ordinary daily course. They must in their whole sequence take on the inner character of the spiritual world. He must be able constantly to keep watch over himself in this respect and have himself in hand. With him, one thought must not link itself arbitrarily with another, but only in the way that corresponds with the severely exact contents of the thought world. The transition from one idea to another must correspond with the strict laws of thought. The man as thinker must be, as it were, constantly a copy of these thought laws. He must shut out from his train of thought all that does not flow out of these laws. Should a favorite thought present itself to him, he must put it aside if it disturbs the proper sequence. If a personal feeling tries to force upon his thoughts a direction not inherent in them, he must suppress it.

Plato required those who wished to attend his school first to go through a course of mathematical training. Mathematics with its strict laws, which do not accommodate themselves to the course of ordinary sensory phenomena, form a good preparation for the seeker of knowledge. If he wishes to make progress in the study of mathematics, he has to renounce all personal, arbitrary choice, all disturbances. The seeker prepares himself for his task by overcoming through his own choice all the arbitrary thinking that naturally rules in him. He learns thereby to follow purely the demands of thought. So, too, he must learn to do this in all thinking intended to serve spiritual knowledge. This thought life must itself be a copy of undisturbed mathematical judgments and conclusions. The seeker must strive wherever he goes and in whatever he does to be able to think after this manner. Then there will flow into him the intrinsic characteristic laws of the spirit world that pass over and through him without a trace as long as his thinking bears its ordinary confused character. Regulated thinking brings him from sure starting points to the most hidden truths. What has been said, however, must not be looked at in a one-sided way. Although mathematics act as a good discipline for the mind, one can arrive at pure healthy, vital thinking without mathematics.

What the seeker of knowledge strives for in his thinking, he must also strive for in his actions. He must be able to act in accordance with the laws of the nobly beautiful and the eternally true without any disturbing influences from his personality. These laws must be able constantly to direct him. Should he begin to do something he has recognized as right and find his personal feelings not satisfied by that action, he must not for that reason forsake the road he has entered on. On the other hand, he must not pursue it just because it gives him joy, if he finds that it is not in accordance with the laws of the eternally beautiful and true. In everyday life people allow their actions to be decided by what satisfies them personally, by what bears fruit for themselves. In so doing they force upon the world's events the direction of their personality. They do not bring to realization the true that is traced out in the laws of the spirit world, rather do they realize the demands of their self-will. We only act in harmony with the spiritual world when we follow its laws alone. From what is done only out of the personality, there result no forces that can form a basis for spiritual knowledge. The seeker of knowledge may not ask only, "What brings me advantages; what will bring me success?" He must also be able to ask, "What have I recognized as the good?" Renunciation of the fruits of action for his personality, renunciation of all self-will; these are the stern laws that he must prescribe for himself. Then he treads the path of the spiritual world, his whole being penetrated by these laws. He becomes free from all compulsion from the sense world; his spirit man raises itself out of the sensory sheath. He thus makes actual progress on the path towards the spiritual and thus he spiritualizes himself. One may not say, "Of what use to me are the resolutions to follow purely the laws of the true when I am perhaps mistaken concerning what is true?" The important thing is the striving, and the spirit in which one strives. Even when the seeker is mistaken, he possesses, in his very striving for the true, a force that turns him away from the wrong road. Should he be mistaken, this force seizes him and guides him to the right road. The very objection, "But I may be mistaken," is itself harmful unbelief. It shows that the man has no confidence in the power of the true. The important point is that he should not presume to decide on his aims in accordance with his own egotistical views, but that he should selflessly yield himself up to the guidance of the spirit itself. It is not the self-seeking will of man that can prescribe for the true. On the contrary, what is true must itself become lord in man, must permeate his whole being, make him a copy of the eternal laws of the spiritland. He must fill himself with these eternal laws in order to let them stream out into life.

Just as the seeker of knowledge must be able to have strict control of thinking, so he must also have control of his will. Through this he becomes in all modesty - without presumption - a messenger of the world of the true and the beautiful. Through this he ascends to be a participant in the spirit world. Through this he is lifted from stage to stage of development because one cannot reach the spiritual life by merely seeing it. On the contrary, one has to reach it by experiencing it, by living it.

If the seeker of knowledge observes the laws here described, his soul experiences relating to the spiritual world will take on an entirely new form. He will no longer live merely within them. They will no longer have a significance merely for his personal life. They will develop into soul perceptions of the higher world. In this soul the feelings of pleasure and displeasure, of joy and pain, do not live for themselves only, but grow into soul organs, just as in his body eyes and ears do not lead a life for themselves alone but selflessly allow external impressions to pass through them. Thereby the seeker of knowledge wins that calmness and assurance in his soul constitution necessary for research in the spiritual world. A great pleasure will no longer make him merely jubilant, but may be the messenger to him of qualities in the world that have hitherto escaped him. It will leave him calm, and through the calm the characteristics of the pleasure-giving beings will reveal themselves to him. Pain will no longer merely fill him with grief, but be able to tell him also what the qualities are of the being that causes the pain. Just as the eye does not desire anything for itself but shows man the direction of the road he has to take, so will pleasure and pain guide the soul safely along its path. This is the state of balance of soul that the seeker of knowledge must reach. The less pleasure and pain exhaust themselves in the waves that they throw up in the inner life of the seeker of knowledge, the more will they form eyes for the supersensible world. As long as a man lives in pleasure and pain he cannot gain knowledge by means of them. When he learns how to live by means of them, when he withdraws his feeling of self from them, then they become his organs of perception and he sees by means of them, attaining through them to knowledge. It is incorrect to think that the seeker of knowledge becomes a dry, colorless being, incapable of experiencing joy and sorrow. Joy and sorrow are present in him, but when he seeks knowledge in the spiritual world, they are present in a transformed shape; they have become eyes and ears.

As long as we live in a personal relationship with the world, things reveal only what links them with our personality. This, however, is their transitory path. If we withdraw ourselves from our transitory part and live with our feeling of self, with our "I," in our permanent part, then our transitory part becomes an intermediary for us. What reveals itself through it is an imperishable, an eternal in the things. The seeker of knowledge must be able to establish this relationship between his own eternal part and the eternal in the things. Even before he begins other exercises of the kind described, and also during them, he should direct his thought to this imperishable part. When I observe a stone, a plant, an animal or a man, I should be able to remember that in each of them an eternal expresses itself. I should be able to ask myself, "What is the permanent that lives in the transitory stone, in the transitory man? What will outlast the transitory sensory appearance?" We ought not to think that to direct the spirit to the eternal in this way destroys our careful consideration of, and sense for, the qualities of everyday affairs and estranges us from the immediate realities. On the contrary, every leaf, every little insect will unveil to us innumerable mysteries when not only our eyes but through the eyes of spirit is directed upon them. Every sparkle, every shade of color, every cadence will remain vividly perceptible to the senses. Nothing will be lost, but in addition, unlimited new life will be gained. Indeed, the person who does not understand how to observe even the tiniest thing with the eye, will only attain to pale, bloodless thoughts, not to spiritual sight.

It depends upon the attitude of mind we acquire in this direction. What stage we shall succeed in reaching will depend on our capacities. We have only to do what is right and leave everything else to evolution. It must be enough for us at first to direct our minds to the permanent. If we do this, the knowledge of the permanent will awaken in us through this. We must wait until it is given, and it is given at the right time to each one who with patience waits and works. A man soon notices during such exercises what a mighty transformation takes place within him. He learns to consider each thing as important or unimportant only insofar as he recognizes it to be related to a permanent, to an eternal. He comes to a valuation and estimate of the world different from the one he has hitherto had. His whole feeling takes on a new relationship toward the entire surrounding world. The transitory no longer attracts him merely for its own sake as formerly. It becomes for him a member, an image of the eternal, and this eternal, living in all things, he learns to love. It becomes familiar, just as the transitory was formerly familiar to him. This again does not cause his estrangement from life. He only learns to value each thing according to its true significance. Even the vain trifles of life will not pass him by quite without trace, but the man seeking after the spiritual no longer loses himself in them, but recognizes them at their limited worth. He sees them in their true light. He is a poor discerner of the spiritual who would go wandering in the clouds losing sight of life. From his high summit a true discerner with his power of clear survey and his just and healthy feeling for everything will know how to assign to each thing its proper place.

Thus there opens out to the seeker of knowledge the possibility of ceasing to obey only the unreliable influences of the external world of the senses that turn his will now here, now there. Through higher knowledge he has seen the eternal being of things. By means of the transformations of his inner world he has gained the capacity for perceiving this eternal being. For the seeker of knowledge the following thoughts have a special weight. When he acts out of himself, he is then conscious of acting also out of the eternal being of things because the things give utterance to him in their being. He, therefore, acts in harmony with the eternal world order when he directs his action out of the eternal living within him. He thus knows himself no longer merely as a being impelled by things. He knows that he impels them according to the law implanted within them that have become the laws of his own being. This ability to act out of his inner being can only be an ideal towards which he strives. The attainment of the goal lies in the far distance, but the seeker of knowledge must have the will to recognize clearly this road. This is his will to freedom, for freedom is action out of one's inner being. Only he may act out of his inner being who draws his motives from the eternal. A being who does not do this, acts according to other motives than those implanted in things. Such a person opposes the world order, and the world order must then prevail against him. That is to say, what he plans to carry through by his will cannot in the last resort take place. He cannot become free. The arbitrary will of the individual being annihilates itself through the effects of its deeds.

Whoever is able to work upon his inner life in such a way climbs upwards from stage to stage in spiritual knowledge. The reward of his exercises will be the unfolding of certain vistas of the supersensible world to his spiritual perception. He learns the real meaning of the truths communicated about this world, and he will receive confirmation of them through his own experience. If this stage is reached, he encounters an experience that can only come through treading this path. Something occurs whose significance can only now become clear to him. Through the great spiritual guiding powers of the human race there is bestowed on him what is called initiation. He becomes a disciple of wisdom. The less one sees in such initiation something that consists in an outer human relationship, the more correct will be his conception of it. What the seeker of knowledge now experiences can only be indicated here. He receives a new home. He becomes thereby a conscious dweller in the supersensible world. The source of spiritual insight now flows to him from a higher region. The light of knowledge from this time forth does not shine upon him from without, but he is himself placed at its fountainhead where the problems that the world offers receive a new illumination. Henceforth he holds converse no longer with the things that are shaped by the spirit, but with the shaping spirit itself. At the moments of attaining spiritual knowledge, the personality's own life exists now only in order to be a conscious image of the eternal. Doubts about the spirit that could formerly arise in him vanish because only he can doubt who is deluded by things regarding the spirit ruling in them. Since the disciple of wisdom is able to hold intercourse with the spirit itself, each false form vanishes in which he had previously imagined the spirit. The false form under which one conceives the spirit is superstition. The initiate has passed beyond all superstition because he has knowledge of the spirit's true form. Freedom from the prejudices of the personality, of doubt, and of superstition - these are the characteristics of the seeker who has attained to discipleship on the path of higher knowledge. We must not confuse this state in which the personality becomes one with the all-embracing spirit of life, with an absorption into the universal spirit that annihilates the personality. Such a disappearance does not take place in a true development of the personality. Personality continues to be preserved as such in the relationship into which it enters with the spirit world. It is not the subjection of the personality, but its highest development that occurs. If we wish to have a simile for this coincidence or union of the individual spirit with the all-encompassing spirit, we cannot choose that of many different coinciding circles that are lost in one circle, but we must choose the picture of many circles, each of which has a quite distinct shade of color. These variously colored circles coincide, but each separate shade preserves its color existence within the whole. Not one loses the fullness of its individual power.

The further description of the path will not be given here. It is given as far as possible in my Occult Science, an Outline, which forms a continuation of this book.

What is said here about the path of spiritual knowledge can all too easily, through failure to understand it, tempt us to consider it as a recommendation to cultivate certain moods of soul that would lead us to turn away from the immediate, joyous and strenuously active, experience of life. As against this, it must be emphasized that the particular attitude of the soul that renders it fit to experience directly the reality of the spirit, cannot be extended as a general demand over the entire life. It is possible for the seeker after spiritual existence to bring his soul for the purpose of research into the necessary condition of being withdrawn from the realities of the senses, without that withdrawal estranging him from the world. On the other hand, however, it must be recognized that a knowledge of the spiritual world, not merely a knowledge gained by treading the path, but also a knowledge acquired through grasping the truths of spiritual science with the unprejudiced, healthy human intellect, leads also to a higher moral status in life, to a knowledge of sensory existence that is in accord with the truth, to certainty in life, and to inward health of the soul.

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Rudolf Steiner Archive: An electronic Library and Archive site for the over 6000 collected works of the Austrian philosopher and founder of Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner

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from Sherry

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I encourage you to read this whole article. It would take me more than 20 minutes to read it, and it is so loaded with true information …

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Not being reconciled with oneself is a well-known condition. It describes our usual relationship with ourselves. We should not accept it, but the veils with which we are concealed from ourselves are numerous and difficult to penetrate. Our knowledge about ourselves is limited. My beginning, the paths I have already taken, the experiences I have already had are difficult to ascertain. The famous admonishment, "Know thyself," reminds us first of all of a shortcoming, namely, our ignorance. Self-knowledge becomes a path of reconciliation with ourselves, with our origins, with our complete being. We then stand in our light. We see ourselves in full. However, there are barriers on the paths that reconcile us with ourselves. We are still reluctant to walk them.
II
This reluctance lies in the fact that we are not only luminous beings-we carry dark, sometimes very dark, parts within us. Wanting to keep a distance from them is understandable. Honest introspection brings to light a whole series of such parts that are repulsive, ugly and cruel beyond words. There is no getting around them, these shadows or shadow beings: pride, jealousy, arrogance, glory-seeking, envy, and contemptuousness, to name but a few. They may provoke aversion. People have long had opinions about them. They are condemned and ignored. Nevertheless, they are worth our interest. Jealousy, when looked at more closely, turns out to be a fascinating creature. We are jealous of what another person has or is, that we would like to have or be ourselves. We begrudge them their happiness, their success, their influence, their wealth, their fame, because they accomplish something that we hunger for. Jealousy reveals an unhappiness, a dissatisfaction that we do not admit to ourselves. It is a sign of an unacknowledged shortcoming. We suffer from it without realising it. It is the same as, or similar to, its sibling, envy. They point to a shortcoming, to an unreconciled state of soul. That is what makes them so fascinating. They contain secrets we would like to know.

Studying them is worthwhile for another reason. Precise perception of the soul brings to light the unexpected observation that our attention transforms these shadow beings. Our interest in them causes the rigid masks they wear to crack. Their dark, repulsive appearance becomes visibly more porous. A first glimmer of light emerges from behind the dark veils. Pride, jealousy, and arrogance are not mere shadows. They are more, much more, than we previously believed. The opinion we had about them turns out to be narrow and limited. They have a history and an origin. They also have light. Defining them only by their shadow existence is insufficient. Eventually, we come to understand that they are fallen beings, and we realise that we ourselves are the reason for their sad existence. They are my creatures. I have pushed them into the abyss in which they now eke out their existence. My shortcomings and my wounds force their existence upon them. We are the cause of the shadows. But this also means it's in our hands to free them from their unhappy situation.

It appears that the shadow beings originate in events through which we were wounded. Our shadows show signs of unhealed wounds. Anyone who remained without wounds would have no shadows-they would be without malice, fear and anger. But such an existence is not granted to us for the time being. We are destined to be wounded.

The gods have made us vulnerable beings. To the gods, however, wounds are not what they are to us. The wounds are full of light for them. They see in them special organs, cosmic organs, through which special developments become possible. The wounds are organs of vision that will fulfil their true and proper tasks in the future.

This is what the gods want to tell us, that we become seers through our wounds. We attain a sensitivity that only becomes possible in this way. We are gifted with senses that represent high aptitudes. The shadow beings hide the higher nature of the wounds. They reveal to us only as much as we can bear the truth of the wounds. Wanting to see the light in the abysmal and despised is the key to exploring the wisdom of the shadows. We must have the courage not to shy away from what is fragile, wounded and evil and to continue enquiring and researching where the bright paths stop. Significant secrets of the soul lie in the place where darkness begins to be illuminated again.
III
An inner path leads to the essence of reconciliation. There is nothing external about it. The key to reconciliation lies in inner worlds. Self-knowledge can be pursued according to the light and the dark sides of the soul. They are interdependent-they support and determine each other. That is why when you go into the light, you also always go into your darkness, and vice versa. The two sides are not at odds with each other. They need each other. They serve each other. The existence of the light beings of our souls and the existence of the dark beings represents an interweaving that cannot be managed with moral and one-sided judgements. It is always an interplay of light and darkness. Rising up to meet this interplay is a prerequisite for understanding the truths of light and darkness.

By going on the trail of our own being, we come across aspects of personality and individuality that can be called ego, person, individuality and higher self. These aspects of being are consistently fascinating entities. They form the spiritual being of a person. Engaging with them is an inner adventure. Each one conceals its full being behind a veil. We can step up to this veil with the wish to meet them. We desire for the being of the ego, the person, the I, or the higher self to show itself. We request it. Wishes expressed in this direction do not miss their target, for these beings have an interest in being seen and recognised by us. They live behind the veil of our consciousness as if in an exile not of their own choosing. It is we who give them permission by removing the impermeability of the veil.

Each of these four entities is distinct. Each fulfils certain characteristic tasks for human beings. From the ego, there emanates an unshakable force to unite us with our earthly destiny. The ego points to our immediate needs, our wishes and desires. By following it, we become earthly. We turn out to be sensual, passionate beings. The ego serves to satisfy our needs. Thanks to it, we experience ourselves as bodily beings whose home is the earth. Ego should not be equated with egoism. It confers perseverance. Thanks to it, we can follow our goals. Reliability and loyalty are virtues of the ego. It has a pure side, full of strength. It must not be confused with needs which are expressed in egotistical actions. These are not possible without the ego, but the ego is not sufficiently characterised by them. The ego is more. Without the ego, we cannot stand up for ourselves or for others-we do not develop resistance. The ego fuels the will.

The person is the image of our earthly existence. But it is also the image we form of another human being. The other human being appears as a person. They are born in a certain place, are physical beings, have a name, are subject to destiny, and have talents and abilities. The person cannot be separated from their destiny. The person exists between birth and death. Beforehand, they are predisposed but not incarnated; afterwards, they pass away and never return to earthly conditions. At death, the person belongs to the past. The person is nevertheless an image of the human individuality. The latter adopts this image and sets it aside again. The individuality is illuminated in each person. It lives in a person's expressions, gestures, behaviour, voice, and gaze.

The individuality of the human being transcends the ego and the person, but it coalesces through them. It lives in the impulses of the ego as it does in the person. But the individuality is also the higher envelope and source of the ego and the person. We cannot follow the individuality on all its paths with our earthly consciousness. In sleep and after death, it escapes our perception. The individuality has an existence from which the earthly human being is excluded. This does not apply with regard to the ego and the person. With them, we are in calm, surveyable waters. With the being of the individuality, we are faced with the mystery of ourselves. The subject of reconciliation takes on a special poignancy here. Being an unknown quantity to ourselves, we feel incomplete, imperfect and small. This is a wound, perhaps the first one. It makes for an abyss that passes through us. This needs to be bridged and the pain it causes relieved. In the being of the individuality, we see the major work the human being must perform on themselves. The wound we are marked with, for whatever reason, is revealed.

Our divine nature, the higher self, is an aspect of our individuality. A being appears in the higher self that transcends the individuality. In the former, the individuality is pervaded by a supra-individual cosmic existence and life. The self is one with the divine cosmic world and creation. The self cannot but appear unattainable to our consciousness, which is bound to the earthly and corporeal. The self eludes all description and representation. It is present only in moments that come upon us like a blessing. These special moments point to states of complete oneness with the cosmos. They reveal premonitions of forms of existence that are fully reconciled.
IV
We are born as beings who are vulnerable. We owe our wounds to the gods. They have given us this flaw. It is from them that we feel pain, that we experience humiliation and despair and suffer from anxiety. We are marked by wounds, but the gods see it differently. In their eyes, every wound is a path that has not yet been walked and can still be walked. They are testing us with this. But they do it with care, so that we can find the paths that are still untrodden but have long been prepared. Every person walks them for themselves, but not only. We also always walk the new paths for other people. Ultimately, we also walk them for the gods. What reconciles us with our wounds radiates up as far as the spiritual worlds.

Suffering and fear are unloved troublemakers that we would prefer to eliminate. But they won't let that happen, for they are on a higher mission. We can feel that they carry messages. Their questions are numerous. Here are three: What can you do to get out of your sorry states of divisiveness, vulnerability, and fear? How do you intend to reach the wholeness of your original being? How would you like to transform the shadows in your soul and bring them into the light? These questions are addressed to us through the suffering that befalls us. Suffering is never against us, even though it may seem so. It wants something from us that we still have to figure out. It beckons us onto paths that still lie ahead of us, onto paths of reconciliation with ourselves.

The gods do not confine themselves to inflicting wounds on us. We are too important for them to let us rush to our destruction. They provide the light, the assurance, and the certainty of healing and salvation. In every wound, there always lies the power to soothe it. There can be no darkness without light. This is the bequest of the gods to us. Suffering, even the worst, foreshadows growth and maturation. The paths that lead out of suffering run alongside us like tracks of light, which, strictly speaking, is the light of the gods. They are there whether we see them or not. To see these paths is, admittedly, still a rare art. That it may be difficult does not mean that it cannot be learned. Here, too, it depends on what I expect and trust myself to do. If I expect solutions, they will come. If I trust myself with this art, I will master it.

Encounters with the being of reconciliation are rare, but they can be brought about. At first, there is the desire to meet the being of reconciliation. We can seek out this being in our interior, in the silence of the soul. We can ask it to reveal itself. If successful, it manifests by filling the soul with special powers. The being of reconciliation creates something that we do not yet know. It grasps the soul as if from the vastness of the cosmos. It is unfathomable. We discover that reconciliation is an angelic being that carries a bond we have long yearned for. In this bond, everything is interwoven into one. Strife and separation are impossible. Anything and everything finds fulfilment because it is embraced, protected, and supported by the ocean of the original oneness.

The being of reconciliation is a healer. It shows that we do not have to be in conflict with our true being. It bestows faith in the healing powers of destiny. In it, the soul grows light. It forgets guilt. It forgets what has been done to it or to others. For guilt and suffering are not ordained to outlast the ages. The being of reconciliation allows us to see with greater clarity that a force of the future lies in suffering. Suffering makes us clairvoyant. We learn to see each other differently. And we become compassionate towards what surrounds us in a way that only the experience of suffering can bring about. The being of reconciliation conveys the message that suffering transforms. It says that suffering is the source of love.

Translation Christian von Arnim
Title image Jasminka Bogdanovic, Fraktal 0104, 2022, crayon / pencil on paper, 17,5×23,5 cm

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Conversation - The Being of Reconciliation

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Imagination from Eurythmy and Time of the Year and Equanimity/Balance, Solstice 2023

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Imagination from Eurythmy and Time of the Year and Equanimity/Balance, Solstice 2023

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drawing course for the Gospel of St John- begins Jan 3 2024

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drawing course for the Gospel of St John- begins Jan 3 2024

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The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen

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The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen

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It was terribly cold and nearly dark on the last evening of the old year, and the snow was falling fast. In the cold and darkness, a poor little girl with bare head and naked feet, roamed through the streets. It is true she had on a pair of slippers when she left home, but they were not of much use. They were very large, so large, indeed, for they had belonged to her Mother and the poor little girl had lost them in running across the street to avoid two carriages that were rolling at a terrible rate.

One of the slippers she could not find, and a boy seized the other and ran away with it saying he could use it as a cradle when he had children of his own. So the little girl went on with her little naked feet, which were quite red and blue with the cold. In an old apron she carried a number of matches, and had a bundle of them in her hands. No one had bought anything of her the whole day, nor had anyone given her even a penny. Shivering with cold and hunger, she crept along, looking like the picture of misery. The snowflakes fell on her fair hair, which hung in curls on her shoulders, but she regarded them not.

Lights were shining from every window, and there was a savory smell of roast goose, for it was New-year's eve, yes, she remembered that. In a corner, between two houses one of which projected beyond the other, she sank down and huddled herself together. She had drawn her little feet under her, but could not keep off the cold. And she dared not go home, for she had sold no matches.

Her father would certainly beat her; besides, it was almost as cold at home as here, for they had only the roof to cover them. Her little hands were almost frozen with the cold. Ah! perhaps a burning match might be some good, if she could draw it from the bundle and strike it against the wall, just to warm her fingers. She drew one out- "scratch!" how it sputtered as it burnt. It gave a warm, bright light, like a little candle, as she held her hand over it. It was really a wonderful light. It seemed as though she was sitting by a large iron stove. How the fire burned! And seemed so beautifully warm that the child stretched out her feet as if to warm them, when, lo! the flame of the match went out!

The stove vanished, and she had only the remains of the half-burnt match in her hand.

She rubbed another match on the wall. It burst into a flame, and where its light fell upon the wall it became as transparent as a veil, and she could see into the room. The table was covered with a snowy white table cloth on which stood a splendid dinner service and a steaming roast goose stuffed with apples and dried plums. And what was still more wonderful, the goose jumped down from the dish and waddled across the floor, with a knife and fork in it, to the little girl. Then the match went out, and there remained nothing but the thick, damp, cold wall before her.

She lighted another match, and then she found herself sitting under a beautiful Christmas tree. It was larger and more beautifully decorated than the one she had seen through the rich merchant's glass door. Thousands of tapers were burning upon the green branches, and colored pictures, like those she had seen in the shop-windows, looked down upon it all. The little one stretched out her hand towards them, and the match went out.

The Christmas lights rose higher and higher till they looked to her like the stars in the sky. Then she saw a star fall, leaving behind it a bright streak of fire. "Someone is dying," thought the little girl, for her old grandmother, the only one who had ever loved her, and who was now in Heaven, had told her that when a star falls, a soul was going up to God.

She again rubbed a match on the wall, and the light shone round her; in the brightness stood her old grandmother, clear and shining, yet mild and loving in her appearance.

"Grandmother," cried the little one, "O take me with you; I know you will go away when the match burns out; you will vanish like the warm stove, the roast goose, and the large glorious Christmas-tree." And she made haste to light the whole bundle of matches, for she wished to keep her grandmother there. And the matches glowed with a light that was brighter than the noon-day. And her grandmother had never appeared so large or so beautiful. She took the little girl in her arms, and they both flew upwards in brightness and joy far above the earth, where there was neither cold nor hunger nor pain, for they were with God.

In the dawn of morning there lay the poor little one, with pale cheeks and smiling mouth, leaning against the wall. She had been frozen on the last evening of the year; and the New-year's sun rose and shone upon a little child. The child still sat, holding the matches in her hand, one bundle of which was burnt.

"She tried to warm herself," said some. No one imagined what beautiful things she had seen, nor into what glory she had entered with her grandmother, on New-year's day.

https://www.thoughtco.com/little-matchstick-girl-short-story-739298

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Read a Sad and Beautiful Short Story by Hans Christian Andersen

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“The Little Match Girl,” or the “The Little Matchstick Girl” is a famous story by Hans Christian Andersen. It is often retold around the holidays.

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Esoteric Lesson, Berlin, 1-29-1907

" The subsidiary exercises strengthen the pupil's soul character, bring it into the right

form, and make the results of meditation good."

"Let's make it clear to ourselves what's really brought about by meditation. Streams of spiritual life are always flowing through the world. These streams can't flow into us, when we're thinking about everyday things. But our meditation words are like portals that are to lead us in the spiritual world. They have the strength to open up our soul so that the thoughts of our great leaders, the master of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings can stream into us. For this to happen the deepest quiet must reign in us. We must realize that meditation is a very intimate soul activity.."

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Spirit of Love in us

Help us to overcome

our fears,

our doubts,

our anger.

Spirit of Love in us

Carry us in the light

with courage,

with trust,

compassion.

Help us to overcome

our fears,

with courage,

our doubts,

with trust,

our anger,

compassion.

Lovingly written by Mary Lynn Channer

submitted by Nancy Carpenter

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day 67- Thank you to Rosemary & to Michael Lipson 

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day 67- Thank you to Rosemary & to Michael Lipson 

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5. You Are Loved
M.P. Scott © 2004

You are loved, deeply loved.
You are a well-cherished garden.
You are loved, deeply loved.
You are a treasured child.
All your life, all your days, from the very first moment of being.
You’ve been loved, greatly loved. You are loved.

Drink it in, drink it in.
Love is the life-giving water.
Take it in, take it in.
Know it in every cell.
Soak it into your toes, so the rose that you are fully blossoms.
You’ve been loved, greatly loved. You are loved.

Drink it in, drink it in.
This is what nourishes spirit.
Take it in, take it in.
This is what opens the heart.
Soak it in to our toes so the roses we are fully blossom.
We’ve been loved, greatly loved. We are love.

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Whenever love and compassion are active in life we can perceive the magic breath of the spirit blowing through the sense world.

--Rudolf Steiner

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Native American proverb attributed to the Cherokee Nation...

"If you want to walk in the shoes of another, you must take off your own shoes first."

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The Beholder/The one who Visions/Der Schauende

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The Beholder/The one who Visions/Der Schauende

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Hello anyone, I could use a tutorial or some tips on how to navigate the padlet, or maybe how to navigate my computer. I am unable to find how to search for specific days and how to scroll to the end. I am not sure where the scroll bar is that I think I have seen or used in the past. Thank you. My email sharleenleonard61@gmail.com

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in person event with Michael Lipton in northeast US, march 2024

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in person event with Michael Lipton in northeast US, march 2024

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Impossible Positivity - Michael Lipson, PhD.

Friday/Saturday March 15-16
Champlain Valley Unitarian Universalist Society
2 Duane Court,  Middlebury

Friday Lecture 7 - 9pm

In our time, it can seem naïve to speak of positivity, hope, or joy. World events all seem to justify perpetual alarm or even perpetual despair. This lecture will examine cases in history, in spiritual literature, and in my clinical practice, where people thrive in seemingly impossible circumstances and even offer help to others.

Saturday Workshop  9am - 4pm

This workshop will include meditative and spiritual practices oriented toward joy and effective participation in life, without ignoring the disasters within us, around us, and ahead of us. Attention, risk-acceptance, and an orientation toward varieties of relationship are some of the ingredients that go into an integrative and creative stance.

Please come prepared for a day of intense communal practice in all these areas. We will base some of our meditative work in Buddhist texts, some in Christian and Jewish scripture, some in Sufi poetry. The key text, however, is what the natural world around us recites, and what is written in our hearts.

Michael Lipson, PhD is a Clinical Psychologist who leads meditation workshops internationally and maintains a private practice in Western Massachusetts.

For more information, and to register, see the Eventbrite page

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Good morning, I have a spiritual science research question that I have been researching for several years and would like your help with. I am trying to better understand the difference between my Ego and my I according to Rudolf Steiner or are they the same?

So far, I have not found anywhere in the original German where Steiner uses the words Ich and Ego interchangeably?

Please let me know if you have and the GA number or date and/or title? Thank you.