To fan the spark of thinking into flame

By my own strong endeavor,

To read life's inner meaning

Out of the cosmic spirit's fount of strength:

This is my summer heritage,

My autumn solace, and my winter hope.

With new thinking kindled from ‘the cosmic spirit's fount of strength’ we have the ability to look at our Summer experiences where we rode Sun-high with Apollo. 

Calling these past images up now to release the elementals from the dying physical sheaths in nature - with awe & reverence - in Faith – so as we come to the present, where the Autumn task is to enkindle our inner fire - peacefully accepting with Love what we have learned in the cosmic expanses – breathing them in so that  toward Winter we look with Hope - that what is not yet here will come, & we will succeed in meeting whatever comes with equanimity, if 1^st we bring order to our thinking.  Winter always bears the future within it.  Like the seeds in the Earth, we may view winter as a time for gestating new thoughts, kernels that are in the process of becoming fruit in its season. This is just what the 6BE are doing for us.

Eleanor Merry has beautifully written, “Winter’s Hope arises in its true nature when the light of Sun-radiant Thinking is able clearly to grasp that the Future is willed by the living Cosmic Spirit.” 

We have to train our thinking with the foremost control of thought exercise, to be able to meet this Cosmic spirit. The Summer has called our Thinking up into the heights.  And now in autumn it must ripen within us, shining, & eager to be kept ablaze by our own strong endeavor – which can then be joined with Cosmic Spirit.  We think about this vastness & wonder we take it in & warm it with our own forces. 

 

Dear friends - Out of the clearness & quietness, of a well-ordered thinking, true Faith, Love & Hope will arise, able to mature now in the growing darkness which we can meet thru our enlightened thinking. We are free & capable now of contemplating our role in the ongoing transfiguration of the world & in finding clarity in our own unique gifts to the world. 

Verse 30 of the Calendar  

There flourish in the sunlight of my soul
 The ripened fruits of thinking;
 To conscious self-assurance
 The flow of feeling is transformed.
 I can perceive now joyfully
 The autumn's spirit-waking:
 The winter will arouse in me
 The summer of the soul.
  
Es spriessen mir im Seelensonnenlicht
 Des Denkens reife Früchte,
 In Selbstbewusstseins Sicherheit
 Verwandelt alles Fühlen sich.
 Empfinden kann ich freudevoll
 Des Herbstes Geisterwachen:
 Der Winter wird in mir
 Den Seelensommer wecken.

     If you would like to donate to the Farm: 
            https://gofund.me/27382cce

Since the middle of the fifteenth century, a gradual transformation of intelligence is taking place. Although it is still very much like that of the Greeks it is undergoing a transformation, and we are in the beginning of it. In the coming centuries and millennia this intelligence will become something very, very different. Even today it shows a tendency toward what will come in future, a tendency merely to grasp what is error, untruth, deception; a tendency to ponder only what is evil.

The mystery pupils and especially the initiates had known for some time that human intelligence approaches its development toward evil, and that it becomes more and more impossible to recognize the good through mere intelligence. Mankind finds itself today within this transition. We may say, it is still barely possible, if men exert their intelligence and do not bear especially wild instincts in themselves, to look toward the light of what is good. But human intelligence will more and more develop the inclination to plan evil, to bring error into knowledge, and insert evil into man’s moral life.

This is one of the reasons initiates called themselves men of anxiety. Indeed, if one observes the evolution of mankind from this aspect as I have just done, it causes anxiety, precisely because of the way intelligence is developing. It is not for nothing that it fills modern man with pride and haughtiness. This is the pre-taste of intelligence becoming evil in the fifth post-Atlantean age, which is beginning now. If man were not to develop anything else but intelligence he would become an evil being on earth. If we want to think of a wholesome future for mankind, we must not count on the one-sided development of intelligence. In Egypt and Chaldea, it was good; later it entered into a relationship with the forces of death; and it will enter into a relationship with the forces of error, deception, and evil.

This is something about which mankind should have no illusions. In an unbiased fashion humanity should reckon with the fact that it has to protect itself against this one-sided development of intelligence. It is not in vain that precisely through the anthroposophically oriented science of the spirit another element will be added by taking in what can be gained through a renewed perception of the spiritual world. This cannot be grasped by intelligence, but only if we take into ourselves what the science of initiation brings down from the spiritual world through vision.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 296 – Education as a Social Problem: Lecture V: The Metamorphoses of Human Intelligence: Present Trends and Dangers 

The heart of the Native American experience: In this 1996 Minnesota Book Award winner, Kent Nerburn draws the reader deep into the world of an Indian elder known only as Dan. It’s a world of Indian towns, white roadside cafes, and abandoned roads that swirl with the memories of the Ghost Dance and Sitting Bull. Readers meet vivid characters like Jumbo, a 400-pound mechanic, and Annie, an 80-year-old Lakota woman living in a log cabin. Threading through the book is the story of two men struggling to find a common voice. Neither Wolf nor Dog takes readers to the heart of the Native American experience. As the story unfolds, Dan speaks eloquently on the difference between land and property, the power of silence, and the selling of sacred ceremonies. This edition features a new introduction by the author, Kent Nerburn.

 

No stenographer was there this part of the lecture. These are a blending of notes from Caroline Van Hidebrand and Herbert Hahn, who were participants (and a minor edit by me at the end):

 

“Behind each of us stands our angel, gently laying hands upon our head. This angel gives each of you  the strength you  need. Above your heads hovers a ring of archangels. They convey , from one to the other of you, what each of you has to give to the other. They connect your souls. Thus you receive the courage you require (from this courage the archangels form a vessel). The light of wisdom is given to us by the higher beings of the Archai, one of whom allows a drop of light to fall into the vessel.”

 

                        
--Rainer Maria Rilke

Flame through the 

impotence of irresolute souls.

Burn out the egoism;

ignite the compassion;

that selflessness,

the life stream of mankind,

wells up as the 

source of spirit rebirth.

– Rudolf Steiner

In contrast to most yoga traditions, which cultivate the energy rising from the lower life center, the Western path of esoteric development begins in our upper center of consciousness―in thinking and in one’s “I.” From there, the center of experience is shifted downward, from the head to the heart. After developing a “new heart center,” as Rudolf Steiner describes it, one can guide forces consciously and, through specific exercises, the “kundalini snake” can be awakened fully.  

In his detailed introduction, editor Andreas Meyer distils the perspectives and instructions from Steiner’s complete works, offering a valuable synopsis for our understanding and practice of meditation. 

Chapters include:

·     The Meaning of Meditation, and the Six Exercises

·     Developing and Cleansing the Lotus Flowers

·     The Snake Symbol

·     The Kundalini Fire

·     The Kundalini Light

·     Developing the New Heart Organ

·     The Reversal in Thinking and Will

·     Specific Aspects of Kundalini Schooling

·     Transforming Physical Love and the Division of the Sexes

·     Breathing, the Light–Soul Process, and the New Yoga Will

·     The Polarity of Light and Love

·     Transforming the Kundalini Fire into Fraternity

— Rudolf Steiner,Knowledge of the Higher Worlds: How is it Attained?(CW 10)

we look on the victory of knowledge.

 

Standing firm in joy

we look on the world that goes under

and forms foundations.

 

If, losing ourselves in joy,

we suddenly woke, we’d see

how all joy’s living powers go under—

and we can do nothing to sustain them.

 

Waking in suffering, we’d see what endures—

can sustain what goes under. 

Rudolf Steiner from "Meditations for Courage and Tranquility" edited by Matthew Barton

There is an extraordinary amount of wrong thinking in our day. One can suffer the pains of martyrdom from the terribly illogical life of the world. Anyone who has acquired a certain clairvoyance does not simply feel that one thing is correct and another incorrect, but he suffers actual pain when confronted by illogical thinking, and a sense of well-being in connection with clear, transparent thinking. This signifies that he has acquired a feeling for such things, and this enables him to make decisions.

And this brings far truer differentiations when one has actually reached this stage. It gives a far truer discrimination between truth and untruth. This seems incredible, but it is true. When something erroneous is said in the presence of a clairvoyant person, the pain which rises in him shows him that this is illogical, erroneous. Illogical thinking is extraordinarily widespread; at no time has illogical thinking been so widespread as precisely in our time, in spite of the fact that people pride themselves so much on their logical thinking.

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

 

 

 

Rudolf Steiner

 

Every moment that we set ourselves to discover in our consciousness whatever there remains in it of adverse, disparaging and critical judgement of the world and of life; every such moment brings us nearer to higher knowledge. And we rise rapidly when we fill our consciousness in such moments with thoughts evoking in us admiration, respect and veneration for the world and for life. 

It is well known to those experienced in these matters that in every such moment powers are awakened which otherwise remain dormant. In this way the spiritual eyes of man are opened. He begins to see things around him which he could not have seen before. He begins to understand that hitherto he had only seen a part of the world around him. A human being standing before him now presents a new and different aspect.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 10 – How to know higher worlds – 1. How Is Knowledge of the Higher Worlds Attained? – Conditions

Translated by George Metaxa

Today's Rudolf Steiner quote

Nobantu Mpotulo

(from the article shown through the above link)

The Bemba Tribe of Zambia takes ubuntu, metta, karuna, and mudita to another level. If in a community there’s a member who is troublesome, the whole community—the young and the old—come together and form a circle, placing the troublemaker in the center. They find the goodness in the person, highlighting their good deeds and showering them with appreciation. Then there’s a celebratory feast held in the person’s honor.

(I, Karen, sometimes feel like a troublemaker, and am received by you all in a similar way.)

Loyalty

“Create within you a new concept of loyalty.

What people call loyalty becomes so easily meaningless.

Try to make this your loyalty......

     You may find there are fleeting moments in your experience

     of your fellow human when he/she appears filled and

     illuminated by his/her time spirit being.  Then other moments

     will come, possibly long moments of time

     when his/her being is as if clouded.

 

     At such moments you must learn to say:

     ‘The spirit makes me strong – I remember my friend’s 

     time spirit being which once I was allowed to glimpse.

     No outer delusion or deception can ever take this from me.’

 

Struggle ceaselessly to uphold the image of the other’s true

time being which once you saw.

 

This struggle is loyalty.

In the effort to be loyal in this sense, humans shall be close to 

his/her fellow human with the strength of a guardian angel.”

“Create for yourself a new, indomitable perception of faithfulness.

What is usually called faithfulness passes so quickly.

Let this be your faithfulness...

 

     You will experience moments...fleeting moments...with the

     other person. 

     .

     The human being will appear to you then as if filled,

     Irradiated with the archetype of his/her spirit.

 

     And then there may be...indeed will be other moments,

     Long periods of time when human beings are darkened.

     But you will learn to say: ‘The spirit makes me strong.

     I remember the archetype which I saw once.  

     No illusion, no deception shall rob me of it.’

 

Always struggle for the image that you saw.

This struggle is faithfulness.

Striving for this faithfulness, we shall be close to one another,

As if endowed with the protective powers of angels.”

https://natalya-yeshch.art/shop/)

our friend Natalie a artist in the war zone reporting this morning: morning of the 14th day of war, Wednesday, March 9, 2022

Those who think I'm strong, don't even open this post because I'm going to complain and get a terrible text. Maybe the next picture will be like everyone about Kobzar, but now I want to confess that I had an attack of contempt... contempt is not in the power of the Ukrainian Army, our people or the heavenly defenders of Ukraine... I somehow disrespected myself because I woke up feeling like a tank ran over me, can you say that anymore? And my only thought was - can I ever go back to bed? will I ever be able to hit an osteopath and finally exercise my back? will I be able to wash myself with warm water tomorrow or will I be able even to wash myself? isn't it the last piece of cheese I'm eating right now? why do i drink coffee that i cant actually drink, is it because i dont know if i'll have that opportunity in a week.. and in a year? - will I survive next winter in Kyiv if heating problems start, because I'm afraid to even think about a cold apartment in the frost... And actually, how am I supposed to think about all this now, when millions of my compatriots are already suffering so much from the war that they are worst than I am now...

... went desperate to the balcony - looked at our sleeping area, now it's quiet like somewhere in the village, there are almost no cars, somewhere dogs are lying, pigeons found something, and crows graze them... something thundered and my ears hurt, but immediately let it go, because it swung on the rails of an empty tram, and the echo between the houses intensified this sound...

... I looked at it all, I looked at how lonely ice cubes dance in the quiet air, I looked at the empty streets and thought: so I'm stubborn... must be stupid to be so stubborn.

... but if it weren't for this stubbornness, it wouldn't be like this now! maybe there would be nothing to be proud of! Because part of this stubbornness is too in those famous stubborn ukrainians, sho now there in the cold confront the rasistsʹkim orkam right now... right now while I'm complaining to myself about a bad sleep or mood.. an appalling dissonance... But let it be at least this! let it be somehow hard, because I also need to manage my stubbornness. So let's keep our stubbornness too - because we will still need all this!

  ·   ·......................................................

many of you know Natalya, she and her husband are Waldorf teachers in Kiev and Natalya paints amazing angels, among other things. She had to stay in Kiev, Ukraine with her family, an elderly grandmother who can’t go very well, with 2 kids, her husband and their cat. I asked to be able to post this because their supplies are slowly running out. From Natalya’s website, please who can order an ONLINE 5 DOLLAR POSTCARD to support them, it would be very helpfull. She can't go to the post office now, so you can only order the online download. With each postcard, you also support the family, but they will also help other families in need.

Thank you so much for sharing from my site. And don’t forget to say a prayer for them, if you can do this too, which is just as important as the support with a postcard.

Thank you very much,

Bernadett Andrea Kiss, Waldorf teacher and -kindergartenteacher, Budapest, Hungary

ps. i will link to a few videos in the comment and the page where you can order first. Natalya’s FB page, where she reports on their situation every day, which is very touching.

(here you can buy a postcard

https://natalya-yeshch.art/shop/)

How often, when two people meet for the first time, one of them arouses instantaneous antipathy in the other, whom he dislikes so much that afterwards whatever they have to do with each other is coloured by this dislike. As a consequence the karmic connection between them can be entirely blotted out, or set on a false track, and will have to be laid aside until the two meet again in their next incarnation. Sympathy and antipathy are the greatest enemies of true social interests, though only too little heed is paid to the fact. But to anyone deeply aware of the importance of true social understanding for the further development of mankind, it is distressing to watch the effect teachers in a school often have upon their pupils, when out of prejudice they show preference for one rather than another, whereas it is important to take each of them as he is able and to make the very most of that.

You who've accompanied me to the earth,

And you who will accompany me through the gates

of death . . .

Do not cease to enlighten me, to strengthen me, to counsel me,

So that from the weaving fires of fate,

I may emerge a stronger vessel of destiny

and more and more learn to fill myself

with the meaning of God's World goals . . .

Here's a quote of this passage in a Christian Community context posted by Chythia Hindes at the time of...
Easter Sunday, 2017, Weaving Fires of Fate

posted by MRichter
...you might need to Right Click the link to open it. I did. Sometimes, I think, "nothing is easy". I'm going to draw this habitual thought and erase a big "X" into it.

“Stand at the gate of the living human being. View in its arch stones cosmic thoughts. Live deep within the human soul. Feel at its center the birth of worlds. Think upon the human being’s earthly ending. Find there renewal of the spirit.”

2. Shared e-mail list for those who have said they are fine with receiving updates and related information. And that their e-mail can be shared with others. 
If you would like to be added or changed, 

send me an e-mail sharleenleonard61@gmail.com 
and let me know what you would prefer. 
Thank you,  Sharleen 

Inside this clay jug
there are canyons and
pine mountains,
and the maker of canyons
and pine mountains!

All seven oceans are inside,
and hundreds of millions of stars.

The acid that tests gold is here,
and the one who judges jewels.

And the music
that comes from the strings
that no one touches,
and the source of all water.

If you want the truth, I will tell you the truth:
Friend, listen: the God whom I love is inside.

— Jalaluddin Rumi, translation by Coleman Barks (The Essential Rumi)

Climbing Jacob’s Ladder – Celebrating the Festival of Ascension with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg & Eurythmy with Maria Ver Eecke

“In heavy clouds let Him ascend
And so also let Him downward tread.
In cooling streams let Him be sent,
In flames of fire blaze His descent,
In air & essence, sound & dew
To permeate our whole earth thru” ~Novalis

            Hazel Archer-Ginsberg is a trans-denominational minister, essayist, lecturer, performer, and poet. She writes and curates ‘Reverse Ritual, Understanding Anthroposophy Through the Rhythms of the Year’ and the ‘I Think Speech’ podcast. Hazel’s been the Cultural Events and Festivals Coordinator for the Rudolf Steiner Branch in Chicago for over 10 years. She is a member of the Central Regional Council, the School for Spiritual Science, the Esoteric Youth Circle, and the General Council of the Anthroposophical Society in America.

                  Register by contacting Diane McGary, mcgary.family@comcast.net, by Sunday, May 22nd. You will receive an email with the zoom link on Tuesday May 24.

Hope to see you there!! – YES! Please feel free to spread the word!

Yours, Diane McGary, mcgary.family@comcast.net, for the the Eastern Region

with the Eastern, Central and Western Regional Councils of the Anthroposophical Society in America

Sunday 29 May 2022 – 3 – 4:30 pm PT, 4-5:30 MT, 5-6:30 pm CT, 6-7:30 pm ET

We will be working with Rudolf Steiner’s THE FIFTH GOSPEL GA 148, Lecture II, 2 October 1913, Oslo

The Whitsun Festival highlights one of the greatest challenges of being human: placing our individual gifts, our individual “I”, in right relationship within the social realm. This challenge is strongly felt during this time of the consciousness soul age. Our groups striving to know Spiritual Science must work together as a community, to have the possibility to create this type of culture, and the opportunity is here for each of us to meet, human to human, where a sacrament is possible in every encounter. Our individual strength comes from our personal development and is enhanced by weaving our gifts together with others, knitting our social world in conscious community.

For more info. contact Hazel@ReverseRitual.com

Before we take a bit of a summer pause, I wanted to share the plans for what is coming up for 6BE prior to Angela picking up again in September!

Tomorrow night (26 May), I will host a call tomorrow at 7pm central to pull together the final plans for a summer 6be that will run 6 or 7 weeks, starting 11 July.

Anyone is welcome to join this 30 minute call to discuss the theme of “The 6BE and the 4-fold human”.

We will be looking for folks who can sign up with a partner to host one day a week during the entire session.  I am planning the same basic 15 minute construct that we have today with a 5 minute leading thought, just that the leading thoughts will be tied to the weekly exercise that is the in Florin Lowndes book “Enlivening the Chakra of the Heart”.

More discussion on this during our call on Thursday!  Please join us!

The link to zoom is the same one from Angela, but I will paste it here: 

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

Call by Phone: 312-626-6799 | Meeting ID: 266 986 103 | Passcode: 345338 

Blessings to all!

Robyn

You are invited to join with a group of friends as we explore Rudolf Steiner’s 6 Essential Exercises using Florin Lowndes “Enlivening the Chakra of the Heart” as our guide. 

We will have a daily 15-minute Zoom meeting, Monday-Friday for 7 weeks, starting on July 11, 2022 and ending on August 26, 2022. 

Everyone is invited to participate! Come when you can and will. Free of charge. We intend to stay as close to time as possible. On Fridays, there will be an optional conversation space. Visit our padlet for updates: https://padlet.com/angelaARC/q0ts0vqbiu4q2g0i

Week One: Control of Thinking

Week Two: Control of Will

Week Three: Control of Feeling (Equanimity) 

Week Four: Control of Thinking in Feeling (Positivity) 

Week Five: Fulfillment of Thinking in the Will (Open Mindedness) 

Week Six: Fulfillment of Thinking in Thinking (Harmony) 

Week Seven: Recap and conversation about the experiences

Topic: SixBasicExercises Practice Group 

Time: This is a recurring meeting 

Join Zoom Meeting 

Meeting ID: 266 986 103 

Passcode: 345338 

One tap mobile 

+13126266799,,266986103#,,,,*345338# US (Chicago) 

+16465588656,,266986103#,,,,*345338# US (New York) 

Dial by your location 

+1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago) 

+1 646 558 8656 US (New York) 

+1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC) 

+1 346 248 7799 US (Houston) 

+1 669 900 9128 US (San Jose) 

+1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma) 

Meeting ID: 266 986 103 

Passcode: 345338 

Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kdhUJUgpne 

Our padlet has updates and resources: https://padlet.com/angelaARC/q0ts0vqbiu4q2g0i

Moreover, we cannot, by mere thinking, influence our own ‘will-organism’. To feel deeply the powerlessness of this thinking is to receive the impulse to transcend it.

And from Esoteric Lessons, "My own being is interwoven with the strength of the breath." and "Speech is a spiritual act of will through which the dead air is enlivened."

Remember in all things to be encouraged and encouraging. "--Since human beings are varied in character, so are the effective means of training varied for the individual human.--" (Occult Science)

“To meditate, on the other hand, means to eliminate this intellectual activity and initially take the content of the meditation as it stands, word for word. If you approach the meditation intellectually before absorbing its content, you are activating your ‘I’ and thus placing the content outside yourself by thinking about it in this way. But when you allow the content just as it is to be present in your consciousness without thinking about it, then it is not the ‘I’ belonging to your present incarnation that works in you but your ‘I’ from your previous incarnation. 

“You make your intellect fall silent; you immerse yourself solely in the words which you hear inwardly, not outwardly. You immerse yourself in them, and by doing so you cause your inner human being, which is not that of your present incarnation, to work in the content of the meditation. In this way the content of the meditation does not become something that you have to comprehend but rather something that actually works within you in such a real way that finally you realize:

“Take a simple meditative content which I have given many times: ‘Wisdom lives in the light.’ It is only too true that if you think about this you can reach some frightfully clever conclusions but also just as many foolish ones. The words are there to be heard inwardly: ‘Wisdom lives in the light.’ When you hear this inwardly something in you takes note, something in you which does not come from your present incarnation but which you have brought with you from former lives on earth. 

“This is what thinks and what feels, and after a while something lights up in you which you did not know earlier and which you cannot think about with your own intellect. You are inwardly much more advanced than your intellect. Your intellect contains no more than a small portion of what exists in you.”

‑‑ for Robert Graves

 

With every starfall I am brought to earth

again.  From every course in dust I rise

and shine again.  From every restless love

and loss I will refine the rustless gold again.

 

Who am I, but the child of all that dies?

What am I, but a light of all that lives?

Be you my friend, while we do suffer here.

Follow, into water, spirit, fire; wash off fear.

 

 

 19860411
John Beck

General 6BE Noon ET - for 6BE Noon ET and related information only. Blind copy is used. This group will receive information about the reading group that Robyn talked about this morning that will be starting in August. (I consider it 6BE related information). 

Shared 6BE Noon ET - for those who have said it is OK to use my judgment in what to send and when to blind copy or not. 
Everyone on this list is also on the general List. 

You can ask to be added or removed at any time. 
E-mail me with your wishes. sharleenleonard61@gmail.com
I sent 2 e-mails this morning to the shared e-mail group. 
Thank you to Robyn and the other camp counselors for an excellent summer camp experience. 
Sharleen
414-573-3267

The student of seeing has to unlock the mystery first, Eckhart tells us, and it begins—here, now—with the question of who is seeing.

Encaustic icon of Christ, sixth century. St. Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai
with reference to Meister Eckhart

THE MYSTERY OF SEEING
This is what Meister Eckhart brings for our edification. There is no skill or method to attain the act of seeing, even though the means may have value in themselves.

The student of seeing has to unlock the mystery first, Eckhart tells us, and it begins—here, now—with the question of who is seeing. Until the question is raised to a new pitch, the intensity needed to undergo the mystery will be wanting.

The gateway is to be found in the releasement from what Eckhart calls the “me and mine,” the ego and its collection of things that define its territory.

As soon as one relaxes and becomes human, endowed with a sensitivity to what is real, the peculiar role assigned to humanity in creation presents itself.

It is here that Eckhart ties cleansing the eye of vision to a view of the cosmos, the starry heavens above and here below. The divine and the human, God and myself. Seeing must travel the breadth of the relation.

The turning point of Eckhart’s thought has to do with transformation. The potentiality of the human being is very high. Angels are envious of the place given to us to occupy, he says. To open the doors of perception and to release vision from its hidden attachments: that is the path that his thought traces.

It is a path of knowing, gnosis, where the act of thinking and the act of being are one and the same. His gnosis is special because of the clarity and simplicity of sight, and also for its specifics.

It tells us that our deep identifications revolve around erroneous representations of reality. Without knowing it, we hold a mistaken world view inherited from our upbringing. It is up to us to radically change these habitual modes of reception.

In the still deep moment of meditation, one comes to the ground of intelligence. This, higher mind, the spark or scintilla of the soul, is where thought is void of object. Dwelling in this releasement, there is witness to the unfolding creative process, which, in Eckhart’s Christology, pours forth from the Father, creator God, to his Son, the intelligible presence to this world.

It means, in strict terms, being present to how the world emerges from nothing, and is nothing in relation to the creator, the All.
SEEING IS A PATH
Seeing is a pathway to liberation, both the greater and the lesser. This thought we owe to Eckhart.

Furthermore, the pathway is there to be discovered. In this moment, thought opens the infinitude of its potential to yield a taste of another way of being. It would be in the freedom of hope that one is able to go forward without a map or preconception. “Without a why,” Eckhart says. Seeing is that look forward.


He reminds us of the extreme diligence needed for the task. The path is not ready-made, waiting there ahead of one’s arrival. Seeing unveils it. When it is actualized, seeing is both means and end, as well as the pathway itself. Extreme diligence: the rhetoric seems to suggest a rigid application of attention, like pouring over a ledger.

Eckhart is careful to state that the work of seeing—both seeing’s work and work’s seeing—is more of an undoing of blockages and freeing the attention.

A vision is constricted because it is riddled by negation. “When a pickpocket looks at a saint, he sees pockets.”

The path is therefore one of “negating negation,” unbinding the attachments that constitute one’s preferences, desires, or inclinations.

A person refuses the “me and mine” and lets go. The discovery of “not this, not that,” that I am not who I take myself to be, follows the seeing. Repeating the recognition over a lifetime defines a path.


Meister Eckhart
LETTING GO REQUIRES A WHOLE NEW WAY OF THINKING
AND A NEW LANGUAGE. It is a challenge to understand what needs release and what needs to be released. On the one hand, “it just happens,” and on the other, the greatest rigor cannot be avoided.

One must remember the moment, as Dogen the Zen master put it (at about the same time in the late Middle Ages as the Rhineland mystic).

Eckhart says it in a similar thought. One must agree to the flow, as it rushes forth from the unmanifest, and be buoyant enough to keep up with its unfolding. Nothing can snag or delay the person awakened to the simple matter of rising to this life. The repetition of seeing involves living life as a seer who is purified by the seeing. (bold mine not authors)

Why purified? This is an important question. Seeing is purification.

Each moment that an active vision takes place, the work gifted to human beings from above is engaged.

This means, seeing occurs in deep releasement.

One has let go of self-image and faces without excuses the question of his or her existence. There the first light of seeing dawns.

Once contamination by the ego has been undone, life can be embraced as it comes to be its becoming.

In this, there is real freedom, which is the aim of all teachings.
There is a work meant for a human being, the species homo sapiens.

It involves relating to the higher part of the mind and trusting the intelligence of letting go. This is a movement toward bearing witness to the formless void—which is the Godhead, in Eckhart’s language, into which even God cannot enter until he surrenders his powers and possessions.

There is this astounding thought: God too must work at releasement in order to see reality.

Here, Eckhart will tell us, lies the height of seeing, when the eye through which I see is the same eye through which God sees.

The human being and the deity share an identical effort.

Seeing is witness for the sake of that highest purpose. What is that?

It is to provide a lens onto reality through which the Creator can see the creation. That we actually share in the common work of keeping the universe lighted within the absolute blackness of empty space
THE WHOLE UNIVERSE IS IN THE PROCESS OF LETTING GO


This means, coming out of hiding and into the light. Reality is guided by the movement of epiphany. This is the thought of the hadith, “God is a hidden treasure wanting to be known.”

The unveiling of reality coincides with letting the blocks and limits go, holding back no longer. Presence appears from absence and disappears back into it.

This is marked by an outbreak of meaninglessness—for Eckhart, the call from on high to be empty of all knowledge.

For him, emptiness is the coming of an ever-present relaxation. Nothing happens, yet everything does. This is how Meister Eckhart’s universe works.

It is with this common cosmic process that we join whenever we are gifted with seeing. In the same instant, we are given to see who we are and what we serve.



From Parabola Volume 38, No. 4, “Liberation and Letting Go,” Winter 2013-2014. This issue is available to purchase here. If you have enjoyed this piece, consider subscribing.

By David Appelbaum

David Appelbaum, a professor in the Department of Philosophy at SUNY New Paltz, is a former editor of Parabola.

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" But at deeper levels of soul we must  feel within us a more profound being inside the initially perceptible one, a being it can rely on, of which it can say to itself: As imperfect as you now still are – this being within you is cleverer. It is at work within you; it can carry you to the point of attaining the greatest skill. It can grant you wings, enabling you to see an endless perspective spread out before you, leading into a limitless future….

 "[I]n immersing ourselves in these sagas and fairy tales, we have in pictures what spiritual science also clearly reveals today. This may initially cause amazement. However, once we have entered more deeply in the whole manner in which these fairy tales and myths arose, all astonishment and doubt vanishes. We find in these sagas and fairy tales not merely what may be called a naive way of regarding the world, but the expression of a profound wisdom-filled worldview.”