Behold the 12 Holy Nights CONCENTRATION.
A Complimentary Spiritual Exercise & Twelve Day journey into the Heart of the Matter…into the Arms of the Mother, Father, Friend, Beloved God.
This journey is meant to enliven & revivify the blood, to dissolve doubt & fear, to midwife the birth of the Higher-Being through the Womb of Remembrance, to bring clarity regarding the Tasks at Hand & to develop the INNER capacities to PERCEIVE what stands behind the material world.
Each concentration will provide a series of short readings that merge to reveal a Sacred Task given through THE WORD.
The readings will be a marriage of voices from those who are pioneering the Science of Spirit, or HEART-thinking.
“May you come to KNOW the true meaning of Christmas!”
The Over-arching TASK at hand:
“To penetrate to the reality of the world...is the task of this post Atlantean Epoch, and Rudolf Steiner tells us, we can only do this by developing the mood of ‘wonder’ through a reverent devotion to the world of reality, which eventually leads us to...loving ‘surrender’.
We must surrender our lower egos by changing our thinking...
When we develop a feeling of ‘loving surrender’ we are transforming our thinking into a faculty that allows the world itself to teach us something of its nature...
One who has practised surrender rises to an imagination of the flourishing will in all things...
To develop imagination one must learn to think differently, that is one must learn to forget the lower ego for a time, so as to find the higher self...
What helps us to achieve this? Anthroposophia, she opens our hearts and births our Higher egos...”
Through this cascade of readings, you are being asked to read between the stars.
You are pioneering a new way of thinking.
It may not be easy to weave the golden thread, but keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Allow the "mood of soul” that births within as you read one passage to merge with the “mood of soul” from the next.
In the end, practice uniting all soul moods that have arisen into ONE. You do not have to understand every word with your mind, but rather bring the questions (perhaps intense questions or confusion) into your heart and let them gently work upon you.
Ponder in your heart.
Take this with you into dreamtime…into night school.
Ask your guardian angel to reveal to you what you need to KNOW in the light of your work here.
If all else fails, go outside at night, find two stars side by side & allow your gaze to rest between them. Notice what you see. Notice what you feel.
You will begin to FEEL what I mean when I say “weave the golden thread.”Bring this feeling into your reading.
January 1st, 2021 Addition
Keep in mind that the 9th Holy Night is from midnight on Jan. 1st to midnight Jan. 2nd.Let us add Taurus into the mix:
“2 January - Taurus: …These next three Nights represent the Three Kings. This Taurus constellation represents Melchior, for it is the constellation of the Bull, which symbolizes that mighty kingly nature that is associated with gold.”
-Willi Sucher
AND MAY THIS BECOME THE GOLD OF THE OUTFLOWING WISDOM AVAILABLE TO OUR SOULS:
“The 9th Holy Night - CHERUBIM, SPIRITS OF HARMONY - NIGHT OF CONSCIENCE.
Our last consideration was a difficult one, and I'm glad to see that some have noted this for it is a good thing to realise how difficult it is to find and develop the right concepts when one is entering into the region of the First Hierarchy, the Hierarchy of the Father Gods. Who are connected to that region of the Father which exists beyond the Zodiac.
Rudolf Steiner tells us:
'That which happened in the beginnings of our evolution, before the Saturn development, we must place outside, beyond the Zodiac. Primeval wisdom called it the Crystal Heaven, and in that crystal heaven were deposed all the deeds of the Beings of a former evolution. They formed, so to speak, the foundation on which the new Beings began to create.'
All of cosmic evolution is based on a metmorphosis of receing to giving as Goethe tells us:
“Human life runs its course in the metamorphosis between receiving and giving.” Man derives not only bodily nourishment but mental sustenance from the outer world; and in this way he grows and receives what he needs for his own development. But through this process he also develops the capacity for giving, in turn, what he has brought to maturity in the way of ideas and feeling, and ultimately, of love. By his taking something from the world and giving something else to his surroundings, his capacities keep constantly increasing: he becomes sensible and intelligent, able to develop concepts which he can sacrifice to the common life of humanity. He develops feelings and sensations that are transformed into love; and by offering these he stimulates his fellow creatures. We need only call to mind what a vitalizing effect love can have on our fellow beings — how one who is really able to pour forth love upon his fellow men can quicken and comfort and elevate them through his love alone.
At each stage of world evolution beings sacrifice something in order to bring evolution to a higher stage and thereby develop their own capacities in doing so, and it is no different for the Father Gods or the First Hierarchy whose sacrifices created Old Saturn, continued to resonate through Sun, Moon and finally to Earth evolution and the human being.
Why is the First Hiearchy connected to the Father Gods? We should take a moment to see the connections:
So far we have seen that the Angels, or the third hiearchy have a great deal to do with our soul. Their desire is that we elaborate our astral body in particular our thinking so that it can become an organ of sight - Imagination and through this development they will in turn develop the fullness of Manas. What in general human beings will develop on Jupiter.
Archangels wish us to develop the feelings in our soul which move our etheric body in the same way that wind moves waves. They wish us to develop these feelings into an organ of higher hearing - inspiration which is a higher form of love, and through this development, they will develop Budhi. What in general, human beings will develop on Venus.
The Archai wish us to develop our will so that it can become higher organ of warmth - Intuition in the physical body and through this higher intuitive capacity they will in turn develop the fullness of Atma - what in general human beings will develop on Vulcan.
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The Angels who developed their 'I' on old Moon when the Astral body of human beings came into existence mediate between human beings and the entire angelic hiearchy, which in the physical body have to do with the nerves and senses, or the head of the human being. The entire Third Hierarchy in turn answer to the third person of the divine trinity - the Holy Spirit or Region of the Bull.
Angels - Third hierarchy - Bull/Holy Spirit
The Archangels developed their 'I' on the Sun when the etheric body of human beings was being elaborated. They are called Fire Spirits because on the sun they took up the wisdom the Kyriotetes sacrificed, and reflected it back as the spark of light. Over the last few days we have seen that the etheric body is the body of light and also an organ of perception.
With our Astral bodies we can 'remember' what enters into us with every sense perception, we bring together the thing seen with the thing unseen in a kind of dream like state in our own souls. But we have seen in our last consideration that when we use the etheric body, when we enter into the etheric body of light and develop it through the will, we can have outer experiences in waking life.
“What has happened to a clairvoyant, who is able not merely to remember the experiences of another condition of consciousness, but who can have clairvoyant experiences in his own everyday consciousness?” If a man has only ascended to the first stage, he can only make use of his astral body in order to look into the spiritual world. Thus the body which a man makes use of at the first stage of clairvoyance is the astral body; at the second stage of clairvoyance which has just been described, he learns to make use of his etheric body. By means of this he can even in ordinary, normal consciousness, look into the spiritual world." Rudolf Steiner.
Here in lies the connection of Archangels with the second hierarchy again:
'If a man learns to use his etheric body in this way as an instrument for clairvoyance, he gradually learns to perceive everything in the spiritual world belonging to the beings of the Second Hierarchy.'
The archangels work in the realm of the soul of a folk which is connected to the etheric body and feelings that are different to those in the Astral body, feeling for time, religious feelings etc. And in the physical body in the realm of the heart and lungs, they unite their work with the 2nd hierarchy.
The second hierarchy are creators of life so when the archangels bring to the second hierarchy the results of human feelings transformed into etheric clairvoyance the archangels in turn develop their own Life Spirt or Budhi.
There is a connection here with Christ for he entered the cosmos through the womb of the Divine Sophia on the sun, and used an archangel to manifest in the spiritual world during his sacrifices, also Michael, being the foremost human on the Sun became Christ's representative Archangel on earth at the time of His descent to the Earth.
It is for this reason that the Archangels mediate between the human being and the Second Hierarchy who in turn are connected to the Region of the lamb and the Second Person of the trinity, The Son.
Archangel - Second Hierarchy - Region of the Lamb or The Son.
The Archai are the highest beings of the Third hierarchy and were human beings on Saturn, their task is to mediate between the human being and the realm of the First Hierarchy and the region of the Father. They are connected to the ego of the human being as it lives in the physical body in which the First hierarchy work in the limbs. As the physical body was formed from impulses that existed outside the zodiac the Archai are also connected to the first person of the Trinity, the Father.
Archai - First hierarchy - Region of the Father
So after this long recapitulation, which was necessary for us to maintain our understanding of the co-operation of higher beings and their manifold workings together, we can look at what the Cherubim are trying to achieve through human beings.
The Cherubim are the spirits of Harmony and they receive their impulses from the region of Crab or Cancer. The symbol of the crab is the vortex, which expresses the harmonious transition between one cycle and the next. Rudolf Steiner tells us that all transitions, on all planes of existence, are led by the Cherubim, and we see their harmonious influence in the great transitions of world evolution - from Saturn to Earth evolution and in those smaller transitions (led by the lower hierarchies, though inspired by the Cherubim). For instance in the great epochs of the earth: Polaris, Hyperborean, Lemurian Atlantean, 5th Post Atlantean, 6th Post Atlantean, 7th Post Atlantean; in the cultural epochs - Indian, Persian, Egypt Chaldean, Greco/Roman, Anglo/German Russian and American; as well as the four seasons of the year and the transitions from day to night.
The Cherubim were the highest beings taking part in Sun Evolution while the Archangels were the lowest beings. They created the aforementioned protective sheath around the sun while the Archangels imbibed the wisdom of the Kyriotetes and from it created the light of the Sun.
The Cherubim prepared the way for Christ's descent into the sun's etheric or spiritual body, just as John the Baptist who was born under the sign of the Crab prepared for Christ's descent into the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth.
The Cherubim are said to guard the gates of paradise or the realm of the Father or 'God:
'What is it then that the Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones have in particular, that is different from all the other beings in the world? They have what is called ‘the direct sight of GOD.’
This is the realm beyond the Zodiac. They guard it with the flaming sword which is an imagination of the voice of conscience.
It is not surprising therefore that John the Baptist spoke like the voice of conscience or consciousness of the 'impulses living in our will' - a necessary requirement for an understanding of Christ. In the wilderness of the soul the voice of conscience speaks, like the 'voice of God' - Repent and make ready the way of the Lord! - and proclaims the coming of the Lord of the Soul - the highest expression of the Ego - Kyrios - the Higher Self.
Buddha was also a preparer for the coming of Christ in the realm of conscience, and his task continued in John the Baptist, in whom lived Buddha's angel.
Rudolf Steiner tells us this in connection with the Cherubim and the voice of Conscience:
'Now I must indicate something to you, my dear sisters and brothers, something you all know, for normal consciousness is already aware of it. It is what we call the voice of conscience in us. The voice of conscience! But the voice of conscience calls out in an indeterminate way to human consciousness. Usually we do not rightly know what it is – in respect to our moral-psychological comportment – that comes from the mysterious depths of our souls and which we call the voice of conscience. With normal consciousness one does not penetrate so deeply into one's own being as to reach the voice of conscience. It ascends, but man does not reach it, so he does not look at it face to face.
And when man penetrates meditatively to the distant world of the Cherubim, the wisdom filled beings who live and act throughout the universe, he makes the great discovery that from the world of the cherubim an impulse enters into him within which the voice of conscience lives. Oh, the voice of conscience is of high origin, high being. It actually lives in the world of the Cherubim. From that world of the Cherubim it weaves itself into humanity and at first resounds from the depths of this humanity in an indeterminate way. But it is a great, mighty encounter when man, through intuition, can come into contact with the field of the Cherubim and encounter the world where his conscience lives and works. It is the greatest personal discovery anyone can make.'
We spoke earlier that what lives in our will can be our karma or it can be passions and desires brought into us from the outside from the world of elemental beings. In our time discernment must rise to a mighty encounter in the realm of intuition with the Cherubim. For when we step into the spiritual world with our etheric and astral bodies so as to plunge into the essence of all living things humans animals plants, as we are exorted to do, if we do not know what lives in us we push this out too and what live in us can cause harm! In karmic relationships this results in chaos.
That is why we see so much chaos in the Anthroposophical Society among its members, who have loosened etheric and astral but have not developed a full consciousness of what lives in them. The projection outwards of one's own weaknesses, evils and sins is an illusion, it attributes these weaknesses or evils and sins to the other causing havoc. This is what is only beginning in our time, but as human beings continue to loosen the etheric body, this will result in the war of all against all.
This is the reason our angels are calling us to develop Brotherhood through a feeling for the divinity of the other.
Our astral bodies are connected with the sympathies and antipathies that enter into us (Judas) and swirl inside us and die away into our will, in order to step into the etheric body with its impressions these must become conscious. Otherwise every sensory perception carries beings into us which drive us unconsciously. We must develop a consciousness of the entire soul as a form of self knowledge before we loosen the etheric body so that we do not cause harm when we enter the spiritual world.
In ordinary life we are limited in the harm we can cause for the physical world itself is not inextricably altered by our thoughts unless they become deeds. A person whose etheric body is loose, however, is a creator as we saw yesterday. Selfish egocentric, materialistic passions and desires are beings that when they enter the spiritual world through us become centres of destruction for we wield world creative power across the threshold, as we saw during our last night. Once one crosses the threshold, either in sleep or in waking life through initiation one begins to create what one might call 'offspring', beings related to thought and feelings and will and they in turn become deeds which can be a blessing or a curse for humanity.
If in our day we become more and more conscious of what enters into our souls from nature, from technology and from other human beings (who also possess elemental beings), if we can turn our gaze inwardly to what lives in us with full consciousness, the voice of the Cherubim resounds! We become either increasingly tortured by what we see there or we are filled with the warmth of the spirit. Each night we etherise all that our soul experiences, and all that our body does and this enters the spiritual world and we are judged thereby. If we have been moral in our thoughts, feelings and deeds, then we are well met. If not we fall into unconsciousness so that we cause no harm in the spiritual world.
Only by developing consciousness gradually, do we become more an more worthy, our blood more and more pure, our consciousness more and more awake so that we can recognise Christ, who is love. Only by understanding this on this night can we come to the Seraphim or the Spirits of love, tomorrow night.
May our hearts resound with the voice of conscience this night and may it find us worthy to enter consciously into the company of higher beings so that we can prepare for our work in the coming September. For September is the month of Michaelmas in the Northern Hemisphere. Michael also judges our deeds, he is the Archai who is the highest representative of the Angelic hierarchy and so the foremost mediator between humanity and the First hierarchy and the realm of the Father.
May his gaze fall upon us with approval on this night.
With love and deepest respect, for you dear ones and for Stephen Leisuk a most moral human being.
Namaste!”
-Adriana Koulias | Holy Nights 2021
IMPORTANT NOTE:
Here begins the body of work created in 2020.
The 12 Zodiacal Signs by Rudolf Steiner are presented throughout this journey in Sidereal Astrology style & order, beginning with Sagittarius.
PLEASE SEE THE COMMENT SECTION AT THE BOTTOM OF THE DAY 1 POST FOR FURTHER EXPLANATION AS TO WHY THIS CONCENTRATION PURPOSEFULLY BEGINS WITH THE ZODIACAL SIGN OF SAGITTARIUS.
Day 9
“I will.”
How can I WILL in harmony with thy will?
“In balance of the soul,
Where the Surging Deeds
of the World’s Becoming
Thine own I
Unite with the World I.
And thou wilt truly feel
In Human Soul Weaving.”
Bring over the fruits of your labor from yesterday as you read the following WORD:
Universal daily prayer for divine guidance.
Correct my Defective Vision.“O Father, Mother, Friend, Beloved God! I will reason, I will will, I will act; but lead Thou my reason, will, and activity to the right things that I should do.
I have long been suffering from the jaundiced vision of earthliness. Instead of perceiving Thee, O Ever Living Spirit, my disordered view sees only the pale corpse of matter. Wilt Thou not heal me, that with perfect wisdom sight I behold in all things Thy transfiguring presence?”
What is the Essence of Day 9?
“The Ninth Holy Night is connected to the foremost being of the first Hieararchy, the Seraphim.
Who are the Seraphim?
Rudolf Steiner tells us:
’Seraphim is a name which for those who understand it in its true sense, even in that of ancient Hebrew Esotericism, has always signified that the task of the Seraphim was to receive from the Trinity the highest ideas and aims for a system of worlds.’
On this night the night of the Seraphim, we therefore stand at the threshold of the world of stars, the world of the Trinity. We are at the threshold that separates the starry realm from the planetary realm.
It is on this night we are asked to understand true love in its relation to Atma (the purified physical body) and the human physical body.
One can make an analogy that is not too distant from the truth when one thinks of the Seraphim as those who bring forth an idea that comes from the godhead: to build a new solar system, at the centre of which is ‘a free fully spiritual human being’ Atma...
To achieve this we must discard our lower ego.
Rudolf Steiner tells us:
’As it is, only the first rudiments of love live in our earthly ‘I.’ And even so, a glow is shed over life on earth through the power of love which radiates into this earthly life. But this love must grow stronger. It must gain sufficient strength to enable man to behold the etheric world and the astral world through the power of love and thus to overcome what lives in him as his lower self, as egoism — the opposite of love — to gain mastery over that which, as the antithesis of love, enables him to experience himself in earthly life as an independent ‘I.’ Love must grow so strong that one learns to ignore this earthly ‘I,’ to forget it, to disregard it. Love is the identification of one’s own self with the other being. This impulse must be so strong that one ceases to heed one’s own ‘I’ as it lives in the earthly body. Here then arises the contradiction, that it is precisely through selflessness, through the highest capacity for love, that one advances towards one’s own true ‘I’ beckoning as it radiates through the cycles of time.
One has to lose one’s earthly ‘I’ to behold one’s true ‘I.’ And he who fails to accomplish this act of surrender has simply no means of finding the true ‘I.’ One could say that the true ‘I’ does not want to be sought whenever revelation of its presence is desired. If sought for, it hides. For only in love will it be found, and love is a surrender of self to the other being. For that reason the true Self must be found as if it were another being.
At the moment of coming face to face with one’s true ‘I,’ one also becomes aware of what lives in a wider world, in the spiritual world itself. One meets the beings of the first Hierarchy: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones.’
Just as painters perceive the ‘lifeless’ world and unite with these sense impressions to discover the inner nature of colour, through the auspices of the Seraphim (intuition) so do we carry our soul’s light into the physical form of the other, to find the inner nature, the living spirit. We enter into the other as an artist enters the world!
One could say the art of love is related to being able to ‘perceive’ Christ in the other.
Love can only exist when our will becomes free enough to move our souls into the soul of the other - soul motion.
Christ brought us true love, which is one with his ‘I’, his etherised blood. This love is free, only this love can reach the True Ego.
’Here is a case in point which shows very clearly that man must not only turn his thoughts in other directions, but think in a different way if he is to rise to a true understanding of the spiritual world. He must bring to life what are really only dead images in purely physical sense-perception: his attitude of mind must change.’
Metanoia.
It was the task of the disciples to change their attitude of mind to enter into Jesus to find the Christ ‘I’ and to proclaim Him to the world as the highest form and expression of human love. The disciples were ‘brothers’ not through blood ties, but through Christ.
Tonight the Seraphim ask us: Are you your bother’s keeper?
On the way to the baptism, Jesus of Nazareth encountered the tempters that brought so much lovelessness and selfishness death and pain into the world. He loved the Essenes he encountered, the Rich man and the Leper and in them he saw Lucifer and Ahriman.
He took them into his soul and their pain also became his and because he did so, Christ in Jesus could find the tempters again imprinted in his soul when he experienced their after image. He was then able to meet them in the right way during his temptation in the Wilderness.
However he could not overcome the third temptation because we human beings must overcome it through Christ love.
Through Christ love and selflessness and brotherhood in the physical body must arise between human beings, where stones are turned to bread, that is, in the life of physical needs, regardless of station, race, colour or creed, regardless of karma or blood ties. Christ reconciles all differences, but we must find him in the other. When we do so, the Fathers in Heaven, the first hierarchy, open the gates to the stars for us. ”
What does Intuitive Perception LOOK and FEEL like?
SEE into what you FEEL as you read the following:
“‘The man Jesus walked through the crowds on the shore swaying and stumbling, while the God in him saw the world as foreign and unknown, a distortion of faces and loud noises, of heat and sun and overwhelming smells.
In the body, the muscles strained, air rushed in and out of the lungs and the heart pounded in the chest, while in the mind thoughts flitted past like shadows. How painful it was to cram his mighty power into that mind and that body! A power that could now harness nature and cause miracles, so that his mere presence would seem to men like a world of marvels, a tempest of splendours. It was not his purpose to enrapture and bewilder, to dazzle and astonish, so he directed Jesus into the wilderness in search of a quiet place wherein he could guard the birthing of his new forces.
That is how he came to be in the old cave situated high above the vast mountainous wasteland of Judea. From its lip he could observe the sun falling into the night, and partake for the first time in the splendour of colours that are separate from the self. Above, Christ looked to the home of his heart, now distant and detached from him. From beyond those stars he had come, descending downwards aeon after aeon. Men had seen him in their mysteries and had worshipped him in their rituals and given him many different names, and now he would walk among them – a God extracted, separated out from heaven and born into the body of a man.
This conception on earth was to his Fathers in the heavens, like a death. He heard a lamentation. He listened. It came not from heaven but from the sleeping souls of the world. They were reaching out to him in their supplication as they had always done. This was why he had come, to make this earth his heaven and rescue it from the maws of hell. Jackals called as the moon made a rise. He had never seen such a moon nor heard such a sound and an intuition drew his attention to the shadows of the night.
From them came the vision of a red-winged angel, falling from the sky and landing at the lip of his cave. It thrust one sad, melancholic eye at him, and said, ‘If it isn’t the favourite come down from his high perch to visit his poor relations!’
‘What are you?’ Christ asked it.
‘Where are your manners, brother? Did no one tell you that this is my kingdom? Come, before you step across my threshold you must first recognise the master of the house! Bend low before me and our little quarrel shall be forgiven. Perhaps I’ll even share some of the riches and power I have gained from this wretched world with you? You have to concede this is more than you did for me!’
A vision came then of Jesus standing before a man who was running from the Devil on his shoulders. This was that Devil, he realised. This was Lucifer, his brother who was cast down from heaven. ‘Lucifer,’ he said to it now. ‘Look into my face! I see you haven’t changed ... You think you can lure me with power because this is your weakness, but listen carefully to me … I have not come into this world to rule it, nor have I come to serve you, I have come to serve the rightful gods!’
Lucifer’s gloomy eye turned to white and a shiver passed over his wings. ‘The rightful gods … yes … what do they know of the world? Do they know anything about thirst? Well? Do they know that human thirst is unquenchable? You are a God, you need not thirst for puny human knowledge, when you can be an angel, like me, an angel is wisdom itself! Throw yourself from the lip of this cave and you will see, as the Psalms say, God will give his angels charge of you, and you will be among them, and they will bear you up with their own hands so that your foot will not even strike one stone!’
But there was something more in the cave with them. From out of the shadowed corners came a blur of blue wings, desiccated and clawing, and the world stirred to make way for them. Another voice came into his ear:
Son of God! Do as your brother says and let us see? Jump! What can happen to you? Fear is something only mortals feel, angels are above such feelings!’
What was this thing called fear? He felt it now, when he thought of jumping from the cave to that great distance below. He was not an angel. If he jumped, Jesus would die, and his task would die with him. ‘Listen to me, Lucifer, your arrogance is made weak by your companion, who has just pointed out that fear is perfectly right for a mortal man! I am a mortal man and fear has given me wisdom! Again, it is written – do not tempt the Lord thy God, to whom you should surrender yourself!’
Lucifer cried an anguished cry, and flew off towards the moon, defeated. But that crawling malignant thing had entered into Jesus. He could feel its blue wings furl and unfurl inside his soul, and he plunged in after it.
‘Son of God!’ the creature breathed. ‘Let me tell you something of hunger. Hunger is a terrible torment for a man; capable of driving even the most pious to sinful acts. But you need not suffer hunger, for you can so easily turn stones to bread by merely saying a word! Say it to impress us!’
Christ tasted ashes and felt the thickness of the bones under his skin, and the mind, imprisoned by a skull, found a memory of the leper … this spirit had tempted that poor man, and had eaten him alive. This was an archangel, and he was far mightier and more dangerous than Lucifer, his brother. He knew his name. He cried out to the ancient creature, ‘Satan, you father of lies! Leave me alone. It is written: man should not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from out of the mouth of God!’
‘That is what they say,’ whispered the creature, ‘those gods who know nothing of men. But men have turned a deaf ear to them, naturally, since they know that the belly must be fed, or the body dies! You see how I love men more than you? When you made life and death a law and left them to their own devices I showed them how to turn stones to coins, and coins to bread so that they might live. And so, as there are stupid men and cunning ones, there are also the rich and the poor. One man can feed his hunger while the other cannot and each trespasses against the other, grasping for the daily bread. If you have come to preach love and eternal life to these animals called men, you might as well go back to that starry home from which you came, Son of God! Brotherly love is impossible while there is death! Over this mystery the will of the heavens cannot rule!’
Christ understood. These backward angels, Lucifer and Satan, had caused men to swing from one extreme to the other. But he had come to show how it was possible to live between extremes, to overcome pride and arrogance through wisdom, and death through love. And here in Jesus’ soul now he discerned a dual nature, a weaving of wisdom and love so endearing that it worked like a great power of attraction for him, and he united his forces with it, and became one with Jesus. He felt a sting, a sudden gnawing in his bowels!
The blue archangel Satan gave a mocking laugh.
‘Now you’ve done it! Feel the tearing of hunger in Jesus? That is why men must live by the rule of the daily bread, and walk side by side with me … the archangel of death!’ The whisper came closer, ‘Listen to me, I am like you, I am stubborn and full of longing, I am eternal, so I shall not be inspired by haste. When the time comes, I shall return for what is mine!
And he was gone.
Christ Jesus let out a gasp and fell to the earthen floor of the cave. Above him he sensed warmth; the love-radiant thoughts of the stars were making a way into his heart to comfort him. And so it was, the orphan from heaven closed his eyes then, and slept his first earthly sleep.”
CONCENTRATE upon the following as you practice Intuitive Perception:
Lovingly Surrender the lower ego (i.e. judgement, opinion & one-sidedness) for but just a moment…a Divine Breath.
Behold THE WORD with the immaculate Heart.
Invite ANTHROPOSOPHIA to Baptize you in the New Water, the “Draught of Remembrance.”
“Though this or that event in the external world may take on a stormy character, though that which is striving to develop from out of the depths of human evolution may have this or that appearance, the essential nature of what is happening to-day can only be grasped if we look at those events which escape the ordinary human powers of perception still usual among us. Such events are only really perceptible when we study the world from a spiritual point of view.
I should like to start by mentioning one such phenomenon which almost escapes notice among the manifold stormy events of to-day. It is regarded as something insignificant and unimportant, but it is an actual fact for one who, from spiritual sources, has acquired the ability to study life as it actually is.
It may sound an extraordinary statement, but it is nevertheless true, that for some seven, eight or ten years now a real student of human life can observe quite a different expression on the faces of new-born babies. Many people, it is true, do not notice this, for the most important things of life pass unheeded to-day. But one who has acquired an eye for such things knows that very many children born during the last seven to ten years wear a melancholy expression. It is as if they ‘held back’ from the world. One might say that even from the first days of life, from the first week onwards, something different can be seen in the physiognomy of these children. And if we investigate this remarkable fact that seems so strange to the man of to-day, we find that the souls entering the world through birth bear within them from before conception and birth that which gives their faces this melancholy expression. Hidden though it often be behind all their smiles, it is nevertheless there in the faces of these children, almost from birth. It was not there formerly. In these souls there lives — though it is quite unconscious, of course — a “reluctance” to enter life. Souls entering through birth to-day feel a kind of hindrance, a difficulty, in entering the physical world.
Now it is a fact that man undergoes an important experience in the spiritual world before entering the physical world through conception and birth, and the effects of this experience are active in his coming life. Here on the earth men die; they pass through the gate of death, laying aside their physical bodies and taking their souls into the spiritual world. These souls still bear within them the effects of all they have experienced in the physical world. After passing through the gates of death human souls appear, on the whole, as the after-effects of what they have immediately experienced in earthly life. Now such souls meet those who are about to descend into a physical body. (This is actually the case. I can only tell you of it, for these things can only be brought from the spiritual world through actual experience of them.) This meeting between those souls who have just passed through the gate of death and those who are just about to enter the physical world through the gate of birth is an important event. Its effect is decisive in many respects. In a certain sense, its function is to give the descending souls some idea of what they will encounter here. It is from this meeting that the “impulse” is derived that stamps the peculiar expression of melancholy on the faces of children entering the world to-day. They do not want to enter the world of which they have learnt through this meeting. For they know how, in a sense, their “spiritual plumage” will be ruffled by what mankind, immersed in materialistic thoughts and feelings, views and deeds, is experiencing on the earth to-day.
This fact (which, naturally, can only be established spiritually) and other things beside throw a strong light on our whole age. The present times can only be understood on such a basis, and we ought to strive for such an understanding...
How helpless, in the main, is the great majority of people in the face of world-events that have come upon them. A most serious question is presented here. What really lies at the base of all this?
At the base of this lies something which is extraordinarily difficult for our materialistically-minded age to grasp, namely: that just since the historical moment in which the wave of materialism rose especially high, the strongest spiritual force that has ever willed to enter human life from the spiritual world is now seeking to enter. It is this that is characteristic of our age. Since the beginning of the last, third of the 19th century the spirit — the spiritual world — is willing to reveal itself to men in all strength; yet men have gradually reached a point in their development when they are only willing to use their physical bodies as instruments for receiving anything at all in the world. Their materialistic outlook has accustomed them to consider — even to maintain on theoretical grounds that the physical body is the instrument of thinking and, indeed, of feeling and willing too. Men have persuaded themselves that the physical body is the instrument of all spiritual life. They have not persuaded themselves of this without grounds; they have good reason for this, namely: That man in the course of his evolution had gradually come to be able to use only the physical body. It had really come about that only the physical body could be used as the instrument of spiritual activity.
So we stand to-day at the infinitely important juncture in human evolution where, on the one hand, the spiritual world is willing to reveal itself with great power, while, on the other, man must find the strength to free himself from his greatest entanglement in what is material and come to a new reception of spiritual revelations.
To-day man is confronted by the greatest trial of his strength — his power to work his way in freedom to the spirit which is approaching him of itself, if he does not shut himself off from it. The time is past when the spiritual could reveal itself to man in all sorts of subconscious and unconscious processes. The time has come when man must receive the light of the spirit through a free, inner deed. All the confusion and want of clarity in which men are living to-day come from the fact that men must receive something that they do not yet want to receive: an entirely new understanding of things.
The old ways of thought, the old ways of regarding world-events, came to full expression in the terrible catastrophe of the world-war. Its infinitely significant warning signs are nothing but a call to re-model our ways of thinking, to try a new way of regarding the world, for the old way can only lead again and again to chaos and confusion. It is time we realised this. It is time we realised that the leading statesmen in 1914 had come to a point at which nothing more could be achieved with the old methods of thought. Because of this they led humanity into misfortune. People must impress this fact strongly upon themselves, or they will not form a strong resolution really to meet the spirit and the life of the spirit in freedom and inwardness of soul.
The lamentable thing about the time in which we are living is that we see things being revealed everywhere which cannot be understood with previous points of view and previous conceptions of life; yet people cling firmly to these old points of view and conceptions of life and simply do not want to come to new modes of conception. The anthroposophic view of the world wanted to prepare mankind for such new modes. Fundamentally, the anthroposophic view of the world had no real opponents except inner comfort and laziness of soul. People cannot rouse themselves to bring the inner forces of their souls to meet the spiritual wave invading our life so powerfully to-day.
I have just said that people are no longer accustomed to use anything but their physical bodies for thinking. It is this that had led to the materialistic view of the world. Now there is one thing that simply must be understood to-day. Nature, as studied by natural science to-day — that science which has achieved so many triumphs — can be understood with the instrument of the physical brain or of the physical body in general. But one cannot understand human life with this instrument of the physical body. We can only understand human life if we can rise to a thinking that is not produced by the physical body alone. It is this thinking that should be cultivated through the anthroposophic view of the world. Of course people say they do not understand the anthroposophic outlook — what is given in our books or presented in lectures. And we can quite believe them. But what does this mean? It only means that they want to se their physical brains for understanding. They do not want to learn another kind of thinking than that which can lazily find support in the physical brain. The anthroposophic view of the world cannot, of course, be understood with such thinking. It is not that one would have to be clairvoyant in order to understand it. But one must train oneself to a thinking that is not bound to the physical brain. What is to be found in anthroposophic literature and can be acquired with the healthy human understanding — for the healthy human understanding is not bound to the brain — gradually develops a thinking, a feeling and a willing that are adequate to the needs of to-day. It is a fact that what the present requires of us cannot be understood by the instrument of the physical body; it must be apprehended, through the instrument of the etheric body, i.e., with the body of formative forces underlying the physical body.
The spiritual world which is striving to reveal itself to men, only finds expression in their deeply unconscious feelings. Men are dominated by an unconquerable fear of the spiritual world. When they say they do not understand spiritual science this is really only an excuse. The truth is, they are afraid of the revelations of the spiritual world. It is only because they will not admit this fear that they say they do not understand spiritual science, or that it is not logical — or they make other excuses. In truth, they are afraid and therefore seek all possible excuses in order to escape from the great problems. How glad people are when they can escape the great tasks and riddles of present day life! When one spoke, maybe from this or that angle, of important problems of our age, people grew uncomfortable. Then perhaps they went to see the plays of Ibsen in which some of the great problems of the age find partial expression. But they did not need to take these seriously; all that is “merely” dramatic art. People grew uncomfortable when one spoke to them directly of the penetration of the physical world by the spiritual. Now Björnson had treated of this in his dramas, but one had no need to believe it; it was “only” art. People felt an unconquerable fear of taking these things seriously.
Again, class differences became greater and greater, the gulf between the governing and proletarian classes became wider and wider. The social question produced riddles; one talked of these but felt uncomfortable about them. Yet people went to the theatre to see Hauptmann’s “Weavers,” though they felt no need to take a serious attitude to the problems it presented. One let oneself be stirred a little by the abysmal depths in human life, but there was no need to take it seriously, for it was “just” art. People took refuge in something that they did not need to take seriously. This is a phenomenon that is characteristic of the psychology of the age. What lies behind this?
Behind this lies the fact that men, in accordance with the will on the part of the spiritual world to reveal itself to them, ought to have striven to take seriously certain things which cannot be grasped through the instrumentality of the physical body, but only through “imaginative” forces — just as art itself can only be grasped by “imaginative” forces. Man’s physical body is built up like a natural product; it is a work of nature. Man’s etheric body is built up like a work of art; it is a real work of plastic art — only, it is in constant motion. And what man receives (for his enjoyment) from understanding a work of art, must be intensified and clarified, must become perception which he takes seriously, i.e., “Imagination,” “Inspiration” and “Intuition.” Man then understands what is willing to reveal itself to him to-day. For behind present events waits concealed what can only be understood spiritually. One should feel deeply that the spiritual revelation trying to enter our present world can only be grasped through spiritual science itself i.e., through that thinking and feeling, through those inner impulses of will which can be trained by spiritual science and belong to the same region of soul as artistic perceptions — though these are not taken seriously and remain mere mirror-images...
We need new “impulses” (or springs of action). If one comes to-day with a new “impulse,” it is the last thing that people understand. For if one brings a new “impulse,” whose source is entirely within the spiritual world, and presents it as a remedy for the evils of our age, complaints are heard on all sides, from the extreme right to the extreme left, that it is all incomprehensible. Of course one does not understand it if one wants to retain the old forms of thinking. But to-day it is necessary to overcome these old forms, re-modelling one’s whole soul inwardly. All external revolutions, no matter how agreeable to this or that party or class, lead into the worst of blind alleys and will bring the greatest misery to mankind if not illuminated by the inner revolution of the soul. This means throwing off one’s absorption in the purely materialistic view of the world and preparing actively to receive the spiritual wave that is willing to invade human evolution as a new revelation. The revolution from matter to spirit is the only salutary revolution; all others are only like diseases of childhood — scarlet-fever or measles — afflicting the early stages of what is trying to come to healthy expression in the emergence of the spirit at the present time.
A strong inner resolution is necessary to-day if we are to be equal to the demands made upon us by our present age. Let us consider in all earnestness that it is a spiritual world that is trying to invade our life. Spiritual forces are there and we should make our decisions, our deeds, our whole thinking dependent on them. This is demanded of us to-day! Much is changing in the present time. Let me point to something symptomatic which also sounds strange when spoken of, but appears of the greatest importance when viewed spiritually.
I have just spoken to you of the etheric body as a necessary instrument for a certain spiritual understanding of what in art need only remain a mirror-image. Now we know from Spiritual Science that in addition to the physical body and “etheric body” we possess an “astral body” — or whatever you like to call it. It is the psychic element proper and is essentially more spiritual than the “etheric body.” At the time of his physical development man was naturally more “remote” from this than from his “etheric body.” For the “etheric body,” underlying, as it does, the physical body, has a kind of “form” [Bildgestalt] even though it is a “form” in constant motion. The “astral body,” however, is really formless. When we speak of it, we are speaking of an “image” or “picture” which, we know, is only intended to “represent” the “astral body,” for this is really formless. The “astral body” has been changing during the last three to four centuries and is very different in modern man. The human beings of the past had “astral bodies” that were, comparatively speaking, permeated with all kinds of spiritual forces; the spiritual feelings and impulses at work in their lives were due to this spiritual element in their “astral bodies.” To-day our “astral bodies” have becomeempty. They are remarkably empty, and this is because, at the present time, when the power of the spiritual world is striving to reveal itself from without (to a certain extent), man is to receive this external spiritual world. Hence his “astral body” has gradually become empty. He ought to fill himself again with what is revealing itself from without. This has a quite definite effect on man. And now I am coming to a fact which, as I have already said, sounds so very strange when one speaks of it just as strange as when one speaks of the child’s melancholy countenance. Nevertheless it is a fact...
The man of to-day cannot form sensible decisions at all if he does not wake up with them in the morning. This is true, however strange it may sound, and men will recognise it more and more from external acts. It is not necessary that we should be conscious of these decisions; in our sub-consciousness we live through in the night what we can experience on the following day. Man has not yet got so far as to be able to survey it prophetically, but that is not the point. If you harbour a thought at 3:30 or 6 o’clock, it may be a thought that you have already had in the night and now arises in you again. If, however, a thought arises that you have not already formed in the night but which is produced from out of the events of the day, it cannot be a reasonable thought in the case of the man of to-day. The man of to-day has to draw his most important impulses from the spiritual world. These do not come from the physical world at all. To-day we cannot but be “unreasonable” if we do not bring our decisions with us, if we do not appeal to this life in the spiritual world. When our “astral body” is free at night, i.e., outside the physical and “etheric” bodies and together with the spiritual world, that which is most essential takes place; it is prepared for the Reason of the day (and more so than in the case of our ancestors). The moment of waking should be sacred for the modern man. He should feel: I come from the spiritual world and enter the physical; all that is good, all that makes me capable of being a reasonable man, I have experienced between falling asleep and waking up, through intercourse with the spiritual world, through intercourse with the dead I have known in life and who have died before me — in short, through intercourse with those who are no longer in a physical body. I experience it when I am with them in the purely spiritual world. From this experience I ought to draw the fundamental mood of sacred regard for the moment of waking; this fundamental feeling will then make it possible for me throughout the day to say in one case “Here I am helped by a spiritual impulse” and in another case “Here I receive no help; this must not be decided before to-morrow.”
That is a way of conducting one’s life spiritually, really reckoning with spiritual factors. Of course, in a materialistic age men do not reckon with spiritual factors for they are always so “clever.” They believe that nothing more than the instrument of the physical body is required in order to be clever. They do not appeal to what can be revealed to them when they are separated from their physical body and are together with the spiritual world in their “astral body.” Nothing but the will to conduct life spiritually, the will to allow spiritual decisions, spiritual impulses, to play a part in what we do in the physical world can make humanity healthy again...
This is what man should really consider thoroughly to-day. The anthroposophic view of the world cannot consist in a number of abstract concepts which we receive, studying them and resting content that we have a different view of the world from that of others. No; our whole thinking and our whole feeling must become different, so that we realise that we must let our life be penetrated by the light of the spirit. Humanity’s present misfortunes have come from its refusal to entertain the spiritual — an attitude that has been cultivated to the utmost...Man should learn from it that he was driven into it by his previous thinking, feeling and willing; he will not come out of it — though it will assume other forms — until he boldly determines to undertake the inner transformation of his soul.
The facts which I have put before you are indeed facts: the melancholy expression on the faces of children, the necessity of using our etheric body for gaining an understanding of the world, and the necessity of appealing to the moment of waking, to what remains of the previous sleep and glows on, as it were, in us.. It will be more and more necessary for man’s future evolution that he should let the spirit play an active part.
One should understand that the anthroposophic view of the world is not intended as something sensational for “psychic idlers” — and many of our present day mystics are just that. One should see in it not a kind of dessert supplementing life’s external, physical enjoyments, but something connected with the deepest impulses of our cultural life. The latter cannot become healthy unless fructified by the anthroposophic view of the world. We should engrave this fact deeply upon our souls when we have learnt to know this anthroposophic view.”
Think with your HEART all the way through to the other side of the above wedded WORDS.
Weave the Golden Thread.
Take the fruits of your labor into dreamtime with you tonight.
Allow your Higher Being to begin to inform your inner most movement.May you come to hold the FAITH in the following:
“The feeling that accompanies the inflow of the spirit into the soul during - or immediately after - meditation is the ‘radiant breath of freedom.’ A feeling of EMANCIPATION is the sign that the spirit has made contact with the soul and is flowing through it. This feeling is no illusion, but a real effect of a real cause. For it is the special function of meditation to cause the soul to devote itself no longer only to the philosophical problem of freedom but to the real LIFE-ELEMENT of freedom; precisely by EXPERIENCING it thus, we learn to solve the problem of freedom. Experience of freedom comes to the human soul through direct and conscious contact with the spiritual world.
To be in direct contact with the spiritual world is to experience freedom - the air and life-breath of the soul...
Such a condition does not consist in the capacity to wish for this or that, but in the degree of CONSCIOUSNESS with which a deed is carried out. In meditation this becomes experience, because meditation itself is a deed that can only be derived from, and carried out, in complete consciousness.
Human beings can be free ONLY insofar as they are CONSCIOUS.
For when Christ Jesus spoke the words from the cross: ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,’ He implied that they who did it were not yet free, because they did not know what they were doing and therefore could not be held responsible. Human beings are fully responsible when the KNOW what they are doing, for only then are they free...
For will in itself is not free; and consciousness in itself lacks deeds - it is the ‘faith that is without works is dead.’
Strength of will must be added to clear consciousness, thus making the dark, and hence unfree, will bright - that is, free - by the light of consciousness. The gospel precept ‘Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free’ underlies this purely HUMAN idea of freedom.
The only HUMAN conception of freedom is realized in DEEDS inspired by the SPIRITUAL WORLD and carried out on EARTH. For human beings are on earth to ACT; yet at the same time are SPIRITUAL beings, and as such have to act on earth.”
May you be held in the womb of 𝒮𝑜𝓅𝒽𝒾𝒶 & filled with the Light of ℭ𝔥𝔯𝔦𝔰𝔱 today & always.
Image by @waldorfchalkboarding
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