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.
December 27th, 2021 Addition
Keep in mind that the 4th Holy Night is from midnight on Dec. 27th to midnight Dec. 28th.Let us add Sagittarius into the mix:
“28 December - Sagittarius: This is also the day of the Murder of the Innocents. They were the souls who had died as innocents by Herod’s hand and thus safeguarded and prepared the path for Christ. Rudolf Steiner has pointed out that it means that when the souls of children, and even babies, return to the spiritual worlds too soon, for their etheric forces are not used up and they return unladen to the spiritual worlds without sin and in purity of life, and it is these stored up forces that later on help to bring about the great and significant spiritual deeds of the Earth. Their death served the Child who was to bear the Christ, and their sacrifice prepared the path and filled the cosmos with a power of spiritual youth to make possible the Events of thirty years later in the Ministry of Christ. Also, the Archer represents the centaur, with the upper part being human and the lower part an animal. This is closely connected in cosmic imaginations with the process of human evolution toward that fulfillment of the “I”, or ego that is our destiny. Thus we have that thread from the dim past through the present 3 to the dim future. The centaur aims at the future with the arrow. All human evolution depends entirely on sacrifice, for all sacrifice creates progress for others, and even the sacrifice of life and health may be required. This is a fundamental law, and forms the background of a gigantic imagination, this deep, deep secret of sacrifice. Golgotha was the Supreme Sacrifice, and it opens up deep secrets. All spiritual accomplishments come from sacrifice.”
- Willi Sucher
AND MAY THIS BECOME THE DANDELION OF THE OUTFLOWING WISDOM AVAILABLE TO OUR SOULS:
“The Fourth Holy Night - ARCHAI - SAGGITARIUS/GOAT - NIGHT OF THE CHOICE.
Dear friends, if we wish to know for ourselves the significance of these Holy Nights for the coming year, we won't find evidence of it anywhere. It is the same with the life of Christ Jesus. One does not find any evidence of his life and this is very important, for we are meant to discover the evidence for ourselves!
Hence, we only know how significant these nights are if we practise, meditate and live with them, not merely now but during the entire year. Having done this for many years I will share with you how I work with them, but every person will find their own individual way. I would love to hear how you work with them.
Firstly, as you know, I write these reflections on the day before each Holy Night. I started doing this as a way of articulating Rudolf's Steiner's findings in my own words. As time progressed I began to have my findings and experiences which I added to them. This is what Rudolf Steiner had hoped with all his heart, that we develop our own experiences for ourselves. In order to see the effects of my work during the Holy Nights, I began to keep a diary. I began to see how each Advent I was faced with a real life physical trial, as well as those of a more spiritual and soul nature. Each Holy Day, I noted what I did, what transpired, how well I kept these days 'holy', where and when I transgressed. Each night I tried to note down any dreams, thoughts, experiences. By the end of the nights I had a picture of the journey and could look back at the year that had gone to see how it had informed my ability to stay conscious. During the following year whenever I was faced with difficulties, illnesses or indeed breakthroughs and joyous moments of discovery, I would look too see how they corresponded with the Holy Day and Holy Night.
When you make this a life practise, you will discover that it is imperfect, that you make mistakes but also that you do achieve something of great value. You begin to see the rhythm, poetry and even yes the elegance of mathematics in all that transpires.
I wanted to share this with you because the question was asked regarding how we know that each holy night has a bearing on a month of the year. The only way to really know, is to find out for yourself. This in our time is true faith - spirit vision.
Having said this let us return to our study!
The Archai rule the region of the Archer or the Centaur/Sagittarius and this Holy Night is connected to April.
This is a most important month. For it was in April that Christ performed his sacrifice on Golgotha the Mount of the Skulls and it is what Rudolf Steiner calls The Mystery of Golgotha.
The Archai as we know passed through their human stage on Saturn. That is where they acquired their ego, when we were just developing our physical bodies. They have since then developed Manas, Budhi and Atma. They are three stages higher than human beings on Earth who are only now acquiring the fullness of their ego. In a sense we have an affinity with them in the region of the physical body and the ego. Hence the ARCHAI are connected to the Zodiacal region of the goat or Saggitarius, for Saggitarius is depicted as being both animal and human.
Some say the name April is derived from Aphrilis the Greek Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, the goddess that the Romans called Venus. Others say that around the fifth century, the Anglo-Saxons referred to April as Oster-monath or Eostre-monath, a reference to the goddess Eostre, whose feast was celebrated during the month. The Venerable Bede, a monk from the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter, believed this gave root to the word Easter— the first Easter having occurred on the third month - April - According to Rudolf Steiner.
What do the Archai then have to do with the Planet Venus? Rudolf Steiner tells us:
'The realm of the Spirits of Personality or Archai reaches to Venus.'
Venus is designated by Spiritual Science to be the closest to the sun, for the names of Venus and Mercury have been interchanged.
Seen from an earthly perspective the influence of the spirits of Personality, or as they are sometimes called the Primal Powers, or as we know them the Archai extends from the earth to the region of Venus.
'We keep to physical conditions when we say: Up to the Moon the Angels exercise their power, up to Mercury the Archangels, to Venus the Spirits of Personality, up to the Sun the Powers, as far as to Mars the Mights.' Rudolf Steiner.
While the angels guide individual human beings, archangels whole nations, the Archai guide the whole of humanity as it develops on earth and this has to be done from those regions that extend as far as Venus.
The Archai are those beings of the Angelic Hierarchy that are connected to the first hierarchy in the sense that they are spirits of Time, having acquired their ego during Saturn (Chronos) they keep a record of humanity's progress (Karma) for the first hierarchy.
Hence Rudolf Steiner in the Foundation Stone Meditation exorts us to Practise Spirit Recollection in that part of the physical body connected to the Seraphim Cherubim and Thrones - the physical body being the principle sphere of action also of the Archai.
So what does this mean?
It is often the case that the highest spirituality is associated with the densest physical materiality and we see this in the Archai, who macrocosmically carry the memory of the Earth's karma to the highest hierarchy, and also microcosmically carry the memory of human karma into our daily lives through our physical bodies in our very bones.
Rudolf Steiner tells us:
'Karma is elaborated in conjunction with the Archai. It is moreover in the power of the Archai to bestow upon us what we need in order that we may not only live through the period between death and a new birth, but, at our next descent to the earthly world, possess already a power which in earliest childhood, enables us, each in his own way, to learn to walk, to find equilibrium, to differentiate the functions of feet and hands, arms and legs.' Rudolf Steiner.
What we do, where we walk, what paths in life we take - these are often led by Karma and the Archai who carry the memory of our karma in our limbs.
On the other hand, in the First Class of the School of Spiritual Science Rudolf Steiner asks:
What do the Angeloi teach us? We humans think. At first we believe that we are experiencing our thoughts alone. But as our thoughts are passing through our minds, the Angeloi really live in them. And when we feel with our senses – as when we grasp something – the Angeloi live in our thinking; it is their feeling. They bring it to our consciousness. And just as the Angeloi feel in our thinking, the Archangeloi experience in our feeling, and the Archai perceive in our willing.
The Archai perceive in our willing!
Rudolf Steiner goes on to say that:
'We would disappear into nothingness in our willing if we did not have the Archai's strength of perception in this willing.'
They perceive through our willing so that we can elaborate our karma through our limbs.
Let us look back at what the aims of the angels are in developing pictures in our astral bodies for the future:
That human beings develop true brotherhood
That human beings perceive the divinity in the soul of the other
The human beings are able to have an unquestionable understanding of the foundation of nature.
We've seen during the last three nights how we can achieve a new kind of thinking which is a form of perception, a perception through willed thinking. This perception is the fruit of the workings of the entire Third Hierarchy.
Rudolf Steiner goes on to tell us:
'When a thought is passing through your minds, my dear sisters and brothers, then feel that in this thought a being from the hierarchy of the Angeloi feels something. The Angeloi touch something when you think. When you are feeling, a being from the hierarchy of the Archangeloi experiences something. When you are willing, while your willing is unfolding, a being from the hierarchy of the Archai perceives something.Human thinking, human feeling, human willing, are not mere processes in humanity. While we are thinking, the Angeloi are feeling; while we are feeling, the Archangeloi are experiencing; while we are willing, the Archai are perceiving.' Rudolf Steiner.
When we think, feel and will consciously:
Thinking becomes Imagination - Angels
Feeling becomes Inspiration - Archangels
Willing becomes Intuition - Archai
One can say that Intuition is what the Angels working on behalf of the entire angelic hierarchy are hoping for us to achieve. The ability to perceive through the power of the will, that is, Will unites with Thinking to create a form of perception so that we can truly know what drives our actions.
In ordinary life we get up, go to work and perform tasks from necessity (karma) but also we have desires and passions that cause us to do this or that. Usually very little thought is put into where the impulses to our actions come from - from inside or from outside.
In primordial times when human beings encoutered another human being they saw an image of the soul of that human being and they understood their relationship with that human being, which rose like a memory into their souls - they knew what they had to do together. When they wanted to know what to do with regards to the world of nature, when to sow or reap they tuned their souls to experience the soul of nature and in after images and complementary colours they knew if the time was right to sow or to reap. Because they had not yet elaborated the faculty of thought the human being did not have a choice, they did what was necessary dicated by inner karma or by outer desire dictated by external forces.
Later as human beings became more subject to the dictates of matter, only priests and kings (initiates) had the authority to bring about relationships among human beings (marriages, wars, contracts) or to tell them what they should do or should not do regarding when to sow or reap, again human beings followed directives in a passive way - for authority compelled.
In our time we are developing individual freedom from karmic necessity and external forces by developing the intellect. This has separated us from the gods and also from human authority of kings and priest so that we are left on our own.
Now in the age of freedom we have Choice - what rises up as a memory in the will from karma or enters the will from external impulses to drive us has to go through thought.
We think:
'Should I do this?'
This is a most important moment! We are given a choice! Something no other being in the cosmos is given. The choice not to be ruled or compelled internal or external forces.
But Who was it that gave us this choice really? Who is it that elaborates the willing feeling and thinking life in our souls so that we can stand freely? It is the human ego. But the human ego could not have achieved this on its own, due to Luciferic and Ahrimanic temptation:
'The ego might have so developed that it could not keep a hold upon itself, and had it been delivered to these forces, everything that came from the soul would have been overpowered by all sorts of elemental forces that arise from wind, air or water. They would have driven the human being violently in all directions.' Rudolf Steiner.
Once again Christ so loved the world that he descend to the Earth to rescue the human ego by dying on the cross for the sins of the world, the passions and desires that drive karma and necessity, resurrecting the human physical body as an archetype for all human beings so that one day they might be able to overcome the elemental forces and the necessity of death and karma so as to rises to a burgeoning new life and destiny.
So we are given a choice! Karma or destiny, Passions and desires or love!
Ordinarily when a feeling rises up from the will that we must do something what happens next is we decide on the pros and cons in an abstract way and then after consideration we make a decision:
'This must be done'
If we are attentive a feeling rises up that confirms our choice and we proceed to perform the deed. But is the deed done out of love? Was it a selfless free deed or one compelled by karma or by passions and desires? We won't know until we fall asleep each night and offer up our deeds to the spiritual world through the agency of our angels who take the essence of the deed to the Archai.
Then, the Archai will either accept the deed as selfless or reject it as selfish:
'And what enables the Ego to be united with the Archai? Although we ourselves, to begin with, are unconscious during sleep, the Being from the Hierarchy of the Archai is fully conscious, receives what is unconscious in us and elaborates it into a definite thought of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with what we have done during the day. But what is it that enables us to be connected rightly with these Archai, in the same way as idealism in speech leads us into right connection with Archangeloi?
'One quality alone brings the Ego, during sleep, into right connection with the Archai, namely true human love, universal and unselfish love for human beings, sincere interest in every fellow man with whom life brings us into contact. I do not mean sympathy or antipathy, which are merely the outcome of something we are not willing to overcome. True and genuine love for human beings during the waking state leads us, during sleep, to the bosom of the Archai. And there, while the Ego is resting in the bosom of these Beings, karma or destiny is shaped. A verdict is passed: ‘I am satisfied with what I have performed with my arms and legs.' And out of the satisfaction or dissatisfaction is born a power that not only plays a part in the period immediately following death, but continues on to the next earthly life — the power to shape destiny aright, so that true balance and adjustment are brought about in all those things which in one earthly life we have experienced in the Ego during sleep, in communion with the Archai.' Rudolf Steiner.
So, we see how supremely important it is that we know what drives our deeds! And as this Holy Night is connected to the Archai and to karma and will have an effect on the month of April, the month that corresponds to the sacrifice of the Macrocosmic Ego of Christ for the freedom of our ego, we must strive to become awake to what drives our actions on this day.
Let's take ourselves back to the after image and complementary colour. We see a person illuminated by light and we remember his physical form. We have said, to truly love that person we must extend our interest, or one could also say our thinking not merely to the physical form but also to the spiritual form that is hidden behind it. This is the soul form that we find in our own souls when we perceive the person and close our eyes, an after image that is also a feeling or complementary colour rises up in our souls.
Here we are crossing the threshold and the concert of beings of the Third Hiearchy are helping us to achieve this experience of the other. Again let us read what Rudolf STeiner tells us:
'What do the Angeloi teach us? We humans think. At first we believe that we are experiencing our thoughts alone. But as our thoughts are passing through our minds, the Angeloi really live in them. And when we feel with our senses – as when we grasp something – the Angeloi live in our thinking; it is their feeling. They bring it to our consciousness. And just as the Angeloi feel in our thinking, the Archangeloi experience in our feeling, and the Archai perceive in our willing.
When a thought is passing through your minds, my dear sisters and brothers, then feel that in this thought a being from the hierarchy of the Angeloi feels something. The Angeloi touch something when you think. When you are feeling, a being from the hierarchy of the Archangeloi experiences something. When you are willing, while your willing is unfolding, a being from the hierarchy of the Archai perceives something. Human thinking, human feeling, human willing, are not mere processes in humanity. While we are thinking, the Angeloi are feeling; while we are feeling, the Archangeloi are experiencing; while we are willing, the Archai are perceiving.'
Angel - feels the other through our thinking.
Archangel - experiences the other through our feeling
Archai - perceives the other through our will.
That is how we can Love the other, from the ground of the spirit in the human being - the third Hierarchy!
Similarly when we look into the world of nature, at a rose say, when we close our eyes we see the soul element of the rose which has entered us. Here it is the elemental beings of nature that are felt experienced and perceived through us by the third hierarchy.
So we have a conscious meeting with human beings who have a karmic connection with us and a conscious meeting with elemental beings of nature which are soul beings and can ignite our passions and desires.
But in our times like never before there are also lower elemental beings which correspond to the man created things around us, beings that are not etheric like the nature beings but sub etheric beings connected to electricity and magnetism and they are connected with adversarial powers, these too drive us.
Every thing that enters our soul to form concepts and memories and thoughts has a soul counterpart that dies away in our will unless we are conscious of it, be they of a karmic or elemental and these compel us to unfree deeds that cannot be done out of love!
For love requires freedom!
Christ came to this world to free our ego from the rulership of elemental passions and desires that are the result of what dies in us and to redeem karma so that we could move from necessity of the past to the destiny of the future.
For if we stand before a person and feel an elemental passion rise to strike them - even if this is from karmic necessity this is not a free deed. But if we stand before that person and consciously realise that we have a karma to strike them which gives rise to passion and yet we can make a conscious choice not to strike them, this is the creation of new destiny!
Love is what holds our hand, love defies necessity, love is not passion. It is what we choose to do or not do out of conscious freedom which is love for the Christ in the other. Only this can be called a free deed and only then do we meet the true essence of love, Christ in our souls.
Human Love leads to freedom and freedom to the Highest superhuman love.
Through Christ we allow karma to bring us together with others and then we elaborate destiny. When we unite with nature consciously we find Christ there too! For the elemental beings hear it! Our love for the elemental beings is what brings them to the Christ in our souls so that they are released and redeemed!
But what do we do at that moment we are about to strike?
We have to imagine the action we are about to perform, just as we imagine a spiritual picture of the person who stands before us, only now we must imagine we are doing the deed, what rises up will be a picture full of feelings, of the consequence or will effects of the deed.
This happens in a split second.
Rudolf Steiner tells us in the future people will do this quite naturally. They will be about to perform a task and see the consequence as a picture that rises up from their will.
We must start to do this now, that is what the angels are asking of us.
Now we know the meaning of true brotherhood through knowing the divinity in the soul of the other which is Christ and we have an unquestionable understanding of the true essence of nature, in the soul of the world, which is one with Christ since his death of the cross.
The free deed is what is accepted by the Archai who then elaborate karma for the next life from the destiny created in this life out of pure Christened love.
'The power to shape destiny aright, so that true balance and adjustment are brought about in all those things which in one earthly life we have experienced in the Ego during sleep, in communion with the Archai.' Rudolf Steiner.
Michael, who is now an Archai, is the great shaper of karma for Anthroposophists. Anthroposophists more than any other human beings have come together through karma to create new destiny. And Micheal takes a special interest in our freedom. He is the countenance of Christ, and observes our deeds carefully seeking in them what is free and therefore done out of love - for to whom much is given, from him much is expected.
May we be well met by his discerning gaze on this Holy Night.
With Love and Deepest respect, for you dear ones, and for Stephen Lesiuk, who walked lightly on this earth respecting its elements, and who was filled with fraternal love.
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 4
“I BELIEVE.”
How can I BELIEVE with certainty beyond the void, uniting head & heart (faith & hope), within the bridal chamber of my consciousness?
“For the Christ Will
in the encircling Round holds sway
In Rhythms of Worlds
Bestowing Grace on the soul...”
Bring over the fruits of your labor from yesterday as you read the following WORD:
The untutored song of my heart.
“I sing a hymn unuttered by any other voice. To Thee I offer the virgin theme that my heart chants secretly. Alone I have nurtured my song child; now I bring it to Thee for Thy training.
To Thee I give no intellectual, premeditated, and disciplined aria; only the untutored strains of my heart. For Thee no hothouse flowers, watered by careful emotions; only rare wild blossoms that grow spontaneously on the highest tracts of my soul.”
What is the Essence of Day 4?
“During the previous three nights we have worked on our faculties of Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition so as to draw close to the Angels Archangels and Archai at night.
This, was the first hierarchy.
Every three nights we move one step higher, to a different hierarchy. So this night is a special night, this night we can enter into sphere of the second hierarchy;
Exusiai (Form), Dynamis (movement), Kyriotetes (wisdom).
This is the night we must draw close to the Exusiai, who were responsible for giving us a provisional ego and for forming the physical world we have around us.
One could say that our previous three nights have been an elaboration of the Astral Body.
The first night was its connection with the Intellectual soul through thought, the second the Sentient Soul through feelings and the third, the Consciousness Soul through will.
Now on this night where we enter the second triad we come to the Etheric body.
The body of habits, memory and life.
This is the night of the Ego. The ego lives in the blood which is the physical manifestation of the Etheric body...
Without an ego we cannot develop. Having ego consciousness is therefore very important. On earth the ego we have, is a reflection. One might say that the ego is a light which shines down into our etheric bodies creating a shadow on our physical bodies.
Our earthly ego is a shadow of our higher ego and we see this reflected in our memory, habits and in the life of our body.
In order to find our higher ego we must look away from our lower ego, in a sense extinguish it, we must ‘turn around’ to see the source of the shadow, the light that shines down.
All our development by way of our lower ego, is for this reason so that we can reach our higher ego. But we can only do this by developing our etheric bodies.
The trouble is, because of materialism, human beings have fallen in love with their lower ego, with the shadow.
Egotism is the result. Egotism is a love for one’s lower ego - Narcissus. But this lower ego, when it does not ennoble the soul, falls prey to the sympathies and antipathies which inspire desires to satisfy only the body, and if it strives to satisfy the soul itself, it is for its own sake, selfishly.
In the physical world in the day our ego should be seen as the tool with which we perfect our own souls so that we can help humanity. When our ego turns lovingly towards others, this selfless love is what enables us at night to have ego consciousness and to come close to the Exusiai.
Love on Earth in the day is Ego consciousness in the spiritual world at night.
Lovelessness on Earth in the day is unconsciousness in the spiritual world at night...
We must love Christ so much that we are prepared to surrender our shadowy lower ego to make way in our soul for Christ, the bearer of the Cosmic Ego...
How do we achieve this?
We begin to transform our etheric bodies into bodies of wisdom...
What is the etheric body?
It is the body of habits, of memory and of life.
The ego must set about transforming habits, creating a new kind of memory, a memory that does not solely rely on sense perceptions, but also on spiritual perceptions, which allows the spirit to etherise our blood, that is to ‘activate’ our blood and make it into a body of light. And just as the sun’s light brings life to the world, so should our etheric bodies bring light to the world...
On this night we must be conscious of our lower ego as that part of us which must elaborate and develop our souls so that, when the time comes, we might turn around and see our Higher Selves in our own etheric bodies!
(Tonight) we must decide to remain with the lower ego or rise to our higher selves...
Mary Magdalene had so elaborated her etheric body through her Sentient Soul that in the Garden of Gethsemane, she could turn around, with transformed memory, to see Jesus’ etheric body, his body of light and life! ”
What does Lovingly Turning Around (Transforming Memory) LOOK and FEEL like?
SEE into what you FEEL as you read the following:
“Magdalena remained behind.
Alone at the entrance to the sepulchre a deep sense of loss beckoned tears from her eyes. Her master was gone, his body was not found and she did not know how he could return again without it. Not having seen the angels like the others she wanted to know it for herself but she had lost her spirit sight!
She watched the sun rise over the hills and when it cast its benevolent rays on the mouth of the tomb she braced herself and dared to look inside. She gasped. Lit up by the birthing light were two angels, one at the head of the great stone bier and the other at the foot of it. She had regained her sight!
’Woman, why do you weep?
She harnessed her mind to answer. ‘Because they have taken away my Lord and I know not where they have taken him!’
Fearful she turned around but there was a man standing before her, haloed by sun. She did not know him but he seemed full of the power of burgeoning and sprouting life, as if he were a gardener, a planter or a cultivator.
To see him made her hope that he might know where her master’s body would be. He took the words from out of the mouths of the angels,
‘Woman, why do you weep?’
‘Sir, if you have borne his body from here, tell me where you have laid it and I will take him away.’
The man now called her by her old name, ‘Mary!’ The memory of her master’s words rose through her feeling to her thinking:
Unite with the bridegroom in the bridal chamber of your heart, and from this union will arise in you a knowledge of Who I Am!
Her eyes saw Him now! The youthful body of Jesus, in all its flawless fullness! ’”
CONCENTRATE upon the following as you practice Transforming Memory (Lovingly Turning Around):
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.”
“One who really thinks...recognizes the fact that simply by being a member of society one is in a complicated relation to others.
Imagine that you have a $5 note in your pocket, and you make use of this $5 note by going shopping one morning, and you spend the full $5. What does it mean that you go out with a $5 note in your pocket? The $5 note is really an illusion — it is worth nothing in reality...Money is namely only a ‘go-between’. And only because in our day a certain social order exists, an order belonging purely to the State, therefore this $5 note which you have spent in the morning for different items is nothing else than an equivalent for so many days of labour of so many men. A number of men must have completed so many days of work, so much human labour must have flowed into the social order — must have crystallized itself into merchandise — in order for the apparent worth of the bank note to have any real value, but only at the command of the social order. The bank note only gives you the power to call into your service so much labour, or to put it another way, to command its worth in work.
You can picture it in your mind: There I have a bank note, which assigns to me, according to my social position, the power over so many men. If you now see these workmen selling their labour hour by hour, as the equivalent value of that which you have in your purse as the $5 note, then you begin to get a picture of the real facts.
Our relationships have become so complicated that we no longer pay attention to these things, especially if they do not concern us closely...
What must be done so that social life and forms are consciously established in opposition to anti-social forces? What is really required?
I said that it would be difficult in our time for people to develop sufficient interest in each other. You do not have sufficient interest if you think that you can buy yourself something with a $5 note and do not remember the fact that this brings about a social relationship with certain other human beings and their labour-power. You only have an adequate interest when in your picture you are able to substitute for each apparent transaction (such as the exchange of goods for a $5 note) the real transaction which is linked with it.
Now, I would say that the mere egoistic, soul-stirring talk of loving our fellow-men and acting upon this love at the first opportunity, that this does not constitute social life. This sort of love is, for the most part, terribly egoistic. Many a man is supported by what he has first gained through robbing his fellow-men in a truly patriarchal fashion, in order to create for himself an object for his self-love, so that he can then feel nice and warm with the thought, “You are doing this, you are doing that.”
One does not easily discover that a large part of the so-called love of doing good is a masked self-love. Therefore, the main consideration is not merely to think of what lies nearest to hand, thereby enhancing our self-love, but to feel it our duty to look carefully at the many-sided social structures in which we are placed. We must at first lay the foundations for such understanding. Yet few today are disposed to do so.
I would like to discuss one question from the viewpoint of general education, namely: How can we consciously establish social impulses to balance those anti-social forces which are developing naturally within us? How can we cultivate the social element, this interest of man in man, so that it springs up in us — going ever further and deeper, and leaving us no rest? How can we enkindle this interest which has disappeared so pitiably in our age, the age of the Spiritual Soul? In our age true chasms have already been created between people. Men have no idea about the manner in which they pass one another by without in the least comprehending each other. The desire to understand the other in all his or her uniqueness is very weak today.
On the one hand, we have the cry for social union; and on the other, the ever-increasing spread of purely anti-social principles. The blindness of people toward each other can be seen in the many clubs and societies which people form. They do not provide any opportunity for people to get to know one another. It is possible for men to meet one another for years and not to know each other better at the end than they did at the beginning. The precise need of the future is that the social shall be brought to meet the antisocial in a systematic way.
For this there are various inner soul methods.
One is that we frequently attempt to look back over our present incarnation to survey what has happened to us in this life through our relations with others. If we are honest in this, most of us will say: Nowadays we generally regard the entrance of many people into our life in such a way that we see ourselves, our own personalities, as the center of the review. What have we gained from this or that person who has come into our life? This is our natural way of feeling. It is exactly this which we must try to combat. We should try in our souls to think of others, such as teachers, friends, those who have helped us and also those who have injured us (to whom we often owe more than to those who, from a certain point of view, have been of use to us). We should try to allow these pictures to pass before our souls as vividly as possible in order to see what each has done.
We shall see, if we proceed in this way, that by degrees we learn to forget ourselves, that in reality we find that almost everything which forms part of us could not be there at all unless this or that person had affected our lives, helping us on or teaching us something. When we look back on the years in the more distant past to people with whom we are no longer in contact and about whom it is easier to be objective, then we shall see how the soul-substance of our life has been created by the people and circumstances of the past. Our gaze then extends over a multitude of people whom we have known in the course of time. If we try to develop a sense of the debt we owe to this or that person — if we try to see ourselves in the mirror of those who have influenced us in the course of time, and who have been associated with us — then we shall be able to experience the opening-up of a new sense in our souls, a sense which enables us to gain a picture of the people whom we meet even in the present, with whom we stand face to face today. This is because we have practiced developing an objective picture of our indebtedness to people in the past. It is tremendously important that the impulse should awaken in us, not merely to feel sympathy or antipathy towards the people we meet, not merely to hate or love something connected with the person, but to awaken a true picture of the other in us, free from love or hate.
Perhaps you will not feel that what I am saying now is extremely important — but it is. For this ability to picture the other in oneself without love or hate, to allow the other individual to appear again within our soul, this is a faculty which is decreasing week by week in the evolution of humanity. It is something which men are, by degrees, completely losing. They pass one another by without arousing any interest in each other. Yet this ability to develop an imaginative faculty for the other is something that must enter into pedagogy and the education of children. For we can really develop this imaginative faculty in us if, instead of striving after the immediate sensations of life as is often done today, we are not afraid to look back quietly in our soul and see our relationships to other human beings. Then we shall be in a position to relate ourselves imaginatively to those whom we meet in the present. In this way we awaken the social instinct in us against the anti-social which quite unconsciously and of necessity continues to develop. This is one side of the picture.
The other is something that can be linked up with this review of our relations to others. It is when we try to become more and more objective about ourselves. Here we must also go back to our earlier years. Then we can directly, so to speak, go to the facts themselves. Suppose you are 30 or 40 years of age. You think, “How was it with me when I was ten years old? I will imagine myself entirely into the situation of that time. I will picture myself as another boy or girl of ten years old. I will try to forget that I was that; I will really take pains to objectify myself.” This objectifying of oneself, this freeing of oneself in the present from one’s own past, this shelling-out of the Ego from its experiences, must be specially striven for in our present time. For the present has the tendency towards linking up the Ego more and more with its experiences.
Nowadays man wants to be instinctively that which his experiences make him. For this reason it is so very difficult to acquire the activity which Spiritual Science gives. The spirit must make a fresh effort each time. According to true occult science, nothing can be done by comfortably remaining in one’s position. One forgets things and must always be cultivating them afresh. This is just as it should be because fresh efforts need to continually be made. He who has already made some progress in the realm of Spiritual Science attempts the most elementary things every day; others are ashamed to pay attention to the basics. For Spiritual Science, nothing should depend on remembering, but on man’s immediate experience in the present. It is therefore a question of training ourselves in this faculty — through making ourselves objective — that we picture this boy or girl as if he or she were a stranger at an earlier time in our lives; of bestirring ourselves more and more, of getting free of events, and of being less haunted at 30 by the impulses of a 10 year old.
Detachment from the past does not mean denial of the past. We gain it in another way again, and that is what is so important. On the one hand, we cultivate the social instinct and impulses in us by looking back upon those who have been connected with us in the past and regarding our souls as the products of these persons. In this way we acquire the imagination for meeting people in the present. On the other hand, through objectifying ourselves we gain possibilities of developing imagination directly. This objectifying of our earlier years is fruitful insofar as it does not work in us unconsciously. Think for a moment: If the 10 year old child works on unconsciously in you, then you are the 30 or 40 year old augmented by the 10 year old. It is just the same with the 11, the 12 year old child and so on. Egoism has tremendous power, but its power is lessened when you separate the earlier years from yourself and when you make them objective. This is the important point on which we must fix our attention.”
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:
“In the practice of meditation, the overcoming of DULLNESS must precede the overcoming of numbness in consciousness. Dullness begins when the self-created image - for example, the image of the Rose-Cross - is extinguished, so that what remains as the object of consciousness is the soul’s own activity that first formed the image. What remains is a wordless and imageless inner activity - a remembering to which nothing externally representable and akin to the sense world is attached. Consciousness is in this way freed from the world of the senses, but if first grows dull...
Overcoming dullness...depends upon awakening the forces of the planetary spheres in one’s soul...
(This first appears) in the soul as LACK OF INTEREST: the consciousness slackens and succumbs to dullness because it finds nothing...It is initially incapable of interesting itself in such a colorless and formless content...
This becomes evident through the way we hear, which depends upon our manner of listening.
For there are many kinds and many degrees of listening: interest and lack of interest determine the differences in listening.
One person discerns meaningful things in the babbling of a child, another hears nothing special in the remarks of a truly wise man. What distinguishes these two is the degree of interest they are capable of mustering in their attention...
Now it is a matter of the ‘power of love,’ the capacity to have an ear ‘for the seven basic moral tones (vowels)’ of the world and to meet them with interest.
These ‘seven basic moral tones’ of the world are at the same time the moral content of space: they are the ‘fullness’ (the PLEROMA of the Gnostics) that fills out the ‘void’ (kenoma) of space. ”
May you be held in the womb of 𝒮𝑜𝓅𝒽𝒾𝒶 & filled with the Light of ℭ𝔥𝔯𝔦𝔰𝔱 today & always.
Image by @waldorfchalkboarding
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