What can we say now that hasn’t already been said about the massive social changes we are weathering as Covid-19 has spread around the world. Some of us live in hotspots with thousands of people dying and others don’t, but never before in our lifetimes have we shared a crisis affecting everyone on the planet. Whether or not we know someone who has suffered or died from their susceptibility to the virus, we have certainly felt compassion for those victims and their families.
We have been amazed by the dedication of all those people who are serving on the front lines. And we’ve probably felt confusion and fear about our own safety and the safety of our loved ones. What happens to our soul—the bearer of our emotions, our passions—under the stress of these biproducts of the pandemic? We know that when we allow fear and anxiety to infiltrate our soul, our physical well-being is affected, too. Is there a remedy for these soul ailments?
Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:
We have only to remember that feelings and sensations, fear and anxiety of the unknown future, gnaw at our souls. Is there anything that can pour some certainty about the future into our souls? It is what we may call the feeling of devoted acceptance of (that which) enters our souls from the hidden future, and it can only work properly if it arises as an attitude of prayer*. Let us avoid misunderstanding. We are not praising what here or there is considered to be acceptance, but a definite form, an acceptance of what the future can bring forth. If we look to the future with fear and anxiety, we strangle our development and hamper the free unfolding of our soul forces. Nothing so obstructs this development as anxiety about what may come to the soul from the future. Only actual experience, however, can judge the results of the right feeling of acceptance of the future. What does such devoted acceptance mean?
In its ideal form it would be the sort of soul attitude that would assure us that no matter what might come, no matter what the next hour or day might bring, were it unknown to us, we could not alter it by fear or anxiety. We should wait for it, therefore, in complete inner peace and utter tranquility…
If we develop (a) feeling of submission in regard to all that may come to us from the future, we shall find that we meet everything in the external world with the same certainty and hope. This we have gained from our submissiveness. We know that in everything it is the wisdom of the world that shines before us… Through our submission, we see how the feeling arises in us that all the wisdom of the world shines through what we long for and desire as the highest. Thus, it is hope for illumination of the entire world that comes to us in the devotions of prayer. When darkness encloses us within ourselves and narrowness and confusion surround us even in the physical, when we stand in the gloom and black of night, we feel when morning comes and we meet the light as if we are placed beyond ourselves.
* A true prayer can give everyone something. Even the simplest person, who knows nothing more than the mere prayer, can still feel its effect, which calls forth the power to raise him ever higher. But whatever height we may have achieved, we are never finished with a prayer. Our souls can always be raised higher.
An excerpt from a lecture by Rudolf Steiner in Berlin, February 17, 1910
We are living in an extraordinary time, yet we have no choice but to see that some of us become better, stronger examples of what it means to be human while others let fear manifest in hatred, distrust, and judgment toward others. The choice of the kind of person we wish to be is a choice only we can make. And we make that choice best when we are in a state of equanimity as the future approaches us. We can pray for this inner strength.
A Verse for Our Time
We must eradicate from the soul
All fear and terror of what comes towards man out of the future.
We must acquire serenity
In all feelings and sensations about the future.
We must look forward with absolute equanimity
To everything that may come.
And we must think only that whatever comes
Is given to us by a world-directive full of wisdom.
It is part of what we must learn in this age,
namely, to live out of pure trust,
Without any security in existence.
Trust in the ever present help
Of the spiritual world.
Truly, nothing else will do
If our courage is not to fail us.
And let us seek the awakening from within ourselves
Every morning and every evening.