Deeds of the Day

Every night while we are sleeping, we work with our Angel to preview the coming day. Most of us don’t remember this.

Just like we plan our coming life with the hierarchies while we are between death and our new birth, we plan our coming day with our Guardian Angel—plans, for example, to be somewhere at a certain time to meet someone we need to meet or to be where we need to be to experience something important. These intentions exist in addition to the practical plans appearing on our calendars.

This probably sounds incredible, but if we spend some time thinking about this idea, we may come to realize how our plans for the day include goals we wish to accomplish on a higher level. We can become more mindful, more aligned with what is actually best for us just by thinking this way. We may begin to recognize the experiences that are a fulfillment of the work we’ve done with our Angel the night before.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

There is a secret intimately connected with the present stage of human evolution, which is not known today. In earlier times, before the middle of the fifteenth century, it was not necessary to take much notice of it, but today it must be reckoned with. This mystery of life is that the human being, constituted as we are today in body, soul, and spirit, every night looks, to a certain extent, at the events of the coming day, but without always carrying that vision over into full day-consciousness. It is our “Angel” who has that clear consciousness.

But what is experienced at night in community with that being whom we call the Angel is a pre-vision of the coming day. This is not a subject for human curiosity, but a matter for practical life. Only when the feeling of this fact fills our inner being can we make right decisions and bring right thoughts into the course of daily life. Let us assume that a person has something definite to do, say at noon. This thing the person has to do has already been arranged by that person and the Angel and during the preceding night, though the fact is not necessarily kept in consciousness and human curiosity has no part in it.

People should be filled with the conviction that during the day they should realize in a fruitful way what they have arranged at night in cooperation with this Angel being.

Much that has happened of late might draw our attention with almost shattering force to what I have just said. The last four or five years of agony (World War I) should have taught us that the consciousness of our association with higher beings through the experiences of the night did not, alas, exist. If the feeling had permeated us that our doings in the day were in harmony with the decisions made with our Angel in the preceding night, how different events would have been!

These things must be spoken of now, to point out how we must learn to regard this life between birth and death as a continuation of the life of spirit and soul which was before birth. It must be made known that we in the future should be able to experience throughout our whole life the revelation of the Divine in our own being, and what through all our life in the day this vivid consciousness should persist as: “What I do from morning till evening I have discussed with my Angel while I slept.”

We must turn to feelings which are more concrete with regard to the spiritual world… Our attitude to the spiritual world must move in this appointed direction.

Excerpt from: The Problems of Our Time, Lecture II by Rudolf Steiner. Berlin, September 13, 1919.

Here we are reminded once again that the life between birth and death is a continuation of our spiritual life before birth. Just as we have intentions for this life prior to being born into it, intentions we formed in alliance with the hierarchies, so we have intentions we make each night as we sleep. The time we are asleep is also part of our life, and it happens every day. We make other kinds of plans arising from our higher self and in agreement with our Angel whether we are aware of them or not.

We’ve already explored how knowledge of karma shows us the consequences of unhealthy trends of thinking, of feeling, and of doing to ourselves and the world around us. The more clearly we see this, the more we naturally strive to become better people. This additional element, the work with our Angel during the night, does the same thing on a daily basis.

Perhaps the miscommunications, the hostilities, the materialistic thinking that are leading our world into chaos would be mitigated if we woke up each morning knowing of the intentions made the night before. Perhaps we would choose to pursue lives that align with the harmonious working of the spiritual world.

Stop Lying Around

The enormous suffering in our world today is exacerbated by our inability to trust what we are being told by our leaders, our media, and each other. What is real? Each side thinks it knows, and the incivility between factions has reached alarming and often dangerous levels.

We need to remember that these cultural divisions are made up of individuals like us, and each of us needs to take seriously the karmic effects we have on ourselves and others by our thoughts and deeds. We may not be able to make one faction stop hating the other or suddenly convince our leaders and our media to tell the truth, but we can make these demands of ourselves. Neglecting to do so has consequences more dire than we might know.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

Human beings determine their future by their past, and because their innermost being is not confined to one incarnation but passes through many, the causes of what confronts them in a given life are to be sought in an earlier life.

We will now consider the chain of events that becomes comprehensible if we think of the consequences of human deeds, thoughts and feelings. It is often said in everyday life: Thoughts don’t cost anything!—meaning that we can think what we like and nobody in the external world will be affected. This is one important point where someone who has really grasped spiritual impulses is at variance with the materialistic thinker.

The materialist agrees that injury is caused if he throws a stone at somebody, but he thinks that a thought of hatred which he may harbor against a fellow human being does not hurt him. However, those who have real knowledge of the world know that far, far stronger effects proceed from a thought filled with hatred than can ever be caused by a stone. Everything we think and feel has its effects in the astral world, and the clairvoyant can follow with great precision the effect of a loving thought that goes out to someone, and the very different effect that is produced by a thought filled with hatred. When you send out a loving thought to someone, the clairvoyant perceives a form of light, shaped like a sort of flower-calyx, playing lovingly around that person’s etheric and astral bodies, thereby contributing something to his vitality and happiness. On the other hand, a thought of hatred bores its way into the etheric and astral bodies like a wounding arrow.

Very varied observations are to be made in this domain. There is a tremendous difference in the astral world if someone voices a thought that is true or one that is untrue. A thought is related to a specific thing and is true if it coincides with that thing. Every event that happens causes an effect in the higher worlds. If someone relates this event truly, an astral form rays out from the teller, unites with the form emanating from the event itself, and both are strengthened. These strengthened forms help to make our spiritual world richer and more full of content—which is necessary if humanity is to make progress. But if the event is related untruthfully, in a way that does not coincide with the facts, then the thoughtform of the teller comes up against the thoughtform that has proceeded from the event; the two thoughtforms collide causing mutual destruction. These destructive ‘explosions’ caused by lies work in the way a tumor works in the body, destroying the organism. Thus lies kill the astral forms that have arisen and must arise, and in this way, they obstruct or paralyze a part of evolution. Everyone who tells the truth actually promotes the evolution of humanity, and everyone who lies obstructs it. Therefore there is this esoteric law: Seen with the eyes of spirit, a lie is a murder. Not only does it kill an astral form, but it also kills the self. Anyone who lies places obstacles along his own path. Such effects are to be observed everywhere in the spiritual world. The clairvoyant sees that everything a person thinks, feels and experiences has its effect in the spiritual world.

Excerpt from: Rosicrucian Wisdom: An Introduction, Lecture 6. The Law of Destiny, May 30, 1907 by Rudolf Steiner.

We are each of us a work-in-progress. If we take an earnest look at ourselves, we realize we might be judgmental toward others and we might exaggerate or shade the truth. We do not have to struggle alone toward addressing these faults. As we learned in the last post, we can ask for help from our guardian angel, as hard as that may be for some of us to believe. As Steiner often says, the fact that we don’t believe in angels does not deny them their existence. Steiner also said that more and more people will begin to experience their angels.

In her first book about angels, Angels in My Hair, Lorna Byrne describes her lifelong relationship with her guardian angel and other angels, as well as the guardian angels of each person she meets. In her humble narrative, we get a glimpse of how angels work with us to guide and protect us. Though we do not all share Byrne’s gift of sight, we know that we can acquire this gift by various methods already referred to many posts since this blog began in September of 2018.

And here’s the thing, every single one of us has a guardian angel – even those with whom we disagree. Let’s ask our angels to help us be more truthful and more tolerant. Let’s ask the angels of others to help them to be the same. Let us encourage peace and charity to enter our hearts and thereby make the world a better place.

Lorna Byrne: The Lady Who Sees Angels Documentary on YouTube >

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssAmweLstLE