How willing are we to try to understand each other? How willing are we to listen to a person who holds an opinion about God or politics or society that differs from our own? How do we move towards peace and love – the ideals celebrated at Christmastime?
For the past three years, we have discussed our souls and spirits. We see that the smallest aspect of ourselves is our current physical body. We realize that we existed before birth and will continue to exist after death. We know that we accrue and pay off karma in every lifetime. These are basic truths of spiritual science and knowing them helps us practice a love and peace that can hold all of humanity.
If we decide to begin on the path toward initiation knowledge (see April 2020 post: Primary Source) in earnest, we must accept that it will require dedication and will and courage. We will need to clean up our acts. Toward the middle of his book, How to Know Higher Worlds: A Modern Path of Initiation, Rudolf Steiner gives seven requirements for spiritual training. They are sobering, to say the least, requiring an honesty with oneself that initially seems impossible. The seventh one tells us something about loving each other. (If you want to know about all of them, please get the book.)
Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:
… To believe in and love humanity is the basis of all striving for the truth. Our striving must be built upon trust and love for humanity—although it does not begin there. Rather, it must flow out of the soul’s own forces. And this love for humanity must gradually expand into love for all beings, and indeed for all existence…
Simply listening to what others say with reverence and devotion, rather than immediately opposing it with our own opinions, need not lead to our becoming slavishly dependent on them. Those who have achieved something on the path to knowledge know that they owe everything to patient listening and assimilation, not to their own obstinate personal opinions. We must always remember that where we have already formed a conclusion, we cannot learn anything. If we desire only to judge, therefore, we can learn nothing… our willingness to learn should be unconditional. It is far better to withhold our judgment on something we do not understand than to condemn it. We can leave understanding until later.
How to Know Higher Worlds, Chapter 5, by Rudolf Steiner.
Learning to listen requires the trust that we will not lose ourselves in the other’s opinion. We may have observed that this seems particularly difficult with the onslaught of today’s media blitz on every aspect of our lives. But how we listen is a vital key to peace and love. Steiner addressed this in a lecture he gave around the same time he wrote the book quoted above:
It is our duty to enter into what another person says; we need only make it clear to him that we value him at that stage of truth where he now stands. Everyone must learn for himself, and knowing this, we shall become tolerant towards every form of truth. We come to a better understanding of things; we do not battle against people but seek to live with them...
Love is higher than opinion. If people love one another, the most varied opinions can be reconciled. Hence it is deeply significant that in Anthroposophy no religion is attacked, and no religion is specially singled out, but all are understood, and so there can be brotherhood because the adherents of the most varied religions understand one another.
This is one of the most important tasks for mankind today and in the future: that we should learn to live together and understand one another. If this human fellowship is not achieved, all talk of spiritual development is empty.
At the Gates of Spiritual Science, Lecture 11, September 1, 1906, by Rudolf Steiner.
Christmas occurs near the winter solstice, a time celebrated for thousands of years. The return from the shortest day of the year; a return to the light. Let us connect the idea of light with love. Let us see that light is related to knowledge and understanding. Love and understanding will lead us to peace… starting within ourselves.