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.

Unbornness

Babies radiate a purity that speaks of something divine, even for those of us who do not believe in God or Heaven. This stirring in our souls, brought to life in the presence of a new life, points to the human being’s divine origin that is hard to ignore or negate. How do we explain this?

When we look at a baby, any baby, we are experiencing not a brand, new being, but a being with a long, long history. While we may see a complex inheritance of the parents’ traits, we must also recognize that this is a person who is here in a new body to further its own evolution. If we feel something magical in the presence of a newborn, we are actually sensing that they come to us from somewhere else--from the spiritual world. This baby existed, as did we, before it was born– before it was even conceived.

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

Among the concepts of spiritual science that must work toward the future development of the human being’s soul in the most fruitful, the most intensive, indeed the most necessary way, will be the concept of our prenatal existence…

In that we have this word “immortality” of the human soul, we actually negate only dying. What word could we use to indicate preexistence in the same way that the word “immortality” points to postexistence? A word like “unbornness”, in the fact of true spiritual knowledge, has as much justification as the word “immortality.” This can be your best evidence of what has been lost in the West directly through the activities of the various religious denominations: the truth about the being of the human being. This truth has been lost even in regard to language. And even insofar as language is concerned, we must bring about the awareness that the human soul is eternal, that it exists before birth as much as it exists after death.

Of course, if you speak only of immortality, of postexistence, you can believe: Here is one earth life, then follows an eternity of a totally different kind! Logically, you will no longer be able to do that when you speak of preexistence. In short, you absolutely arrive at repeated earth lives when you speak of preexistence. It is a fundamental fact that never in earthly civilization has one come to the view of preexistence without also speaking of repeated earth lives.

But consider what it will mean for the whole approach to this earthly existence if this teaching of repeated earth lives is not a mere theory, if this view finds its way into all the feeling life and also the will life of people, if we experience ourselves as beings that have descended from spiritual worlds and have embodied ourselves in a physical body. Then, you know that here on this earth you are a messenger of the divine spiritual world; you know that this life here is a continuation of a spiritual life. Everything that we bear in ourselves as a sense of duty, as abilities, is illuminated and energized by such an awareness, for we know that the gods have sent us down into this physical existence…

These concepts penetrate the whole of our human nature; they penetrate not merely our thoughts; they penetrate our feeling, our emotions; they penetrate our will and give us an awareness of the nature of our whole human condition.

The manner in which one places oneself in the world in awareness of this preexistence of the human soul will be especially important for the civilization of the future. This manner will penetrate human beings with the light and with the power that is needed to struggle free from the powers of decline that otherwise will, without fail, drive civilization into barbarism at the beginning of the third millennium.

Excerpt from: Spiritual Science as a Foundation for Social Forms, Lecture XVII, by Rudolf Steiner. September 18, 1920, in Dornach, Switzerland.

Over the last six years of this blog, we have looked at karma and reincarnation many times. We have spoken about choosing our parents, our birthplace, our strengths and weaknesses and all of the challenges we face from previous earth lives.

Immortality does not mean that when we die we’ll go to a heavenly place for all eternity. Though we are immortal, we continually leave one physical body through death’s doorway, and after a while in the spiritual world, we come back again into a new body. Most people do not yet know they are here time and time again to further their own evolution as well as world evolution. In fact, today’s religions largely work against this knowledge by telling us that we will receive eternal life after death either in heaven or hell depending on how we lived. We are told that if we believe a certain way and behave a certain way, we will live in heaven forevermore.

Yet, it is egotistical to say, “When I die, I want to live eternally in heaven with all those I love.” The whole focus is on oneself. It is not egotistical to say, “I have lived and died before. The people I care about have lived and died before. Here I am again, just like every other human being on the planet.” The good news is that every one of us wants to come back.

Accepting preexistence—unbornness—is altruistic not egotistic. Our present body is most likely a different sex or race or nationality or all of the above than our previous body or the one we will have in our next life. Compassion and tolerance are logical outcomes of this worldview because this worldview encompasses all human beings, all those with whom we exist in the world of the living and the “dead”. We imbody a capacity to love beyond our family and friends, we feel our relationship with all of humanity because we are part of all humanity from the distant past and into the distant future, we come back with those we know according to the grand laws of karma.

Dr. Steiner’s last sentence from this excerpt tells us how important this realization is to us. We all have a sense of the times that show us what will happen without it.

Harmony

We have arrived at the sixth and final basic (aka essential) exercise. We have explored ways to gain mastery of our three soul qualities: thinking, feeling, and willing. In the first three exercises, our goal with thinking is to obtain objectivity; with willing, to obtain control of our actions; with feeling, to obtain equanimity. In the fourth exercise between thinking and feeling to seek positivity, and in the fifth, between thinking and willing to become open-minded. All of this has led us to have more control of ourselves.

The sixth exercise is an effort to harmonize all these capacities. For example, we may have noticed that we have a hard time thinking positively, that we don’t naturally look for the good aspect of things. We may want to practice that particular exercise (#4) more often. Maybe we tend to act before we think, or we tend to get carried away by our feelings; we now have a practice to address the areas that require more effort. The sixth exercise asks us to practice all the exercises in various combinations to strengthen our self-control – our sense of self.

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

In the sixth month, endeavors should be made to repeat all the five exercises again, systematically and in regular alternation. In this way a beautiful equilibrium of soul will gradually develop. It will be noticed, especially, that previous dissatisfactions with certain phenomena and beings in the world completely disappear. A mood reconciling all experiences takes possession of the soul, a mood that is by no means one of indifference but, on the contrary, enables one for the first time to work in the world for its genuine progress and improvement. One comes to a tranquil understanding of things which were formerly quite closed to the soul. The very movements and gestures of a person change under the influence of such exercises, and if, one day, he can actually observe that the character of his handwriting has altered, then he may say to himself that he is just about to reach a first rung on the upward path. Once again, two things must be stressed:

First, the six exercises described paralyze the harmful influence other occult exercises can have, so that only what is beneficial remains. Secondly, these exercises alone ensure that efforts in meditation and concentration will have a positive result. The esotericist must not rest content with fulfilling, however conscientiously, the demands of conventional morality, for that kind of morality can be extremely egotistical, if a person says: I will be good in order that I may be thought good. Esotericists do not do what is good because they want to be thought good, but because little by little they recognize that the good alone brings evolution forward, and that evil, stupidity and ugliness place hindrances along the path.

These exercises do not have to take exactly one month each. Some indication of time had to be indicated. What is important though, is that one practices them in the particular order given here. If anyone should practice the second exercise before the first, he would derive absolutely no benefit from it. The order is very important. Some people even believe that they ought to begin with the sixth exercise, the harmonizing one. But nothing can be harmonized which is not already there. Whoever does not practice the exercises in the given order will gain nothing at all from them. To begin with the sixth exercise is as senseless as if one needed to take six steps to cross a bridge and tried to take the sixth step first.

Excerpt from: Guidance in Esoteric Training by Rudolf Steiner.

One of the reasons this work is courageous is because we come face to face with the shortcomings in our own soul. Without striving for self-control, we tend to either excuse ourselves or berate ourselves for the outcomes of our daily lives. Many of us don’t even go this far; instead, we blame everyone or everything else for the outcomes of our daily lives. Taking responsibility for ourselves is hard to do, but that is only the first step.

If we refer back to April and the first exercise, thinking, right away we get a glimpse of the consequences of this exercise toward objectivity. Because we learn to focus on an irrelevant object, we gradually develop the skill to focus on our thoughts and deeds with objectivity; we become truthful to our own self. We begin to see objectively our own excuses, our own guilt, our own blame of others, and how they’ve dominated our thinking life. Plenty of our head space is hard to face until we obtain the required objectivity.

The reason we don’t see many people who have control of themselves is because it is a hard goal to reach. Yet, when we do meet such a person, it’s no longer difficult to imagine how just one person can make the world a better place. The mysterious answer to world problems begins with becoming a better person – one who has self-mastery.  Since we’re alive anyway, we may as well begin the actual hard work of being a human being.

Embracing the New

As living human beings, the most important thing we can do for ourselves – and everyone else – is to continue to learn and grow. Sometimes, all it takes is to apply an unaccustomed depth of attention to the world happening every second around us to open our minds to the new.

Scrolling through the various media is not sufficient. Yes, we encounter a cat doing something we’ve never seen before or a person falling in a stupendous way, or even a great vocalist performing, but this curated entertainment is two-dimensional, and you are not. We belong in the three-dimensional world, and that world is our best teacher. For example, did we see a squirrel dashing up the tree where we’d never seen one before? What color, red or grey? Why is it suddenly running; is danger chasing it? Is the day warm, is the sun shining, are there mountains in the distance, are birds singing in the trees, are there more small animals scuttling among the leaves? It belongs here—it is indigenous. Its needs are met here, yet danger still exists… As we pay close attention to the squirrel, our thoughts expand; we begin to see how we connect with everything in the world around us. As we observe the squirrel and its environs, we observe ourselves too.

This same attention can be applied to new ideas. Sure, we already know a lot, but we can build on what we know rather than argue against what we don’t already know. The only way to do this is to try to accept a new idea without judging it for a moment; to stop and give the idea some attention and room to breathe. How does the idea feel as I think about it? How does the person who believes it feel? How does this idea fit into the world? Is there any aspect of this idea that works for me? What would change about us if I believed this?

In this fifth essential exercise, Steiner leads us toward advancing soul capacities through accepting new thoughts and new experiences. We can perhaps imagine why this exercise follows the previous four.

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

In the fifth month, efforts should be made to develop the feeling of confronting every new experience with complete open-mindedness. The esoteric pupil must break entirely with the attitude which, in the face of something just heard or seen, exclaims: “I never heard that, or I never saw that, before; I don’t believe it – it’s an illusion.” At every moment the student must be ready to encounter and accept absolutely new experiences. What he has hitherto recognized as being in accordance with natural law, or what he has regarded as possible, should present no obstacle to the acceptance of a new truth. Although radically expressed, it is absolutely correct that if anyone were to come to the esoteric pupil and say, “Since last night the steeple of such and such a church has been tilted right over”, the esotericist should leave a loophole open for the contingency of his becoming convinced that previous knowledge of natural law could somehow be augmented by such an apparently unprecedented fact.

If he turns his attention, in the fifth month, to developing this attitude of mind, he will notice creeping into his soul a feeling as if something were becoming alive, astir, in the space referred to in connection with the exercise for the fourth month. This feeling is exceedingly delicate and subtle. Efforts must be made to be attentive to this delicate vibration in the environment and to let it stream, as it were, through all the five senses, especially through the eyes, the ears, and through the skin, in so far as the latter contains the sense of warmth. At this stage of esoteric development, less attention is paid to the impressions made by these stimuli on the other senses of taste, smell and touch. At this stage it is still not possible to distinguish the numerous bad influences which intermingle with the good influences in this sphere; the pupil therefore leaves this for a later stage.

Lack of prejudice. We should remain flexible, always capable of taking in new information. If someone relates something to us which we think sounds improbable, we must nevertheless always keep a tiny corner of our heart open, in which we say: “He could be right after all.” This does not need to make us completely uncritical, for we can always examine and test such statements. When we practice this, a feeling comes over us as if something was streaming into us from outside. We draw this in through the eyes, ears and the whole skin.

Excerpt from: Guidance in Esoteric Training by Rudolf Steiner.

Next month we come to the last of these six exercises. Meanwhile, we can reflect on the reality that we are always becoming something anew—even when we do nothing. Put another way, doing nothing is impossible because we are always becoming. Who are we becoming? These exercises are teaching us to guide ourselves purposefully. The world around us is also eternally becoming. We can be either blindsided by the events of the day every morning when we wake up or we can become masters of the way we encounter every day. It’s our choice—which is pretty remarkable when we think about it.

The Bright Side of Life

“If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” Hm. We’ve sure come a long way toward the opposite pole of that sentiment. A certain meanness, if not malice, is readily observable across the various media we consume and in the areas of our shared presence.

This destructive criticism originates inside of each of us, and no matter how refined or deserved the rebuke may be, what lies behind it is the desire to tear someone or something down. This is a common but dangerous poison causing untold harm to both the giver and the receiver. These cruel observations are never to our credit but diminish us every time we allow ourselves to be amused or caught up in the mudslinging.

This month, Steiner suggests that we take an alternate route – that we actively try to notice the beauty in someone or something. That at the very least we withhold criticism. Think how much better we would feel about ourselves and the world around us. Think how differently we would affect the people around us. Of course, this effect expands out into time and space beyond our current comprehension, and we should consider this in our assessment of its benefits. But even without that cosmic view, we would observe the positive impact we make in real time.

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

In the fourth month, as a new exercise, what is sometimes called a ‘positive attitude’ to life should be cultivated. It consists in seeking always for the good, the praiseworthy, the beautiful and the like, in all beings, all experiences, all things… The esoteric pupil must strive to seek for the positive in every phenomenon and in every being. They will soon notice that under the veil of something repugnant there is a hidden beauty, that even under the outer guise of a criminal there is a hidden good, that under the mask of a psychopath, the divine soul is somehow concealed.

In a certain respect this exercise is connected with what is called ‘abstention from criticism’. This is not to be understood in the sense of calling black white and white black. There is, however, a difference between a judgment which, proceeding merely from one’s own personality, is colored with the element of personal sympathy or antipathy, and an attitude which enters lovingly into the alien phenomenon or being, always asking: How has it come to be like this or to act like this? Such an attitude will by its very nature be more set upon helping what is imperfect than upon simply finding fault and criticizing…

A person who consciously turns his mind, for one month, to the positive aspect of all his experiences will gradually notice a feeling creeping into him as if his skin were becoming porous on all sides, and as if his soul were opening wide to all kinds of secret and delicate processes in his environment which hitherto entirely escaped his notice. The important point is to combat a very prevalent lack of attentiveness to these subtle things.

If it has once been noticed that the feeling described expresses itself in the soul as a kind of bliss, endeavors should be made in thought to guide this feeling to the heart and from there to let it stream into the eyes, and thence out into the space in front and around oneself. It will be noticed that an intimate relationship to this surrounding space is thereby acquired. A person grows out of and beyond himself, as it were. He learns to regard a part of his environment as something that belongs to him. A great deal of concentration is necessary for this exercise, and, above all, recognition of the fact that all tumultuous feelings, all passions, all over-exuberant emotions have an absolutely destructive effect upon the mood indicated. The exercises of the first months are repeated, as with the earlier months.

Excerpt from: Guidance in Esoteric Training by Rudolf Steiner.

We are bombarded by the criticisms surrounding us in our daily lives.

Deciding to take up the six basic exercises must be done in freedom; we make the choice. The hard choice. Steiner indicates that this particular exercise, the fourth of six, can be the point where many decide they cannot go forward as their livelihood depends on delivering this type of criticism. Looking on the bright side is not compatible with the work they’ve chosen to do in this lifetime. And that’s ok. The spiritual path is arduous and not everyone is prepared or willing to begin right now. Nevertheless, many of us want to do something to make the world a better place and aren’t sure what we can do, so here it is: the chance to actively work to make the world a better place is totally within our own power as a result of work we are free to choose.

Pretty cool.

Emotional Intelligence

“The riddle of man becomes important for us when we begin to realize that in all we do, even down to our moods, we influence the whole cosmos, that our little world is of infinitely far-reaching importance for all that comes into being in the macrocosmos. A heightened feeling of responsibility is the finest and most important fruit that can be gained from spiritual science. It teaches us to grasp the true sense of life, to take it earnestly so that what we cast upon the stream of evolution may be meaningful.” – Rudolf Steiner

If a child has a meltdown when it doesn’t get its way, the adult is advised to stay calm and quietly talk to the child until they can successfully divert the child’s attention. This advice implies that adults have some control over their own emotions. Generally, this is regarded as a healthy development, and people who can’t control their emotions are deemed immature.

The control we seek over negative emotions makes total sense; however, in this exercise we are also asked to have control over our pleasurable emotions. Why? As we’ve explored in previous posts, we exist in the center of two opposing forces. When we looked at virtues from this point of view, we saw that courage exists in the balance between foolhardiness and cowardice. Thus, in this month’s exercise, we should seek to feel the peaceful calmness somewhere between depression and euphoria.

Steiner elsewhere says that every day we should laugh and cry. Emotions are real; we shouldn’t pretend otherwise. We shouldn’t suppress them, but we can learn to be the master of them. We may need to meditate on this a moment to recognize the difference between suppression and mastery.

In this third of six exercises (see previous posts for exercises one and two), we are being asked to consciously choose a moment to understand an emotion we are having rather than succumb to it – and to do that for about 15 minutes every day this month.

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

In the third month, life should be centered on a new exercise – the development of a certain equanimity towards the fluctuation of joy and sorrow; pleasure and pain; ‘heights of jubilation and “depths of despair” should quite consciously be replaced by an equable mood. Care is taken that no pleasure should carry us away, no sorrow plunge us into the depths, no experience lead to immoderate anger or vexation, no expectation give rise to anxiety or fear, no situation disconcert us, and so on. There need be no fear that such an exercise will make life arid and unproductive; far rather will it quickly be noticed that the experiences to which this exercise is applied are replaced by purer qualities of soul. Above all, if subtle attentiveness is maintained, an inner tranquility in the body will one day become noticeable; as in the two exercises before, we pour this feeling into the body, letting it stream from the heart towards the hands, the feet, and finally the head. This naturally cannot be done after each exercise, for here it is not a matter of one single exercise but of sustained attentiveness to the inner life of the soul. Once every day, at least, this inner tranquility should be called up before the soul and then the exercise of pouring it out from the heart should proceed. A connection with the exercises of the first and second months is maintained, as in the second month with the exercise of the first month.

Mastering joy and sorrow: We may feel sometimes an urge to cry. Then it is time to practice this exercise. We force ourselves with all our strength not to cry for once. The same with laughing. We try, on some occasion when we feel laughter rising up, not to laugh but to remain peaceful. That does not mean that we should not laugh any more: but we should be able to take hold of ourselves, be master over laughing and crying. When we have overcome ourselves in this way a few times, we will have a feeling of peace and equanimity. We allow this feeling to flow through the whole body, pouring it out from the heart first of all into the arms and hands, so that it can radiate out from the hands into our actions. Then we let it stream down to the feet and last of all up to the head. This exercise requires earnest self-observation and should take at least a quarter of an hour each day.

Excerpt from: Guidance in Esoteric Training by Rudolf Steiner.

This exercise, mastery of our feeling, is so important right now. We are exposed everywhere to countless efforts to enflame us one way or another, and many of us are often reacting with great vehemence to something we read or hear. Of course, much of what we are hearing is horrific—if it’s true—, but working with this exercise may teach us how to see through all the manipulation and calm ourselves.

When we have allowed something to pull us off center, we are not masters of ourselves. It’s just a fact. If we believe that having mastery over our own selves will not allow us to be fully ourselves, we may want to examine that conviction. If we can simply come to ourselves in the moment and giving ourselves permission to laugh or cry, we lose nothing.

As in the previous month, don’t forget to occasionally practice the first exercise, mastery of thinking and the second exercise, mastery of doing. Meanwhile, this month we will see how we fare with mastering our feelings.

A Small Task

The challenge this month is the same as last month: to dedicate ourselves to a daily regimen of doing something relatively simple. Last month’s exercise was to gain mastery of thought. This month’s exercise is to gain mastery of will, to take charge of our own actions.

In last month’s exercise we were to set aside 5 minutes each day for an entire month to think about an unexciting object. We could imagine a pencil or a pin or a button. We could think about what it’s made of, how it was manufactured, how we use it, etc. That exercise works best with our eyes closed. For more details, including the results we can hope to experience, see last month’s post.

The second exercise of six is to focus on something we do every day for a month. Once again, we should pick something unexciting to do that is out of the ordinary. Steiner’s example is to water a flower at or near the same time each day. Clearly, a flower, whether it’s in a vase or in a garden, doesn’t need to be watered each day, so we want to choose an activity to do every day that doesn’t need to be done. Some people turn a ring around their finger or a watch around their wrist once a day. That’s it. If we can see that accomplishing this one unimportant thing each day is easy, we can add another thing to do at another time of day.

More examples will not help us because we really have to come up with our own ideas; we shouldn’t use the examples given here in this post.

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

When this exercise has been practiced for, say, one month (see last month’s blog for first exercise), a second requirement should be added.

We try to think of some action which in the ordinary course of life we should certainly not have performed. Then we make it a duty to perform this action every day.

It will therefore be good to choose an action which can be performed every day and will occupy as long a period of time as possible. Again, it is better to begin with some insignificant action which we have to force ourselves to perform; for example, to water at a fixed time every day a flower we have bought. After a certain time, a second, similar act should be added to the first; later, a third, and so on… as many as are compatible with the carrying out of all other duties. This exercise, also, should last for one month. The action must spring from our own initiative, one must have thought of it oneself.

But as far as possible during this second month, too, the first exercise should continue, although it is a less paramount duty than in the first month. Nevertheless, it must not be left unheeded, for otherwise it will quickly be noticed that the fruits of the first month are lost and the slovenliness of uncontrolled thinking begins again.

Care must be taken that once these fruits have been won, they are never again lost. If, through the second exercise, this initiative of action has been achieved, then, with subtle attentiveness, we become conscious of the feeling of an inner impulse of activity in the soul; we pour this feeling into the body, letting it stream down from the head to a point just above the heart.

Excerpt from: Guidance in Esoteric Training by Rudolf Steiner.

This series of exercises will move us toward becoming masters of ourselves. By directing our thoughts in a focused way, we will eventually be able to control our thinking instead of having random thoughts intrude in haphazard ways throughout the day. We also begin to have more faith that we are doing things we consciously intend to do; we aren’t wondering why we did something uncharacteristic because we are conscious and directed when we act.

None of us is a finished product; we are always on a path of becoming. We should expect and guide ourselves to pursue mastery of our thinking and our doing. That is the point of these simple exercises; they get us started on that path.

If we continue last month’s effort for 5 minutes a day and add this second one this month, we may well begin to experience subtle changes in our capacities. We should try. After all, we are the ones responsible for ourselves.

Taking The Time

Meditation and contemplation are no longer practices existing on the sidelines of modern life. Many professional athletes consider their morning meditation as essential. The medical world acknowledges that meditation helps patients deal with chronic pain, stress, anxiety and depression (Mayo Clinic 2/10/24). A Wharton School of Business study in 2019 found that meditation can “reduce stress, improve focus, help regulate emotions, increase cooperation and team building, and lead to better decisions.” Most of us have already heard about this.

So why isn’t everyone doing it?

Because it takes time. It takes consistency. It takes discipline.

Meditation or mindfulness practice promises a mastery of ourselves that changes who we are. And no trumpets are blaring, no lights are flashing, no accolades are forthcoming, so we must see a point to ourselves that is our own reward.

Though many forms of meditation exist, today we will look at the first step in what Rudolf Steiner calls the six basic exercises. Many reasons exist for beginning a meditative practice. One reason is so that we can become masters of ourselves.

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

In what follows, the conditions which must be the basis of any occult development are set forth. Let no one imagine that he can make progress by any measures applied to the outer or the inner life unless he fulfils these conditions. All exercises in meditation, concentration, or exercises of other kinds, are valueless, indeed in a certain respect actually harmful, if life is not regulated in accordance with these conditions. No forces can actually be imparted to a human being; all that can be done is to bring to development the forces already within him. They do not develop of their own accord because outer and inner hindrances obstruct them. The outer hindrances are lessened by means of the following rules of life; the inner hindrances by the special instructions concerning meditation, concentration, and the like.

The first condition is the cultivation of absolutely clear thinking. For this purpose, a person must rid himself of the will-o’-the-wisps of thought, even if only for a short time during the day – about five minutes (the longer, the better). He must become the ruler in his world of thought. He is not the ruler if external circumstances, occupation, some tradition or other, social relationships, even membership of a particular race, the daily round of life, certain activities and so forth, determine a thought and how he works it out. Therefore, during this brief time, acting entirely out of his own free will, he must empty the soul of the ordinary, everyday course of thoughts and by his own initiative place one single thought at the center of his soul.

The thought need not be a particularly striking or interesting one. Indeed, it will be all the better for what has to be attained in an occult respect if a thoroughly uninteresting and insignificant thought is chosen. Thinking is then impelled to act out of its own energy, which is the essential thing here, whereas an interesting thought carries the thinking along with it. It is better if this exercise in thought-control is undertaken with a pin rather than with Napoleon. The pupil says to himself: Now I start from this thought, and through my own inner initiative I associate with it everything that is pertinent to it. At the end of the period the thought should be just as colorful and living as it was at the beginning.

This exercise is repeated day by day for at least a month; a new thought may be taken every day, or the same thought may be adhered to for several days. At the end of the exercise an endeavor is made to become fully conscious of that inner feeling of firmness and security which will soon be noticed by paying subtler attention to one’s own soul; the exercise is then brought to a conclusion by focusing the thinking upon the head and the middle of the spine (brain and spinal cord), as if the feeling of security were being poured into this part of the body.

Excerpt from: Guidance in Esoteric Training, Chapter I: General Requirements: General demands which every spiritual aspirant for occult development must put to himself, by Rudolf Steiner.

Perhaps if this were easier to do, people would be less inclined to take medications to fall asleep, to calm down, to get work done. Many people don’t even try meditation or mindfulness before seeking external help. Why? Perhaps we don’t have faith that it will work. What we don’t have to take on faith is that there will be no damaging side effects.

If we give this exercise a try for just 5 minutes a day until the 15th of May, we will have spent 2 ½ hours in meditation over the course of a month. Of course, we can go meditate longer than 5 minutes if we want. Our minds will wander, extraneous thoughts will pull us off course, but we just keep coming back to the pin or the pencil or the paperclip or the button or whatever we decide to focus on. We do get better and better at this if we keep at it.

We are free to mediate or not, obviously; however, if we want to experience the spiritual world and our place within it, we cannot just wait for it to happen, we must begin the work.

Karma Is an Active Law

In Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning, he outlines his idea that the human being’s will to find meaning is the driving force of our lives. In Frankl’s logotherapy, he has three tenets: 1) Life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most miserable ones; 2) Our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life; 3) We have freedom to find meaning in what we do, and what we experience. Central to his theory is that we must find ways to endure hardship.

Rudolf Steiner tells us that understanding the principles of karma is the key to understanding the meaning of life. We can see that underlying Frankl’s theory is the law of karma. Why is this happening to me or to them is understandable on a deeper level when we begin to grasp the idea of karma and reincarnation. The suffering we see in the world and in our own lives, the disparity of one human life compared to another, seems random, senseless, and cruel without this key.

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

The law of Karma does not throw light upon abstract riddles of the universe, but upon problems which we actually encounter in life at every step. Is it not a real life-riddle when we see that one human being is born in misery and poverty, apparently without any fault of his own, and that the finest gifts which lie concealed within him must atrophy owing to the social condition into which life has placed him? We must often ask ourselves in life: How can we explain the fact that an apparently innocent man is born in the midst of misery and pain, whereas another man is born without his merit in overabundance and wealth, surrounded at the cradle by those who tenderly love him? These are problems which modern superficiality alone can ignore.

The deeper we look into the law of karma; the more we find that the hard injustice apparently presenting itself to a superficial observation of this law disappears. We then realize more and more why one person must live in one condition of life and another person in another. Injustice and hardness in one or other life-situation can only be seen if we limit ourselves to the observation of one life; but if we know that this one life is the absolute result of former deeds, the injustice completely vanishes, for we perceive that the human being prepares his own life.

Someone might now object: It is terrible to think that all the blows of destiny which a human being encounters in this life are brought about through his own fault! We must realize, however, that the law of karma is not something for sentimental people to brood over, but that it is an active law, rendering us strong and giving us courage and hope. For even though we ourselves have molded our present life with all its hardships, we know at the same time that karma is a law the chief significance of which must be looked for, not in the past, but in the future. No matter how deeply oppressed we may be in the present owing to the result of past deeds, our insight into the law of karma will bear fruit in our subsequent lives. Our attitude determines what fruit our deeds will bear, for no action is without consequence. It is far more anthroposophical to look upon karma as an active law! For no matter what we do, we cannot escape the consequences of our deeds. The more we suffer in this life and the better we bear our sufferings, the more shall we profit by this in future lives. Karma is a law which solves the riddles of life which we encounter at every step.

Excerpt from: Theosophy and Rosicrucianism, Lecture 7: The Law of Karma by Rudolf Steiner. June 22, 1907 Kassel, Germany

Applying the law of karma to our own lives means that we are better able to accept and move on through life’s tribulations; we are meant to grow and become stronger because of them.

Applying the law of karma to the woes of the world includes the knowledge that we cannot idly watch evil run riot. We must help wherever we can; we can choose to have a positive effect on another person’s karma. To see an example of this, watch the short documentary, The Barber of Little Rock, on YouTube. Arlo Washington’s work in Little Rock, Arkansas is an inspiring example of what Steiner calls making a new entry in the book of someone else’s karma.

Truly understanding the law of karma is not to focus on the past, but to embrace the future knowing that nothing we do is in vain.

#TheBarberofLittleRock #ArloWashington #ViktorFrankl #karma #meaning of life #Man’sSearchforMeaning

Love as a Force for Good

Love for someone else is possible only if we become genuinely interested in them. We can be attracted to them by an array of qualities but love itself happens because of our desire to know more about them: what gives them joy, what interests them, what are their hopes and dreams. As we get to know them better, we begin to understand them and gain insight into them. Interest is the ground on which we step that allows love and understanding to bloom. As great as our love for another person becomes, it is but a baby step.

The spiritual hierarchies are interested in us; they love us. We will find that our experience of love here on earth is a mere reflection of the love we experience among the hierarchies in the spiritual world between earth lives. Each cycle of life as we go back and forth between earth and “heaven” is held with interest by the hierarchies, most specifically by our guardian angels. We are never alone and never unloved, but most of us don’t know it. Many of us aren’t interested in knowing it, but nevertheless, between each earth life, we are part of this communion with the hierarchies.

We may recall from previous posts that how we live our lives on earth affects our ability to fully encounter the beings of the hierarchies after we die. It is our own responsibility to work toward our inner development, and if we choose not to do that, not only do we find it difficult to feel love toward each other and all of humanity, to work together toward common goals, we also will have difficulty communing with the hierarchies after death which then hinders our ability to love in our next life. And so on.

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

(Some) people here on Earth are incapable of unfolding love in which there is real strength, incapable of unfolding that all-embracing love which comes to expression in the power to understand other people. We may say with truth: it is among the Gods, in pre-earthly existence, that we acquire the gift for observing other people, to perceive how they think and how they feel, to understand them with inner sympathy. If we were deprived of this association with the Gods, we would never be capable of unfolding here on Earth that insight into other human beings which alone makes earthly life a reality.

When in this connection I speak of love, and especially of all-embracing human love, you must think of love as having this real and concrete meaning: you must think of it as signifying a genuine, intimate understanding of other people. If to the all-embracing love of humanity, this understanding of others is added, we have everything that constitutes human morality. For human morality on Earth—if it is not merely expressed in empty phrases or fine talk or in resolutions not afterwards carried out—depends upon the interest one person takes in another, upon the capability to see into the other person. Those who have the gift of understanding other human beings will receive from this understanding the impulses for a social life imbued with true morality.

So we may also say: everything that constitutes moral life in earthly existence has been acquired by human beings in pre-earthly existence; from our communion with the Gods there has remained in us the urge to unfold, in the soul at any rate, community on Earth as well. And it is the development of a life where the one person together with the other fulfils the tasks and the mission of the Earth—it is this alone that in reality leads to the moral life on Earth. Thus we see that love, and the outcome of love—morality—are in very truth a consequence of what man has experienced spiritually in a pre-earthly existence.

Excerpt from: Man and the World of Stars. Lecture IV: Rhythms of Earthly and Spiritual Life, Love, Memory, the Moral Life, by Rudolf Steiner. Dec. 15, 1922, Dornach, Switzerland.

We can be grateful to those who love us and allow us to love them because we need to know what love means. And we can feel grateful for meaningful work with others—work that accomplishes something in the world—work we could not do if we didn’t have others working alongside us. We can also be grateful for the flame that ignites our interest in others and our will to work in the world. The impetus to be our best selves, to create community in the world, to truly love, comes from the hierarchies in the world we live in before birth and again after death, whether we believe in them or not. But we must purposefully direct our wills to overcome the distractions of our world in order to utilize this gift of the gods, in order to genuinely encounter each other.

All around us in 2024 we can find the results of a lack of capacity to see and understand the other: we have lost our moral compass. We define people by our sympathies and antipathies instead of seeing them as having souls like us. The results of this are horrific. To become complete human beings, we must fight our own lethargy, our own prejudices, to seek insight into each other. Becoming a whole human being, a moral human being, is the hardest thing we can do because no one can do it for us. Yet this is our real work, the work that matters.

A meditative practice, of contemplation in the quiet of our own minds, even for just five minutes every single day, is a start. This is so much harder to do than it sounds. Try it.

Un-easy

It’s hard to think amidst all the distractions we have in our lives. The levels of media disturbance we accept in our own homes are exacerbated when we live within the unceasing hum of a city. No wonder so many of us abandon efforts to meditate after a few attempts; we neglect to pursue our own thoughts, let alone thoughts of higher knowledge. Yet connecting with our spiritual nature has never been more important.

Why? Because it’s our time to do it; we are at that point in our evolution. Just as once people lived among the spirits of nature in a dreamy consciousness and then lost that capacity four to five hundred years ago in order to acquire scientific reason, we are now able to find our connection to the spirit again with this hard-won intellect and reason. If we continue to live without a foundation in the spirit, rooted in materialism, we will sink ever deeper into egotism and despair. We will lose our moral grounding. Sound familiar?

The trouble is, we have to exert ourselves to acquire this connection to the spirit. Steiner says, “It belongs to the essence of spiritual science that it makes demands on soul activity, that you do not accept spiritual-scientific truths lightly, as it were, for it is not just a matter of taking in what spiritual science says about one thing or another, but of how you take it in… To make spiritual science your own you must work at it in the sweat of your soul…”

Of course, we can choose to disregard the call to spirit. We are, after all, free in this regard.

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

Human beings will only attain the kind of connection they need to be truly human if they seek it in their inner life, if they delve so far down into the depths of their soul that they reach the forces that connect them with the spirit of the cosmos, out of which they were born and in which they are embedded, but from which they can be separated…

Only by penetrating into the depths of their own being will they find the connection with divine spiritual beings that they need for their salvation, the spiritual hierarchies that are progressing along a straight path. This connection with the spiritual hierarchies from which we were actually born, in the spirit, this living connection with them, is made difficult to the highest degree by the saturation of the world by modern technology. Human beings are dragged away from the spiritual-cosmic connections, and the forces which they should be developing to maintain their link with the spiritual-soul being of the cosmos are being weakened.

A person who has already taken the first steps in initiation will therefore notice how the mechanical things of modern life penetrate into man’s spiritual-soul nature to such an extent that a great deal of it is smothered and destroyed. Such a person also notices that the destruction of these forces makes it particularly difficult for him really to develop those inner forces which unite the human being with the ‘rightful’ spiritual beings of the hierarchies.

When someone who has taken the first steps in initiation tries to meditate in a modern railway carriage or on a modern steamer, he makes a great effort to activate the necessary forces of vision to lift him into the spiritual world, yet he notices the ahrimanic (spiritual beings desiring materialism) world filling him with the kind of thing that opposes this devotion to the spiritual world, and the struggle is enormous. You could call it an inner struggle experienced in the ether body, a struggle that wears you out and crushes you.

Other people who have not taken the first steps in initiation also go through this struggle, of course, and the only difference is that the student of initiation experiences it consciously. Everyone has to go through it; the effects of this are experienced by everyone.

It would be the worst possible mistake to conclude from this that we should resist what technology has brought into modern life, that we should protect ourselves from Ahriman (See: Here Know Evil) by cutting ourselves off from modern life. This would be a kind of spiritual cowardice. The real remedy is not to let the forces of the modern soul weaken and cut themselves off from modern life, but to make the forces of the soul strong so that they can stand up to modern life. A courageous approach to modern life is necessitated by world karma, and that is why true spiritual science possesses the characteristic of requiring an effort of the soul, a really hard effort.

Excerpt from: Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom, Lecture 1, Technology and Art, by Rudolf Steiner. Dornach, December 28, 1914.

No one seems to be very happy with the current state of the world. Wars on all continents, political strife between families and friends, poverty, injustice, famine, you name it. Will we be able to address any of it with our established lines of thinking? Will we be able to penetrate to any truth with the shifting stories told through the lenses of deceit, arrogance, greed and malevolence we can witness every day in front of us or in the news? What if these maladies are recognized as evidence of a humanity that needs a perspective, a new voice? What if we could understand it all with spiritual insight?

We just won’t know unless we make the effort over and over again. Effort, by definition, isn’t easy, but then, neither is witnessing the world as it is today. Finding our own spiritual self could be the most important work we do in this lifetime.