Rilke was a marvelous romantic poet whose works continue to inspire many. According to Wikipedia this is how he confronted his own turbulent times:AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Dec 18, 2021 10:29 pmLou Gold wrote: ↑Sat Dec 18, 2021 5:40 pmLet me presume that we agree, that both of us correctly grok Goethean Science and that neither of us is afraid of death. How shall we best participate in the concrete realities we see unfolding around us?AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Dec 18, 2021 5:04 pm
It will be difficult for most precisely because the spiritual evolutionary process has not been internalized as concrete reality. The fear response, and generally all self and other-destructive responses, is the response of people who are afraid to physically die more than anything else. By definition, that means they have not come to perceive spiritual realms and their own evolution through them over multiple lifetimes as a concrete reality. I would say even the 'true believers' will succumb to this response because what they hold as religious dogma has not been born again from within as inwardly perceived knowledge of Self, through Nature's appearances. In that sense, saying "Nature bats last" is another way of saying, "my own higher Self bats last". We can ignore it, but it won't ignore us, and the longer we ignore it, the worse its 'reaction' for us as spiritual (not physical) becomings.
I live in the home of a medical doctor who is a hospitalist and is regularly called to covid duty. He reports a staffing shortage in face of the approaching surge of illness. The national report is that there are presently 20% fewer healthcare staff than were present at the beginning of the pandemic. Some have left because of simple overwhelm. Some have left because they do not like vaccine mandates. Some don't want to work in the intensities of a fear-filled zone. Some have died. Some stick it out and do the best that they can. Got any advice to offer?
Yes and a lot of it is summarized and advocated for in my various essays and posts here. In short, for anyone who is still capable, which is probably most people, turn towards the eternal spiritual with persistence, patience, devotion, good will, and concrete Thinking effort. I also love the way Rilke put it:
“We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares have been set around us, and there is nothing that should frighten or upset us. We have been put into life as into the element we most accord with, and we have, moreover, through thousands of years of adaptation, come to resemble this life so greatly that when we hold still, through a fortunate mimicry we can hardly be differentiated from everything around us. We have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our terrors; if it has abysses, these abysses belong to us; if there are dangers, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Rilke supported the Russian Revolution in 1917 as well as the Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919.[30] He became friends with Ernst Toller and mourned the deaths of Rosa Luxemburg, Kurt Eisner, and Karl Liebknecht.[31] He confided that of the five or six newspapers he read daily, those on the far left came closest to his own opinions.[32] He developed a reputation for supporting left-wing causes and thus, out of fear for his own safety, became more reticent about politics after the Bavarian Republic was crushed by the right-wing Freikorps.[32] In January and February 1926, Rilke wrote three letters to the Mussolini-adversary Aurelia Gallarati Scotti [it] in which he praised Benito Mussolini and described fascism as a healing agent.[33][34][35]
PS: I love the much acclaimed translation of Rilke's "Letters" rendered by the Buddhist eco-philosopher Joanna Macy and the prize-winning poet and clinical psychologist Anita Barrows.