Cleric K wrote: ↑Thu Aug 25, 2022 1:59 pmFederica, I think the above dilemma will be resolved for you if you take a more 'interactive' way of looking at things.Federica wrote: ↑Wed Aug 24, 2022 9:41 pm In other words, moving forward in any direction becomes a dilemma. A concentric, lawful structure is there and organizes everything, but that Logic I cannot access, I cannot measure anything against it, as I have not reached there. On the other hand, I am called to have an active, responsible, and moral approach to thinking-feeling-willing. It has to be intuitive, also, because there is no lawfulness to rely upon.
Let's look at this in the context of the speech/writing split. Seen phenomenologically, in our stream of becoming we're continuously impressing our spiritual activity in the perceptual stream. With our spiritual activity we weave in intuitively grasped meaning. When we think, we express in perceptual verbal artforms the invisible meaning that we live in.
These two poles are not independent. Many times the metaphor of the riverbed has been given. Through our intuitively willed spiritual activity we impress the forms of the riverbed but at the same time this activity is being shaped by the riverbed. So we have a classical example of an unitary system which is only seen from two different angles. The best example is probably General Relativity where "Matter tells space how to curve, and curved space tells matter how to move". In our case we can say something like "Perceptions tell intuition how to curve (how to fit the perceptions), and intuitive spiritual activity tells perceptions how to move." Of course this by no means should remain simply as an abstract conundrum for the intellect (basically perpetuating the bi-stable mode). Instead, it is perfectly possible for modern man to enter livingly into this flow of reality.
In ordinary consciousness we're tempted to anchor ourselves within something apparently stable. We can anchor ourselves either in the perceptual stream and see only the "Perceptions tell intuition how to curve" part (basically materialism or contemplative mysticism) or we anchor ourselves in the 'mind-stuff' and see only how the "intuitive spiritual activity tells perceptions how to move" (idealism which however fails to understand why this activity is constrained).
The reason that this bi-stable mode can't be overcome is that in both cases the human mind seeks only an intellectual statement about reality. The mind tries to extricate itself from the flow of reality and make a bystander-statement about what reality is. It is clear that we need different cognitive skills if we're to overcome this mode. We need to find a new anchor point which is neither within some particular perception nor within some particular concept. To make an analogy with sound - if a membrane moves very slowly we have a bi-stable situation - the membrane is now here, then there. But when the frequency increases we have something qualitatively different - tone which is stable in itself. Similarly, when through concentration we place ourselves in the very process of becoming, we no longer step outside the process and seek external intellectual statements about it. Instead, our becoming turns into a completely practical matter, exactly like a form of art.
When we learn some form of art we develop our motor skills and make them fit to express artistic intuition. So it's the same basic principle at all levels. The perceptual world - the stone, clay, canvas, paints, keys, strings, our body and senses - curve and restrict our intuition. At the same time our intuition tells the art materials how to move and arrange. When we come to our soul life we have the same process. Through our activity we're shaping our character which in turns acts as the riverbed for future activity. So much like with Hegel, we have this dialectic evolution, through which the spirit impresses itself in the resisting perceptual spectrum and transforms it such that in turn it can express even greater degrees of freedom.
When we see things in this way it should be much easier to resolve the apparent duality between speech and writing. It is really a difference between the art forms that we give to our intuitive spiritual activity. In thinking we spiritually gesticulate to transform the perceptual stream primarily in the spectrum of imagination. In speech we allow our activity to penetrate the larynx and will it's movements. Thus we can say that we impress our intuitions into artforms consisting of pressure waves in the air. These waves can affect other conscious perspectives and eventually they can discover the intuitive ideal content which was impressed in the waves in the first place. Written language is yet another way to impress our spiritual activity in the perceptual stream. Building a house is yet another way. We transform the perceptual stream in certain way which proceeds from our ideas and goals. The one seeing the house can understand it when he unites with the ideas and goals we invested in it.
So we need not place artificial separations between speech, writing or any other form of manifesting our spiritual activity. The bottom line is that we continually impress our spiritual activity in the stream of perceptions in the most varied ways. In this sense the whole World content is a full-spectrum script that we're all writing. Through speech we impress sound into the world. Through writing we impress ink or shapes in the sand.
It is all so simple. First we collectively have to develop the consciousness that we're continually impressing our spiritual activity in the stream of perceptions. Everyone contributes in some way. Second we need to realize that the perceptual stream is at the same time a symbol for the riverbed which constricts the degrees of freedom of our spiritual activity. These constraints are not only of human origin. The archetypal riverbed of the stream of becoming is impressed by spiritual activity which still evades human consciousness.
This is something that can be relatively easily experienced in meditation - simply because it is so general, it's ubiquitous, everything we experience is an example of it. We have to simply condense this ubiquitous experience into clear consciousness. Previously you said that you're distracted in meditation by wondering whether the feeling you're bathing in is the right one. This still maintains somewhat external view on the matter. The feeling is seen as a dress that we should put on. We look at the red, the blue, the short one, the laced one, and wonder which is the right one for the ball with the prince. But in this case our inner goals and our outer means are still not organically united. In the same sense, when we wonder about the right feeling to focus on, we're not yet organically one with the feeling, we still see it as something extraneous which we want to attach to ourselves and we wonder if that will get us closer to our goal (which obviously is not the feeling itself).
This is directly related with our previous conversations about the plumbing. As long as we see our concentration as an indirect activity which is supposed to lead us to some expected state, the meditation is not yet as it should be. At some point we have to approach the matters directly. It's like saying "I like to have things, to travel here and there and thus I need to get a job in which I'm otherwise not particularly interested". We're still divided as long as we see concentration as something boring which we need to get through in order to arrive at something more interesting. On the contrary, when we really begin to align with our stream of becoming, this simplest flow in itself becomes supremely interesting for us. We understand how all our life we've been flying above our own reality, which is under the intellect's nose, so to speak, yet it requires certain effort to attune to it. Seen in this way, there can't be a question about the rightness of the feeling because the feeling permeates organically our cognitive becoming. The feeling grows as an aura around our genuine interest in our stream of becoming.
It is indeed possible to start with feeling in the way you suggest. One can suppress the wondering and simply focus on the Love of God, humility, prayer and so on. This can also work (as a point of departure) but it requires certain soul disposition which is not available to everyone - it depends on their particular riverbed, i.e. - their karma. In some people disbelief simply outweighs everything else. But the development which passes through cognition is available to everyone simply because everyone can think. When we concentrate on our stream of thoughtful becoming, when we realize that in the way we lay down thoughts our intuition tells perceptions how to move, and when we perceive, perceptions tell our intuition how to curve, then to this kernel ingrows also the feeling element which Ashvin aptly quoted "Within this book thinking is experienced in a way that makes it impossible for a person involved in it to have any other impression - when he is living in thought, he is living in the cosmos."
This is the key. As long as we're wondering whether we're bathing in the right feeling, the thinking that tries to bath itself still speaks from the background. Cinderella wonders which dress is the right one to impress the prince. But when the wondering itself becomes the center of experience, then even without aiming for it, soon it becomes impossible to have any other feeling than that we're living in Cosmic reality. Our cognitive becoming is the Cosmic World process. Our wondering about the dress is more real than the dress. It is precisely within this wondering activity that we'll begin to find our true being hidden in the background until recently. The feeling then comes through the natural expansion of this process which gradually includes not only becoming from thought to thought but also the longer term becoming of our being and the World at large.
AshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Aug 25, 2022 3:37 pm I want to reference a great practical example of what Cleric also illustrated above from one of Steiner's lecture. It also points to why my own abstract reflections on this polar dynamic, in contrast to the interactive approach, may be perpetuating the dilemma. That's why I try to sprinkle in these quotes - right now I have trouble translating what I experience inwardly into interactive illustrations and practical examples, so I figure it's often best to quote others who can do so. On no account should these be taken to suggest we should simply incorporate the ideas from external authorities, imitating the concepts in our abstract schema, rather than winning through to them from our own observation of living experience and our sound reasoning. It is the latter which makes all the difference to our cognitive evolution. (the astral-ego discussed below associates with our intuitive spiritual activity and the physical-etheric with impressed riverbed i.e. perceptual stream)
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA059/En ... 03p01.html
I am yet again amazed by the unreal realness of this situation.. Thank you.
Ashvin, your reflections, old and new, constantly bring me new insights, not perpetuations of dilemmas! With speech and writing I have been wrestling with many details, the discussion was larger, but I was following (I still have to reply to that post). I look forward to reading this new lecture.
Cleric, I fully recognize that oftentimes I make intellectual statements. I guess it shines through my written words. Sometimes I do have a clearer sense of the flow of reality. I experience it as very gentle, faint swirls of breeze, not like a real breeze but like an ideal breeze, disclosing a sort of silent attention that lasts perhaps one or two seconds. The rest of the time I rely on the memory of that, so to speak. Apart from a couple of attempts, I have not really started training the artform in meditation, so I hope I will enter a more unified sense of reality by working on it. In the meantime I do my best with what I have. On speech and writing, it does look very simple in this context. Rather than the relation between the two, we see that they are both expressions of the same process of impression, in which they are united. Because absolutely everything is meaning, even the voids between words are, and any discontinuity is riverbed constraints.
Regarding meditation, I have been cautious, but the new impression I am receiving today is positively encouraging and I feel I can try again in a more neutral mood. The river image looks very inviting and welcoming to me.
The two times I have tried, I have been distracted not directly by wondering about the feeling, but by becoming aware of a racing heart beat first. The sensation of the heart pumping made me think “I’m doing something wrong” and because the thing I had been doing was focusing on summoning feelings, that became my thought, and it was the end.
I don’t really recognize wearing the feeling in the way you describe, like a dress to impress. If it was a dress, rather than beautiful and laced, it was simple and ripped. I can assure you that I was not seeing the concentration as something boring, rather as an unknown, and a little frightening. I was keeping these instructions in mind, starting from feeling lost in cosmic void:
Cleric K wrote: ↑Mon Jul 25, 2022 9:38 am the important thing is that the thought-image is imbued with deep feeling. If we avoid being prejudiced about it, we could say that these feelings should be of religious magnitude.
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The thought-image should be like a condensation of something of Cosmic magnitude, which initially can only be anticipated as a feeling.
Cleric K wrote: ↑Thu Jul 28, 2022 2:59 pmThis is an amazing feeling when we begin to forebode the immensity of the spiritual Cosmos. It is true that through knowledge we begin to orient but the thing that really makes the difference is Love. Only when we begin to feel that this immensity within and without us is focused on us, the tiny speck on Earth, the terror and panic of the beyond begins to transform into the Love of the Divine. For some the Divine Fire is the fire of hell, while for others it is the Fire of Divine Love.
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So the question is: what/who will we give our heart to? To that which can make us a living spring that never runs dry and goes in the meadows to quench the thirst of its fellow beings? Or to those that will take the little water we have and leave us on the sands for the vultures to feast.
Cleric K wrote: ↑Mon Jul 25, 2022 9:38 am Imagine that someone throws an object and shouts "Watch out!". You don't see the object but cover your head with your hands and freeze in anticipation of the impact. You expect to come into contact with something external to you. Well, in our meditations we should also be open to go beyond ourselves. ...If they were to take seriously that we should go beyond our intellectual self in meditation, the first reaction would be to simply freeze in anticipation of something to fall on our head from the spiritual world. That's why we need to find the religious feeling
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If it feels slightly disturbing that our thoughts are like overtones modulated over deeper Cosmic Thoughts thought by living Intelligence, then we're on the right track. If we don't feel that this is at least a tiny bit scarily intimate, then we're probably holding the idea only as a floating concept in our mind, which has no power to nudge our ego from its throne (thus the saying "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom").
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The symbol for concentration is especially effective when it is imbued with these deep religious feelings. And I beg you once again not to mistake the word 'religious' for naive belief. It is only to suggest we need this intellectual inversion, to feel that the forces over which our intellectual activity is modulated, are far greater and more powerful than our conscious personality. In other words, we need to find once again the sacred dimension of being.
The mood I had evoked was imbued with gratitude, but also with something along the lines of fear. Maybe it was not embodied enough. The riverbed meditation looks like an easier start, but I also feel an affinity to the image of the turning round shapes that you shared. I don’t yet know what I will do next time.