Federica wrote: ↑Sun May 28, 2023 1:55 pm
AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat May 27, 2023 8:12 pm
I think the main part of the answer is exactly the faith you mentioned, or put another way, establishing an inward certainty of the general direction in which our Cosmic-Earthly destiny must unfold. (...)
There is a rush to understand everything in the rigid, lifeless concepts at our disposal.
The thing is, there is a sense of empowerment, a sense of being fully human, when practicing the intellectual type of reasoning. And the vague recognition one can have that something is missing is put on the back of the
content of cognition, not its
method. I think that a vast majority of people simply haven’t had the chance to realize that there exists another approach. It was my case as well, until I arrived here. I knew something was missing, something needed to be discovered ‘sooner or later’. I was not fully satisfied with ‘knowledge’, and ‘worldview’, and ‘righteousness’, but I had no idea the problem wasn’t a ‘what’ but a ‘how’.
AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat May 27, 2023 8:12 pm
A similar thing happens on the path of higher cognition, which I also referred to in a
comment to Luke. We may often justify our lack of inward certainty in the general direction as
caution, humility, and a careful assessment of our current lack of inner knowledge. We feel that the higher cognitive worlds so far remain closed to us and it's best not to overstep our bounds. But is that really the case?
Are we perhaps expecting some major inner revelation to prompt us towards what we already know we should be doing?
We mostly have all the resources for morally
perfecting our character, which is the primary means by which we loosen the intellectual mask and let the higher ideations more consciously inflow. We have the focused thinking exercises, the will exercises, the reading materials, etc. There are a
million little things we can do to creatively manifest the general direction of our destiny. I think a lot of them have been mentioned here already, like paying attention to animalistic eating habits, to our speech and gestures, feeling thankful when we encounter illness and misfortune, and many similar things. Lately I have been working with Steiner's exercise to try and consciously change our handwriting. It's not so much the result which matters in these exercises, but
the intention to strengthen our will and be of more use in the quest to fulfill the ideals of our Cosmic organism.
We can mask our intentions within the physical spectrum, but they are laid bare in the higher worlds. Our Cosmic allies will not fail to notice them. We may often be unfaithful on our end of the covenant, but they never are.
Yes, I have read that comment. In my case, I don't think that's the issue. I don't expect major revelations, and I am not covering for myself my insufficient engagement with the thought that it's a humble and careful attitude. The reason for the laking engagement is rather a fear of losing control completely. It's also a fear of, in a certain sense, not recognizing myself. I am still unable to renounce the feeling of having solid ground under my feet. The simple fact of writing this gives me a somewhat uncomfortable sensation. In some respects I think I'm doing a lot, and in another one, not enough. I have a strong, continuous awareness that this focus is the only one menaingful, and my whole being is oriented in its direction now. This is a huge inner life change and a rather relevant change in the external life as well. But there is surely also an attachment to the personality I can recognize, that is very challenging to let go of. For example, you speak of an exercise to change your handwriting. It was enough for me to read about it, to feel an immediate resistance to the idea. For me, it’s evident that everything connected with the hands in particular, is especially linked to the sense of identity. I have noticed that in my case, in other situations. As a thought experiment, for example, if I had to lose a hand in an accident, I think I couldn’t tolerate the idea of having someone else's hand transplanted. My hands are the mirror of ‘me’. So this is my main problem right now. Perfecting the character sounds nice, the million little things to try out sound nice, and ‘affordable’, and I am making substantial efforts in those directions, but let's face it, what’s requested here is more than that. I am fine with not masking anything, this is not my problem (sure, I mask things as needed in everyday life situations, but that’s another story) working with intention at strengthening the will is not my problem, I have (not perfected but) improved that objectively. The real problem is to sacrifice the current sense of identity, what makes us us, to be ready to grow new organs, and to let go of the current ones. I get that it must depend on not yet having identified one’s center of gravity in the higher self. That's where the struggle really lies: that the end has to be the means at the same time.
Federica,
I agree, unwinding the personality rooted in the lower ego is the key task - the sacrificial death which is needed - and also what I mean by 'morally perfecting the character'. The million little things are exactly the way to do that, along with strenuous meditative effort which seeks higher guiding impulses from the spirit worlds. Remember, the little things are only 'little' from the aliased physical perspective - when they are rhythmically placed as seed-offerings to the spirit worlds during meditation, sleep, between incarnations, they are then becoming something much more than we can imagine. They are elaborated by all the higher hierarchies working on our behalf, before being incarnated again within our soul-life.
Another thing is that the efforts to unwind the personality should, correspondingly, be understood as something we are engaging as a human collective for Cosmic aims. You mentioned before that you feel the 'we' and 'our' is too impersonal in these discussions, but that is exactly the point - it is not 'my' problems, 'my' issues, etc., but the shared archetypal tendencies which have flowed down through many incarnations since the Fall, prior to which we were all in fact a unified soul-spiritual organism. That is why it perfectly proper for us to feel, for ex., that
we have crucified Christ and it is part of our karma. I was planning on sharing the following passage somewhere, so may as well do it here. I encourage anyone interesting in pursuing it further to order the book, which is probably worth it for this chapter alone.
But I also want to point out, I think whatever you are doing in your own personal practice is perfectly fine and it is clearly working, even if the results aren't clear yet or we feel to have bumped up against various barriers. I often feel the same way in my own practice. These comments are not about pointing to any given person and saying they should be doing more of this or more of that - it is simply about providing the constant stream of communal support that we will all surely need as we work further into the dark depths of our existence.
If our souls are filled with these questions as we approach the Lord’s Prayer, we will be deeply struck by something in the text of these seven petitions; they never mention the individual human “I.” There is no talk of my Father, my trespasses, and so on, a mode of expression that would be a basic condition of mystic absorption and religious fervor in prayer. The petitions always use “we,” “our Father,” “our trespasses,” and so on. This points to the first, preliminary way we must approach the Lord’s Prayer. It shows us that the Lord’s Prayer is not at all intended for personal use; consciousness concerned with personal, individual matters cannot use the Lord’s Prayer. The Lord’s Prayer is not intended for the fulfillment of individual wishes, for the rapturous absorption of lonely mystics, or for personal development. The mere fact that it is addressed to God the Father shows that it is not intended for these purposes. The Father God has to do with the hierarchy of humanity, not its groups and individuals. Separate beings have conscious relationship with the Father only insofar as they represent their hierarchy in its capacity as a community in cosmic destiny. And no one is qualified to represent the fourth hierarchy without having made the concerns of its destiny one’s own. When reciting, in the name of humanity, the seven petitions related to the seven needs of human destiny, one’s consciousness must be occupied with the questions that concern human destiny. Then one’s voice becomes the voice of humanity; the unconscious voices of all humankind form a chorus that joins the voice consciously expressing the seven needs of humanity. The hierarchical choirs alone penetrate as high as to the Father God; the sounds of single voices die away on closer thresholds. This is why poets imagine choirs of angelic hosts (though we need not determine here whether those spiritual hierarchies sing “Gloria” and “Hosanna” to the Father God). The fourth hierarchy is no exception; if words are to ascend to God the Father, they must rise morally and spiritually in chorus. What the chorus of humanity has to say to God the Father is contained in the seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, as spoken by Jesus Christ as the representative of humanity. The Lord’s Prayer is the spiritual and moral expression of the chorus of the fourth hierarchy; it contains every cry humankind sends up—even to the threshold of the Father sphere—in all the toil of labor, all the pain of sickness, all the distress and fear of death, and also in every endeavor after goodness, truth, and beauty. This is why the Lord’s Prayer offers the best training in selflessness and the surest and most comprehensive source from which the recognition of the true need of humanity can be drawn.
...
Now, the very idea of balance is connected to right and left—the horizontal. And this idea is completely appropriate when applied to the karmic relationship between earlier earthly lives and the current one, because it involves an ongoing act of balancing. This idea alone, however, is not enough for understanding the Lord’s Prayer, which does not deal with the fulfillment of karma from the past, but with determining future karma now. The seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer represent an active determination of karma, not merely petition for karma to occur; there is no need to be anxious about that. Because the Lord’s Prayer deals with the predetermination of karma in the present, the balance that forms the basis of the Lord’s Prayer and gives the petitions karmic justification must be imagined not as horizontal, but as vertical. We must picture one end of the scale in heaven and the other on Earth. The higher scale is in the realm of the Father’s mercy; the lower in the sphere of human initiative. Between the two and determining the balance is the Son, through whom, alone, human beings can approach the Father. The fact that this karmic balance weighs vertically rather than horizontally is a consequence of the Son becoming the lord of karma. The rule of Christian karma is: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you” (Matthew 7:7). This differs from the law of the elders, or karma of the old covenant, in that following the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the weighing was no longer just horizontal, but also vertical. In other words, along with the law whose principle is “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth", the new law, whose principle is preeminently expressed in the Lord’s Prayer, becomes increasingly important. In the following meditations, we will discuss the moral and spiritual meaning of the vertical position of the karmic balance, as well as the nature of the “new law,” whose lord is Christ. The task here is to clarify, through the seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, the nature of the new relationship between humanity and God the Father—that is, the nature of the new covenant as Christian karma, in which the weighing is done vertically.
Tomberg, Valentin; Bruce, R.H.. Christ and Sophia: Anthroposophic Meditations on the Old Testament, New Testament, and Apocalypse (p. 231). steinerbooks. Kindle Edition.