Book excerpt

[Güney27]

I found this in a book from an antroposopher.
It is very simple to read and connects a lot of concept to our first person experience.
How do you find that short excerpt?

This leaves us asking how we can be more aware of our soul and spirit. The best place to start is to think about how we connect to the outside world. The outside world enters into us through our senses. All that we see, hear, and feel enters into our soul and there we make sense of what is outside us. If the sensory impulse is familiar, we are quickly able to identify it, but if we see or hear something for the first time, it can take a while to figure out what it is. A good illustration of this is a story about Charles Darwin’s voyage to South America. They anchored the ship, the Beagle, and went ashore. It was a large ship, larger than the natives had ever experienced before. A sailor asked a native what he thought of his ship, and the native replied through the interpreter, “What ship? All I see is a large bird out on the water.” I often think about this story to help me become aware of the activity of my soul; I see something, then I think about it, giving it personal meaning, and then I can act on what I saw, or decide not to do anything. This is what happens in my soul. As Thomas Moore says, we do this with attachment. We all have certain feelings and thoughts about things, and we have particular patterns of behavior. This comes up in our relationships with our friends and family. We hear people say, “Oh, dad won’t like that.” Or, “What will mum think of that?” “My husband/wife/friend won’t be happy when I tell them about that.” If we can overcome our initial reaction to situations, detaching from our habitual responses, then the movement of our spirit assists us to be more accepting of another person’s behavior. The movement of our spirit opens us to the future. The spirit moves in our soul, making it more mobile and pliable. Through our spirit, we can change, releasing ourselves from past patterns that hold us back. Those who allow this movement of the spirit within their soul are usually more content with life, more inspiring, accepting change and changing themselves to meet the future.

[Federica]

I found this in a book from an antroposopher.
It is very simple to read and connects a lot of concept to our first person experience.
How do you find that short excerpt?

This leaves us asking how we can be more aware of our soul and spirit. The best place to start is to think about how we connect to the outside world. The outside world enters into us through our senses. All that we see, hear, and feel enters into our soul and there we make sense of what is outside us. If the sensory impulse is familiar, we are quickly able to identify it, but if we see or hear something for the first time, it can take a while to figure out what it is. A good illustration of this is a story about Charles Darwin’s voyage to South America. They anchored the ship, the Beagle, and went ashore. It was a large ship, larger than the natives had ever experienced before. A sailor asked a native what he thought of his ship, and the native replied through the interpreter, “What ship? All I see is a large bird out on the water.” I often think about this story to help me become aware of the activity of my soul; I see something, then I think about it, giving it personal meaning, and then I can act on what I saw, or decide not to do anything. This is what happens in my soul. As Thomas Moore says, we do this with attachment. We all have certain feelings and thoughts about things, and we have particular patterns of behavior. This comes up in our relationships with our friends and family. We hear people say, “Oh, dad won’t like that.” Or, “What will mum think of that?” “My husband/wife/friend won’t be happy when I tell them about that.” If we can overcome our initial reaction to situations, detaching from our habitual responses, then the movement of our spirit assists us to be more accepting of another person’s behavior. The movement of our spirit opens us to the future. The spirit moves in our soul, making it more mobile and pliable. Through our spirit, we can change, releasing ourselves from past patterns that hold us back. Those who allow this movement of the spirit within their soul are usually more content with life, more inspiring, accepting change and changing themselves to meet the future.

I guess it makes sense that I go first - unless Ashvin overtakes me so I'll try to write quickly

I'd say - so far so good! It's a short excerpt, and one could be picky and say: "Hey, the outside world does not really enter into us via the senses", but these expressions are acceptable because they could express a first degree of approximation. Maybe perception is clarified further later on in the book.

The ship story is a nice example that helps become more conscious of our intuitive context, exactly like the alien dwelling in Cleric's FoC essay:

these perceptions are always perceived within an invisible intuitive context, the meaningful background of our existence which we can compare to an intuitive sense of orientation. As we saw, this context is not something readymade but builds up throughout our life. On one hand the perceptual world (remember that this includes all conscious phenomena, and not simply our conception of an outer physical world) impresses into our conscious life – like the perceptions of the alien dwelling do. On the other, our intuition develops through everything we do in relation to it. Everything we have seen, smelled, touched, done, felt, thought about, has contributed to the richness of our present intuitive context.

Maybe one could say that, in this book's excerpt, things are presented in simplified way, there's a shortcut, but again, it could appear as entirely legitimate when considered in the larger trajectory of the whole book.

[AshvinP]

I found this in a book from an antroposopher.
It is very simple to read and connects a lot of concept to our first person experience.
How do you find that short excerpt?

This leaves us asking how we can be more aware of our soul and spirit. The best place to start is to think about how we connect to the outside world. The outside world enters into us through our senses. All that we see, hear, and feel enters into our soul and there we make sense of what is outside us. If the sensory impulse is familiar, we are quickly able to identify it, but if we see or hear something for the first time, it can take a while to figure out what it is. A good illustration of this is a story about Charles Darwin’s voyage to South America. They anchored the ship, the Beagle, and went ashore. It was a large ship, larger than the natives had ever experienced before. A sailor asked a native what he thought of his ship, and the native replied through the interpreter, “What ship? All I see is a large bird out on the water.” I often think about this story to help me become aware of the activity of my soul; I see something, then I think about it, giving it personal meaning, and then I can act on what I saw, or decide not to do anything. This is what happens in my soul. As Thomas Moore says, we do this with attachment. We all have certain feelings and thoughts about things, and we have particular patterns of behavior. This comes up in our relationships with our friends and family. We hear people say, “Oh, dad won’t like that.” Or, “What will mum think of that?” “My husband/wife/friend won’t be happy when I tell them about that.” If we can overcome our initial reaction to situations, detaching from our habitual responses, then the movement of our spirit assists us to be more accepting of another person’s behavior. The movement of our spirit opens us to the future. The spirit moves in our soul, making it more mobile and pliable. Through our spirit, we can change, releasing ourselves from past patterns that hold us back. Those who allow this movement of the spirit within their soul are usually more content with life, more inspiring, accepting change and changing themselves to meet the future.

Guney,

Thanks for sharing. Federica's response reminded me to make a comment

I think the basic message here is an important one, particularly the bold part. This is the key work. We have to realize that our initial reactions to situations have formed quite independently of our thinking agency, mostly through experiences of childhood and adolescence.

It is helpful to keep in sight how all sensory events unfold within our soul space. There is a distinct lawfulness to the transformation of sensations in comparison to that of feelings and thoughts but, nevertheless, they are interwoven at all times within our unified soul life and influencing one another. In fact, the etched soul pathways of habitual reactions are, in a real sense, the sensory events from childhood and adolescence that are still present as patterned images beneath the surface of waking consciousness. These pathways were relatively adaptive for our being to grow into physical and social life, although even that is debatable in more recent years since the sensory-social environment has been structured by quite flattened interests and corrupted institutions. They overall reflect a quite selfish way of interacting with the living and sentient environment, even if that egotism is hardly conscious for most people.

We can't undo the depths of this egotism in a snap, but we can work on the 'little things' that are mentioned above, resisting the habitual soul movements that are stimulated by sensory events and continually try to push their way into manifestation. It also fits in nicely with Barfield's quotes that were posted here. Our "I" should allow new impulses to flow into soul-sensory life and gradually transform/redeem the old, so that it uses the latter for ideal aims instead of being used by the pathways for purely selfish interests. The "I" should remain continuously active, present, and vigilant within the stream of its unfolding experience. Of course this won't be possible to do at all times, but it is truly the effort that counts - these efforts allow our inner organism to gradually adapt to new ways of thinking, feeling, and being.

[Federica]

Güney, would you reveal the book's name and author? Maybe we can send it to a few high priests of philosophy and science

[Güney27]

Güney, would you reveal the book's name and author? Maybe we can send it to a few high priests of philosophy and science

The book is called "Bible unlocked" from Kristina Kane.
What do you mean with high priests?

[Federica]

Güney, would you reveal the book's name and author? Maybe we can send it to a few high priests of philosophy and science

The book is called "Bible unlocked" from Kristina Kane.
What do you mean with high priests?

Thanks!

https://a.co/d/bcN7FPB

Lorenzo used to refer to Steiner and other Masters of esoteric science as "high priests" to mean that they used their position of authority as "cult leaders" to spread their teachings using secret and complicated language that normal people can't understand.

Granted that Steiner is not always easy to read, the real "high priests" today are some representatives of the mainstream worldview who appropriate the results of scientific inquiry and unduly use them as foundation for a religion of materialism and technology. Theese people and their followers should be exposed to ideas like the ones you shared here.

[Federica]

Speaking of new books, I have order this one:

https://amzn.eu/d/e67egto

after watching this: