LukeJTM wrote: ↑Sat Jun 24, 2023 9:34 pm
Thank you, Federica. That is helpful. I haven't found Steiner's lectures on Esoteric Lessons before, I only know these exercises from the books, which are basically exercepts from different lectures compiled together in a flow. "Six Steps in Self-Development" and "Strengthening The Will" are the books I have on it. I think he might have mentioned some of them in An Outline of Occult Science but I haven't read it.
I will have a look at the Brian Gray video.
Yes - reading the lectures, rather than compilations of curated excerpts, is more demanding, but worth it. It provides a somewhat more direct, insightful understanding.
Luke, I was thinking about your example of frustration and impatience, that I can relate to (although my feelings are always more challenged by other people than by situations) and I thought I would comment. Please keep in mind, this is only a beginner, limited understanding. I am sharing it because it has led to some improvement in myself.
I believe the main task in this exercise is not so much to attend to this or that particular peak in feelings, this or that event that we experience as an overflow of feelings - and that we try to remedy with things like a deep breath, an attempt to enquire the deeper reasons, etcetera. I don't think it's harmful to do so. However, it may be scarcely effective, if the overall trend of our 'feeling curve' throughout the days is not brought into clearer and clearer awareness, and addressed.
So I believe it's first and foremost a matter of freely deciding to direct attention to the 'anatomy' of our feeling activity. I say 'freely' to mean that we don't wait to be compelled by an uncomfortable feeling peak. This ground work is best done when we are not overwhelmed by any particular feeling currents. It's a regular turning of the focus of attention towards our ground habit of emotional reactivity, with the intention to gain more control over it through aware observation, calm vigilance.
For me, this starts from the second Steiner quote I shared, by first realizing that the triggers of my feeling peaks are nothing other than the unfolding of karma, that I should strive to accept, and also conceive to interact with - in an inner stance that's both passive and active. In my experience, this preventive work already takes away a good part of restless reactivity to those triggers, the moment they do pop up in the flow of our daily events. I have notice that, when I start
owning what comes to me as 'event from outside', positive or negative, instead of being saddedned, shocked, outraged, or completely elated, euphoric, or in disbelief, I can also start to somehow interact with the events. I get a sense of becoming able to steer them, to some minor extent. Surfing is a good analogy. I can orient the direction of events a little, rather than being only stuck in an emotional reactivity that occupies the whole feeling space and impedes any fruitful interaction with the flow of becoming, as it happens.
When one does that every day - summoning a sense of inner tranquility - out of free initiative (rather than waiting to be upset by this or that
feeling) it becomes clear we are arbitrarily upset by feeling peaks, not by the events themselves. We are upset by
our own reactivity to the events. So when we become more conscious of this reactivity, we skip falling prey to arbitrary emotional peaks. In my experience this work is actually not as demanding as it may seem. And it's almost immediately rewarding.
Maybe it's self-evident why this work doesn't numb the life of feelings, why it actually allows it to flourish. It’s because the beneficial, all-round expression of feelings does not reside at all in the peaks. The emotional peaks disperse the power and intensity of Feeling, therefore they need to be brought back to equanimous balance. I’m not sure if the following is correct, but I would say that, as much as the idea of verticality is helpful for Thinking, and how to lift it above the flat, reality-mimicking mode, for Feeling it’s more useful to imagine that we want to give it breadth, span, and roundness. We want to forge Feeling into a large and warm foundation, taking away the random, angular peaks, making it round, and full, and equal, and self-contained. We want to give Feeling the quality of being always sufficient and abundant at the same time, like a circle is. In a word, we want to elevate Feeling by making it equanimous. So by mastering the peaks, we are going to experience more intense, conscious, round, and rewarding feelings, that better support active, vertical Thinking and work in concert with it, and don't drag it down to uninspired intellectual thought sequences.
I would also like to say, I have taken a look at a few other Vimeo videos from Brian Gray, who teaches the Foundation Program in Anthroposophy at Rudolf Steiner College in Fair Oaks, CA. I think he’s a great teacher!