Federica wrote: ↑Sun Jul 24, 2022 4:17 pm
Thank you for the credit, Ashvin! You are right, I have not realized how difficult it becomes to ignore the life of feelings on the path. I certainly haven’t. All I have realized is my personal work on feelings up to this point and, to some lesser extent, what I am reading about feeling. What’s stated in the lecture you shared - I have read it carefully - I certainly haven’t realized, for the most part. For now I am simply reading:Here I’m surprised that feelings are said to be more difficult to see through than thinking, but for now I simply take notice, and hope I’ll be able to make better sense of that later (not a question I am asking).Steiner wrote:We must be able to include feeling in the development of knowledge. Through constant review of our own being, we must be able to know what kind of persons we are as feeling human beings. This is not easy. With thinking it is relatively easy to achieve clarity about ourselves. [...] But with feeling we never really get to the point of observing ourselves in our souls. We are always convinced that the direction of our feeling is the correct one. We must delve most intimately into our souls if we wish to know ourselves as feeling human beings.
There actually are a few things in this lecture that I can relate to directly:Steiner wrote: When people think clearly they are citizens of the world, for they well know that thinking makes you human, even when it is dead in the present age. But people are separated by their feeling into nations, and especially today they let this unconscious feeling dominate in the worst possible way. Because people feel themselves as only belonging to a certain group, all kinds of conflicts arise.
I was so glad to read this. I was trying to express something along these lines in some of the first posts of this thread, about people trying to get themselves an identity by declaring allegiance to flags and then playing for others and for themselves that role, whatever conflicts it takes, as a hopeless, nonsensical way of feeling that they have ‘meaning’ as humans. Another feeling referenced as necessary to cultivate, that I have felt, is the immersive feeling of being lost in the cosmic void without clues about our own being. I can feel this feeling even without waiting for the night sky. The blue sky of the day is enough. And the ‘earnestness’ it's referred to as another feeling to cultivate, I understand too, I call it urgency.
Right, but let's always remember we are those "people". If we feel that we aren't conditioned by our gender, race, or nationality, then we are simply keeping that influence subconscious (and it's not easy to bring it to consciousness). At the end of the day, we are speaking of the nation as Idea, and as Steiner mentioned in the linked lecture, Ideas don't just hang in the air, but belong to ideational beings. They are experienced from the first-person perspective of such beings, not unlike we experience our own ideas from our first-person perspective. And there are important goals for humanity which are accomplished by such beings ideating national currents of willing, feeling, thinking. Yet, by becoming more conscious of these beings and their ideational currents, we also decondition from them. It's always good to view another human being, first and foremost, as an image of the universal Spirit, transcending any transient identifications, but we don't get a complete understanding of the human individual in that way. For the latter, we must also try to discern these nested layers of influence, of course without any prejudice or moral judgment.
Again from the lecture, there’s this image that I find so brilliant, of the humans of today, going around living life until death, as kind of zombies, dead corpses. We are right now, as alive as we are, the dead form of the human figure, ”the visible corpses of our animating invisible soul. And so it is for thinking. Our ordinary thoughts are dead thoughts in a corpse figure.” What a helpful image, it makes the idea that our concepts are dead precipitations much more apprehensible. It really is a powerful metaphor, not an ordinary one, but a metaphor that one can try on oneself instead of looking at it. What I don’t get in that passage is “It’s perhaps depressing to realize that it’s a corpse”. Why should it be depressing… It's such a brilliant insight!
Well, if you don't find it depressing, that means you are making a real living connection to your core inner being, not bound up with the physical body and its senses-concepts. So that's great!
I also read the link to the TCT thread and the great metaphor of the toy-concepts assigned by the council of children to the TV news. A robust one whose explanatory value extends in quite a few directions. It’s interesting how solid understanding is gained. I have heard some ideas multiple times by now, however every new metaphor that revisits these same ideas is not superfluous. There is a way in which depth in meaning is added every time. The tissues of understanding are densified every time by the images. It doesn’t seem to work the same way for abstract concepts without analogical correlates, where there is no real gradient of understanding, it’s a zero-one switch. Flipping the switch may require some enterprise, but once it’s done the extra example won’t add much meaning. Anyhow, following the links in there, I even stumbled upon a joke that you made!? I couldn’t believe my eyes : ) (I just mean: nice to see that you allow yourself to joke sometimes.)
Great point about the metaphors, allegories, parables. These are a great way to cultivate Imagination, either reading them or making them. I have my moments with the jokes
You probably won't be surprised to hear, smiling and laughter can become spiritual exercises as well. There is a great exercise to calm the soul before meditation - imagine each of your body parts 'smiling', not physically, but with the inner meaning of 'smiling', working up from the toes to the forehead in a slow and methodical way. This really helped me early on in the process.
For the most part, if I ever watch TV/movies anymore, it is either a simple comedy (I really like rewatching old comedy 'sketches') or an optimistic drama which highlights the endless creativity and drive of the human spirit.
Lastly, a serious thought about feelings. Your reference to the feeling of devotion makes me notice that in my long list of feelings, I omitted devotion, and the mood of prayer. Are they the same thing? If they are, I would prefer for myself the latter expression, which I can understand and find.
I can’t really find devotion, I can’t see myself as a devotee. These words have colors of abandonment to blind belief in my ear. I do think devotion is one possible approach to ease one’s way towards spiritual life, for those who are inclined to find and cultivate the feeling in their heart, as it was in the Vedanta tradition with Bhakti Yoga as well, but it’s not my way. And I noticed another word that I perceive with a similar semantic color as devotion. It’s “impure”. You use it in reference to not entering the higher worlds impure. The word is not used in the lecture and I wonder if there's a particular meaning you assign to it?
Yeah, I would say they are the same thing. By devotion, I certainly don't mean anything like blind belief. In my view, there is a huge difference between that blind belief and freely surrendering oneself to the Ideas, Feelings, and Will of the higher progressive spirits out of reasoned gratitude, trust, and love. It's not anything much different than what you mention above when looking into the blue sky - "the immersive feeling of being lost in the cosmic void without clues about our own being" - although we certainly want to maintain a connection to our own being with meditation. Blue colors have generally signified a mood of devotion in religious practices.
Steiner wrote:Imagine that dawn has gone by and it is daytime. You see freely up into the air, as it is today. What do you see? You see the so-called blue sky. To be sure, it is not there, but you see it all the same. That certainly does not continue into all infinity, but you see the blue sky as if it were surrounding the earth like a blue shell.
Why is that? Now you have only to think of how it is out there in distant universal space. It is in fact dark. For universal space is dark. The sun shines only on the earth and because there is air round the earth the sunbeams are caught and make it light here, especially when they shine through watery air. But out there in universal space it is absolutely black darkness. So that if one stands here by day one looks into darkness, and one should actually see darkness. But one does not see it black, but blue, because all round there is light from the sun. The air and the moisture in the air are illumined.
So you see quite clearly darkness through the light. You look through the light, through the illumined air into darkness. And therefore we can say: Darkness through light is blue.
...you will also be aware that when people who understand such things want to be thoroughly meek and humble, they use blue, or black — deep black. That is so beautiful to see in Catholicism: when Advent comes and people are supposed to become humble, the Church is made blue; above all the vestments are blue. People get quietened, humble; they feel themselves inwardly connected with the subdued mood — especially if a man has previously exhausted his fury, like a bull, as for instance at Shrove Tuesday's carnival. Then one has the proper time of fasting afterwards, not only dark raiment, black raiment. Then men become tamed down after their violence is over.
