By meaning I mean that we live in the temporal intuition of the movement. Maybe you expect 'meaning' here to have some deeper significance, as if the movement of the fly is a part of a world peace program or some other grand endeavor (and in fact we can find such deeper significance if we want - we can conceive that the exercise is part of our attempts to better understand reality. From that perspective we don't move that imaginary fly for nothing, there's certain purpose and meaning, even if the movement itself looks erratic).Güney27 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 11:34 pm I'll try to give my understanding of cleric's essay CT as they may have more resonance on the forum than steiner's.
Ashvin's answer reminded me of the content of Cleric's essay
I still have questions that came up while I was writing.
Citation:
But notice the big difference - this fly cannot surprise us because we grasp the temporal law of its movement, we live in its meaning by thinking the movement.
What do you mean by meaning, in that word.
What is the meaning of the movement of a fly? She moves erratically and that's about it I would say.
I think I don't understand the usage here.
If some external observer could see our imaginary fly it would be just as unpredictable as the real one. He would say that the imaginary fly moves erratically. But there's difference between the erratic as the person grasps it and the erratic that we experience when imagining the movement. It is this difference that the example tries to point out.
At the most basic level you can reflect on the ways other human beings shape your feelings and ideas. For example, that person who insulted you or the girl that smiled at you and you now can't stop thinking of her. Do these people shape your thoughts and feelings?Güney27 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 11:34 pm Is our ego equated with our mental activity, of which thinking is only the end product?
If so, how is our thinking shaped by other beings, feelings, ideas and so on.
Do these things live in our self(i) or is there a separation. Or is our ego not involved in the unfolding of thoughts
It is similar with spiritual beings. There's constant interference of spiritual activity. Give some consideration of the riverbed metaphor. The whole Cosmos is your riverbed. You body, nervous system and sense organs are only the focal point. There are also finer aspects of the riverbed - your etheric, astral, mental sheaths. With your spirit (the water) you flow through the riverbed. It shapes you but you can also shape it. Since your riverbed is the whole Cosmos, it means that the way you work upon it manifests in the experiences of other focal points. Maybe if you smile to somebody their thoughts and feelings will also be shaped in some way. Things are difficult only when we try to imagine that there are parts of our existence that are completely ours. Even our thoughts are not completely ours because not a single thought can be what it is if there wasn't the whole Cosmos to support it.
You can experiment by following the reverse path of the light. When you have a perception of the tree you can say that you experience certain specific configuration in your physical and etheric brain. But then you can begin to trace these configurations. You can move your attention from you experience in the head, through the eyes and imagine you follow the threads of light towards the tree. Then try to feel the form of the tree, touch it with your thoughts from all sides, follow the branches. It's the same you would do with your hands if you place them on the trunk and glide them towards a branch, reaching the leaves, feeling their form. Try to follow the floods of sunlight as they are absorbed by the leaves. Follow the moisture in the soil as it is sucked by the roots and moves as sap.
The goal of such exercises is not to imagine that these imaginative forms and movements are the actual reality of the tree. The goal is to go beyond ourselves and fill the environment with thoughts. Then later, as crazy it may sound, we'll see that we can think not only with the interior of our body but with the whole environment. Of course the thought that can be reflect by a stone is of a very different nature than that reflected in our neural activity. We shouldn't imagine that we'll experience intellectual thoughts in the stone. They key is that the inner space circumscribed by our skin and where we feel our conscious existence, is not disconnected from inner space at large. That's why a good exercise is to follow the world with our thoughts, touch it, follow its forms and movements. Then gradually we begin to sense that the inner being of the tree can reflect intuitions just like our inner brain reflects intuitions and we call that thoughts.