Christian initiation and Freedom

[Güney27]

Lately I have started to look a little more at the teachings of various Western Christian masters.
Among others, I came across Omraam Mikhael aivanhov and Daskalos.

Here I noticed that they are more understandable than Steiner, which is probably due to the fact that they do not go into as much detail as Steiner, and write their texts in a clearer and more practical way.

Especially the question of what is the core message of the Christian initiation teachings is well summed up by these authors.


Omraam Mikhael aivanhov and Daskolos describe that Humans are on earth to manifest God's Kingdom and to carry out the Divine Will. This can only be done by transforming ourselves into purer beings, developing sacred values within ourselves and motivating all our actions with goodness and beauty. For this, a purification of our being must take place and our egoism must be overcome. Every human being has a great task, because in us lives a side which is egoistic, cold, greedy and so on. Steiner also emphasized this matter, saying that for each spiritual step we take, we have to take three steps in our morality. I like the phrase that people are on the way to becoming workers in God's cosmic enterprise. Here I wonder how this relates to man's freedom. When man becomes a worker in the cosmic enterprise, does he have to give up his freedom at a certain point in order to carry out Divine plans?

[AshvinP]

Lately I have started to look a little more at the teachings of various Western Christian masters.
Among others, I came across Omraam Mikhael aivanhov and Daskalos.

Here I noticed that they are more understandable than Steiner, which is probably due to the fact that they do not go into as much detail as Steiner, and write their texts in a clearer and more practical way.

Especially the question of what is the core message of the Christian initiation teachings is well summed up by these authors.


Omraam Mikhael aivanhov and Daskolos describe that Humans are on earth to manifest God's Kingdom and to carry out the Divine Will. This can only be done by transforming ourselves into purer beings, developing sacred values within ourselves and motivating all our actions with goodness and beauty. For this, a purification of our being must take place and our egoism must be overcome. Every human being has a great task, because in us lives a side which is egoistic, cold, greedy and so on. Steiner also emphasized this matter, saying that for each spiritual step we take, we have to take three steps in our morality. I like the phrase that people are on the way to becoming workers in God's cosmic enterprise. Here I wonder how this relates to man's freedom. When man becomes a worker in the cosmic enterprise, does he have to give up his freedom at a certain point in order to carry out Divine plans?

Guney,

Thanks for starting this thread and referring us to OMA and Daskalos. They are wise spiritual masters, indeed. I also love your image and quote!

On the topic of carrying out the Divine Will, we should always remember that His Will is for us to become One with Him - or to progressively reawaken to our Oneness with Him - and that He is the essence of Freedom. God is the only fully Free Be-ing. So growing into our higher potential, i.e. our Divinity, cannot be anything other than free-ing. Put another way, our very sense of 'freedom' can only have meaning in relation to how near or far we are in our lucid consciousness from God. The more we fragment our bei-ing into the sensory spectrum and life of personal emotions and desires and opinions and arbitrary actions, the more we are enslaved to foreign powers that may bring temporary happiness and pleasure but at the expense of long-lasting spiritual freedom. The more we harmonize the currents of our willing-feeling-thinking through loving spiritual ideals united under the umbrella of actualizing God's Will, the more we realize our Divine potential that is the essence of freedom.

All of that is quite metaphysical and abstract. The task ahead of us is to increasingly steer the freedom we find initially in our thinking "I"-consciousness into closer and closer union with the Divine "I"-consciousness, exactly through the purification you suggest above. Steiner's saying could not be any more true in my experience - each step we take to acquire knowledge should be accompanied by a few more towards inner moral perfection. These naturally feed back into one another over time as well - what we know helps us steer our moral efforts and the virtues we acquire on the path help us more effectively seek and integrate knowledge. We should never feel that one is coming at the expense of the other, but rather they are mutually supporting one another, just like faith in the Divine Will and freedom of the human will.

Here is another angle from Tomberg, who I find to be somewhat halfway between OMA and Steiner in style and content. There is no doubt that he was also a spiritual master. It's interesting because sometime after being ousted from the Anthroposophical Society, Tomberg joined the Catholic Church. He has a very high view of the Church's creeds, confessions, sacraments, traditions, and even 'dogmas', and I personally find this to be a perspective that helps deepen my own faith in God and humanity. Previously I was quite critical and cynical towards these aspects of the Church like most occultists and esotericists, but he has helped me to confront my own lack of faith in this regard.

In other words, is resurrection something which purely and simply happens to man, without any participation on his part, or is it a comprehensive act which embraces the entire circle of that which is above and that which is below—including human will? Let us return once again to Lazarus’ resurrection at Bethany. There, Jesus, after being “deeply moved in spirit”, after having wept, after having been “deeply moved again”, and after having given thanks to the Father “that thou hast heard me”, cried in a loud voice: “Lazarus, come out!” And “the dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with bandages, and his face wrapped with a cloth” (John xi, 33-44). Did Lazarus come out of the tomb like a somnambulant obeying the order of a hypnotist, i.e. under magical constraint? Or did he come out because the voice that he heard had awoken in him all the love, all the hope and all the faith which vibrated in it, and thus he experienced the ardent desire to be near the one who called him?

... it was the affection and respect that the Master inspired in the soul of Lazarus, just as it was the persuasion that life was still necessary for him and that precious experiences were still promised to him here below, which made Lazarus come out of the tomb... The Arcanum of resurrection is therefore one of morality, pure and simple, wholly contrary to a pure and simple act of power. It is not a matter of a feat of force—no matter whether divine, Angelic or human—but rather of the superiority of the moral order to the natural order, including death. Resurrection is not an all-powerful divine act, but rather the effect of the meeting and union of divine love, hope and faith with human love, hope and faith. The trumpet sounds from above the whole of divine love, hope and faith; and not only the human spirit and soul but also all the atoms of the human body respond “yes” in chorus, which is the free expression—a cry from the heart of the whole being and of each particular atom—of the love, hope and faith of man, and of Nature, which is represented by man. For man represents Nature towards God and he represents God towards Nature. For this reason, in addressing ourselves to the Father who is in heaven, we say: “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

What would be the good of praying to the all-powerful Father for his kingdom to come and for his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven if we were not the connecting link between him and Nature?…if the Father still reigned in Nature, and if all that took place on earth were his will only?…if he had not yielded his rule over Nature to others, and if other wills than his were not developing on the earth?

The earth, i.e. Nature, has been given by the Father to the free human being as the field of deployment of his freedom. And it is this freedom alone which can—and is in the right to—address this prayer to the Father in the name of freedom and in the name of the whole of Nature: “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” This prayer means to say: I desire your kingdom more than mine, for it is my ideal; and your will is the heart of hearts of my will—which languishes after your will, which is the way that my will seeks, the truth to which my will aspires, and the life from which my will lives.

This prayer is therefore not only an act of submission of the human will to divine will, but it is above all the expression of hunger and thirst for union with the divine will; it does not adhere to fatalism, but rather to love. It is to St. Augustine that we owe the remarkable statement: “God is more myself than I myself am”; he knew how to pray the Lord’s prayer.

Anonymous . Meditations on the Tarot (pp. 571-572). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[zigzagger]

The idea that God is morally higher than Nature needs to be de-obfuscated. Since Nature is purely God’s self-expression, how can God be Good and Nature be Fallen? Failure to answer this question clearly and sensibly has contributed to the near-extinction of Christian mysticism and the rise of materialist science.

There can be only one answer. God is good in the void state of pure potential. As soon as God awakens to self-exploration, there arises the inevitable conflict of competing ideas. At present, the Universe is in its periodic phase of dynamic interplay of these ideas, a futile exercise which will go on until God is tired at the end of the day. Then the Ideal state will resume: the wonderful peace of dreamless sleep: the night of Consciousness.

[Güney27]

Lately I have started to look a little more at the teachings of various Western Christian masters.
Among others, I came across Omraam Mikhael aivanhov and Daskalos.

Here I noticed that they are more understandable than Steiner, which is probably due to the fact that they do not go into as much detail as Steiner, and write their texts in a clearer and more practical way.

Especially the question of what is the core message of the Christian initiation teachings is well summed up by these authors.


Omraam Mikhael aivanhov and Daskolos describe that Humans are on earth to manifest God's Kingdom and to carry out the Divine Will. This can only be done by transforming ourselves into purer beings, developing sacred values within ourselves and motivating all our actions with goodness and beauty. For this, a purification of our being must take place and our egoism must be overcome. Every human being has a great task, because in us lives a side which is egoistic, cold, greedy and so on. Steiner also emphasized this matter, saying that for each spiritual step we take, we have to take three steps in our morality. I like the phrase that people are on the way to becoming workers in God's cosmic enterprise. Here I wonder how this relates to man's freedom. When man becomes a worker in the cosmic enterprise, does he have to give up his freedom at a certain point in order to carry out Divine plans?

Guney,

Thanks for starting this thread and referring us to OMA and Daskalos. They are wise spiritual masters, indeed. I also love your image and quote!

On the topic of carrying out the Divine Will, we should always remember that His Will is for us to become One with Him - or to progressively reawaken to our Oneness with Him - and that He is the essence of Freedom. God is the only fully Free Be-ing. So growing into our higher potential, i.e. our Divinity, cannot be anything other than free-ing. Put another way, our very sense of 'freedom' can only have meaning in relation to how near or far we are in our lucid consciousness from God. The more we fragment our bei-ing into the sensory spectrum and life of personal emotions and desires and opinions and arbitrary actions, the more we are enslaved to foreign powers that may bring temporary happiness and pleasure but at the expense of long-lasting spiritual freedom. The more we harmonize the currents of our willing-feeling-thinking through loving spiritual ideals united under the umbrella of actualizing God's Will, the more we realize our Divine potential that is the essence of freedom.

All of that is quite metaphysical and abstract. The task ahead of us is to increasingly steer the freedom we find initially in our thinking "I"-consciousness into closer and closer union with the Divine "I"-consciousness, exactly through the purification you suggest above. Steiner's saying could not be any more true in my experience - each step we take to acquire knowledge should be accompanied by a few more towards inner moral perfection. These naturally feed back into one another over time as well - what we know helps us steer our moral efforts and the virtues we acquire on the path help us more effectively seek and integrate knowledge. We should never feel that one is coming at the expense of the other, but rather they are mutually supporting one another, just like faith in the Divine Will and freedom of the human will.

Here is another angle from Tomberg, who I find to be somewhat halfway between OMA and Steiner in style and content. There is no doubt that he was also a spiritual master. It's interesting because sometime after being ousted from the Anthroposophical Society, Tomberg joined the Catholic Church. He has a very high view of the Church's creeds, confessions, sacraments, traditions, and even 'dogmas', and I personally find this to be a perspective that helps deepen my own faith in God and humanity. Previously I was quite critical and cynical towards these aspects of the Church like most occultists and esotericists, but he has helped me to confront my own lack of faith in this regard.

In other words, is resurrection something which purely and simply happens to man, without any participation on his part, or is it a comprehensive act which embraces the entire circle of that which is above and that which is below—including human will? Let us return once again to Lazarus’ resurrection at Bethany. There, Jesus, after being “deeply moved in spirit”, after having wept, after having been “deeply moved again”, and after having given thanks to the Father “that thou hast heard me”, cried in a loud voice: “Lazarus, come out!” And “the dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with bandages, and his face wrapped with a cloth” (John xi, 33-44). Did Lazarus come out of the tomb like a somnambulant obeying the order of a hypnotist, i.e. under magical constraint? Or did he come out because the voice that he heard had awoken in him all the love, all the hope and all the faith which vibrated in it, and thus he experienced the ardent desire to be near the one who called him?

... it was the affection and respect that the Master inspired in the soul of Lazarus, just as it was the persuasion that life was still necessary for him and that precious experiences were still promised to him here below, which made Lazarus come out of the tomb... The Arcanum of resurrection is therefore one of morality, pure and simple, wholly contrary to a pure and simple act of power. It is not a matter of a feat of force—no matter whether divine, Angelic or human—but rather of the superiority of the moral order to the natural order, including death. Resurrection is not an all-powerful divine act, but rather the effect of the meeting and union of divine love, hope and faith with human love, hope and faith. The trumpet sounds from above the whole of divine love, hope and faith; and not only the human spirit and soul but also all the atoms of the human body respond “yes” in chorus, which is the free expression—a cry from the heart of the whole being and of each particular atom—of the love, hope and faith of man, and of Nature, which is represented by man. For man represents Nature towards God and he represents God towards Nature. For this reason, in addressing ourselves to the Father who is in heaven, we say: “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

What would be the good of praying to the all-powerful Father for his kingdom to come and for his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven if we were not the connecting link between him and Nature?…if the Father still reigned in Nature, and if all that took place on earth were his will only?…if he had not yielded his rule over Nature to others, and if other wills than his were not developing on the earth?

The earth, i.e. Nature, has been given by the Father to the free human being as the field of deployment of his freedom. And it is this freedom alone which can—and is in the right to—address this prayer to the Father in the name of freedom and in the name of the whole of Nature: “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” This prayer means to say: I desire your kingdom more than mine, for it is my ideal; and your will is the heart of hearts of my will—which languishes after your will, which is the way that my will seeks, the truth to which my will aspires, and the life from which my will lives.

This prayer is therefore not only an act of submission of the human will to divine will, but it is above all the expression of hunger and thirst for union with the divine will; it does not adhere to fatalism, but rather to love. It is to St. Augustine that we owe the remarkable statement: “God is more myself than I myself am”; he knew how to pray the Lord’s prayer.

Anonymous . Meditations on the Tarot (pp. 571-572). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Ashvin,
If we are free to abandon our will and carry out the divine will, are we really free?

Aren't we a stone that is thrown in one direction and thinks that it is itself responsible for the flight?
Suppose a person decides to become a Christian and study religion. Something in him urges him to do this and not lose his interest. That something is not under his conscious control.
Perhaps it is his destiny, his karma or something else that directs him to it. That's the way it is for me, various things made me come to this forum. At first I didn't understand anything at all, but a feeling within me pushed me to keep researching. These things were not under my conscious control.
Today I am at the point where I am trying to optimize my life to become God's worker.
Was this decision really my own?

[AshvinP]

The idea that God is morally higher than Nature needs to be de-obfuscated. Since Nature is purely God’s self-expression, how can God be Good and Nature be Fallen? Failure to answer this question clearly and sensibly has contributed to the near-extinction of Christian mysticism and the rise of materialist science.

There can be only one answer. God is good in the void state of pure potential. As soon as God awakens to self-exploration, there arises the inevitable conflict of competing ideas. At present, the Universe is in its periodic phase of dynamic interplay of these ideas, a futile exercise which will go on until God is tired at the end of the day. Then the Ideal state will resume: the wonderful peace of dreamless sleep: the night of Consciousness.

Hello zigzagger,

I also don't think it's appropriate to say Nature is morally fallen. It is more appropriate to think of Nature as morally neutral, waiting on humanity to 'convince' her, through living example, that the selfless virtues that we know as 'Good' are worth following. It is a question of trust - Nature looks upon humanity with anticipation that we will redeem her kingdoms from an atomized, destructive, and overall selfish existence, first of all by addressing those tendencies within ourselves. Humanity is fallen in its soul-life and Nature is only fallen in so far as she follows our cues.

"The creation waits in eager expectation for the revelation of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not by its own will, but because of the One who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God."

But we have so far given Nature little reason to trust that we are leading her in the right direction, especially over the last few hundred years. Nowhere is that more evident now than in the animal kingdom, where there are great reasons to look upon humans with mistrust and fear. Humanity alone is capable of drawing down lucid and loving ideas-ideals into the sphere of Nature. That can't be done in a state of dreaming or dreamless sleep, but only through lucid thinking consciousness and conscience. We have to freely adopt more creative responsibility towards Nature, not less.

What you seem to be expressing above is a "spiritual naturalism" in which the Cosmos expresses itself in repetitive cycles of self-exploration and reintegration into 'pure potential void', and we simply have to passively wait for that to play out again, like it always does. The Christian outlook (exoteric and esoteric), however, is that of a therapeutic impulse towards the active healing of humanity and Nature. It is like a person who sees another dying of organ failure or blood loss and decides, out of the free inspiration of his innermost being, to donate his own organs and blood for their restoration. It is an 'alchemical' work of transmuting Nature so as to bring about a new heaven and earth, forever healed, rather than simply repeating the old stages of sickness and health through infinite time.

[Güney27]

The idea that God is morally higher than Nature needs to be de-obfuscated. Since Nature is purely God’s self-expression, how can God be Good and Nature be Fallen? Failure to answer this question clearly and sensibly has contributed to the near-extinction of Christian mysticism and the rise of materialist science.

There can be only one answer. God is good in the void state of pure potential. As soon as God awakens to self-exploration, there arises the inevitable conflict of competing ideas. At present, the Universe is in its periodic phase of dynamic interplay of these ideas, a futile exercise which will go on until God is tired at the end of the day. Then the Ideal state will resume: the wonderful peace of dreamless sleep: the night of Consciousness.

Hello zigzagger,

I also don't think it's appropriate to say Nature is morally fallen. It is more appropriate to think of Nature as morally neutral, waiting on humanity to 'convince' her, through living example, that the selfless virtues that we know as 'Good' are worth following. It is a question of trust - Nature looks upon humanity with anticipation that we will redeem her kingdoms from an atomized, destructive, and overall selfish existence, first of all by addressing those tendencies within ourselves. Humanity is fallen in its soul-life and Nature is only fallen in so far as she follows our cues.

"The creation waits in eager expectation for the revelation of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not by its own will, but because of the One who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God."

But we have so far given Nature little reason to trust that we are leading her in the right direction, especially over the last few hundred years. Nowhere is that more evident now than in the animal kingdom, where there are great reasons to look upon humans with mistrust and fear. Humanity alone is capable of drawing down lucid and loving ideas-ideals into the sphere of Nature. That can't be done in a state of dreaming or dreamless sleep, but only through lucid thinking consciousness and conscience. We have to freely adopt more creative responsibility towards Nature, not less.

What you seem to be expressing above is a "spiritual naturalism" in which the Cosmos expresses itself in repetitive cycles of self-exploration and reintegration into 'pure potential void', and we simply have to passively wait for that to play out again, like it always does. The Christian outlook (exoteric and esoteric), however, is that of a therapeutic impulse towards the active healing of humanity and Nature. It is like a person who sees another dying of organ failure or blood loss and decides, out of the free inspiration of his innermost being, to donate his own organs and blood for their restoration. It is an 'alchemical' work of transmuting Nature so as to bring about a new heaven and earth, forever healed, rather than simply repeating the old stages of sickness and health through infinite time.

Ashvin,
Would you consider yourself a Christian?

[zigzagger]

AshvinP, your post is thoughtful but contains an assumption I question. The idea of Heaven is a human idea – it is an abstraction from reality -as if reality could be other than what it is, better than what it is. It says that God could be other than what it is. Consider how this works in humans: a priest represses his sexuality, regarding it as sinful, so his sexuality emerges in unhealthy ways.

It brings to mind theosophical or Eastern ideas of other realities regarded as more enlightened than ours. But other realities are the equivalent of what we enter into when we dream. The only substantial reality that truly exists is the one we all consensually share. IOW, none of the other ideas are real enough to make it to ground level. They are fragmented, partial and inadequate – rejects even. They can’t express enough of what God feels the need to express. Only the World we all know does that. This is why peace can only come when exhaustion brings on the bliss of dreamless sleep.

[AshvinP]

Lately I have started to look a little more at the teachings of various Western Christian masters.
Among others, I came across Omraam Mikhael aivanhov and Daskalos.

Here I noticed that they are more understandable than Steiner, which is probably due to the fact that they do not go into as much detail as Steiner, and write their texts in a clearer and more practical way.

Especially the question of what is the core message of the Christian initiation teachings is well summed up by these authors.


Omraam Mikhael aivanhov and Daskolos describe that Humans are on earth to manifest God's Kingdom and to carry out the Divine Will. This can only be done by transforming ourselves into purer beings, developing sacred values within ourselves and motivating all our actions with goodness and beauty. For this, a purification of our being must take place and our egoism must be overcome. Every human being has a great task, because in us lives a side which is egoistic, cold, greedy and so on. Steiner also emphasized this matter, saying that for each spiritual step we take, we have to take three steps in our morality. I like the phrase that people are on the way to becoming workers in God's cosmic enterprise. Here I wonder how this relates to man's freedom. When man becomes a worker in the cosmic enterprise, does he have to give up his freedom at a certain point in order to carry out Divine plans?

Guney,

Thanks for starting this thread and referring us to OMA and Daskalos. They are wise spiritual masters, indeed. I also love your image and quote!

On the topic of carrying out the Divine Will, we should always remember that His Will is for us to become One with Him - or to progressively reawaken to our Oneness with Him - and that He is the essence of Freedom. God is the only fully Free Be-ing. So growing into our higher potential, i.e. our Divinity, cannot be anything other than free-ing. Put another way, our very sense of 'freedom' can only have meaning in relation to how near or far we are in our lucid consciousness from God. The more we fragment our bei-ing into the sensory spectrum and life of personal emotions and desires and opinions and arbitrary actions, the more we are enslaved to foreign powers that may bring temporary happiness and pleasure but at the expense of long-lasting spiritual freedom. The more we harmonize the currents of our willing-feeling-thinking through loving spiritual ideals united under the umbrella of actualizing God's Will, the more we realize our Divine potential that is the essence of freedom.

All of that is quite metaphysical and abstract. The task ahead of us is to increasingly steer the freedom we find initially in our thinking "I"-consciousness into closer and closer union with the Divine "I"-consciousness, exactly through the purification you suggest above. Steiner's saying could not be any more true in my experience - each step we take to acquire knowledge should be accompanied by a few more towards inner moral perfection. These naturally feed back into one another over time as well - what we know helps us steer our moral efforts and the virtues we acquire on the path help us more effectively seek and integrate knowledge. We should never feel that one is coming at the expense of the other, but rather they are mutually supporting one another, just like faith in the Divine Will and freedom of the human will.

Here is another angle from Tomberg, who I find to be somewhat halfway between OMA and Steiner in style and content. There is no doubt that he was also a spiritual master. It's interesting because sometime after being ousted from the Anthroposophical Society, Tomberg joined the Catholic Church. He has a very high view of the Church's creeds, confessions, sacraments, traditions, and even 'dogmas', and I personally find this to be a perspective that helps deepen my own faith in God and humanity. Previously I was quite critical and cynical towards these aspects of the Church like most occultists and esotericists, but he has helped me to confront my own lack of faith in this regard.

In other words, is resurrection something which purely and simply happens to man, without any participation on his part, or is it a comprehensive act which embraces the entire circle of that which is above and that which is below—including human will? Let us return once again to Lazarus’ resurrection at Bethany. There, Jesus, after being “deeply moved in spirit”, after having wept, after having been “deeply moved again”, and after having given thanks to the Father “that thou hast heard me”, cried in a loud voice: “Lazarus, come out!” And “the dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with bandages, and his face wrapped with a cloth” (John xi, 33-44). Did Lazarus come out of the tomb like a somnambulant obeying the order of a hypnotist, i.e. under magical constraint? Or did he come out because the voice that he heard had awoken in him all the love, all the hope and all the faith which vibrated in it, and thus he experienced the ardent desire to be near the one who called him?

... it was the affection and respect that the Master inspired in the soul of Lazarus, just as it was the persuasion that life was still necessary for him and that precious experiences were still promised to him here below, which made Lazarus come out of the tomb... The Arcanum of resurrection is therefore one of morality, pure and simple, wholly contrary to a pure and simple act of power. It is not a matter of a feat of force—no matter whether divine, Angelic or human—but rather of the superiority of the moral order to the natural order, including death. Resurrection is not an all-powerful divine act, but rather the effect of the meeting and union of divine love, hope and faith with human love, hope and faith. The trumpet sounds from above the whole of divine love, hope and faith; and not only the human spirit and soul but also all the atoms of the human body respond “yes” in chorus, which is the free expression—a cry from the heart of the whole being and of each particular atom—of the love, hope and faith of man, and of Nature, which is represented by man. For man represents Nature towards God and he represents God towards Nature. For this reason, in addressing ourselves to the Father who is in heaven, we say: “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

What would be the good of praying to the all-powerful Father for his kingdom to come and for his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven if we were not the connecting link between him and Nature?…if the Father still reigned in Nature, and if all that took place on earth were his will only?…if he had not yielded his rule over Nature to others, and if other wills than his were not developing on the earth?

The earth, i.e. Nature, has been given by the Father to the free human being as the field of deployment of his freedom. And it is this freedom alone which can—and is in the right to—address this prayer to the Father in the name of freedom and in the name of the whole of Nature: “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” This prayer means to say: I desire your kingdom more than mine, for it is my ideal; and your will is the heart of hearts of my will—which languishes after your will, which is the way that my will seeks, the truth to which my will aspires, and the life from which my will lives.

This prayer is therefore not only an act of submission of the human will to divine will, but it is above all the expression of hunger and thirst for union with the divine will; it does not adhere to fatalism, but rather to love. It is to St. Augustine that we owe the remarkable statement: “God is more myself than I myself am”; he knew how to pray the Lord’s prayer.

Anonymous . Meditations on the Tarot (pp. 571-572). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Ashvin,
If we are free to abandon our will and carry out the divine will, are we really free?

Aren't we a stone that is thrown in one direction and thinks that it is itself responsible for the flight?
Suppose a person decides to become a Christian and study religion. Something in him urges him to do this and not lose his interest. That something is not under his conscious control.
Perhaps it is his destiny, his karma or something else that directs him to it. That's the way it is for me, various things made me come to this forum. At first I didn't understand anything at all, but a feeling within me pushed me to keep researching. These things were not under my conscious control.
Today I am at the point where I am trying to optimize my life to become God's worker.
Was this decision really my own?

Guney,

We are presented with impulses and opportunities to proceed in a certain direction, but surely we cannot expect to coast into spiritual illumination out of sheer momentum from the initial impulse, like a stone. I am sure you have experienced that it takes continual intents and acts of dedication and commitment to avoid becoming stagnant or regressing in spiritual development. No God can force you to make those commitments and no Devil can prevent you from making them. They are sourced from your innermost being. It is not an abandonment of our will but an attunement of our will with the Source that animates it. If we want to imagine this innermost kernel of our own being is still like a stone propelled by some external force, then we have to abstract from living experience and imagine it 'from the side'. Of course, no such external perspective can actually be imagined.

We should also remember that many of the urges and opportunities we encounter in our normal waking life were sown by us in previous incarnations. Steiner gives the example of someone intending to build a house and then, after fulfilling the intent, moving into the house. Now the person has to live in the house, instead of roaming around the city from couch to couch, or whatever - is that a loss of freedom? Just because we have forgotten our previous intent doesn't negate the fact that it existed. With the building of the house to live in, we have now opened up opportunities for higher development that we wouldn't have before, like meditating in peace and solitude. That is a rough metaphor for the entire course of our body-soul-spirit development over the epochs. Once we build the corporeal and psychic 'houses' for our spirit, we then have the means of becoming more and more conscious of our own previous intents and how to fulfill them.

[AshvinP]

Ashvin,
Would you consider yourself a Christian?

Yes, I certainly would.

[AshvinP]

AshvinP, your post is thoughtful but contains an assumption I question. The idea of Heaven is a human idea – it is an abstraction from reality -as if reality could be other than what it is, better than what it is. It says that God could be other than what it is. Consider how this works in humans: a priest represses his sexuality, regarding it as sinful, so his sexuality emerges in unhealthy ways.

It brings to mind theosophical or Eastern ideas of other realities regarded as more enlightened than ours. But other realities are the equivalent of what we enter into when we dream. The only substantial reality that truly exists is the one we all consensually share. IOW, none of the other ideas are real enough to make it to ground level. They are fragmented, partial and inadequate – rejects even. They can’t express enough of what God feels the need to express. Only the World we all know does that. This is why peace can only come when exhaustion brings on the bliss of dreamless sleep.

ZZ,

Here you are assuming that I mean "heaven" as some parallel plane of existence that we don't currently experience, but may get to experience someday if we remain faithful. However, that is not how I mean it.

In my view, we could replace 'heaven' and 'hell' with 'spirit' and 'matter', or 'invisible' and 'visible', or 'lucid consciousness' and 'unconscious', and we are practically speaking of the same essential polar relation. These are not spatial locations or spiritual 'objects', but overlapping domains of experience. When we experience all that which strives within us towards ideals of love, hope, faith, etc., we are dimly experiencing heaven, and when we experience all that which strives within us towards sensuous passions, negative emotions, moral depravity, etc., we are dimly experiencing hell. It is dim because the reality of these domains is heavily formatted by our intellectual cognition.

Earth - or the thinking human soul - is that which links these two domains and keeps them separate, warring with each other, or brings them closer together into harmony. I think it is undeniable that these two tendencies exist and are integral facets of our living reality. They express themselves at the level of the body (or nature), the soul (or psyche/culture), and the spirit (invisible ideas-ideals). And it is equally undeniable that the only World we know is the World we know through the lens of our ideas. The difference between whether heaven and hell remain separate or are reunited in harmony is exactly our own lucid consciousness - as Jung said, "until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."

What you call the 'substantial reality' that we 'consensually share' is simply the dynamic interplay of these polar forces that we are always sandwiched between. We perceive a thin 'slice' of the effects of that interplay and call it the "physical objective reality". But it's clear this sense-perceptible slice of reality cannot lead us to any true knowledge of those forces by itself, hence we get the problem of abiogenesis (how life originates), the hard problem of consciousness, the 'problem of evil', and so forth. But we don't only exist in that thin slice, but also in the sub-sensory and supra-sensory depths. We have desires, impulses, feelings, passions, etc. that bubble up from the subconscious and ideas, ideals, virtues, etc. that trickle down from the supra-conscious. The only way we know of either the subconscious or the supra-conscious, or even the thin slice of sense-perceptible reality, is through our life of lucid thinking.

With that said, would you agree that an act of cognition-thinking is implicit in every act of meaningful perception?