Taking The Time

Meditation and contemplation are no longer practices existing on the sidelines of modern life. Many professional athletes consider their morning meditation as essential. The medical world acknowledges that meditation helps patients deal with chronic pain, stress, anxiety and depression (Mayo Clinic 2/10/24). A Wharton School of Business study in 2019 found that meditation can “reduce stress, improve focus, help regulate emotions, increase cooperation and team building, and lead to better decisions.” Most of us have already heard about this.

So why isn’t everyone doing it?

Because it takes time. It takes consistency. It takes discipline.

Meditation or mindfulness practice promises a mastery of ourselves that changes who we are. And no trumpets are blaring, no lights are flashing, no accolades are forthcoming, so we must see a point to ourselves that is our own reward.

Though many forms of meditation exist, today we will look at the first step in what Rudolf Steiner calls the six basic exercises. Many reasons exist for beginning a meditative practice. One reason is so that we can become masters of ourselves.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

In what follows, the conditions which must be the basis of any occult development are set forth. Let no one imagine that he can make progress by any measures applied to the outer or the inner life unless he fulfils these conditions. All exercises in meditation, concentration, or exercises of other kinds, are valueless, indeed in a certain respect actually harmful, if life is not regulated in accordance with these conditions. No forces can actually be imparted to a human being; all that can be done is to bring to development the forces already within him. They do not develop of their own accord because outer and inner hindrances obstruct them. The outer hindrances are lessened by means of the following rules of life; the inner hindrances by the special instructions concerning meditation, concentration, and the like.

The first condition is the cultivation of absolutely clear thinking. For this purpose, a person must rid himself of the will-o’-the-wisps of thought, even if only for a short time during the day – about five minutes (the longer, the better). He must become the ruler in his world of thought. He is not the ruler if external circumstances, occupation, some tradition or other, social relationships, even membership of a particular race, the daily round of life, certain activities and so forth, determine a thought and how he works it out. Therefore, during this brief time, acting entirely out of his own free will, he must empty the soul of the ordinary, everyday course of thoughts and by his own initiative place one single thought at the center of his soul.

The thought need not be a particularly striking or interesting one. Indeed, it will be all the better for what has to be attained in an occult respect if a thoroughly uninteresting and insignificant thought is chosen. Thinking is then impelled to act out of its own energy, which is the essential thing here, whereas an interesting thought carries the thinking along with it. It is better if this exercise in thought-control is undertaken with a pin rather than with Napoleon. The pupil says to himself: Now I start from this thought, and through my own inner initiative I associate with it everything that is pertinent to it. At the end of the period the thought should be just as colorful and living as it was at the beginning.

This exercise is repeated day by day for at least a month; a new thought may be taken every day, or the same thought may be adhered to for several days. At the end of the exercise an endeavor is made to become fully conscious of that inner feeling of firmness and security which will soon be noticed by paying subtler attention to one’s own soul; the exercise is then brought to a conclusion by focusing the thinking upon the head and the middle of the spine (brain and spinal cord), as if the feeling of security were being poured into this part of the body.

Excerpt from: Guidance in Esoteric Training, Chapter I: General Requirements: General demands which every spiritual aspirant for occult development must put to himself, by Rudolf Steiner.

Perhaps if this were easier to do, people would be less inclined to take medications to fall asleep, to calm down, to get work done. Many people don’t even try meditation or mindfulness before seeking external help. Why? Perhaps we don’t have faith that it will work. What we don’t have to take on faith is that there will be no damaging side effects.

If we give this exercise a try for just 5 minutes a day until the 15th of May, we will have spent 2 ½ hours in meditation over the course of a month. Of course, we can go meditate longer than 5 minutes if we want. Our minds will wander, extraneous thoughts will pull us off course, but we just keep coming back to the pin or the pencil or the paperclip or the button or whatever we decide to focus on. We do get better and better at this if we keep at it.

We are free to mediate or not, obviously; however, if we want to experience the spiritual world and our place within it, we cannot just wait for it to happen, we must begin the work.

Karma Is an Active Law

In Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning, he outlines his idea that man’s will to find meaning is the driving force of our lives. In Frankl’s logotherapy, he has three tenets: 1) Life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most miserable ones; 2) Our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life; 3) We have freedom to find meaning in what we do, and what we experience. Central to his theory is that we must find ways to endure hardship.

Rudolf Steiner tells us that understanding the principles of karma is the key to understanding the meaning of life. We can see that underlying Frankl’s theory is the law of karma. Why is this happening to me or to them is understandable on a deeper level when we begin to grasp the idea of karma and reincarnation. The suffering we see in the world and in our own lives, the disparity of one human life compared to another, seems random, senseless, and cruel without this key.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

The law of Karma does not throw light upon abstract riddles of the universe, but upon problems which we actually encounter in life at every step. Is it not a real life-riddle when we see that one human being is born in misery and poverty, apparently without any fault of his own, and that the finest gifts which lie concealed within him must atrophy owing to the social condition into which life has placed him? We must often ask ourselves in life: How can we explain the fact that an apparently innocent man is born in the midst of misery and pain, whereas another man is born without his merit in overabundance and wealth, surrounded at the cradle by those who tenderly love him? These are problems which modern superficiality alone can ignore.

The deeper we look into the law of karma; the more we find that the hard injustice apparently presenting itself to a superficial observation of this law disappears. We then realize more and more why one person must live in one condition of life and another person in another. Injustice and hardness in one or other life-situation can only be seen if we limit ourselves to the observation of one life; but if we know that this one life is the absolute result of former deeds, the injustice completely vanishes, for we perceive that the human being prepares his own life.

Someone might now object: It is terrible to think that all the blows of destiny which a human being encounters in this life are brought about through his own fault! We must realize, however, that the law of karma is not something for sentimental people to brood over, but that it is an active law, rendering us strong and giving us courage and hope. For even though we ourselves have molded our present life with all its hardships, we know at the same time that karma is a law the chief significance of which must be looked for, not in the past, but in the future. No matter how deeply oppressed we may be in the present owing to the result of past deeds, our insight into the law of karma will bear fruit in our subsequent lives. Our attitude determines what fruit our deeds will bear, for no action is without consequence. It is far more anthroposophical to look upon karma as an active law! For no matter what we do, we cannot escape the consequences of our deeds. The more we suffer in this life and the better we bear our sufferings, the more shall we profit by this in future lives. Karma is a law which solves the riddles of life which we encounter at every step.

Excerpt from: Theosophy and Rosicrucianism, Lecture 7: The Law of Karma by Rudolf Steiner. June 22, 1907 Kassel, Germany

Applying the law of karma to our own lives means that we are better able to accept and move on through life’s tribulations; we are meant to grow and become stronger because of them.

Applying the law of karma to the woes of the world includes the knowledge that we cannot idly watch evil run riot. We must help wherever we can; we can choose to have a positive effect on another person’s karma. To see an example of this, watch the short documentary, The Barber of Little Rock, on YouTube. Arlo Washington’s work in Little Rock, Arkansas is an inspiring examples of what Steiner calls making a new entry in the book of someone else’s karma.

Truly understanding the law of karma is not to focus on the past, but to embrace the future knowing that nothing we do is in vain.

#TheBarberofLittleRock #ArloWashington #ViktorFrankl #karma #meaning of life #Man’sSearchforMeaning

Love as a Force for Good

Love for someone else is possible only if we become genuinely interested in them. We can be attracted to them by an array of qualities but love itself happens because of our desire to know more about them: what gives them joy, what interests them, what are their hopes and dreams. As we get to know them better, we begin to understand them and gain insight into them. Interest is the ground on which we step that allows love and understanding to bloom. As great as our love for another person becomes, it is but a baby step.

The spiritual hierarchies are interested in us; they love us. We will find that our experience of love here on earth is a mere reflection of the love we experience among the hierarchies in the spiritual world between earth lives. Each cycle of life as we go back and forth between earth and “heaven” is held with interest by the hierarchies, most specifically by our guardian angels. We are never alone and never unloved, but most of us don’t know it. Many of us aren’t interested in knowing it, but nevertheless, between each earth life, we are part of this communion with the hierarchies.

We may recall from previous posts that how we live our lives on earth affects our ability to fully encounter the beings of the hierarchies after we die. It is our own responsibility to work toward our inner development, and if we choose not to do that, not only do we find it difficult to feel love toward each other and all of humanity, to work together toward common goals, we also will have difficulty communing with the hierarchies after death which then hinders our ability to love in our next life. And so on.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

(Some) people here on Earth are incapable of unfolding love in which there is real strength, incapable of unfolding that all-embracing love which comes to expression in the power to understand other people. We may say with truth: it is among the Gods, in pre-earthly existence, that we acquire the gift for observing other people, to perceive how they think and how they feel, to understand them with inner sympathy. If we were deprived of this association with the Gods, we would never be capable of unfolding here on Earth that insight into other human beings which alone makes earthly life a reality.

When in this connection I speak of love, and especially of all-embracing human love, you must think of love as having this real and concrete meaning: you must think of it as signifying a genuine, intimate understanding of other people. If to the all-embracing love of humanity, this understanding of others is added, we have everything that constitutes human morality. For human morality on Earth—if it is not merely expressed in empty phrases or fine talk or in resolutions not afterwards carried out—depends upon the interest one person takes in another, upon the capability to see into the other person. Those who have the gift of understanding other human beings will receive from this understanding the impulses for a social life imbued with true morality.

So we may also say: everything that constitutes moral life in earthly existence has been acquired by human beings in pre-earthly existence; from our communion with the Gods there has remained in us the urge to unfold, in the soul at any rate, community on Earth as well. And it is the development of a life where the one person together with the other fulfils the tasks and the mission of the Earth—it is this alone that in reality leads to the moral life on Earth. Thus we see that love, and the outcome of love—morality—are in very truth a consequence of what man has experienced spiritually in a pre-earthly existence.

Excerpt from: Man and the World of Stars. Lecture IV: Rhythms of Earthly and Spiritual Life, Love, Memory, the Moral Life, by Rudolf Steiner. Dec. 15, 1922, Dornach, Switzerland.

We can be grateful to those who love us and allow us to love them because we need to know what love means. And we can feel grateful for meaningful work with others—work that accomplishes something in the world—work we could not do if we didn’t have others working alongside us. We can also be grateful for the flame that ignites our interest in others and our will to work in the world. The impetus to be our best selves, to create community in the world, to truly love, comes from the hierarchies in the world we live in before birth and again after death, whether we believe in them or not. But we must purposefully direct our wills to overcome the distractions of our world in order to utilize this gift of the gods, in order to genuinely encounter each other.

All around us in 2024 we can find the results of a lack of capacity to see and understand the other: we have lost our moral compass. We define people by our sympathies and antipathies instead of seeing them as having souls like us. The results of this are horrific. To become complete human beings, we must fight our own lethargy, our own prejudices, to seek insight into each other. Becoming a whole human being, a moral human being, is the hardest thing we can do because no one can do it for us. Yet this is our real work, the work that matters.

A meditative practice, of contemplation in the quiet of our own minds, even for just five minutes every single day, is a start. This is so much harder to do than it sounds. Try it.

Un-easy

It’s hard to think amidst all the distractions we have in our lives. The levels of media disturbance we accept in our own homes are exacerbated when we live within the unceasing hum of a city. No wonder so many of us abandon efforts to meditate after a few attempts; we neglect to pursue our own thoughts, let alone thoughts of higher knowledge. Yet connecting with our spiritual nature has never been more important.

Why? Because it’s our time to do it; we are at that point in our evolution. Just as once people lived among the spirits of nature in a dreamy consciousness and then lost that capacity four to five hundred years ago in order to acquire scientific reason, we are now able to find our connection to the spirit again with this hard-won intellect and reason. If we continue to live without a foundation in the spirit, rooted in materialism, we will sink ever deeper into egotism and despair. We will lose our moral grounding. Sound familiar?

The trouble is, we have to exert ourselves to acquire this connection to the spirit. Steiner says, “It belongs to the essence of spiritual science that it makes demands on soul activity, that you do not accept spiritual-scientific truths lightly, as it were, for it is not just a matter of taking in what spiritual science says about one thing or another, but of how you take it in… To make spiritual science your own you must work at it in the sweat of your soul…”

Of course, we can choose to disregard the call to spirit. We are, after all, free in this regard.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

Human beings will only attain the kind of connection they need to be truly human if they seek it in their inner life, if they delve so far down into the depths of their soul that they reach the forces that connect them with the spirit of the cosmos, out of which they were born and in which they are embedded, but from which they can be separated…

Only by penetrating into the depths of their own being will they find the connection with divine spiritual beings that they need for their salvation, the spiritual hierarchies that are progressing along a straight path. This connection with the spiritual hierarchies from which we were actually born, in the spirit, this living connection with them, is made difficult to the highest degree by the saturation of the world by modern technology. Human beings are dragged away from the spiritual-cosmic connections, and the forces which they should be developing to maintain their link with the spiritual-soul being of the cosmos are being weakened.

A person who has already taken the first steps in initiation will therefore notice how the mechanical things of modern life penetrate into man’s spiritual-soul nature to such an extent that a great deal of it is smothered and destroyed. Such a person also notices that the destruction of these forces makes it particularly difficult for him really to develop those inner forces which unite the human being with the ‘rightful’ spiritual beings of the hierarchies.

When someone who has taken the first steps in initiation tries to meditate in a modern railway carriage or on a modern steamer, he makes a great effort to activate the necessary forces of vision to lift him into the spiritual world, yet he notices the ahrimanic (spiritual beings desiring materialism) world filling him with the kind of thing that opposes this devotion to the spiritual world, and the struggle is enormous. You could call it an inner struggle experienced in the ether body, a struggle that wears you out and crushes you.

Other people who have not taken the first steps in initiation also go through this struggle, of course, and the only difference is that the student of initiation experiences it consciously. Everyone has to go through it; the effects of this are experienced by everyone.

It would be the worst possible mistake to conclude from this that we should resist what technology has brought into modern life, that we should protect ourselves from Ahriman (See: Here Know Evil) by cutting ourselves off from modern life. This would be a kind of spiritual cowardice. The real remedy is not to let the forces of the modern soul weaken and cut themselves off from modern life, but to make the forces of the soul strong so that they can stand up to modern life. A courageous approach to modern life is necessitated by world karma, and that is why true spiritual science possesses the characteristic of requiring an effort of the soul, a really hard effort.

Excerpt from: Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom, Lecture 1, Technology and Art, by Rudolf Steiner. Dornach, December 28, 1914.

No one seems to be very happy with the current state of the world. Wars on all continents, political strife between families and friends, poverty, injustice, famine, you name it. Will we be able to address any of it with our established lines of thinking? Will we be able to penetrate to any truth with the shifting stories told through the lenses of deceit, arrogance, greed and malevolence we can witness every day in front of us or in the news? What if these maladies are recognized as evidence of a humanity that needs a perspective, a new voice? What if we could understand it all with spiritual insight?

We just won’t know unless we make the effort over and over again. Effort, by definition, isn’t easy, but then, neither is witnessing the world as it is today. Finding our own spiritual self could be the most important work we do in this lifetime.