I suggest we read the entire chapter two and then you can ask questions or share your experience of it.
After we learn how to lay the foundation in chapter one we cover the next two steps in chapter two; namely preparation and illumination.
PREPARATION we must cultivate our feeling and thinking life.
it is suggested we focus on new life and near death in the process of nature......
growth and decay become a sort of meditation................we have to observe our thinking and feeling in relation to focusing on things blossoming and things decaying.....
the "inner word" thus awakens on the soul level when mastering this exercise with commitment.
this is just the very beginning, could you please respond and share what your thoughts are on chapter two on preparation.
thank you. jenny ren.
hello freinds the process
hello freinds
the process or cycle of growth and death has been a process of thought for me as a new comer to RS. during periods of thought I seem to have felt different parts of my pyshical body kind of like a pressure so to speak, as I ( or what I beleive to be my I)contemplate the process of growth ,becoming, flourishing, and dying and withering. ? has anyone else felt anything similar?
Answer to Doubtingneil
Dear Neil,
Have a great trip wherever you’re going.
Cheers,
patri
Greetings freinds, I would
Greetings freinds,
I would like to post a short notes of thanks to this group for your insightful comments and thoughts, but I see that ours paths must divirge for a time, I wish the best to each of you.
happy trails
neil
Higer Worlds Chp.2 and reply to doubtingneil
Dear Neil,
I don’t know if you will get an opportunity to read this, but here goes. I have been thinking about your question regarding feelings in the body when one is practicing the exercise of observing life as it grows and flourishes, and as its withers, fades and dies away. I needed to really work with these exercises for a while until I felt I could answer your question properly (if I could answer it). Often when I’m looking at the plants in my home I will notice a new bud or leaf or extension of the plant beginning to just appear as a new growth. With some plants, I will see them one day, and the next notice that they have sprouted completely new stems or flowers. Living in my soul with what feelings they induce, and Steiner’s allegory of being similar to watching the sun rise. When in the countryside, sometimes I wake very early in the morning and look out the window to just see the sun starting to rise and then stay with this until the sun has completely risen. If I’m trying to think of any sensations in the body, I can only think of this feeling of alignment to nature, to the natural in the world, it is a feeling of belonging to all that lives, the natural world – plants, animals, the stars and planets. It is a feeling of the cosmos living inside one. Once, when young (I was in the garden), I noticed something in my arm and I pulled at it, and it turned out to be the stem of a long blade of grass that had gone completely into my arm. I had a feeling of communion with nature, with the living/growing processes of same, as if this blade of grass was growing in my arm. As to the dying away, Steiner mentions this feeling as to a feeling we would have when watching the slow rise of the moon on the horizon. Sometimes I have plants that I have had for a long time, and one day I look at them and know their time is up. They haven’t actually died yet, but there is something in them that lets me know it is time to let them go. Or when there is a leaf or plant that is fading away, what kind of feeling does this induce in the body, if any? This one is harder, this dying away, this process of decay and passing away, this watching the moon rise, I can only relate to a passage from the bible, of there being a time and place for everything under the sun, a time to be born, a time to die, etc. This feeling really applies to PoF, as a sense of the soul, the ego (the I), one day being in another place. The rising moon as a solar plexus, of a place outside present time.
Have a great trip wherever you’re going.
Cheers,
patri
poetry
pure poetry .. lovely. I am enjoying reading the writings in this group - thanks jennyren and everyone.
Poetic writings
Dear Caryn,
Thanks for appreciating the poetic approach. Did not really know if the poetic approach would really work on this website, so it's nice to know there are those who appreciate same.
Cheers,
patri
Reply to Doubtingneil & Jennyren
Doubtingneil, I hope we see you back and happy trails to you too. I enjoy your comments. Jennyren, I am still working on my response to your note above. I left my Bamford translation of KOHW and my Verses and Meditations texts in a hotel while on a trip this weekend. Oops. While they are being shipped back to me, I am now working from the Metaxa translation. Hope to post a reply soon.
On Preparation
Main points that I gleaned from the section on preparation:
Preparation involves the cultivation of the life of thought and feeling.
Attention of the soul is directed to two processes: one of budding, growing, & fluorshing; the other of fading, decaying, & withering. I have not yet started working earnestly on this but as I looked at my compost today I felt the beginnings of the attention to decay.
A result of this process is the revelation to the student of the soul world or astral plane.
As a student I should become oriented, meaning that I need to understand that thoughts & feelings are veritable realities.
I need to guard our thoughts & feelings. I need to forbid wrong thoughts & feelings as well as arbitrary flitting to & fro in both thought and emotion.
I must pay attention to sound; particularly making efforts to distinguish between sounds from inanimate objects from those of living creatures. I must concentrate on the sound from living creatures with respect not to whether the sound is pleasing or not, rather to the message eminating from the source's soul.
I need to change the way in which I listen to people; being cautious not to interject my own agreements/disagreements/opinions to that coming from another's mouth. I should try to keep my inner self silent. I have started to attempt this. It is very difficult but I derive a fulfillment from making the effort. Keeping my inner self silent has been and remains a very challenging exercise for me. My inner self has traditionally been loud and under poor control.