Two nights ago I watched a very creative anthroposophist and a very creatively devout atheist argue about three-folding. Before going to sleep I was reading a comparative analysis of various forms of Gnosticism. That's when this "causality/morality" game was born. It's meant in seriously playful truth.
#1. Did something go wrong at some point in the distant past? (Some people might be imagining Eve eating the apple as an image of the earliest point of something going wrong; but even if you don't have an exact notion of what exactly went wrong, at this point the question is simply if you think something did indeed go wrong)
If no, think of an action that you consider to be the result of a moral weakness and use this as an analog for "what went wrong". Or, go on with your December Day.
if yes, continue
#2. Was there a reason for this event?
if no, enjoy the land of non-causality!
if yes, continue
#3. Was this reason of a moral character? (that is, do we consider this event to have had an element of 'choice' or do we consider it to simply be the product of spiritual/physical mechanics)
if no, exit (you might notice that in answering yes to #1 you are using the word "wrong" in a formal manner, which is fine; it's how I almost exclusively use it) and keep up the good work
if yes, continue
#4. Could the entity responsible for this event have chosen differently?
if no, you might want to revise your response to #2 and/or #3. Unless you can locate a possibility of "choice", you may exit into your day.
if yes, (make sure you mean it; don't answer 'yes' here if your thought system really needs the event to be amoral or needs the morality to be located outside the entity we are calling responsible)continue
#5. Is your answer to number 4 based on an actual observation? (or is it based on anything else?)
if no, join the metaphysical club? Billions upon billions are doing it!!!! You will certainly be able to find people who will share your belief (especially now that we have the world wide web)
if yes, continue
#6. Is your observation sharable? (or at the end of the day do people just have to say they see it as well)
if no, enjoy your cult of the faithful (you have seen something from which other will, at most, recieve the fruits of faith; as long as they listen to you.)
if yes, continue
#7. Can you share your observation with people who do not share your world-view? (or does it require a rather sophisticated set of agreements?)
if no, enjoy your slightly less restrictive cult of the faithful. If you find that the majority of people who "share" you observation also share your particular world-view, it might be that there is an unconscious form of conflation taking place. By the way, i don't see this type of cult as necessarily a problem.
if yes, continue (answering yes means that you can observe this event with folks who might be inclined to interpret it very differently, depending on their world-views...but you can each point to and agree upon the qualitative nature of the description; it would be like two people agreeing on their drawings of the moon while disagreeing on what the moon is)
#8. observe this event.
if you can't observe it, go back and see if you really mean "yes" to number 5; it might be that rather than an observation, you are being guided by a set of mental pictures in which a particular ideology is hiding away and merely calling itself "empirical".
if you are observing the event, continue.
#9. Observe the event until you "see" how a specific cognitive projection is functioning in its genesis.
if the projection does not reveal itself, go on with your day happily and do your best to be helpful and harmless
if you locate the projection, continue
#10. Observe the activity of projection until you notice its cause/source.
if you can't notice its source, go on with your day but also enjoy having made a discovery that almost no ideology or spiritual path can afford to accept as valid.
if you notice its source, continue
#11. Observe this source until the light of cognition locates its point of falsity.
if this does not take place, try resting your attention on this source-idea and notice if there is an aspect of it that is livingly unformed.
if this does take place, continue
#12. As Christ in You, go back to #1 and try to suppress the joy! Or just enjoy your day.
Christmas fragments and jolly relationships
I'm in a PoF study group in which we use creative writing to explore our resistances to the text. I've been writing two psycho dramas. In the first I have the shadow (as I see/create it) of anthroposophy dance with the shadow of "A Course in Miracles". In the second have their healthy natures singing a duet. I'm working on how chapter 5 of PoF dances (in a health inspiring way) with aspects of The Course. I've been reading the "Chistmas" sections of PoF and The Course and came across this Course quote. I like how it can be seen to pull out or restate some of my favorite aspects of PoF's Chapter 5. The following are somewhat random quotes and comments. With Christmas near I have included quotes that come from parts of the text that explicitly or implicitly relate to this time of year. Steiner often referred to when Christ said that men are not yet ready to hear certain truths. Whereas fundamentalists will need to interpret the use of "together" in a dogmatic and text-based manner, PoF frees us to see that Freedom implies that "togetherness" is inherent in our nature as Sons of God.
This is the season when you would celebrate my birth into the world. Yet you know not how to do it. Let the Holy Spirit teach you, and let me celebrate your birth through Him. The only gift I can accept of you is the gift I gave to you. Release me as I choose your own release. The time of Christ we celebrate together, for it has no meaning if we are apart.
I don't know how many of you have read Steiner comment on his Christ experience at the turn of the century. He goes into it in various places, always speaking about it from various aspects. Im looking at how beautifully some of his statements from 1919 harmonize with the following Course quote. I also like thinking about how the following might relate to the Mystery experience of Thomas Aquinas after which he said all of his previous knowledge was like straw in comparison to this experience. And a rich man asked the Lord when salvation will come; the Lord let the edge of his cloak fall into the dust as he spoke to the rich man:
The Atonement is in time, but not for time. Being in you, it is eternal. What holds remembrance of God cannot be bound by time. No more are you. For unless God is bound, you cannot be. An instant offered to the Holy Spirit is offered to God on your behalf, and in that instant you will awaken gently in Him. In the blessed instant you will let go all your past learning, and the Holy Spirit will quickly offer you the whole lesson of peace. What can take time, when all the obstacles to learning it have been removed? Truth is so far beyond time that all of it happens at once. For as it was created one, so its oneness depends not on time at all.
I think the last part of the following quote can be related to what Steiner is trying to say about the apparent paradox of individualism. PoF is painting a new kind of knowing, a knowing that has been transformed from a bowl collecting bits of information into an ear listening joyfully to the song of the spirit. To many the new thinking will appear as a type of ignorance because they can only see knowledge as something that is always finished and grasped. The idea that there can be a free type of knowing that is percieved and not achieved by ego seems utterly impossible. We could use the phrase "trying to find magnitude in littleness" to describe modern reductionist science. Or to refer to how we let Ego try to make the rules for how we will recognize Christ. Christ knew that the people made the obstacles to their relationship with him and spoke of this:
In your practice, try to give over every plan you have accepted for finding magnitude in littleness. It is not there. Use the holy instant only to recognize that you alone cannot know where it is, and can only deceive yourself.
While Steiner's PoF doesn't seem to have a psychology attached to it, it does. On the explicit side of the coin, Steiner writes only in terms of objective knowledge and seems to be saying nothing about psychological classics like "sin" and "guilt" and "joy". But, remember, he says the book is about what it points towards, which is an experience of unity, of what "self" truely is! If we are willing to accept the reality of this experience (we reject it over and over), we see that PoF must be about the journey as well. The journey has its psycho-dynamic aspects of course. The "self-sustaining" nature of thinking is something that our "ego" rejects or wishes to be the creator of. Our experience of thinking's true nature is love perfected. PoF points, therefore, to the mistake of trying to understand the true meaning of Love through mental pictures of "parts" of love or bits of knowledge related to mental pictures of "love". If there was a passage in the bible in which Jesus said the following, I bet Steiner could have related it to the middle of Chap 5 quite beautifully. Jesus came from the cave and called the disciple whom he loved to his chest, gently saying unto him:
You have so little faith in yourself because you are unwilling to accept the fact that perfect love is in you. And so you seek without for what you cannot find without. I offer you my perfect faith in you, in place of all your doubts. But forget not that my faith must be as perfect in all your brothers as it is in you, or it would be a limited gift to you. In the holy instant we share our faith in God's Son because we recognize, together, that he is wholly worthy of it, and in our appreciation of his worth we cannot doubt his holiness. And so we love him.
PoF speaks from and to the Archetypal Human Being. The Ego can not see the True Human because it (the Ego) only survives in the darkness of its successful illusions. The Ego tricks us into believing in scarcity so that the true meaning of love is not percieved. As long as we believe/feel/think that the dragon can gobble up love and leave us without it, the Ego can rest assured that we remain apart from PoF. However, PoF is the recognition that the ego breeds only the unreal (5-10{26, 27}) And the Christ said that when men are ready to see, a great book will be written that teaches Freedom through the eyes of His Love and that...
In the world of scarcity, love has no meaning and peace is impossible. For gain and loss are both accepted, and so no one is aware that perfect love is in him. In the holy instant you recognize the idea of love in you, and unite this idea with the Mind that thought it, and could not relinquish it. By holding it within itself, there is no loss. The holy instant thus becomes a lesson in how to hold all of your brothers in your mind, experiencing not loss but completion. From this it follows you can only give. And this is love.
Steiner would often say that it is mostly fear that blocks Man's acceptence of his spiritual reality. Only occastionally did Steiner go into the confused root of this fear. But Steiner was a cognitive monist and always argued that the ego was an idea (confused as it is) that could be corrected via Christ. Steiner spoke of how increasingly people would hear Christ directly and know their true natures. He predicted this would increase in the last century and this is a prediction he certainly got right. Cripplingly depressed by the loss of her son in the war, the woman awoke on the first holy night to a bright light at the edge of her bed. The light was seen outside her, but somehow she knew it came from within. She felt the darkness being dispelled as she heard His words softly spoken:
It is in your power to make this season holy, for it is in your power to make the time of Christ be now. It is possible to do this all at once because there is but one shift in perception that is necessary, for you made but one mistake. It seems like many, but it is all the same. For though the ego takes many forms, it is always the same idea. What is not love is always fear, and nothing else.
And finally: In 1956 a young archeologist reached behind the rock of a dark cave and pulled out these fragments of the lost holy text. The words of Christ had not been seen by human eyes for over 1800 years. These were not to be seen for some time.
The meaning of love lies in what you have cast outside yourself, and it has no meaning apart from you. It is what you prefer to keep that has no meaning, while all that you would keep away holds all the meaning of the universe, and holds the universe together in its meaning. Unless the universe were joined in you it would be apart from God, and to be without Him is to be without meaning.
Let no despair darken the joy of Christmas, for the time of Christ is meaningless apart from joy. Let us join in celebrating peace by demanding no sacrifice of anyone, for so you offer me the love I offer you. What can be more joyous than to perceive we are deprived of nothing? Such is the message of the time of Christ, which I give you that you may give it and return it to the Father, Who gave it to me. For in the time of Christ communication is restored, and He joins us in the celebration of His Son's creation.
God offers thanks to the holy host who would receive Him, and lets Him enter and abide where He would be. And by your welcome does He welcome you into Himself, for what is contained in you who welcome Him is returned to Him. And we but celebrate His Wholeness as we welcome Him into ourselves. Those who receive the Father are one with Him, being host to Him Who created them. And by allowing Him to enter, the remembrance of the Father enters with Him, and with Him they remember the only relationship they ever had, and ever want to have.
This is the time in which a new year will soon be born from the time of Christ. I have perfect faith in you to do all that you would accomplish. Nothing will be lacking, and you will make complete and not destroy. Say, then, to your brother:
I give you to the Holy Spirit as part of myself.
I know that you will be released,
unless I want to use you to imprison myself.
In the name of my freedom I choose your release,
because I recognize that we will be released together.
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