Our contribution to the cosmos
“I am the Door of the Sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers; but the sheep did not heed them.” John 10:7
The I AM is a door to spirit. We are the sheep. On one side of the door are thieves and robbers snapping at our heels. On the other side of the door is our spiritualised being and our spiritual contribution to the Cosmos. These thieves and robbers are the forces within us that keep us from entering through the door. They keep us from entering into a right relationship with our I AM.
Have you ever walked into a room and had an uncomfortable feeling about happened there before you entered? You experience what another person has left behind in the room? The clairvoyant can see in an Imaginative picture what emanated from that person.
Do we think about what emanates from us every moment of everyday? In everything we do we send out spiritual substance into the world, it is perpetually passing over from us into the world. It rays forth from us and influences the whole world.
Every thought of love, every kindness, every prayer, and every lie, every judgment, all our irritability and our anger. These are actual substances, however fine, that ray forth and they are perceptible to those who have eyes to see. This substance continually fills the world and creates the future. This is how we provide the building-stones for the future. So it follows that the present world is the result of all the thoughts of love and hate from the past.
So we stand on the doorstep of the I AM in everyday life deciding to enter into that right relationship with it. Sometimes we can be objective and control our temper. Sometimes we can love where love is not returned. At other times we snap and abuse someone. Or we lie or cheat or blame others so that we don’t have to take responsibility for what happens to us.
So what rays forth from us falls into two parts; that which is gladly received by the cosmos and that which the cosmos rejects. All that is negative does not please the cosmos so it leaves it alone. It remains where it is. How long does it remain? It remains there until such time as we come and destroy it. All false thoughts, all ugly feelings, whatever is morally evil - a man must himself erase from existence if it is to be no longer there. It will follow him continually until he has erased it. How is it erased? With true thoughts, beautiful feelings and good deeds.
Knowing this might motivate us to decide here and now never to create anything on the side of the door where the thieves and robbers are. But what about the ‘stuff’ that we have already created? Everyday we have the opportunity to deal with that. Yet how many people disown what they have created by not accepting responsibility for what is happening to them by blaming someone else?
If we want to pass through the door freely, having the right relationship to our I AM, then we must become the sheep, the sacrifice. If someone does us wrong then we must as quickly as possible neutralise our feelings about it. Otherwise those angry feelings will thieve and rob the forces of the I AM. We will create more substance that the Cosmos rejects.
This is exactly why the little tests of life come our way, to give us the opportunity to erase the past, nay, to redeem the past. Christ is the key to this process. He has given us the power that makes it possible to be continually creative, to continually create what the cosmos will accept. He stands there in the etheric world just on the other side of the door, patiently waiting for us – “I am the door, if any one enters by me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.”
It is awe inspiring to think that we can make this contribution to the cosmos. It is almost beyond comprehension that the light of our love, of our prayer, and the light that ignites when a spiritual truth thrills us, can create the future and resolve the past.
And if we take your picture
And if we take your picture of how the cosmos (Truth) rejects all falsity, we see how it "protects" itself eternally. I must put "protects" in quotes because the Truth can not be in danger or vulnerable to the misty illusions the ego sees as real and makes real (to itself). You may dream of a terrifying dragon but upon awakening to the glistening sun and cool breeze of the day, the dragon is seen in the proper context. The Truth is forever free, never in danger of being imprisoned. However, as long as we reject the truth on our side of the door (as we dream) we do indeed imprison ourselves.
And if we take your wonderful picture of what exists on each side of the door- the false notions of the robbers and thieves vs. the eternally radiant shining of God's Truth- and look at it through the lens of the story of the Prodigal Son, we can see, I think, that the Father cares not for what His Son did on the other side of the door; he simply is ready to receive His Son whenever the Son finally sees that the true purpose of his journey into darkness was to re-cognize and then accept the Love that was always his true inheritance.
And if we imagine that we stand next to Christ as he speaks:
I have been correctly referred to as "the lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world," but those who represent the lamb as blood-stained do not understand the meaning of the symbol. Correctly understood, it is a very simple symbol that speaks of my innocence...Innocence is incapable of sacrificing anything, because the innocent mind has everything and strives only to protect its wholeness. The lamb "taketh away the sins of the world" in the sense that the state of innocence, or grace, is one in which the meaning of the Atonement is perfectly apparent. The Atonement is entirely unambiguous. It is perfectly clear because it exists in light. Only the attempts to shroud it in darkness have made it inaccessible to those who do not choose to see.
The Atonement itself radiates nothing but truth. It therefore epitomizes harmlessness and sheds only blessing. It could not do this if it arose from anything but perfect innocence. Innocence is wisdom because it is unaware of evil, and evil does not exist. It is, however, perfectly aware of everything that is true.
The resurrection demonstrated that nothing can destroy truth. Good can withstand any form of evil, as light abolishes forms of darkness. The Atonement is therefore the perfect lesson. It is the final demonstration that all the other lessons I taught are true. If you can accept this one generalization now, there will be no need to learn from many smaller lessons. You are released from all errors if you believe this.
The innocence of God is the true state of the mind of His Son. In this state your mind knows God, for God is not symbolic; He is Fact. Knowing His Son as he is, you realize that the Atonement, not sacrifice, is the only appropriate gift for God's altar, where nothing except perfection belongs. The understanding of the innocent is truth. That is why their altars are truly radiant.
Freedom
"that the Father cares not for what His Son did on the other side of the door; he simply is ready to receive His Son whenever the Son finally sees that the true purpose of his journey into darkness was to re-cognize and then accept the Love that was always his true inheritance."
Isn't this the essence of it - not caring what it done by others. It seems kind of odd that the reverse is mostly true in our lives.
I like to think of Atonement as At-one-ment. I guess that if we are at one with others we will understand why they do what they do. Then we have freed ourselves from what binds us.
K
Anthroposophy, as I mean
Anthroposophy, as I mean it, provides such an immense opportunity to demonstrate the actual nature of sin: sin is understanble only at a formal level because, at root, it isn't real. The Philosophy of Freedom address this as a whole, but I find it particularly fascinating to apply 5-10{26, 27) to how we typically try to understand darkness/sin. If we recognize what Steiner is saying in 5-10{26}, we recognize that Christ's teaching of sin is as far from most esoteric Christian teachings as well as conventional Christianity.
Walk you in glory, with your head held high, and fear no evil. The innocent are safe because they share their innocence. Nothing they see is harmful, for their awareness of the truth releases everything from the illusion of harmfulness. And what seemed harmful now stands shining in their innocence, released from sin and fear and happily returned to love. They share the strength of love because they looked on innocence. And every error disappeared because they saw it not. Who looks for glory finds it where it is. Where could it be but in the innocent?
and when we read 5-10{26,27} in the context of Christ's message below things get really beautiful. The line that contains "reinterpreted as part of heaven" says very well what, ultimately, PoF is offering to replace our partial perception/conceptions with:
Nothing around you but is part of you. Look on it lovingly, and see the light of Heaven in it. So will you come to understand all that is given you. In kind forgiveness will the world sparkle and shine, and everything you once thought sinful now will be reinterpreted as part of Heaven. How beautiful it is to walk, clean and redeemed and happy, through a world in bitter need of the redemption that your innocence bestows upon it! What can you value more than this? For here is your salvation and your freedom. And it must be complete if you would recognize it.