Self-Development

On Silence

April 12, 2014 By Amelia Leave a Comment

Questions on the Quest: To Be Silent, or To Speak?

Often, the spiritual student is advised to remain silent regarding his or her own spiritual experiences, at least until they have been ripened by time and experience.

On the other hand, we need to share with one another what we experience, to create a community of conscious seeking. We need to support each other in our quests. We need to exercise discernment in how we regard spiritual experiences and “facts” that are communicated to us. I feel that humanity as a whole is across the threshold, and many are “splashing about the spiritual world like toddlers.” Let us not be ashamed of our childish enthusiasm for exploration! Many people are having spiritual experiences of the most varied kinds, including Imaginations, Inspirations, and some Intuitions. While one’s spiritual research results can’t be completely reliable until one has achieved repeatable Intuitions, this does not mean that there is no value to what one experiences on the journey. We can help each other with discernment, with encouragement, with inspiration!

Silence can form a chalice that receives the Spirit.

The Quest involves Questions

What is worth speaking ? What is the value in what is unspoken?

How can you find the Truth if you do not Love it? How can you find Love if you are not Truthful?

There is so much that is unspoken; it is a vast realm. We must listen carefully, and inquire. Ask the Parsifal question…

Silence seals the lips. There is a great sweet waterfall of blessing that lives in the blanket of silence. In silence, things can shimmer in their natural state, without the outer maya that becomes entangled when we think and judge and speak.

To love truth deeply, this is a courageous and sublime act! Be ready to strip aside all one’s mistaken assumptions, petty self importance, and attachments. Be ready to jump into the void and trust that a power will come that will bear one aloft…

True love truly sees, truly comprehends, truly infuses. I feel it is something that we just begin to develop. To be open as an infant to the nurturer, as the flower to the sun. To stand naked in spirit, with all our multitudinous faults spread before us in the eyes of angels. Then, to stand in this utter naked transparency, and bring our own light of love to shine upon what we can illumine, what we can let live in the pregnant emptiness we have created for the other to inhabit.

My Manichaean Motto

April 12, 2014 By Amelia Leave a Comment

Those of us who transform acts of evil into capacities for healing, we are warriors. We gather strength today for tomorrow’s battle against evil. We develop capacities of redemption. We should not underestimate the power and courage we gain just by living through and to varying degrees overcoming the effects of others’ evil deeds. That which is experienced has effects which work deeply into the will of the future. What now seems to be a difficult destiny will shine forth in the future as a pillar of resolution to defend the good.

pieta

No Fault

April 11, 2014 By Amelia Leave a Comment

We humans are story makers and often there are struggles between whose story will be the dominant one. Many times there are stories which are denied a voice, but also stories which can be accepted too readily without knowing a fuller picture. If we can learn to hold back from judgment often inexplicable events can become understandable. So perhaps acting to redeem wrongs is enough without judging the supposed wrongdoer when the fuller picture is not clear. We all are potentially agents of good and evil and very good at deceiving ourselves so it is easy to find fault. What if we led a no-fault life — a life where we were not concerned in finding fault or condemning others, but where we focused instead on healing and creating what is good?

The Etheric Web

April 11, 2014 By Amelia Leave a Comment

Artwork by Alex Grey

The ethers have the quality of flowing, and lack the clear distinctions of physical matter. It is my understanding that a true “seeing” of distinct etheric bodies is dependent on first developing a complete “sealed” etheric membrane in one’s own etheric body. This, in turn, is developed by spiritual practice as outlined in How to Know Higher Worlds. Steiner speaks there of the “etheric web.” and of various currents and flows one can develop within the ether body. It is my understanding that these newly formed qualities of the etheric body require ongoing practice, or nutrition one might say, to become reliable as a basis for receiving the input of organs of spiritual perception.

Read Steiner on the etheric web here.

Thoughts on Destructive Forces in the I

April 11, 2014 By Amelia Leave a Comment

I offer up my ruminations today on Rudolf Steiner’s lecture on Evil and the Power of Thought At the Center of Man’s Being, the lecture quoted in the last post and found here.

The ego is forged out of forces of destruction. There is a very fury of destruction and chaos within each of us, and we owe the development of our “I” to that power. Only through this power of destruction are thoughts able to enter in and “kill” our etheric body, thus giving us the capacity for consciousness, which in turn offers us a realm for freedom.

We must learn to know this center of destruction within us. We must not allow it to extrude itself into outer civilization, causing evil and chaos.

We must learn to understand, even to love, this force of destruction within us. For without it, we would not be developing our “I,” and thus would never attain consciousness in spiritual worlds. There is a paradox Steiner presents. The ego must be forged out of these forces of destruction, yet this ego cannot enter spiritual realms. It must be completely sacrificed. Only the ego permeated with love is able to live in spiritual realities. Yet only that which has been carefully built up is worthy of sacrifice. Thus, we must with great effort build up a strong vessel out of the forces of destruction, then completely empty out this vessel, and offer up the vessel in love to the spiritual world. This is true spiritual alchemy.

Steiner also refers to a great mystery: “Spirit must exist, and for the sake of the maintenance of the spirit matter may be extinguished.” I believe this can also be taken on a very literal level. Matter exists as a realm for beings to evolve and develop; it exists as an arena for humans to develop their “I.” There is a very palpable sense of resistance in the very nature of the material world. Yet materialism must be overcome if we are to ascend to spiritual worlds. Matter may be extinguished for the preservation of spirit, quite literally. I believe that the human being contains within his developing ego the power of nuclear fission, the power to obliterate matter (and along with this, the power of creation). This power will become readily available within individual human beings only in the very far distant future, yet the forces of destruction already have the upper hand in earthly evolution, and will continue to increase. In order to ensure that these forces can lead humanity to ascent, we must fully develop the forces of love. We must consciously dedicate as much energy to building up moral forces as we do to building up consciousness itself; each act of cognition must become an act of love.

A time will come in the far distant future when the earth as we know it will require dissolution. We will participate in the destruction of our universe as we know it. Yet this destruction is necessary for a new form of existence which will allow future evolution and progress. Powers of destruction are just as important as powers of growth and life. Without the obliteration of the past in every moment, the future could not come into being in the present.

We must learn to love evil, for it creates the ground upon which we launch consciously into other realms. Only through transforming evil do we attain the power of creating good.