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Self Awakening Study Courses based on the work of Rudolf Steiner
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>>> THESE GLIMPSES OF CONTENTS AND IMAGES FROM SOME OF THE 26 LESSONS <<<
LESSON 1.
End of INTRODUCTION
[...] * How can we ennoble our physical condition, our temperaments, our character and our humanity and how to help others in their strivings for the same?
* The past, the fixed answers, the habits, the judgments and beliefs could hold us in unfreedom.
* How do we change towards freedom?
* Do we have the ability in these and other situations to respond?
* Do we have Response-ability to help to move us from unfreedom towards freedom?
* During the year, our aim will be to learn and develop these ennobling processes, ways to understand and care for the others and to become active and to do what is close to our heart.
THESE ARE THE AIMS AND TASKS OF EduCareDo
This will be a shared research work with you, beginning with the
First steps in the Light on the Path
From LESSON 3.
UNDERSTANDING, CARING and DEVELOPING THE HUMAN SENSES
The twelve Senses
Which are the seven not so well known senses and how do they share their tasks with the five well known ones?
The seven 'new' Senses: Life-, Movement-, Balance-, Warmth-, Word-, Thought- and Ego-Sense.
The five well known Senses: Touch-, Smell-, Taste-, Sight- and Hearing-Sense.
Rudolf Steiner also gave a useful definition:¨a sense becomes effective at the moment when we achieve perception and before mental activity sets it.
¨
Let's discover some of our 'new' senses through an experiment.
Experiment: One evening, with closed doors and windows, and lights off, try being led blindfolded, by partner or friend, into the middle of a room and being left there in the darkness and silence.
Earlier, but without you seeing it, your friend has moved some furniture to odd places and unusual positions [middle of the room, overturned chair etc.] Now you have to find your way out of the room. Try to ascertain which senses helped you to achieve this? [I have done this and other experiments many times with students. Out of chairs and tables a mineshaft was constructed and they had to escape and crawl out from the partly collapsed shaft.]
Besides our Touch-sense, we recognize a not so well known, but most important Life-sense or Wellbeing-sense, a Self-movement-sense and a Balance-sense. They make us aware of our condition and bodily activity. Did you work your way out of the room, by using these four bodily or will-related physical senses? > > > > > >
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LESSON 20.
ECOLOGICAL-SOCIAL-ECONOMY
[...]
Early beginnings: First experimental biodynamic grain grown on 'Demeter' farm in NSW...hand milling on a little stone mill assisted by children in need of special care,...home baking of ferment bread and comparing breads at a new Anthroposophical Activities group in Sydney... others need the bread, so starting to bake more in a local bakery after the bakers finished their work...
Helios Enterprises Ltd. non profit organisation is born,...with enthusiastic friends we now start our own bakery...
Demeter Bakery is born...we need finance, issue our first loan prospectus for building and equipment, overwhelming response, our request was three times over subscribed ... rebuilding old woodfired brick ovens, purchasing large stone mill and grain silos and the bakery grows...bakery shop, other shops, deliveries to all suburbs and country, supermarkets, Qantas, Lufthansa...
open days, seminars, 'bake-ins' for children and adults of all ages, --thousands have baked bread over the years-...Many people went through the bakery completely overcoming drug problems...
The over subscription of loan moneys led to the birth of Hermes Trilance Ltd a bank like non profit organisation to support biodynamic farmers, bakers, distributors and other environmentally oriented enterprises...
We obtained low cost leases of many houses in a dilapidated government housing estate, renovated and refurbished them with the help of students and co-workers and provided very low cost housing and could still repay the building costs...
[...] * Our economy is mostly Production oriented economy. The aim is to make the highest profit for the shareholders [for myself] to do this we it is necessary to pay as little as possible for the work. 'My powers serve my own interest', EGOTISM. This egotism is the catch even in the best institutions, because it stirs in every human being.
* Consumer oriented economy produces goods for needs, not for profit. [food for healthy nutrition ¡V not for profit]'My powers serve the others'>LOVE. Don¡¦t have to do anything detrimental to others or to the living Earth...
We often hear about the 'free economy' that will make the human community the most prosperous when it allows the individuals to reap the full or the largest possible proceeds of their own labor. We even move towards profit sharing or co-operatives. But it is the opposite:
The wealth of a community is the larger, the less individuals make demands for themselves from their labour.
As a consequence of EGOTISM the community suffers poverty and want at one or other time and also suffers environmental degradation.
We experience this all over the Earth today in our globalised economy...
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From LESSON 6.
THE THREEFOLD HUMAN CONSTITUTION AND CONTROL OF THINKING
[...] We look at the plant and we see it in a vertical position, but with its flower-fruit pole towards the cosmos and with the root down into the earth. Here we observe a deeply significant relationship between the human being and the plants. We have the image of an up-side down plant in us.
Our threefold constitution has very close connections to the plant: the root plants provide important nourishment for our nerve sense pole, while the flower, fruit and seed nourishes us through our metabolic pole and the leaf vegetables help to balance and harmonize the rhythmic heart-lung areas.
[...] We will be dealing with these questions in the Health and Nutrition Lesson.
Exercise: Try to find other threefold aspects in the human constitution, in nature and in the world. Write them down and keep adding to the list...
.... THE SIX BASIC EXERCISES
1. Control of Thinking
2. Control of Willing
3. Equanimity in Feeling
4. Positiveness in Life
5. Open-mindednes for new Experiences
6. Balance between above Exercises
These exercises can gradually strengthen our concentration in conscious Thinking [Truth], can help us toward purpose directed Willing [Goodness] and balanced equanimity in our Feeling [Beauty].
Through true inner experiences and realizations we don't only develop and strengthen our three godly gifts, but also move towards 'freeness' on our path leading the spiritual in us to the spiritual in the universe...
From LESSON 9.
DEVELOPMENT and CARE of the FOUR MEMBERS of the HUMAN BEING
[...] Human development proceeds in periods of 7 years [See Lesson 2, page 4.] with the important landmarks of second dentition and puberty.
The total renewal of physical substance of our bodies corresponds with this 7-year rhythm. [See Lesson 8.].
Through the hereditary components received from our parents we belong to a race, a nation and a family, but we also bring our individuality into this life, which will make us unlike any other human being. This spiritual kernel of our being unites itself with our earthly body at birth and during our life it leaves the body and re-enters it at sleeping and waking [See Lesson 8.'Sleep'].
Heredity and environment can not in themselves explain the development of the child...
Beginning of LESSON 10.
The Human Being, the four Temperaments the four Elements and the four Ethers..
"When it is a case of mastering life, we must
listen for life's secrets. These lie behind
the sense-perceptible."
Rudolf Steiner.
In the last Lesson we have looked at how to understand, care and what to do for the developing four Members of the human being.
In this lesson, we will try to fathom and to hear life's secrets to gain a better understanding of others and ourselves. Through this understanding we will look at the various ways, we relate to others and how we treat them>>> EduCareDo.
* For instance: how do we treat a child, who throws a tantrum, or an adult who seldom fulfils what he promises, or someone who can't stop complaining about her difficulties and sicknesses? We could also include ourselves in this questioning.
* We meet someone and we first experience him or her through our senses. We see the form, head, features, colors, sizes, chest, limbs and proportions. We see the movements of the head, eyes, hands and walking. We hear the voice. We understand the meaning of the words and the actions.
* What we can experience is an outer expression of the other person and we certainly notice the great gap between what we call human nature and what confronts us in each individual.
* However, we might discover certain characteristics inpeople that can be grouped. What are these characteristics? Let's make a simple presentation of some of these characteristics through a little story:
The story of an excursion:....
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From LESSON 21.
INTRODUCTION to BIOGRAPHY WORK
[…] What is biography? This word, so familiar, points to deep issues.
Bio – life, graphy – writing. Biography is something alive and in movement.
Is it possible, in the midst of this movement, to observe one’s own life-writing?
We can also ask 'who' is writing?
We live within the movement of time, but as conscious human egos we have the gift of memory which makes available to us events past. This stream of our past accompanies us as we plunge into the movement of 'now' time. And what of future time? It comes to meet us as surely as we leave the past behind us.
We have asked 'who' is writing the script of my life? My limited earthly ego says, 'I am' – but my expanded selfhood says: "your true 'I' is with you in this writing. At night during sleep and in moments of insight during the day you meet with me."...
[...] OLDER AGE PHASES have a special place in a biography. Just as past lives have interacted with the present life, so the course of the present life interacts with the time span of older age. It becomes a mirror, which reflects rich patterns of bright and dull colors. As details vanish there remain monuments in time, which cause the soul to focus and gain the capacity to read the deeper meanings written into their lives...
From LESSON 22.
GETTING in TOUCH with ASTRONOMY
Relationship of Macrocosm to Microcosm
[...] Light and Darkness
The following poem expresses an underlying soul mood in our quest to understand something about the stars.
The stars spake once to Man.
It is world-destiny
That they are silent now.
To be aware of the silence
Can become pain for earthly Man.
But in the deepening silence
There grows and ripens
What Man speaks to the stars.
To be aware of the speaking
Can become strength for Spirit-Man.
Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925)
[...]Light and Darkness, the two primary and polar experiences of our life on Earth.
* What happens when these two opposites meet?
* How is it different, how are you affected?
Spend at least half an hour, preferably on several occasions, observing (with your whole being) each of the following:
1) Sunrise, 2) Sunset...
From LESSON 23.
HEALTH and NUTRITION
[...] When we talk about Health, usually we have a general feeling of wellbeing, wholeness, balance and harmony, but not a very conscious image of the 'healthy human being'.
Our modern medicine is mostly focusing and teaching us about diseases and how to 'treat' them after we get sick. A great percentage of diseases are Nutrition related, but there is no consensus about healthy nutrition.
'Why do we Eat?' Simple answer: 'Because we are Hungry'. If we would not eat, eventually we become Ill and die, but if we start eating we become Healthy again.
In Hunger we carry a predisposition to Illness. Hunger is a desire filled spiritual experience. Nutrition connects to Health and Illness.
Rudolf Steiner’s conclusion:
"One who understands Nutrition correctly, understands the beginning of Healing."
Can we build a conscious image about 'the healthy human being' and how we may maintain such a state in our lives?
We will look at many questions we have worked with in our previous Lessons...
The 'ordinary' food we buy and eat is exposed to all sorts of processes and has substances added to it, mostly without our knowledge, but often without the possibility of knowing what has happened to it and how are we affected by all these processes?
his is a huge, but most important area affecting ours and our children’s well being and health. Due to loopholes in the labeling laws...
Another amazing warning came from Rudolf Steiner [Dornach 13. 01. 23] –more than timely to day-: [...uric acid and its salts tend towards the nervous system and the brain...]"...and if the cow were to eat meat, enormous quantities of uric acid salts would be deposited; they would go to the brain and the cow would become deranged [...] the cows would become mad".
Today Mad Cow Disease is sweeping the world. ("On the basis of epidemiological data, researchers believe that the source of BSE in Great Britain was feed containing meat-and-bone meal" - from United States Department of Agriculture website.)…..
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From LESSON 12.
EXPERIMENTS with ELEMENTS, ETHERS and their EFFECTS in NATURE and in the HUMAN BEING
[…] Nature creates crystal forms through the involvement of all four aggregate conditions. Water on ground level evaporates through Fire [warmth] into the Air and when it reaches a very cold layer it crystallises into the most beautiful and infinitely varied ennobled Earth forms, the snow flakes....
...EXPERIMENT: Grow a crystal at home: You can grow large single crystals of salts by suspending a 'seed' crystal by a thread in a jar containing the solution. [see diagrams and descriptions]...
From LESSON 13.
EXPERIMENTS with ELEMENTS, ETHERS and their EFFECTS in NATURE and in the HUMAN BEING
[…] EXPERIMENT: When you next see a rainbow, stop and look at it. Contemplate it. What do you see, what do you feel? [Ask others too.] Watch where the rainbow touches a tree or a hill and then walk towards the rainbow and it will move with you. The person at your side will see a different rainbow. We all have our own individual rainbows.
[...]
With all our experiments and exercises we start to deepen our experiences with light, darkness and colour. This deepening and interiorising of the surface experiences can be of great help to the Sanguinic temperament. The sanguine delights in the surface phenomena: shimmering warmth on a road, blazes of colour, dark depths of a cave, sparklng fish. Emotions soar and plunge. These exercises can help the Sanguine to dwell on the content of the experience as well as the surface of it...
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From LESSON 24.
HEALTH and NUTRITION
[...] We have looked at the growing and preparing of our foods and started to follow the menacing and increasing numbers and quantities of agricultural chemicals, food additives, irradiation and genetically modified foods [GM] often comfortably hidden from us and making our decisions difficult and unfree.
What about our drinking WATER and our AIR?
* Our drinking water is chlorinated and often fluoridated...
[...] Light Metabolism, [see image above] the foundation of Nutrition
* Human beings and animals breathe out carbondioxide [CO2]. The plant combines this carbondioxide with water [H2O] and with the help of sunlight and the green dye chlorophyll in the leaves creates carbohydrate, the living plant substance.
This process is photosynthesis.
We breathe in the oxygen released by the plant and we take it up into our organism with the help of the red dye the hemoglobin in our blood. We carry this oxygen from the lungs to the tissues. [Polarity]
* In the green leaves of the plants we can actually witness the continuous wonder of creation of Life on Earth. The plants make living carbohydrate from the dead substances, which human beings can’t do...
[...] Out of Rudolf Steiner’s great concern about the Earth and humanity’s future was born his Biodynamic gifting for a renewed healing agriculture and nutrition for the Earth and for all its inhabitants; minerals, plants, animals and human beings...
[...] The data in the Lessons is there for a helping reference, when you want to make decisions about your health and nutrition...
[one of the graces to lift our nutrition towards the Creator beings in thankful consciousness]
Earth who gives us all these food,
Sun who makes it ripe and good.
Sun and Earth we pray that yea
Never shall forgotten be.
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From LESSSON 14.
WORK ARISING out of RUDOLF STEINER¡¦S STRIVINGS.
REVIEW of the FIRST HALF YEAR
[...] In Switzerland near Basel on the Dornach hill, with artists and workers from all over the world, Rudolf Steiner designed and built a double domed building with auditorium and stage and named it the Goetheanum. This was a manifestation of anthroposophical research in artistic forms and images, with laboratories and workshops for spiritual knowledge for every department of human activity. The nearly completed, mainly wooden building was destroyed by arsonists on New Year's Eve in 1922. Rudolf Steiner redesigned the building, which was built out of concrete in new forms of an organic architecture.
A year later, in 1923 at the Christmas Conference, a new foundation of the Anthroposophical Society was laid. There Rudolf Steiner presented the 'Foundation Stone Mantra' with its far reaching implications for the individual and for the evolution of humanity.
Soon after, the School of Spiritual Science, with its General and various professional Sections, was established...
From LESSON 15.
Female and Male Spirituality
AND PAINTING WORKSHOP 2 PART 2
In the last Lesson we have tried to use our Anthroposophical understanding to come to terms with world events of deep significance for all of us. How to Educate ourselves, how to Care and what to Do? During the next half year we will further develop and use our Spiritual Scientific Research methods in practical ways for our questions in our every day and professional lives.
Rudolf Steiner once said that one of the greatest unfreedoms is to be born a female or a male.
This is a very challenging statement but how can we understand it? We will look at:
* How does our Female and Male Spirituality affect our personal lives and our interactions with others?
* Where does this spirituality come from and where does it lead us?
* How to work towards a deeper understanding of our interpersonal relationships and our stand and attitude towards the world?
* How to understand the strong individualizing, separating processes in the world at present, while in active search for peace and unity outside and within?
* How to harmonize our every-day lives with the Spirit of our times by fathoming our evolutionary processes?
* Can Spirituality be Female or Male?...
...How can we work with all these questions in a meaningful way? ...
From Lesson 16.
Female and Male Spirituality
OPEN-MINDEDNESS for NEW EXPERIENCES
[...] We have looked at Questions orientating us into the future, Symptomatology to come to diagnostic understanding of this wide and deep topic and we will work next with Threefolding as 'treatment'. We will look at questions and practical problems we have at present with our Female/Male and Feminine/Masculine qualities and will try to find ways and directions, which are possible for us to follow now to bring balancing solutions and healing in our relationships...
From LESSON 17.
Female and Male Spirituality
AND THE CLAY EXERCISE
[...] Biologically we are bi-sexual and the potential that does not come to physical expression influences us from the unconscious. We experience ourselves between the masculine and the feminine...
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From LESSON 25.
HEALTH and NUTRITION
[…] In the previous Lesson we have looked at some of the very complex nutritional processes on our path of self-knowledge and World knowledge. Now we will look at some particular foods and will also work with many health questions.
We will look at some important BASIC FOODS.
Examples:
* Milk: We have looked at milk from a lacto-vegetarian nutrition point of view, but we know that milk is the most important food for children, containing all the nutrients needed to build the body.
It is important that the child receives mother’s milk in early infancy, because before it was born the child was part of the body that produces its milk and the child feels connected with this milk.
Cow’s milk, which is much higher in calcium, can create hardening problems later in life, like arterial sclerosis. Just as Milk is necessary in young age for body growth and strength so is Honey beneficial, when we grow older...
[...] Feeling in the soul is healthy. Feeling in the physical is illness. Pain is feeling enhanced. [Polarity]
The essence of the organism lives, not in Substance but in activity, in Processes in continuous variation around equilibrium, maintained by the Ego.
Between these polar metabolic [transformation] processes our ego maintains the possibility of functioning in an earthly body, in order to fulfill its task in this incarnation.
Nutrition stimulates the health-giving etheric forces to prevent illness. [Polarity] [...]
If the Ego – the spirit - cannot maintain the equilibrium between the astral and etheric – which are also the basis of our soul activity – we become ill.
So illness depends on whether our soul-spiritual forces are able to function in a balanced way.
Rudolf Steiner maintains that PHYSICAL ILLNESS HAS SOUL-SPIRITUAL CAUSES.
This insight could open up a new Preventative Medicine, where the soul-spiritual causes could be 'treated' before actual bodily lesion, physical damage starts to manifest. A New World with new possibilities?!...
SUBSTANCE, WHICH EXISTS IN THE WORLD IN ITS PURITY, IS THE EXTERNAL CURE FOR THE CORRESPONDING SUBSTANCE IN ITS DAMAGED STATE.
APPLIED THE RIGHT WAY IT IS A REMEDY TO THE HUMAN BODY...
[...] The External world is not only beautiful, but it is the mighty HEALER. Somewhere in Nature the Remedy is concealed.
It is important not only to understand the language of the Healer but also to HEAR it, to obey it. Today it is sometimes hard to hear the healing voice, because misunderstandings of LIGHT and DARKNESS have penetrated our knowledge….
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From LESSON 5
WATERCOLOUR PAINTING
[...] Your painting exercises...
Figure 2: This painting shows the build up of colour. Is it finished?
The Meditative Quality
Another facet to painting is the meditative quality.
* Practice living into the colour. While you are working with yellow consider its characteristics.
* Does it seem lively?
* Does it have a flickering, active feel about it?
* Do you feel it radiating outwards?
* Does it take you out of yourself?
* Are you joyful when you look at it?
And the blue ...
* Is it as busy?
* Does it feel heavier or slower?
* Blue shines inwards.
* Does it engender a longing?
* Do you feel how by its own nature blue wants to make forms? *
* Whereas the yellow finds it difficult to come to form.
These perceptions or understandings will not come with one painting. Over the next few months...
From LESSON 18.
THE ARTS and THEIR MISSION
***
LIVING WORDS
An Introduction to Creative Speech
[...] Anthroposophical cognition leads to realization that thoughts are not the only living reality; something else is needed.
Rudolf Steiner: "thoughts are not the living reality; they are dead gestures which merely point to that reality; and at a certain stage one feels that, to attain reality, one must begin to create; must pass over to art. Ideas alone simply cannot present the world in its rich full content."
Exercise: A.) Evaluate how did you succeed after each lesson in bringing the content to life in your artistic presentations.
B.) Make notes of your findings and go back to those lessons now, where you feel that your presentation did not fulfil this task and repeat the presentation in a newly created form. You will be surprised about your new creativity.
In your creative exercises your thoughts and ideas [Edu] started to come alive and become ideals [Care] eventually flowering into artistic creations [Do]. A poem, painting, sculpture, story, music or movement expressed your realities and looking into these expressions one can experience the spiritual in the colours, tones, forms as well as in words. So we might be able to live all aspects of our lives more artistically.
Goethe, out of his artistic feeling said: "Art is a manifestation of secret laws of nature which, without it, would remain forever hidden." So art becomes again the important bridge between the sense world and the supersensible...
LIVING WORDS
An Introduction to Creative Speech
... Words used to be our companions, now they are our slaves and through this enslavement they have become desiccated. Just observe for a moment how words carry information through scripts, computers, conversation without any acknowledgment of their inherent life and rhythm. There are still a few places, especially in the arts, where words live and there are still people who know how to tell a story or speak a poem.
Every landscape has its own personality. In a similar way each sound has its own being. It's own character. It's own power. Creative speech aims to develop an awareness of and sensitivity to this being.
We pursue our deeper connection to words through activities. We will learn how to befriend words and let them be our companions once more. Now lets begin...
From Lesson 19.
ECOLOGICAL-SOCIAL-ECONOMY
[...] The Individual within the Society
To practice tolerance in a spiritual sense is to respect the freedom of someone else’s thought. To listen in inner silence with the soul is to witness another human being and to realise that what becomes a physical reality always existed first in the spirit.
"In the Beginning was the Word".
How to Listen? We must suppress our own opinions completely, not only to the words we hear, but also to the feelings behind them, even if we are convinced that the speaker is wrong. It requires more strength to listen, than to interrupt.
Such listening produces different kind of understanding; one feels as if the other person’s soul is filling with warmth and light, when one faces the other with absolute tolerance. We should guarantee absolute freedom, even freedom of different opinion. Interrupting someone’s speech can be like a kick!...
...We can’t separate ourselves, because a soul is not a soul separate from human community. Abilities best develop in tranquility, but character and the whole human being develops within the currents of the world.
Rudolf Steiner advises: when we live in a brotherly community, we must wait - till what took root ripens to fruitfulness - in silent inward meditation.
What we need are not outer ‘social skills’ but deep inner sincerity; WE have to CHANGE! ….
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From LESSON 26.
REVIEW, EXERCISES, FUTURE
[...] We have come to the end of our first year of working together with our Self-Awakening Study Lessons on our path of knowledge leading the spiritual in us to the spiritual in the universe.
It is time to look together at the larger pictures and polarities emerging out of our studies and to find new questions, new polarities, and new challenges on our path of self-development for world development.
This path is also to help us gradually to increase our levels of consciousness and through that to be able to have more responsability on our path towards freedom……
[...] After a year’s work we can now do the six exercises together at the beginning of each day. The regular daily work with these six basic exercises can lead us on a conscious and measurable path to overcome our weaknesses and increase our strength. In other words we can gradually change by evolving and ennobling our soul/spirit capacities.
[...] * There is an old Chinese proverb: "I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand." ...
* Rudolf Steiner is an initiate of the will and said: 'I don't want you to believe me, I want you to understand me', which is one of the important tasks of the Consciousness Soul...
* This Self-awakening study course contains plenty of doing in order to understand. The exercises aim to create loving deeds and responsability to carry us towards freedom. Therefore the Lessons are not only for reading-studying, but for DOING-understanding a basis for your research in your life...
All things in life
Are dedicated to the purpose
Of expanding awareness.
One never discards a portion of oneself
One merely transforms it into Light
Until the entire being is Light.
Emmanuel
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