Someday I will Live...
One day I will Love...
Maybe I will Be Happy.
This reluctance, this wavering, this questioning stems from our internal hesitation and resistance to change at intersections that require a decision that threatens the familiar, the predictable, the manageable... the moments that necessitate willingness, diving in, and trust.They are born out of fear and with regards to fear, there is no better and more thought-provoking streaming of truth than this excerpt from Dune...
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”― Frank Herbert, Dune
Intersections are divine interventions meant to change that which does not serve our higher purpose. To will us into waking from sleep, face and harness the power of the lion and the wisdom of the dragon, fuel our fire, and step into our destiny. Instead of shying away from them, we should welcome and be grateful for these scenarios... the ones that urge us, inspire us, demand from us that we make a transition: enter the abyss, lose ourselves in it, but with trust that we will find our truth there.
To make ourselves vulnerable, to allow the stirrings of our soul, to heed the call that beckons us forward, to trust our intuition, to act with courage, to face the fear, to conquer it with intent, and willingly and wholeheartedly make that leap of faith.
"Fear meets one at the threshold to spirit knowledge. And fear causes one to recoil from this knowledge. One now becomes creative in recoiling instead of in pressing forward."
In the face of fear, we have two choices: press onward or recoil... hiding behind rationalizations that allow us to drag our feet and delay... keeping us stuck in the familiar... preventing us from discovering, experiencing, living, and thriving.
"If one fills the soul with something that afterward proves to be like a dream in its illusory character, and one experiences the illusory in its true nature, then one becomes stronger in one's own experience of self. In confronting a dream, one's thinking corrects the belief one has in the dream's reality while dreaming... but one cannot be satisfied with mere thought correction. One must correct by experiencing."
A dream is only a dream until we decide to act, to dive in, to experience it fully, thereby turning it into a reality.
"... a gradual conquest of the soul's “fear of the void.” This void, however, is only a “void of nature,” in which the “fullness of the spirit” can manifest itself if one wishes to take hold of it... the soul enters this fullness at the moment when the spirit reveals to the soul the creative will."
We think we feel, we will. But when speaking of creative will we must remember that the source of all that is creative is love... love is the ground, the foundation of everything that lives... creative will is love saturated with wisdom or wisdom penetrated with love.
"The spiritual world can be entered, as it were, through three portals. The first may be called the Portal of Death, the second the Portal of the Elements, and the third the Portal of the Sun. Those who wish to tread the entire path of knowledge must pass through all three portals."
"The Portal of Death can only be attained if we strive to reach it through... complete surrender and devotion to certain thoughts or perceptions which are suited to our individuality and which we place so entirely in the center of our consciousness that we identify ourselves wholly with them. “Hitherto I have only ‘thought' this thought; I have placed it at the center of my consciousness, but now it is beginning to unfold a particular life and inner agility of its own.”
To succeed in the conquest of fear, first, we must surrender to the spiritual, and not in a religious context, but rather in the thoughts, feelings, and emotions we are only able to perceive through Spirit. We must allow our Spirit free reign, enabling the spiritual world to speak to us through experiences and sensations that impart unto these thoughts a life of their own.
"There is a certain feeling of isolation, for example, a feeling of loneliness to be undergone — a feeling of being forsaken. One cannot grasp the spiritual world without previously feeling forsaken by the physical world, without feeling that this physical world does many things which crush one, which wear one down. But we must come through this feeling of isolation to be able to bear the inner animation to which the thought awakens, to which it is born. Much resistance now confronts the human being;... One feeling in particular comes — an inner feeling that we simply do not wish to have. We do not admit this, however, but say instead: “Oh, I can never attain that"... This clinging to what the physical world gives is extremely strong in the human being. He would like to take with him into the spiritual world what he has conquered in the physical. He must have the possibility, however, of standing before a completely clean slate, of standing before complete emptiness and of allowing himself to be guided only by the thoughts which then begin to come to life."
That is why this first step is Death... because it requires from us the death of all the evasions of what one must experience so that the thought can become enlivened and substantial. We cling to the physical, to the tangible, to the rational because we cannot imagine another world whose laws are sensed, intangible, felt, and experienced rather than known. What´s worse... we may consider it possible but are unwilling to plunge into this abyss. To enter the spiritual world, we must put aside what we know and surrender to what we think and feel to be built anew.
"The second portal is the Portal of the Elements... one knows: “Now that I am awake, I think, I form thoughts, I connect them... We now actually live and weave within the thoughts themselves... pass through the Portal of the Elements. Then the whole process becomes subject to our will, then we can follow a definite line of thought with intention. We then live in the whole life of thought with our will."
To live life with will is to identify oneself with destiny, to weave in the thoughts... to manipulate them at will. It means taking charge of our fate, and deciding to act accordingly.
"And then the power of will we are now using shows itself as a simply fearful monster. This has been known for thousands of years in mysticism as the encounter with the “lion.” One must go through this encounter with the lion. In the life of feelings this gives rise to a dreadful fear, a fear of what is taking place in the world of thought, of this living union with it, and this fear must be overcome, just as the loneliness of the Portal of Death must be overcome. “You are obliged to will, but you must do something, you must seize something.” Yet concerning all these elements of will which one contains, one has the feeling: “If you seize it, it devours you, eradicates you from the world.” This is the experience of being devoured by the lion."
But here we have yet another choice... rather than surrendering to the fear that the elements of will in the spiritual world will seize, devour, and strangle us... we must decide to jump up onto that lion´s back, grasp these elements of will, and make use of them for action. This means learning to experience the spiritual world through our Spirit and following its lead into creative fruition. Taking to heart, trusting, and manifesting.
"The third portal is the Portal of the Sun. At the Portal of the Sun, we must perceive a dragon, a fierce dragon. And this fierce dragon we must truly perceive. What provides us with the forces of digestion, and many other functions bound up with the lowest part of our nature, appears to us in the form of a dragon... if we do not contemplate the dragon at the Portal of the Sun, he devours us and we become one with him in the spiritual world. The forces used in digestion are involved in a process of transformation and we experience them in the right way when we learn more and more to cultivate the identification with destiny."
Intersections are divine interventions meant to change that which does not serve our higher purpose. To will us into waking from sleep, face and harness the power of the lion and the wisdom of the dragon, fuel our fire, and step into our destiny. Instead of shying away from them, we should welcome and be grateful for these scenarios... the ones that urge us, inspire us, demand from us that we make a transition: enter the abyss, lose ourselves in it, but with trust that we will find our truth there.
To make ourselves vulnerable, to allow the stirrings of our soul, to heed the call that beckons us forward, to trust our intuition, to act with courage, to face the fear, to conquer it with intent, and willingly and wholeheartedly make that leap of faith.
"Fear meets one at the threshold to spirit knowledge. And fear causes one to recoil from this knowledge. One now becomes creative in recoiling instead of in pressing forward."
In the face of fear, we have two choices: press onward or recoil... hiding behind rationalizations that allow us to drag our feet and delay... keeping us stuck in the familiar... preventing us from discovering, experiencing, living, and thriving.
"If one fills the soul with something that afterward proves to be like a dream in its illusory character, and one experiences the illusory in its true nature, then one becomes stronger in one's own experience of self. In confronting a dream, one's thinking corrects the belief one has in the dream's reality while dreaming... but one cannot be satisfied with mere thought correction. One must correct by experiencing."
A dream is only a dream until we decide to act, to dive in, to experience it fully, thereby turning it into a reality.
"... a gradual conquest of the soul's “fear of the void.” This void, however, is only a “void of nature,” in which the “fullness of the spirit” can manifest itself if one wishes to take hold of it... the soul enters this fullness at the moment when the spirit reveals to the soul the creative will."
We think we feel, we will. But when speaking of creative will we must remember that the source of all that is creative is love... love is the ground, the foundation of everything that lives... creative will is love saturated with wisdom or wisdom penetrated with love.
"The spiritual world can be entered, as it were, through three portals. The first may be called the Portal of Death, the second the Portal of the Elements, and the third the Portal of the Sun. Those who wish to tread the entire path of knowledge must pass through all three portals."
"The Portal of Death can only be attained if we strive to reach it through... complete surrender and devotion to certain thoughts or perceptions which are suited to our individuality and which we place so entirely in the center of our consciousness that we identify ourselves wholly with them. “Hitherto I have only ‘thought' this thought; I have placed it at the center of my consciousness, but now it is beginning to unfold a particular life and inner agility of its own.”
To succeed in the conquest of fear, first, we must surrender to the spiritual, and not in a religious context, but rather in the thoughts, feelings, and emotions we are only able to perceive through Spirit. We must allow our Spirit free reign, enabling the spiritual world to speak to us through experiences and sensations that impart unto these thoughts a life of their own.
"There is a certain feeling of isolation, for example, a feeling of loneliness to be undergone — a feeling of being forsaken. One cannot grasp the spiritual world without previously feeling forsaken by the physical world, without feeling that this physical world does many things which crush one, which wear one down. But we must come through this feeling of isolation to be able to bear the inner animation to which the thought awakens, to which it is born. Much resistance now confronts the human being;... One feeling in particular comes — an inner feeling that we simply do not wish to have. We do not admit this, however, but say instead: “Oh, I can never attain that"... This clinging to what the physical world gives is extremely strong in the human being. He would like to take with him into the spiritual world what he has conquered in the physical. He must have the possibility, however, of standing before a completely clean slate, of standing before complete emptiness and of allowing himself to be guided only by the thoughts which then begin to come to life."
That is why this first step is Death... because it requires from us the death of all the evasions of what one must experience so that the thought can become enlivened and substantial. We cling to the physical, to the tangible, to the rational because we cannot imagine another world whose laws are sensed, intangible, felt, and experienced rather than known. What´s worse... we may consider it possible but are unwilling to plunge into this abyss. To enter the spiritual world, we must put aside what we know and surrender to what we think and feel to be built anew.
"The second portal is the Portal of the Elements... one knows: “Now that I am awake, I think, I form thoughts, I connect them... We now actually live and weave within the thoughts themselves... pass through the Portal of the Elements. Then the whole process becomes subject to our will, then we can follow a definite line of thought with intention. We then live in the whole life of thought with our will."
To live life with will is to identify oneself with destiny, to weave in the thoughts... to manipulate them at will. It means taking charge of our fate, and deciding to act accordingly.
"And then the power of will we are now using shows itself as a simply fearful monster. This has been known for thousands of years in mysticism as the encounter with the “lion.” One must go through this encounter with the lion. In the life of feelings this gives rise to a dreadful fear, a fear of what is taking place in the world of thought, of this living union with it, and this fear must be overcome, just as the loneliness of the Portal of Death must be overcome. “You are obliged to will, but you must do something, you must seize something.” Yet concerning all these elements of will which one contains, one has the feeling: “If you seize it, it devours you, eradicates you from the world.” This is the experience of being devoured by the lion."
But here we have yet another choice... rather than surrendering to the fear that the elements of will in the spiritual world will seize, devour, and strangle us... we must decide to jump up onto that lion´s back, grasp these elements of will, and make use of them for action. This means learning to experience the spiritual world through our Spirit and following its lead into creative fruition. Taking to heart, trusting, and manifesting.
"The third portal is the Portal of the Sun. At the Portal of the Sun, we must perceive a dragon, a fierce dragon. And this fierce dragon we must truly perceive. What provides us with the forces of digestion, and many other functions bound up with the lowest part of our nature, appears to us in the form of a dragon... if we do not contemplate the dragon at the Portal of the Sun, he devours us and we become one with him in the spiritual world. The forces used in digestion are involved in a process of transformation and we experience them in the right way when we learn more and more to cultivate the identification with destiny."
We can get lost in the experiences of our Spirit, subject to our basest desires. But when perceiving the dragon, we must do so with an intent to grow and evolve so that we may better interpret our experiences in the spiritual world and discover our life´s mission and purpose. We must harness the dragon´s energy to discern and learn from the forces of a higher kind. Taking in all of the illuminations of the spiritual world.. becoming enlightened.. and then radiating that light in the physical world so that others perceive it in us and are drawn to Spirit like moths to the Eternal... to the Infinite... to the Supreme Love in the Light.
"Within the streaming
Light I feel
The life force.
Death has waked
Me from sleep,
From spirit sleep.
I shall live on
And do, out of myself,
What the power of light
Radiates into me."
"The Three Decisions on the Path of Imaginative Cognition: Loneliness, Fear, Dread." - Lecture by Rudolph Steiner
"The Human Soul in Courage and Fear." - Lecture by Rudolph Steiner
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