posted April 05, 2005 01:51 PM            

Out in the sense-world's glory
The power of thought gives up its separate being,
And spirit worlds discover
Again their human offspring,
Who germinates in them
But in itself must find
The fruit of soul.

posted April 07, 2005 02:22 AM            

I'm hoping what you're hoping too

posted April 08, 2005 03:45 PM            

I am not exactly sure as to what this means, but I can only guess that it speaks of our thoughts being at one with everything, and not just exclusive to our Mind, when we are in the glory of the world of senses.

It seems that this poem speaks of the intimate link between Mind and Soul. As a rough interpretation, I think it speaks of the at-one-ment of the mind, or "the power of thought", that is found in the glory of our senses. Our thoughts are connected to the experience of stimulus through are senses. When we are happy, it is because of some sensation we are having through one or more of our senses. Even if it is a memory, it is still a recollection of an experience through one or more of the five senses.
So, if we keep going, the poem seems to tell us that through our senses we may achieve an at-one-ment of our thoughts. Let's think about this. If our Mind directed all thought to the interpretation of the sensory stimulii around our immediate environment, then we would be at one within our own being. Imagine absorbing everything around you: the computer screen along with all the organized clutter on your desk with your eyes, the scent of your abode (a mixture of your own scent with others that live with you and the smell of paper or parfume making a collage of aromas), the feel of the carpet or your footwear on your bare feet, the clothes on your body, and the plastic of the keyboard on your fingertips, the taste of the brisk air in your mouth that accentuates its odor, and the sounds of your computer's buzzing, key's typing, people talking, television bursting, birds chirping, phone ringing...ok, so my house is usually pretty busy but the point is made. I would go as far as to say that this is what it's like to live in the Eternal Now. All sensory stimulii is directly interpreted by the brain/Mind and thought is immediately connected to it, not separate from it.
Steiner relates in the poem that "spirit worlds discover again their human offspring" when "the power of thought" has achieved at-one-ment. In essence, we are connected to these "spirit worlds" that we flourish in, yet in ours-elves we "must find the fruit of Soul."
I could keep going, but I'm out of time...

Peace Profound

posted April 09, 2005 04:03 AM            

To my Higher S-elf,
My angelic refraction,
In Your cleansing grace
I sanctify my thinking in unification.

Walk in me the virid child-
Aligned with widest wisdom-
And lull the fiercely caging savage
Waxing in destruction.
Still the stifling echoes
That streak about the gaps within
And stem from feats of failure.
Incandesce this dappled depth,
Incessantly, with binding Love and Light
That bends upon Your beckoning.

Upon the limitless branches
Of my potent dreams and potential,
Find in me the fragile fruit
blooming on the Tree of Life.

posted April 10, 2005 08:50 PM            

Thus to the World-All speaks,
In self-forgetfulness
And mindful of its primal state,
The growing human I:
In you, if I can free myself
From fetters of my selfhood,
I fathom my essential being.

-Rudolf Steiner (translated by Ruth and Hans Pusch)

posted April 11, 2005 02:27 AM            

And I love your poem too

I want to get back to this later: "The power of thought gives up its separate being..."

It's a total synchronicity your posted that line...
It's helped me find an answer...I'll explain later...
Im at work at the moment.

posted April 11, 2005 10:21 PM            

I don't have enough time at the moment either, but I must remark on the second and third lines in this poem. It's almost pardoxical isn't it? "In self-forgetfulness / And mindful of its primal state..."

Even as a translation, Steiner's musings contain such an intensity in dimension of the higher worlds.

posted April 13, 2005 01:55 AM            

quote:

---

The course of the year has its own life. With this life the human soul can unfold a feeling-unison. If the soul opens itself to the influences that speak so variously to it week by week, it will find the right perception of itself. Thereby the soul will feel forces growing within that will strengthen it. It will observe that such inward forces want to be awakened - awakened by the soul's ability to partake in the meaningful course of the world as it comes to life in the rhythms of time. Thereby the soul becomes aware of the delicate, yet vital threads that exist between itself and the world into which it has been born.
In this calendar a verse is inscribed for each week. This will enable the soul to participate actively in the progressing life of the year as it unfolds from week to week. Each verse should resound in the soul as it unites with the life of the year. A healthy feeling of "at one-ness" with the course of Nature, and from this a vigorous "finding of oneself" is here intended, in the belief that, for the soul, a feeling-unison with the world's course as unfolded in these verses is something for which the soul longs when it rightly understands itself.
-Rudolf Steiner

---

In this week's pOem, Steiner mentions "the growing human I". For those of you who have read any other works by Steiner, you might be familiar with the Ninefold Constitution of the Human Being. I came across this concept specifically in a book of his called Rosicrucian Wisdom. For a quick description it should suffice to say that it is an unfolding of our entire composition (i.e. our physical body, etheric body, astral or soul body, etc.) and that it is made up of nine parts. The highest and loftiest of those parts is called Spirit-man (or Spirit-woman in the case of females...we'll give the translator the benefit of the doubt and say he was probably under the pressure of a deadline). I took this concept of the Spirit-man or Spirit-woman to be the same as the concept of the Higher Angel of the Self, the "I" in women and the "O" in men from Linda's teachings, after conferring with a good friend of mine. It is this same concept which I believe Steiner is referring to in the line "The growing human I".
This pOem makes me think of the many facets of myS-elf that I do not fully understand. How do I know who I am? What defines ME? Is it my family, my friends, where I was born, what I read, what I eat, what I believe, or my actions? Is it a combination of these things? What makes us US? Then I think of how the identity I identify with now is only a subterfuge and not my true Spirit S-elf. There are many experiences I have undergone and actions I have taken that do not represent my true Spirit form, but I am allowed this through free will. Some of the things we identify with are even given a negative connotation as the word "fetters" is used in the sixth line of the pOem. Then again, this "selfhood" that restricts us may very well direct us towards the path of revelation. A growing-knowing of the Higher S-elf. The "World-All" from the first line I interpret as the rhythm of the world we live in in-unison with the whole uni-verse that was mentioned in the preface, "an 'at one-ness' with the course of Nature". The poem seems to reveal that we may reach our Higher S-elf when we are in tune to this rhythm and that a product of this attunement is the release of our earthly identity, or at least a loosening of the strong grip we handle it with as to be open-minded enough to grow through our learning (an eternal process,btw).
Any thoughts anyone?

posted April 16, 2005 03:37 PM            

quote:

---

...In you, if I can free myself
From fetters of my selfhood,
I fathom my essential being. (from the pOem a few posts above)

---

Glory be to the majestic music of the heavens!!!

As I was driving in my car yesterday, I received a most luminous revelation about the last three lines of this week's Steiner pOem. As I've kept repeating the pOem to myS-elf this past week, I kept getting a minor visual as I reached the last three lines. This visual was of a body of water upon which there was a boat and I kept getting the implication that there was fishing being done, though I didn't see any fish being caught or hurt. This wasn't really a vision, for I've experienced on rare occasions much stronger vibrations that might be called thus. It was more of a subtle daydream that I now know was due to the alliteration of these last three lines. If you'll notice from those lines, you will hear that the most prominent letter in them is "f". The ones that stand out the most are "free", "fetters", and "fathom" though they are not alone. I think this little visual that kept coming to me had its origin with the word "fathom" as it is a word used to measure depth in a body of water. As I kept this thought throughout the week, I later connected it with the word "fetters" originally interpreting it as a restrictive chain or bonding. Then, once I visualized the "fetters" as a thin string in the likeness of a fishing line the revelation hit me like a current of electricity.
Now, where I am going with this has to do with what I've written about previously: our search for our true S-elves in relation to the identity we find or build from our own lessons in life and our environment. I use the words "in relation to" purposefully for there is a most definite and calculable intricacy between our true angelic Spirit and the ego on this present earth, in the way that a spider and a butterfly might meet upon the spider's web. The visual I received from these lines also allowed me to think of the term "fishers of men" as used in regards to Jesus Christ and his disciples. Immediately after I came to the stunning clarification that we must all be "fishers of S-elf". How exactly may we do this? I suppose that it is up to each and every one of us to find a path suitable enough for our own needs, but the pOem does shed a little light that may help us gauge our current state...
If we attune ourS-elves to the "oneness" of the world around us (what I've interpreted the "World-All" to be), and free ourS-elves from the restrictions of our "selfhood", then we may truly become who we really are in Spirit. Subconsciously, I feel that upon reading those last three lines one immediately registers the word "selfhood" with a negative connotation. Yet, as I've meditated and focused on this pOem I have taken myS-elf to the depths of my learnings and reasoning until I no longer saw the word "selfhood" as something to keep away from. Yes, it may be defined as a notation of self-centeredness, but that is only one of its definitions (and even self-centeredness may be a positive thing given the proper conditions). The comprehension of "selfhood" as a restricting idea compelled me to focus on that as a totality. As I kept concentrating on this poem over and over again, it was as if my brain was dilating in its attempt to connect the concept of the Higher S-elf to the s-elf-centeredness of selfhood and the ego instead of maintaining a separation of the two. Once I was able to grip this idea sufficiently, I then understood that I was not accurately interpreting the word "free" as well. My mind maintained the concept of freeing myS-elf from the lower state of selfhood as staying away from it at a distance. Distance, though, does not define freedom. If a hand opened the latch of a bird's cage and the bird flew away into the world, is the bird truly free because of it's distance from the cage or did the bird's cage just get bigger? What defines freedom then? To this I may not consciously have the answer, but thinking of this resounds a quote in me. "The truth shall set you free." As I think of the lines "In you, if I can free myself / From fetters of my selfhood...", I see it ever more clearly. If we understand the passions and desires that we maintain with our egos and see the macrocosm of the Uni-verse and all things one, then our passions and desires will not be put out but burn ever brighter until its luminosity reaches Heaven and our Spirit. Then, we can understand WHY we identify WHAT we identify with on this realm by loosening that primal hold we have on it enough to expand our freedom of it. Instead of being so highly inclined to think, feel, or act in one way we may open the possibilities towards different kinds of thinking, feeling and doing.

Peace Profound to All!

P.S. Randall, I don't know if I'm breaking any regulations on the forum by being the only one keeping my own thread alive. I apologize if this is against any rules. My persistence in posting is in the hopes of others replying here so that a spiraling of ideas may ensue, but unfortunately I have not received any replies other than SunChild's. If this is an issue and you would like me to find another way of posting this topic, please let me know. If not I warn everyone: I can go on FOREVER.

posted April 17, 2005 03:42 PM            

I sense a kindred nature to my own:
Thus speaks perceptive feeling
As in the sun-illumined world
It merges with the floods of light;
To thinking's clarity
My feeling would give warmth
And firmly bind as one
The human being and the world.

posted April 19, 2005 06:26 PM            

quote:

---

"the Supra Conscious Soul
causes all feminine Souls of both men and women
to possess the qualities of gentleness . . perception
sensitivity and intuition . . intellect . . creativity

while the Universal Mind causes all
masculine Minds of both men and women
to possess the qualities of intelligence . . invention
organization and reasoning . . courage and endurance" (Heathcliffe to Linda in Gooberz)

---

As this unfolds, I understand "perceptive feeling" more clearly.

All of a sudden I am reminded of some thoughts I felt a few weeks back. I was thinking about the way light works upon matter and how we have shed such limiting knowledge from it, scientifically speaking of course. We know that light spreads into a spectrum of colors and that our eyes perceive the color that is reflected by each object in our environment. If we only see the colors that objects reflect, though, then what of the rest of the light that comes into contact with these objects? The concept of it being absorbed by matter has been accepted, but if this is true then to what purpose? Perhaps, once again, Steiner's pOem offers some insight...

posted April 25, 2005 05:55 PM            

Within the light that out of spirit depths
Weaves germinating power into space
And manifests the gods' creative work:
Within its shine, the soul's true being
Is widened into worldwide life
And resurrected
From narrow selfhood's inner power.

posted May 03, 2005 08:40 PM              

"In quella parte del libro de la mia memoria dinanzi a la quale poco si potrebbe leggere, si trova una rubrica la quale dice: Incipit vita nova."