Renunciation

Dear friends, first we met Sacrifice, then Bestowing, now we explore Renunciation. Living into the ‘Inner Realities of Evolution’ it’s been interesting to experience the idea that the 4 elements which are the foundation of life on here on Earth are a mirror reflecting the essential deeds of great spiritual beings. I have always related to nature spirits, the elemental beings, but this is a whole new perspective.

The reality behind Fire is sacrifice: the supreme offering of the Spirits of Will.

The Air we breathe, the wind – is ever whispering: the virtue of bestowing, a weaving reverence granted by the Spirits of Wisdom.

So now every time I encounter or work with these elements my entire mood of Soul shifts….And before we get to the last 2 elements, developed in the further Earth embodiments, I’d like to take us deeper into the quintessence of Will & Wisdom.

Being a person of initiative I have always prided myself in being able to get things done. My childhood was taken from me, so I learned early on to use my will to get what I wanted.  But what I am learning now is that deeds connected with the spiritual world require a different kind of will – the will of resignation – of renunciation. This is triggering for me since my mother was very passive, renouncing herself to death, so I was determined to never be like that.

But more & more I know that what worked for me in the past does not apply to my life now. I see that to achieve spiritual results it is not effective to make my personal desires top priority. By consciously subduing my wishes, restraining my self-motivated intentions, & forgoing result orientated satisfaction, I can work my resolve to serve the higher will.

It’s powerfully interesting to explore our will force thru the lens of Spiritual Science which gives us 7 stages of Will:

  1. Instinct
  2. Impulse/Drive
  3. Desire
  4. Motive
  5. Wish/Aspiration
  6. Intention
  7. Resolve for the Good

In lecture 3 Steiner gives the most interesting advice, which was hard for me to hear at first: “The greatest spiritual, magical effects, always require preparation connected with the renunciation of wishes, desires, and impulses of will which may appear within us. The less we “will,” the more we say: We will allow life to flow over us, not longing for this or that, but accepting everything just as Karma sends it to us, the more we are able to accept Karma and its workings in this way, keeping quietly ready to renounce all that we should otherwise wish to choose for this life, the more vigorous we become as regards the activity of our thinking.”

Being fully conscious of the various phases of evolution, guides us on the path of initiation. The Saturn experience can be seen in the fire trial, & on ancient Sun we meet the air trial.

To face the water trial as experienced on old Moon we have to be able to recognize the Luciferic beings who remained behind in their course of development, enabling them to invade our astral body during this phase of earthly evolution.

On the one hand it is because of these Luciferic beings that we have desires, drives & passions. And on the other hand our will to overcome their resistance gives us the impulse toward free will.

Also mysteriously attached to these backward beings is the seed of resignation or renunciation on the part of the Cherubim – Because while some of the choir receives the warmth that flows from the sacrifice of the Spirits of Will into themselves, others renounce the sacrifice – they return what comes toward them – they do not participate in it – they hold themselves back.

So now besides the sacrifice that ascends & is reflected back as light in Time, we have renounced clouds of sacrifice that descend, that return back – to become a separate layer between the outer & inner expanse of ancient Sun.  And thru this diverting back, a ring of clouds comes into being, a division in the Sun substance, like a globe that has a divergent outer ring.

This is the origin of all divisions, what can be called the ‘Sacred Wound’ which some of us carry more than others.

But why did a portion of these Cherubim, these Spirits of Harmony renounce this willing sacrifice?

Well if they had not, everything would have been subject to Time – the coming into being & the passing away – But since some rejected the sacrifice they were able to hold onto eternity. These Cherubim move beyond Time, so that eternity – permanence – may also exist – And we will be able to fully receive this eternity in the New Jerusalem!

One of the questions I hold is: Do these refraining Cherubim move up the ladder – graduate to the realm of the Seraphim, the Spirits of Love? Interestingly enough these highest of the Hierarchical beings – the closest to the godhead, are not mentioned at all in the course of evolution so far. That leads me to imagine that Love, The Spirits of Love, are directing it all – preparing us in all ages to come for the incarnation of The Christ on Earth – the ‘Being of Love’ born into a human body at the Turning point in Time…

A recapitulation occurs within this process before the Old Moon embodiment & in our next installment we will further explore this ‘Sacred Wound’ – how it affected those that were rejected & how that manifests in the human soul today…

Until then remember: Love is who you are…

~hag

RUDOLF STEINER’S CALENDAR OF THE SOUL
translated (with added titles) by Roy Sadler
ALL HALLOWTIDE III
The Gift Of Destiny
v32

I feel my own fruit-bearing power
present me to the world
and strengthen my innate intent
to turn towards the clarity
within life’s web of destiny.

This verse can be regarded as the last autumn verse
and its mirror the first one, with an unknown power
that can now become one’s own creativity for the world
as one’s soul turns towards the clarity of her destiny.

AUTUMN PRELUDE I
My Future’s Power
v21

I feel a strange new strengthening
fruit-bearing power of becoming;
I sense the seed maturing
and on a starlit loom in me
a dawning vision weaving
my pathway to my real being.

Resurrection of the Temple (The first Goetheanum) by Rita de Cassia Perez, Adriana’s mother

The ‘Envy of the Gods’ – The ‘Envy of Human Beings’

Presented by Adriana Koulias*

A Winter Solstice offering preparing us for the Centennial commemoration of the burning of the first Goetheanum.

21 December 2022, at 5 pm PT, 6 pm MT, 7 pm CT, 8 pm ET

Here is a link to the World Clock for your time zone

Online & in-person at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago

Dear Friends – This special presentation is supported by your generous donations. $10-$50 or pay what you will www.rschicago.org/donate (credit card or PayPal)

Please type ‘Adriana’ on the line of your payment that says: Purpose

For those attending in-person doors open at 5:30 pm for our Potluck meal. Please bring food & drink to share.

To register & receive the Zoom code Contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

 Work on building the First Goetheanum, which was designed and supervised by Rudolf Steiner, began after the laying of the double dodecahedron foundation stone on the 20th of September 1913. Construction proceeded for a decade under enormous difficulties in the political, economic and cultural realms, brought on by the advent of the First World War. After the war when the building was near completion, the First Goetheanum was destroyed by an arsonist on New Year’s Eve 1922/1923.

This NYE 2022-23 will be the 100th anniversary of this event and the world is again facing many difficulties, political, economic and social.  Adriana’s lecture will explore what Rudolf Steiner meant by the ‘Envy of the Gods and the Envy of Human beings’ and how a consciousness of this during the coming 12 Holy Nights can provide the necessary strengthening for the coming twelve months.

During this presentation Adriana will speak about the three gifts given by Rudolf Steiner in 1913: The naming of Anthroposophy, The Fifth Gospel, and The Laying of the Foundation Stone of the First Goetheanum. She will explore with us how we can link our hearts to the old Goetheanum during the coming 12 Holy Nights to prepare ourselves for the coming 12 months in 2023, so we can work towards a Cosmic New Year.

In this way we will celebrate the Jubilee of the Christmas Conference and the resurrection of the living impulse of the First Goetheanum in the most auspicious way.

For Rudolf Steiner tells us: ‘My dear friends, may this link our hearts to the old Goetheanum which we had to consign to the elements. May it link our hearts also to the Spirit, to the Soul of this Goetheanum. With this vow before whatever is best within our being we want to live on not only into the new year. In strength of deed, bearing the spirit, leading the soul we want to live on into the new cosmic year.’ ~Rudolf Steiner, ‘The Envy of the Gods and the Envy of Human Beings.’

Adriana Koulias was born in 1960 in Brazil. Adriana moved to Australia when she was 9 years old where she lives today. She has studied art, operatic singing and nursing.  She has been studying Anthroposophy (awareness of our humanity) as given by Rudolf Steiner for 33 years and has since 2002-3 integrated this knowledge into several novels and a number of books, international lectures and articles online and in magazines.

8 thoughts on “Renunciation

  1. Hazel, you found this excerpt from lecture 3 compelling, and so did I:

    “The greatest spiritual, magical effects, always require preparation connected with the renunciation of wishes, desires, and impulses of will which may appear within us. The less we “will,” the more we say: We will allow life to flow over us, not longing for this or that, but accepting everything just as Karma sends it to us, the more we are able to accept Karma and its workings in this way, keeping quietly ready to renounce all that we should otherwise wish to choose for this life, the more vigorous we become as regards the activity of our thinking.” GA 132, lecture III

    Of course, we fail here because most of us become children of Lucifer long before we possibly become brothers and sisters of Christ. There is a critical choice made in early childhood when we either embrace Earth as the so-called “first love” or renounce it and remain aloof from Lucifer and Ahriman. Most of us embrace the Earth and this leads directly to Lucifer and Ahriman. I remember it when I gladly joined up with the other kids around the neighborhood oak tree on the corner of 29th and Lawrence in old north Tacoma in order to play hide and go seek and other games.

    It is interesting, though, that in the Book of Revelation at the first church of Ephesus, when John is admonished for having “left the first love”, and is told that unless he repents , or renounces, that the One will come and remove his lampstand out of its place, what this means. I have wondered a lot about it. We know of someone who was deeply initiated at the Mystery of Ephesus, and right into the Heart of Its Being, and thus Earthly concerns would have had little meaning for him/her.

    https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+2&version=NASB1995

    And yet, Rudolf Steiner in lectures on The Fifth Gospel tells of how disturbing it was for Jesus to see how the Essenes would keep guard against the entry of Lucifer and Ahriman through their gates, and instead inflict them on those outside their protective interiors who had embraced the Earth, which is one of our deeds to do. Christ would eventually meet Lucifer and Ahriman face to face in the forty days in the wilderness. Only Ahriman could not be defeated alone. He had the power already to make earth dwellers turn stones into bread, and we still do. Of course, this is a major “first love” requirement, but we can renounce identifying with it all as if making money and being imprisoned by materialism is important to our eternal well being.

    1. It seems we can find the Trinity everywhere…
      Starting of course with the Holy Trinity & then it goes from there.

      This idea that Steiner puts froth about the 3 Soul forces being shown in their aspects of Judging, & of Love & Hate, puts judging in the Christ space reflecting the threesome of Lucifer, Christ, Ahriman.

      So we can never ‘fail’ if we are striving to find that balance. And as we know, sometimes in life we are meant to favor one extreme over the other to achieve a certain thing. We can have the ‘hard will’ when we need to get things done, & use the ‘soft will’ when refraining is the moral move…
      It’s all relative daddy.

    2. Steve, your last remark reminded me of something I read recently. From GA 51, History of the Middle Ages, lecture I:

      “We must free ourselves from the state of coercion which many are still bound to-day, though the consciousness that, as regards the feeling of freedom, all men are equal, has spread more and more. Men have grasped that by right no man can be a slave or a bondsman. To-day man feels himself free by right. But another form of unfreedom, material unfreedom, has persisted. In ancient Greece, the oppressed, the vanquished, the slaves, were unfree. Unfree in ancient Rome were those who had no claim to citizenship, no share in the State. In the Middle Ages men were made unfree by physical force. None of these forms could be maintained; economic unfreedom alone persists.
      More and more clearly has the striving for complete freedom of personality shown itself. The ancient Greek valued distinction or race; the Roman, distinction of person; modern man attaches value to capitalism, to a show of wealth. Thus evolution points to the fall of more and more of those barriers which shut the personality off from the outside. Then the ground becomes free for the new ideal. History teaches us that the free man acquires a new value from out the spirit. The man who fulfils the ideal will be he who is freed from all these forms of oppression, he who, released from earthly gravity, can direct his gaze upwards. Only then will Hegel’s words become wholly true: “History is the progress of humanity to consciousness of freedom.”

        1. Yes, and freedom requires that we get our hands dirty by rubbing shoulders with Lucifer and Ahriman. Earth evolution, as such, can be likened to where the “rubber meets the road”. Thus, it can be shown that at the Mystery of Ephesus it was possible to turn away from the Earth as the place where the field of action was located in spite of the external world being Maya. At Ephesus it was meant for the initiate to receive the Cosmic Word as an air-ensouling process leading to spirit recollection and perception. It is not without significance that the first words from the Gospel of John harken back to Ephesus:

          “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was a God. The same was in the beginning with God.

          All things came into being through It and save through It was not anything made that was made.

          In It was Life and Life was the Light of men.

          And the Light shone into the darkness but the darkness comprehended it not.”

          Now, these words from the prologue to the Gospel of John can clearly be traced back to the Mystery of Ephesus. This mystery ended when it was burned to the ground on the day that Alexander the Great was born. From that day forward it can be shown that all roads began to lead to the incarnation of Christ on Earth in order to bring the trinity of Light, Life, and Love as the new process in replacement of the air-ensouling process that existed at Ephesus, and was traceable to the Jahve Impulse.

          1. haha, Yes, This image of needing to get our hands dirty is a good one…
            And our evolution is a grand metamorphosis where we are put to the test.

            The Mysteries of Ephesus did indeed bring us ‘an air-ensouling process’ – And also as you showed in the Gospel of John prologue, it was also about bringing us into the rudiments of an initiation of Light. These mysteries did not end when the Temple of Artemis burned to the ground. This event actually acted as releaseing of the seeds – The mysteries became written in the universal etheric – taken out of the secret Temple walls – disseminated out into all worlds – taken from the East to the West by Aristotle & Alexander the Great, which prepared the way for the Christ…I don’t think of it as a replacement, more like a process – the process of evolution which is a metamorphosis.

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