Greetings Friends – Remember: Our Soul is the best friend we keep forgetting we have. She’s closer than our breath & older than death. She dreams like a mountain, laughs like a river, & communicates with us in the exuberantly mysterious style of the elements & the gods. We are animated because of our soul-forces! She loves us with nonstop unconditional ingenuity. Isn’t it right, then, to devote at least 5 minutes a day to acknowledging, working with & honoring our own Soul forces, as well as the World Soul, giving thanks & being open to receive her blessings?
When we work with the 6 Basic / Essential / Protective Exercises given to us by Rudolf Steiner, we are purifying & building up of our Soul Forces of Thinking (aligned with Imagination), Feeling (giving us Inspiration) & Willing (Intuition). Each of these forces can be combined to bring further development as we work consciously with these groupings: The fulfilment of Thinking in Feeling (Equanimity) – The fulfilment of Thinking in Willing (Open-mindedness) – The fulfillment of Thinking in Thinking (Positivity) –
And the alchemy of them all – to bring forth Harmony as the 6th – turning the 5-pointed Star of the human being into the hexagram – symbol of the heart – the triangle that points up to our Cosmic origins meets the triangle that points down to the Earth.
This individual development is again furthered by practicing the 8-Fold Path (the Weekday Exercises) which forges us in the fire of community – opening us to the:
Anima mundi (Latin. Greek: ψυχὴ κόσμου Psychè Kósmou) our intrinsic connection between all living things.
Plato knew: This world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence…a single visible living entity containing all other living entities, which by their nature are all related.
The Stoics believed it to be the only ‘vital force’ in the universe. Similar concepts are also held in the systems of Eastern Philosophy like the Brahman-Atman of Hinduism, the Buddha-Nature in Mahayana Buddhism, & in the School of Yin-Yang, Taoism, & Neo-Confucianism as qi or chi.
Also found in the thoughts of Hermetic Philosophers like Paracelsus, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, Friedrich Schelling & in Hegel’s Geist (“Spirit”/”Mind”).
Ralph Waldo Emerson published “The Over-Soul” in 1841, which was influenced by the Hindu conception of a ‘Universal Soul’.
In Jewish mysticism, a parallel concept is that of “Chokhmah Ila’ah”, Sophia, the All-Encompassing “Supernal Wisdom” that transcends & vitalizes all of creation – a “cosmic consciousness” that empowers us to mitigate all division & conflict within creation.
This jives with ideas developed by folks like James Lovelock since the 1960s – in the Gaia Principle.
Sweet, Ok, so…
Dear Soul-Self , ever dancing in the Beloved World-Soul we all share: May we see ourselves in each other. Then we can Be in Harmony so that the ‘Me’ becomes the ‘We’.
And we can ask: What is the message that our World-Soul is sending us?
Join us online or in-person to further explore the 6BE – October 7-10, 2021 for ‘Building the Temple of the Heart’, the ASA AGM & Conference co-sponsored by the Central Regional Council.
25 August 2021 – “Speaking with the Stars”: August is prime Milky Way time. After dark, the Milky Way runs from Sagittarius in the south, up & left across Aquila & through the Summer Triangle very high in the east, on down through Cassiopeia to Perseus rising low in the north-northeast.
Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day
“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.” ~H.G. Wells
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
79 – Deathday of Pliny the Elder, Roman commander & philosopher – died while attempting to rescue a friend from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Stabiae that had just destroyed the cities of Pompeii & Herculaneum. The prevailing wind caused by the sixth & largest pyroclastic surge of the eruption overcame his ship
1270 – Deathday of Louis IX of France, the Crusader King, devoted to his people, founding hospitals, visiting the sick like his patron St. Francis, even caring for people with leprosy. Louis united France. Every day he invited 13 guests from among the poor to eat with him.
1530 – Birthday of Ivan the Terrible
1609 – Galileo Galilei demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers
1744 – Birthday of Johann Gottfried Herder, German poet, philosopher, friend of Goethe
1814 – The U.S. Library of Congress was destroyed by British forces
1867 – Deathday of Michael Faraday, English physicist & chemist, who contributed to the study of electromagnetism. Albert Einstein kept a picture of Faraday on his study wall, alongside pictures of Isaac Newton & James Clerk Physicist Ernest Rutherford stated, “When we consider the magnitude and extent of his discoveries and their influence on the progress of science and of industry, there is no honour too great to pay to the memory of Faraday, one of the greatest scientific discoverers of all time”.
1900 – Deathday of Friedrich Nietzsche. Rudolf Steiner mentioned that in a previous life he was a Franciscan monk. Steiner also wrote: Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom GA5. The enigmatic Friedrich Nietzsche was seen by Steiner, but was lying in a coma near death. Nietzsche’s philosophy receives a scholarly & critical treatment & is then related to Nietzsche, the man.
At one point in his life, Rudolf Steiner brought out an edition of some of Nietzsche’s writings. In seeing that Nietzsche’s ideas received a public exposure, Steiner was not identifying himself as one of Nietzsche’s disciples, but rather assuring philosophical readers that this important link in the spiritual development of occidental thought should not be ignored.
Here is Steiner’s Memorial Address The Personality of Friedrich Nietzsche
1914 – World War I: The library of the Catholic University of Leuven is deliberately destroyed by the German Army. Hundreds of thousands of irreplaceable volumes Gothic & Renaissance manuscripts are lost
1916 – The United States National Park Service is created
1933 – The Diexi earthquake strikes Sichuan, China & kills 9,000 people
1944 – World War II: Paris is liberated by the Allies
1948 – The House Un-American Activities Committee holds first-ever televised congressional hearing: “Confrontation Day” between Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss.
1950 – President Harry Truman orders the U.S. Army to seize control of the nation’s railroads to avert a strike
Festival Gathering: Tuesday 28 September on the eve of Michaelmas with Rev’s Jeana Lee & Victoria Capon
Potluck at 5:30
Talk at 7pm
At the Rudolf Steiner Branch, 4249 N Lincoln Ave, Chicago, IL 60618
Meeting The Dragon With Our Four Fold Being – A talk and collaborative sculptural creation
Bring Food & drink for the potluck & a found objects to help build the dragon!
Then our inspiration can come to life through our collaboration.
Jeana Lee was recently ordained as a priest of the Christian Community Movement for Religious Renewal and sent to the congregation in Chicago. Previously she taught chemistry and math at Green Meadow Waldorf high school. She enjoys swimming in the lake and is interested in questions of sin and redemption.
Victoria Capon hails from the east coast and is new to Chicago. Before attending seminary she taught at the Waldorf School of Cape Cod. Now she is happily settling into serving the chicago CC congregation and exploring the Windy City
What happened to Craig Wiggins? Wasn’t he the CC priest of Chicago?
You see, I feel this vibration coming on with September 28th, and it should sparkle, as Amanda seems to indicate. So, Hazel, what is going on here?
Maybe a simple review of the Michael Meditations would be in order, which has been previously given. As such, we should start it on September 1st, and allow it to run from there. I can start it if that would be okay. The new priests can always give their informative impressions. Would that work?
https://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/APC1956/GA026_index.html
These Michael impressions are huge, and apparently especially for the new priests who might be advocating them. The goal is the same. Spiritual progression.
He is still here but since he is Lanker he travels alot. At the recent ordination Chicago recieved 2 new Priests, I invited them to come to the Branch to bring us a Michaelmas Fest.
I see. Thanks.
will the talk and ‘sculptural creation’ on tues sept 28 be on zoom? that sounds very interesting but I am not in the chicago area
Hi Amanda –
I asked the Priests if we could do it as a hybrid in-person & on zoom, & they said they prefered it to just be an in-person gathering.
I will let them know there is interest so perhaps that may change, if so I will post it.
Thanks