Tag: Anthroposophy

On ambivalence

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It is right to be ambivalent, to genuinely not mind which outcome arises from a situation. If the road is clear, enjoy the drive. If the road is blocked, enjoy the view. Either is as good as the other.

The mineral world is unconscious and exists in one dimension.

The plant world is conscious of up and down and exists in two dimensions.

The animal world is also conscious of front and back and exists in three dimensions.

Humankind is also conscious of time and exists in four dimensions.

To transcend these four dimensions and understand them as nothing more than the means by which we can achieve that transcendence is the struggle of our kind.

On gender and sexuality

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When Steiner looked ahead to the future that would become reality if humanity didn’t rise to the occasion and rediscover their spiritual selves last century, he saw a world of decadence and sexual depravity, including homosexuality.

This is of course happening. We are now seeing a move not just towards accepting (even admiring / aspiring to?) homosexuality, but also bisexuality, trans-gender identity…

But perhaps these are necessary steps, not necessarily signs of disaster.

Surely our spiritual selves don’t have gender? So surely if we are going to cast off our physical chains, one of the things that has to go is the binding of gender roles and relationships? Perhaps it is too big a step for humanity to cease to be bound by gender and simultaneously rise above sexuality completely. If that were the case, surely there would be an evolutionary step where we would still experience sexuality but not the strict gender roles – so it would be natural for gender lines to be blurred and new types of relationships to form.

It’s hard enough for me to conceive of the idea that what we are witnessing around us could be called spiritual progress. So I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised if Steiner had felt the same but even more strongly, and misinterpreted his insight!

…

The gender divide was first breached after World War One with the emancipation of women, when they started working and wearing men’s clothes because their dresses were impractical. What a shock to a 1920s family to see their daughter wearing trousers! In the sixties men started wearing more feminine clothes too, but they stopped in the eighties. Perhaps when they reached a certain age and discovered that they wanted power in their jobs and their families and re asserted their masculine dominance.

Now, so many young men have no need to demonstrate masculinity to further a career – there are no careers for them – so perhaps that is ‘freeing’ them to allow the gender barrier to break down a bit more. Of course this is all unconscious, but surely the deeds of the unconscious masses are like an indicator paper.

I think I will see the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender ‘movement’ in a different light now, and try to better understand it and what it signifies for humanity.

On needing others

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According to anthroposophy, we humans are now in the pit of the physical period of our evolution, and we are intentionally unsupported by the more powerful spiritual hierarchies while we find our own (as yet undeveloped) spiritual awareness. We need to be “free” to make our own decisions about how we live our lives – in other words we cannot be directed by any higher sense of what is right or wrong anymore.

So how has this separation from our spiritual superiors been achieved, so that we don’t meet them in our sleep every night? Perhaps by filling the world with wifi and toxic food, so that we are polluted and no longer able to make contact with our spiritual selves. Perhaps these technologies are the tools used to achieve severance, and perhaps they are necessary – they need to exist so that they can be unconsciously accepted and then consciously rejected.

But if you’re like me, even when you reject them, you realise that that is not enough. You are still ill. Your food is not nutritional enough. You are still tired, your muscles are still knotted, your stress levels are still high… And they always will be until you realise that in this age, it is no longer possible to be independent and to be healthy and achieve your potential. The things that have severed us from the spiritual world have also made the planet unable to sustain our bodies. So we need to seek out homeopaths and hypnotists and massage therapists (who turn out to be light workers); we need to seek out local farmers and cheese makers; and we need to “see” them and meet them on a spiritual level here on earth, while money changes hands and we talk about the weather. That is how our spiritual independence will come about – through letting go of the ego and making it a Human journey.

So I accept that I need help. I realise that I need to stop even trying to know how to fix myself and everything around me, and I’m going to trust the people who come into my life.