 From Being Kind to Being Kindness “For the fact that the earth is the way it is has its basis down to the smallest piece of rock, in that the earth is filled with the earth spirit. That is how the earth must be regarded as a whole, not a physical whole, but an entity with a body, an entity that belongs to its spirit.” How the Spiritual World Projects into Physical Existence: The Influence of The Dead” Collected Works, Rudolf Steiner Let’s continue working with “Being Kind”, now, more from the viewpoint of Earth. Our being kind to others is an aspect of our personality – our persona, the way we, in ego presence, put ourselves into favorable relationship with others. Personality does not express who we are, because it does not express where we are with any depth. Personality forms through what happened to us from the past and expresses how we live as a mask, which, as we now see with everyone wearing masks, a mask reduces everyone to sameness. The anti-viral mask makes visible what was already our way of meeting others. The virus, a fully earth-creature, perhaps is trying to show us what we become when we neglect where we are, the only place where we are truly human, Earth, of the humus. As this “not being here” becomes more and more prevalent, we meet Earth as a disease; in reality, Earth is showing us we are diseased. An enormous difference exists between “being kind” and “being kindness”, the difference between living at the surface of who we are and living the essence of who we are as soul-spirit-body-earth beings. Notice your own bodily response to these two phrases. Say the first phrase (being kind) and notice where the words are bodily felt – somewhere from the neck up is where the vibration occurs. The second phrase (being kindness) evokes bodily vibration. How to intensify this second vibration becomes our concern. (This little noticing requires doing so bodily, experiencing bodily, not experiencing our thoughts of what we are doing.) Notice the introductory phrase by Rudolf Steiner at the top of this posting. He powerfully expresses that Earth is a being of body, a body with soul and spirit. If we live only through our personality we inevitably live ON Earth, not within Earth. A first suggestion – beginning to feel the presence of the fullness of Earth. Begin going to sleep and waking up in a different manner. Go to sleep slowly, don’t just fall asleep or work at falling asleep. And wake up slowly, without an alarm clock, which is only the reminding us it is time to step into our personality. Notice what happens bodily when you gradually go into sleep. Inwardly track the process as it unfolds; and the same with waking up. Feel the way body seems to expand beyond the limits of the material form. Body is not expanding; our body-awareness expands, that is we become aware that body belongs to the world and there is nothing of the world that is not of the Earth. So, becoming more aware of the fullness of body also helps us notice that we are indeed Earth-beings, humus beings; it even feels a bit humor-us, to look around and see how pliable Earth is in letting us think we are Her owners by shaping Her into the house we live in, the floor, ceiling, walls, windows, and everything, everything without exception, is Earth. Earth is humoring us. Notice the particular quality of bodily feeling the fullness of our foundational reality – it is the quality of being on the way to being Kindness. Going to sleep is a process of going into Earth. You are very likely to notice that when you slowly go into sleep, dreams are far more prevalent – or remembering them is. Dreaming is the way the body actively senses where it is when in sleep. When in sleep, body experiences the fullness of Earth in images, as images. Psychology believes its own theories, and in doing so puts Psyche inside of us. Psyche is all around us – it is the soul of Earth. We are always in the dreamtime, and the function of the mask is to forget this, to mask it. One more little step on the Earth-path. Or, let’s be properly modest and call it on the first step of the Earth-path. Once everything said above begins to be noticed, then it becomes possible to address Earth, simply by gesturing Her name, quietly but very bodily, that is through moving the mouth and lips, taking a deep breath (that is Hers, we just borrow a bit), something that can be felt happening – and returning what is Hers, not by being some kind of alien that uses what is her to survive in this alien place, but by acting like we are where we are. When, then speaking Her name as if we are indeed her children, the primary feeling of experiencing our earth-livingness is….. being Kindness. Being Kindness is not something that we periodically do, it is our essence as of Earth. When we are not Kindness, we are aliens. When we do experience the “arrival” of aliens, it will be the moment when the way we project ourselves as persona becomes the dreamtime we live. It is guaranteed that the aliens we will meet are the aliens we are, and it will not be a pleasant experience.
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 A new world arising - Lateral divinityLateral Divinity Let’s begin to inwardly listen with more preciseness now, body-soul-spirit-earth listening – and begin a process of speaking more concerning this ever-spacious moment of world-initiation. We need to try and do this even as the usual order of things still thrashes about, hoping that we will not recognize that the way of power is on the way out – and the new world, the power of love presents itself. This new way in not inevitable, and the awakening can easily be missed; it will certainly be missed if we do not find the way into the peace of inner Stillness that intimately links with heart-awareness. The practice is easy and needs to be entered daily, and after a while, this inner space can be entered in a flash, not quite the same as permanence, but is the necessary kind of attentiveness needed to be able to respond to what is announcing itself. Simply be inwardly present with the Silence; then place attention at the center of the heart; then, extend attention to the top of the head and be within the region of the descent of individual divine awareness with the ascent of soul awareness from below. This shifting of world-attention, to say it more “metaphysically” marks the awakening of the receptive force of Earth-creating now happening rather than everything in us and around us as already formed and here. What does this initiatory moment concern? An originating moment of an entirely different world – the world of Lateral Divinity. This time is a time of initiation into relationship. A time when we notice, when we are with someone, that this person, any person -- is a divine presence! It could not be easier, though there are some requirements – including silencing one’s personality for a moment; silencing one’s ego for a moment. These two are easy. In order to see/feel the presence of the divine standing beside you, it is also necessary to, first, be aware that we are always projecting – and thus are never truly with the divine person, but with our own past and our own fantasied selves--- I mean the deep past, really deep past, within the still ongoing struggles with our present time of many times of reincarnation. Trying to solve previous difficulties or trying to live previous joys. It is not necessary to ‘believe’ in reincarnation; rather I am warding off endless psychologizing which has been the handmaiden of the materialistic world. As my dearest friend James Hillman said: “We have had a hundred years of psychology and the world keeps getting worse.” The term “reincarnation” is loaded, quite consciously by forces of distraction that are continually, inwardly reciting a kind of – let’s call it an “anti-mantra”, one that says you are your own person, you are an individual, you are an ego beset with desires, needs, wants, intentions, and you want to share yourself with others without cleaning the windows. Plus the shadowy windows are, in these days, with the forces of counter-initiation, very hard to even get to because getting to those windows requires being here rather than thinking that somehow we are here in spite of being imbedded in the great world remodeling that occurred centuries ago, when the age of power began and developed its main strategy of assistance, that of rank materialism. By materialism, I don’t mean just greed, though it certainly inspires reducing ourselves to greed. By materialism I mean seeing/experiencing everything as reduced to the surfaces of the here. What we all inevitably live within and take as reality, and often try to find ways of getting out of this reality rather than finding the way through it, that is, going through it to the point of recognizing that it is all illusion. A contrived illusion that has as its main objective the thwarting of death – until, as if out of nowhere, it appears, when it is too late to learn how to meet it. Thus, this simplest of all acts – noticing that a divine presence, the presence of another person, is the presence of a divine being, requires a developed acuteness of ourself as being no-thing. Not things. But who we are can be arrived at only through the presence of another, and the other is divine presences standing next to us. Even noticing this new-world presence for not more than an instant, becomes the instant of total transformation --- into Kindness! The soul of the newly arriving person is not someone who, out of their personality, life experience, formal education, life-learning, has come either to genuinely try to be a kind person or to act like one as a lived strategy. Kindness is something else – an inherent essence not something learned or put on; it something far deeper than that. I mean, if the person standing alongside you is a divine presence, just imagine that as the reality for a moment, then what is evoked as who we are – we cannot say that, oh, that means I too am divine; that would be an erroneous abstract intellectual conclusion. The newly arising world throws us out of the concretized intellect, and we find ourselves as naked bodies – until we notice the other person as divine radiance. When this awakening happens, just for a second – oh, it is also not eros for someone or for the other next to us either; it is way, way beyond eros. And, if you do notice something like I am trying to describe here, do not put it into an old category, for it cannot be categorized. The new world of pure receptivity! The new world of the Feminine presence as the protector and guide of this instant, and through whom, this instant can gradually deepen, and deepen, and deepen until we notice, oh, this is the world we live in now. The very first perception of living in a new world is what we feel radiating from the divine person alongside us – Kindness.  (image - The Red Book by C.G. Jung) The Highest Calling of the Human Being is Care for Earth Once the mind clears of the daily onslaught of distraction, one question arises: What is the purpose of this time of initiation? Initiation into what? The question must be asked from the heart rather than the mind, for mind is the very center for the attack of the distractions of the day – political, oh my gosh! – technological – yikes! – economic – good Lord! – health – try to get away from that one! – relational – pure turmoil! If you place attention at the very center of the heart, eventually, with faithfulness of doing, a sensorially felt spark of light announces. Once noticed, it does not go away, though it requires daily tending. A sensing by the heart of the center of the heart. More than desire, more than longing, more than ‘feeling’. More, here, means stronger, a remarkable strong receptive force of awaiting that can begin the unfolding of an age of kindness. Receptive force: the very opposite of the kind of forcefulness we know of, the forcefulness of the will – fiery, impulsive, singularly oriented, urgent, demanding. Not so with the heart. If the receptive heart is not attended, it will seem to disappear, such is the way of reticence. The very nature of this force is reticence, so it will not be converted into urgency to come forth by our wishing it would be more ‘forceful’. This primary quality of heartfulness, when we listen, teaches the simultaneous method and result of this moment of world initiation. The word, “moment” here also has to be re-imagined. It is a “world-moment”, which needs to be felt in terms of duration rather than belonging to the linear stream of time. A major part of the non-effort effort of the heart concerns revealing to us the manner in which the spirit/soul intertwines with the inner-physical. This two-in-one - spirit/soul and physical, expresses in the world as a soft emanation rather than a strong shout. A lingering moment, perhaps lasting for ages. Yes, we are moving from one age to another, and that won’t and can’t happen like clicking the internet button or shooting yet another rocket into the vast “nowhere”, which is only an emblem of where we already are. And it also cannot be an overlay, a kind of wallpapering of the age being exited. The wallpaper has to come off, and it feels like being skinned, when attention focuses on the outer and material events but feels like a cleansing, a purification happening when attention remains within the heart. Purification here means simplification, immediacy, being one with itself rather than something to be used. This initiation moment transforms the age of the love of power into the age of the power of love. It is a change from the cosmology of expansion on the way to dropping of the edge, into the cosmology of care, the cosmology of kindness. And, the transitioning draws us deeply into the revelation of Earth as the soul of spirit-soul presence, the guide, who is not a guide showing us how to ‘get out of here’, but rather how to ‘get into the here’. Back to the central Light of the heart. Light that is also feeling, the Light-as-feeling – of radiance seeking Radiance, becoming more than the inner heart-Light, does not hide away ‘inside’ the heart as it seems to be doing. That reticence-presence of the inner Light is the human aspect of the radiance of the Spiritual Earth. We are Earth’s consciousness, existing in the physicalness of our Being and as her primary quality of emanation. What in the world does that sentence indicate? Whew! There is a wondrous rose bush in the backyard. The blooming roses are not only expressions of Earth-as-Beauty, that is, the autopoesis (that is self-creating) of Earth creating Herself, but an even more subtle dimension of this creating herself. The roses perfume. They are far more than natural “things” that smell. Oh my, how paltry is such a way of speaking! They are Earth as presence AND as emanation. Emanation means the every-moment continuing presence of creation happening. Earth and her expressions are not already all present, done, created, which is the way of seeing them through the lens of the love of power. The age of seeing Earth as already done, thankfully, has now ended, though we have a quite perverse perception of that reality – as if we have to hurry up and use it up completely before it disappears. Earth is the missing Creatrix. We know only of the “Creator” and live by that cosmological story of His doing the creation, with Wisdom, the feminine of all creating, who, by the way, He is said to have created and stands by his side as a kind of advisor. God as “He” reveals a lack of imagination on our part. It is rather ONE in two aspects – the creator/revealer as “here is creation”, and the creatrix/emanator as “creating happening continually”. i  I KEEP SAYING THAT THIS TIME OF CIVILIZATIONAL BREAKDOWN SIGNALS AN INITIATION MOMENT. “INITIATION” IS ONE OF THOSE CHARGED WORDS AND HOLDS THE POSSIBILITY OF HUGE FANTASY INFLATION. INITIATION CERTAINLY DOES NOT JUST HAPPEN. IT IS LIKELY THAT THE OPENING OF THE “POTENTIA” OF THIS MOMENT WILL GO BY COMPLETELY UNRECOGNIZED, AS THERE ARE NECESSARY PREPARATIONS THAT NEED TO BE ENGAGED WITH FULL CONSCIOUS AWARENESS. IT IS CERTAINLY SO, THAT IS, OBVIOUS, THAT THE OPENING OF FULL, INTEGRAL CONSCIOUSNESS ENTWINED WITH SENSORY AWARENESS REMAINS NOT ONLY OBSCURED BUT HIGHLY CONFUSED PRIMARILY BY FORCES THAT USE THIS MOMENT TO INITIATE BECOMING EVER MORE UNAWARE OF AWARENESS ITSELF. THE POSSIBILITY OF AWAKENING ALREADY BECOMES MORE POSSIBLE THE MOMENT THAT WE BODILY FEEL THAT COUNTER-FORCES KEEP BUILDING ON MORE AND MORE ADDITIONS TO THE PRISON OF THIS ULTRA-MATERIALISTIC CIVILIZATION. AS ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN SAID: “WE CANNOT, IN ORDER TO LIVE, NOT LIVE.” WE PRESENTLY ACCEPT AND EVEN WELCOME “NOT LIVING” AS LIVING. THESE COUNTER-FORCES OF LIVING SUBVERT DEVELOPING SUBTLE SENSING BY CLAIMING THAT WHAT DOES NOT BELONG TO THE ‘THEORY’ OF MATERIALISM BELONGS TO “CONSPIRACY THEORY”, THAT IS, SOMETHING UNTRUE, AND A THREAT TO THE PREVAILING PUBLIC NARRATIVES. THE COUNTER-FORCES PERSUADE US TO BECOME UNSURE OF WHAT WE FEEL, WHAT WE SENSE, AND WHAT WE KNOW. THREE INTERFERENCES TO AWAKENING TO AN INNER PLACE OF TRUE FREEDOM WHERE SENSORY AWARENESS OPENS INTO DEPTH ARE: A.SALVATIONAL RELIGIONISM B.SALVATIONAL SCIENTISM C.SALVATIONAL TECHNOLOGISM THE TRAP OF MATERIALISM HAS GONE WAY BEYOND THE NECESSARY SPIRITUAL (YES, SPIRITUAL) MOVEMENT INTO MATERIALITY. THE SPIRITUAL PURPOSE OF MATERIALISM WAS TO EDUCATE THE SENSES INTO BEING ABLE TO EXPERIENCE THE INVISIBLE VISIBLY. INITIATION DOES NOT HAVE TO DO WITH DISEMBODIED VISIONS BUT INCREASING THE CAPACITIES OF SENSING WHOLLY. THAT DID NOT HAPPEN; INSTEAD, PATHOLOGICAL ATTACHMENT TO THE MULTIPLICITY OF MATERIAL THINGS (INCLUDING IDEAS) HAPPENED. INITIATION DOES NOT LEAD TO SOME KIND OF IMAGINED BENEFITS – SUCH AS ‘THIS BELIEF WILL SAVE YOU”, WHICH BELONGS TO RELIGIONISM, NOR DOES IT BELONG TO THE CLICHÉ – “LISTEN TO THE SCIENCE”, WITHOUT TELLING THE FULL PROCESS OF THAT SCIENCE, NOR DOES IT BELONG TO THE PULL TOWARD THE FANTASIED BENEFITS OF BECOMING MORE AND MORE DISEMBODIED. CONTEMPLATE THE WORD “SALVATIONAL”. SUCH A VIEW ALWAYS, ALWAYS LEADS US AWAY FROM WHAT IS PRESENT AND THE DEPTH OF WHAT IS PRESENT. EVERYTHING IS ALREADY HERE. WE DO NOT NEED TO BE SAVED. EVERYTHING DOES NOT HAVE TO ‘GET BETTER’, BE ‘FASTER’, ‘MAKE YOU MORE EFFECTIVE” OR MORE “EFFICIENT’, “MORE ATTRACTIVE”, “MORE COMFORTABLE” OR, “HAVE MORE OPINIONS” (THOUGH ALL OF THESE DO INCREASE FEAR). THE WORD “SALVATION” AND ITS ACCOMPANYING UNCONSCIOUS FANTASIES ALSO INHERENTLY SEPARATE THE ADHERENTS TO ANY OF THESE “ISMS” FROM EVERYONE ELSE EXCEPT THE “SAVED”. YOU ARE SOMEHOW “BEHIND” IF YOU DO NOT ACCEPT THOUGHTLESS THOUGHTS. THE SEPARATION INCLUDES THE FANTASY THAT “WE ARE BETTER THAN THE REST.” BECOMING SENSORIALLY PRESENT INCLUDES, THEN, THE RECOGNITION THAT WE CANNOT CREATE HUMANS, BUT IT IS POSSIBLE TO CREATE IMITATION HUMANS. WHEN YOU FEEL THAT YOU ARE UNDER THE FORCE SOMETHING MAKING YOU INTO WHAT YOU ARE NOT, KNOW THAT THERE IS A “MASTER PLAN” GOING ON, AND SUCH A SCENARIO IS DEMENTED, IT IS THE PSYCHOTIC PLOY OF THOSE WHO FEAR WE WILL RECOGNIZE EARTH AS THE SPIRITUAL-PRESENCE OF WHOM WE ARE ASPECTS O. THE SPIRITUAL EARTH CAN BE DIRECTLY KNOWN THROUGH PRESENCE, DEEPENING, NOTICING OUR BELONGING WITH EARTH CREATING HERSELF AS BEAUTY. WE ARE NOT HERE TO SAVE OR TO BE SAVED, BUT FOR THE MAKING OF BEAUTY.  Living with Electric Demons Welcome back to a place where humans are allowed to be humans with all our foibles, a place that resonates with all of Life. I woke this morning, early, laid quiet, awake, remembering the residuals of the night’s journey. Lately, these nightly excursions into the purity of consciousness punctuate the enclosure that savagely greets us from the moment the eyes open, casting a veil over the revelations of the night. Yet, each instant of the day, everything noticed in the night-light comes forth from the soul meeting the ever-emerging Soul of the World. This bursting forth of Life also quickly clouds over in an instant and the Wholeness of things hides behind the falseness of the already- known. What seems true of this particular time of anamnesis, troubled anamnesis, consists of the constantly felt almost electrical feeling of the inner body, a curtain in front of the curtain that programs the whole of experience. I’ve been working to remove the electric curtain of the falsely known world. Inwardly, not with the mind, but with attention itself, utilizing it like an invisible blackboard eraser, starting anywhere, and wiping out the constructed world. Wiping away the streets, the telephone poles and wires, houses, highways, cars, cars, and cars, the elimination goes on and on – television, the screen this is being written on, cities, airplanes, “smart”-phones, stores, restaurants, grocery stores, Zoom, and the preying invisibilities too – government, the ocean of the daily untruth tsunami, the rush of unconscious people. And more and more. Of it all, the revelatory wiping away the inner felt electronic currents announces as the most powerful. The currents seem to be presences, demon particles who are skilled in dividing themselves into such small pieces that who they are remains undetectable. We all have our demons, but please, Soul, let us be able to meet them with clarity. By now, through practices, some introduced here, a partial but extremely delicate uncovering of truth-felt consciousness occurs through awakening sleeping heart desire with tapping the thymus. Almost dizzying, but present long enough to pour attention into the thinly felt veil of invisible light at the edges of body while inwardly saying the sacred word “Heart”, the living heart stirs into consciousness and meets the world in Her pristine realness. Like consciousness taking a shower. Why won’t you stay, be here, we belong together, we create each other, don’t we? How can falsity possibly be more resilient than Her presence as delicate truth impinging the body? It is the electric currents, the false light, the doubled light of the creative Light. Light emanates from Light, becoming each instant, emanating and echoing within itself. The constant rhythmic light meeting its contraction back into itself births water and land, gemstones, color, plants and animals and humans. The essential rhythm of creating, just as any mother giving birth goes through -- pushing to bring forth life, contractions, and more visioning life… until the mystery of birth happens. The excruciating miracle of all creating. As for mothers, so also for the world. The creating veils itself, inviting the intimacy of search, but now, in the collapsing world, the veil itself is veiled. Electricity pulses, alternating current, now revved up in frequencies upon frequencies, turning on the light, the bulb brightening a false and materialized illuminating of the world. Neon and bulbs and screens and satellites roboting us, obscure the deep womb of the happening of birthing of Life. Light as particled light, punctuates into vicious emotions, confusion, error, devouring the desire of creating wanting to happen, splitting the true atoms of every human. We become dulled, desiring the comfort of the already-created rather than going through psychic birth pains. The inner work of erasing seems to be a primary event guiding further re-search. When the electric, sharp and edgy cuttings of the divided inner life are erased, a union of the body with Earth awakens. For a few moments the constant happening of Earth as one, intertwining each one with One, the way of Love occurs. How to sustain it? This has something to do with noticing that we are all one, undergoing moments of nodal gatherings that forgetfully separate. |
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Robert Sardello
The School of Integral Psychology
417 W. Doyle
Granbury, Tx 76048
spiritualheart@heartfulsoul.com