Contemplations
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Contemplation archives
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How to Meditate
Leonardo da Vinci
by Rev. Reingard Knausenberger
The Advent festive season marks the beginning of the spiritual year. Every Christian festive season takes us into a specific objective place of inner renewal. Now in Advent, when the summer heat draws us out, the challenge is to purposefully renew, re-establish and deepen our inner contemplative practices. Against the resistances of daily demands, the exhaustion and temptation to flop into holiday mood, this kind of effort for personal soul care is where we know for sure what a truly free deed is. It is very similar to fitness training: it feels good afterwards and you miss it when you don’t do it.
Mary, the bearer of the Christ-child, is the archetype of the contemplative soul. We can read in the Gospels of Luke how meditative life works. In many paintings of the Annunciation, Mary is reading in a book. She is thinking, pondering, focusing on specific thoughts again and again. It is easy to observe in oneself, the effect specific thoughts have on our attitude and energy and if they destroy or create resilience or not. Holding oneself to attitudes of choice is the beginning, like taking on the practice of allowing and dis-allowing certain thoughts to live in oneself.
Then the angel appears, meaning for us today: the unexpected events that come towards us through life. How do we receive them? Mary first seeks to connect with her inner composure, that place which she has been training - “Fear not”.
Then she listens, and questions – “How can this be”.
When she responds, it comes from a place in her soul where she is the master – “Let it be so”.
And now she can accept, connect and take into her Self the message which will continue to form her reality and change her life – “see, I am the handmaid of the Lord”. Knowingly and humbly, she can place her trust in this ‘other reality’ and have faith that it will lead her in directions that are necessary and ultimately GOOD, as coming from a greater dimension of reality. Everyone is faced with such situations in life at some point, like hearing one is pregnant, or losing a job, or receiving news of a life-threatening illness, or of the death of a very close person. Nurturing an inner spiritual life rhythmically is not a luxury, an add on, it is the key that unlocks the power we didn’t know we had. Advent is now, Begin Now, always, every day again: Now.
The Advent festive season marks the beginning of the spiritual year. Every Christian festive season takes us into a specific objective place of inner renewal. Now in Advent, when the summer heat draws us out, the challenge is to purposefully renew, re-establish and deepen our inner contemplative practices. Against the resistances of daily demands, the exhaustion and temptation to flop into holiday mood, this kind of effort for personal soul care is where we know for sure what a truly free deed is. It is very similar to fitness training: it feels good afterwards and you miss it when you don’t do it.
Mary, the bearer of the Christ-child, is the archetype of the contemplative soul. We can read in the Gospels of Luke how meditative life works. In many paintings of the Annunciation, Mary is reading in a book. She is thinking, pondering, focusing on specific thoughts again and again. It is easy to observe in oneself, the effect specific thoughts have on our attitude and energy and if they destroy or create resilience or not. Holding oneself to attitudes of choice is the beginning, like taking on the practice of allowing and dis-allowing certain thoughts to live in oneself.
Then the angel appears, meaning for us today: the unexpected events that come towards us through life. How do we receive them? Mary first seeks to connect with her inner composure, that place which she has been training - “Fear not”.
Then she listens, and questions – “How can this be”.
When she responds, it comes from a place in her soul where she is the master – “Let it be so”.
And now she can accept, connect and take into her Self the message which will continue to form her reality and change her life – “see, I am the handmaid of the Lord”. Knowingly and humbly, she can place her trust in this ‘other reality’ and have faith that it will lead her in directions that are necessary and ultimately GOOD, as coming from a greater dimension of reality. Everyone is faced with such situations in life at some point, like hearing one is pregnant, or losing a job, or receiving news of a life-threatening illness, or of the death of a very close person. Nurturing an inner spiritual life rhythmically is not a luxury, an add on, it is the key that unlocks the power we didn’t know we had. Advent is now, Begin Now, always, every day again: Now.
Diversity in Togetherness
Revelations 7, 9-17
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'Thereafter I saw: behold, a great assembly which no one could count, from all nations and tribes and languages. They stood before the throne and before the Lamb, clad in white garments, with palm branches in their hands. And they called out with a great voice: healing is of our God who sits upon the throne, and of the Lamb! … And one of the elders began and spoke to me: Who are these in white garments, from where have they come? I answered: My Lord, this you know. He spoke: These are the ones who have come out of the great suffering and they have washed their garments and made them shine white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore they can stand before the throne of God and serve Him day and night in his temple. …"
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Stuck one day in a traffic jam on the Jan Smuts/Republic Road intersection in Hyde Park, a biologist friend who was in the car with me, suddenly said: I’m quickly going over there to have a look. Said and done, he was out of the car and onto the triangle of brown and greening plant cover in the middle of the intersection. As the cars inched forward, he took his time and then returned with a handful of grasses and flowers. “Wow, 36 different grasses on just that patch, what diversity!” he said excitedly and full of wonder.
Recently in Germany, as autumn set in, I equally stood in wonder looking at a bowl of harvest fruits. What beauty. Such different fruits, yet everything can be completely itself, while simultaneously fitting in with all others. How often does it happen: despite distinct differences, there is a visible commonality and harmony? How come?
They all, - grasses, fruits, plants of the bushveld - in all their diversity, have come about, grown and matured by having turned toward the same sun.
Those who are seen clad in white garments, who have achieved a voice and co-operation in the realm of the angels, are not distant saints. They are human beings coming from diverse origins. They have grown in the afflictions of life. They have matured into their own distinctive expression of self. How? — by consistently turning toward the same Spirit-Son.
This is the prospect of the Christian Community of the future.
Rev. Reingard Knausenberger/Engelbrecht Fischer
Recently in Germany, as autumn set in, I equally stood in wonder looking at a bowl of harvest fruits. What beauty. Such different fruits, yet everything can be completely itself, while simultaneously fitting in with all others. How often does it happen: despite distinct differences, there is a visible commonality and harmony? How come?
They all, - grasses, fruits, plants of the bushveld - in all their diversity, have come about, grown and matured by having turned toward the same sun.
Those who are seen clad in white garments, who have achieved a voice and co-operation in the realm of the angels, are not distant saints. They are human beings coming from diverse origins. They have grown in the afflictions of life. They have matured into their own distinctive expression of self. How? — by consistently turning toward the same Spirit-Son.
This is the prospect of the Christian Community of the future.
Rev. Reingard Knausenberger/Engelbrecht Fischer
Hope
by Rev. Steffen Barth
Hoffnung ist Orientierung des Geistes,
Orientierung des Herzens,
die die unmittelbar gelebte Welt übersteigt
und irgendwo in der Ferne verankert ist, hinter ihren Grenzen …
Hoffnung ist eben nicht Optimismus.
Es ist nicht die Überzeugung, dass etwas gut ausgeht,
sondern die Gewissheit, dass etwas Sinn hat –
ohne Rücksicht darauf, wie es ausgeht.
* * * * *
Hope is orientation for the spirit,
orientation for the heart,
which transcends the immediate living world
and which is embedded somewhere in the widths of space, beyond its boundaries...
Hope is not just optimism.
It is not the conviction, that something will turn out alright,
rather it is the certainty, that something has meaning--
regardless of how it will turn out.
Orientierung des Herzens,
die die unmittelbar gelebte Welt übersteigt
und irgendwo in der Ferne verankert ist, hinter ihren Grenzen …
Hoffnung ist eben nicht Optimismus.
Es ist nicht die Überzeugung, dass etwas gut ausgeht,
sondern die Gewissheit, dass etwas Sinn hat –
ohne Rücksicht darauf, wie es ausgeht.
* * * * *
Hope is orientation for the spirit,
orientation for the heart,
which transcends the immediate living world
and which is embedded somewhere in the widths of space, beyond its boundaries...
Hope is not just optimism.
It is not the conviction, that something will turn out alright,
rather it is the certainty, that something has meaning--
regardless of how it will turn out.
Vaclav Havel
St Michael with sword and scales on the facade of St Michael's Cathedral in Belgrade, Serbia
At this time of year, as we go towards an encounter with the archangel Michael, we should be aware of the image of the scales he is often shown holding in his hand. With these scales he is balancing the deeds we have or haven’t fulfilled during the past year. This is a time to turn our gaze inward toward all that has emerged and to consider what might still arise from it. We might even see fruits that have grown in our life. Yet we can also be painfully touched by those intentions which turned out differently to what we hoped and expected. No doubt, there are areas in ourselves which we do not want to face.
The scales that Michael holds might be a question to each one of us: are we able to uphold our inner standing or are we attempting to avoid confronting our inner standing, our integrity? As soon as we deceive ourselves or when we deafen our inner voice with the distractions available in our life, we are trying to avoid the upholding of our inner standing. It is when we accept what we see for what it is that we are upholding our inner standing, our integrity. As soon as we are honest with ourselves, we can find a reliable place in us from which we can move on.
Hope is a striving power in us to change ourselves, because she remembers who we actually want to be. Hope is looking for the seeds. She tries to find the right conditions for them to grow. She is encouraging us to move on. When we allow hope to live in our heart, we will even begin to feel that we are accompanied on our way by the one, who knows how to find and hold the inner balance.
The scales that Michael holds might be a question to each one of us: are we able to uphold our inner standing or are we attempting to avoid confronting our inner standing, our integrity? As soon as we deceive ourselves or when we deafen our inner voice with the distractions available in our life, we are trying to avoid the upholding of our inner standing. It is when we accept what we see for what it is that we are upholding our inner standing, our integrity. As soon as we are honest with ourselves, we can find a reliable place in us from which we can move on.
Hope is a striving power in us to change ourselves, because she remembers who we actually want to be. Hope is looking for the seeds. She tries to find the right conditions for them to grow. She is encouraging us to move on. When we allow hope to live in our heart, we will even begin to feel that we are accompanied on our way by the one, who knows how to find and hold the inner balance.
by Rev. Steffen Barth
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Because human beings want to be carried in heavenly worlds, doesn’t mean it is done.
Rather it is the whole world which should be transformed. And the melting-pot for this is precisely the human being, in him the ignoble can turn into noble gold, the temporal into eternal being. This is also the reason, why the human being is so intensely, so painfully and firmly bonded with the earth. Michael Bauer |
These words speak to a deeper, unconscious part of our being. They ask, what kind of attitude do we live with in the world, and what we are looking for with inner vision? Is there not a strong yearning in each of us to be near the heavenly world, our true homeland?
To lift up our sight to the heavens is legitimate, as that is where the dwellings are which enable us to bring the Good, the Truth and the Beauty into the world. For it is our mission to transform the world with these powers, they are our guidelines to form and live our life – and this process begins within us! We recognise how difficult this is as soon as we are facing the ignoble and what is not yet transformed in us. How are we able to change negative attributes? This is often connected with processes in which we will encounter sorrow and powerlessness. How often have we been defeated by the adverse forces within us which work with malice and cleverness, who are masters in disguising, hiding and denying.
Rudolf Steiner once referred to the soul of the human being as a battlefield upon which gods are fighting! Over time we will be able to recognise the evil adverse forces within us. Our part in this fight is to be awake in our thinking and feeling, and to unite wholeheartedly in the right moment with those heavenly forces who are there and, respecting human freedom, are waiting for our call.
To lift up our sight to the heavens is legitimate, as that is where the dwellings are which enable us to bring the Good, the Truth and the Beauty into the world. For it is our mission to transform the world with these powers, they are our guidelines to form and live our life – and this process begins within us! We recognise how difficult this is as soon as we are facing the ignoble and what is not yet transformed in us. How are we able to change negative attributes? This is often connected with processes in which we will encounter sorrow and powerlessness. How often have we been defeated by the adverse forces within us which work with malice and cleverness, who are masters in disguising, hiding and denying.
Rudolf Steiner once referred to the soul of the human being as a battlefield upon which gods are fighting! Over time we will be able to recognise the evil adverse forces within us. Our part in this fight is to be awake in our thinking and feeling, and to unite wholeheartedly in the right moment with those heavenly forces who are there and, respecting human freedom, are waiting for our call.
Does God exist?
Arild Rosenkrantz 1957
by Rev. Steffen Barth
All our children or teenagers come to a point where they lose the feeling that they are carried and surrounded by the Spirit of God. This is the moment where they stand at an abyss, but they don’t know how to cross it. There is no way back and yet their inner soul doesn’t know how to cross. Then they ask the older ones the question: ‘Does God really exist?’ Why is this question often so hard for us to answer? Why can’t we answer them with all the confidence in our heart: ‘Yes, God lives’? If we ourselves struggle at this point, we should realise that we also have a problem in overcoming this abyss … .
We should be able to take our children by the hand and go for a walk. After a while we could pause at a plant, looking carefully in wonder at the shape of the leaves or the blooming of the flowers and discover in the coherency of the detail the beauty of their creation. We could also stop at a stone, take out our magnifying glasses and look at the crystals and just be astonished at the harmonious combination of the minerals that build up this stone. Or we could take our time looking at a lizard lying in the sun, trying to be calm so we do not frighten him. And while we are kneeling close to this lizard, we look at his skin, his legs, his head and then we suddenly see him smoothly moving away. We are surrounded by the wonders of nature and we are often not able to see them anymore, because we don’t familiarise ourselves with them and so remain on this side of the abyss. But from this side we are only able to see surface, the exterior. The ability to experience wonder and beauty in the common phenomena that surround us is what can open up in us the feeling for the creative power of the Spirit of God at work within them. We discover that it is not the result of just a hap-hazard event happening during evolution. We only have to open our eyes and really familiarise ourselves with what is around us! And while doing it we suddenly have been, for a moment, on the other side of the abyss. Awakening the power of wonder for the beauty in nature can be a first step towards gaining back the confidence in God as a living reality.
Rudolf Steiner calls it a disease within the human being if he can’t acknowledge the Father God as the ground of existence, around us and even within us. In our incapacity of uniting ourselves with the world of nature this disease appears, e.g. by not giving ourselves the time and calm to just be and by not allowing us the peaceful moments to open our hearts for the wonderful world we are living in.
All our children or teenagers come to a point where they lose the feeling that they are carried and surrounded by the Spirit of God. This is the moment where they stand at an abyss, but they don’t know how to cross it. There is no way back and yet their inner soul doesn’t know how to cross. Then they ask the older ones the question: ‘Does God really exist?’ Why is this question often so hard for us to answer? Why can’t we answer them with all the confidence in our heart: ‘Yes, God lives’? If we ourselves struggle at this point, we should realise that we also have a problem in overcoming this abyss … .
We should be able to take our children by the hand and go for a walk. After a while we could pause at a plant, looking carefully in wonder at the shape of the leaves or the blooming of the flowers and discover in the coherency of the detail the beauty of their creation. We could also stop at a stone, take out our magnifying glasses and look at the crystals and just be astonished at the harmonious combination of the minerals that build up this stone. Or we could take our time looking at a lizard lying in the sun, trying to be calm so we do not frighten him. And while we are kneeling close to this lizard, we look at his skin, his legs, his head and then we suddenly see him smoothly moving away. We are surrounded by the wonders of nature and we are often not able to see them anymore, because we don’t familiarise ourselves with them and so remain on this side of the abyss. But from this side we are only able to see surface, the exterior. The ability to experience wonder and beauty in the common phenomena that surround us is what can open up in us the feeling for the creative power of the Spirit of God at work within them. We discover that it is not the result of just a hap-hazard event happening during evolution. We only have to open our eyes and really familiarise ourselves with what is around us! And while doing it we suddenly have been, for a moment, on the other side of the abyss. Awakening the power of wonder for the beauty in nature can be a first step towards gaining back the confidence in God as a living reality.
Rudolf Steiner calls it a disease within the human being if he can’t acknowledge the Father God as the ground of existence, around us and even within us. In our incapacity of uniting ourselves with the world of nature this disease appears, e.g. by not giving ourselves the time and calm to just be and by not allowing us the peaceful moments to open our hearts for the wonderful world we are living in.
John the Baptist and The Comforter
a rendering by Rev. Reingard Knausenberger
From the Gospels, we receive very defined images of John the Baptist. He is the upright strong Caller in the desert to ‘change our ways, to rethink and turn around’. He knows his mission and lives in service of a clear purpose and a higher calling. In contrast to the usual superhuman-like images of him as a ‘conscience awakener’, one can stop short in astonishment when confronted with this unusual depiction of the Baptist.
Here he sits hunched, as if burdened; earnest, with a gaze that could seem to be nearly depressed and helpless. What is he looking at? Yet around him is not the harsh starkness of desert, not a mood of judgment. Sitting on green grass, in a forested hilly landscape, a river quietly meandering while animals peacefully populate the scene. And next to John, unobtrusively ‘naturally’ part of the scene, is the Lamb. Does the harmony and peacefulness of the surrounds emanate from this presence? Is the burden John feels somehow bearable because it is embraced by this presence, although he doesn’t seem to even notice the Lamb?
It is the voice of John and the baptism he initiated, that brought people to the awareness of their sinful nature and the need for atonement, not just for themselves, but especially in relationship to others. Among human beings the most atrocious criminal acts are done every day. And yet it is rare to speak about ‘trespasses, indebtedness, shortcomings’ between us, in fact, these are often not even felt or noted as essential. If noticed, a quick apology solves the slip-up or forgetfulness; or ‘it wasn’t so bad’ and anyway, are not the circumstances, the others at fault, what could I do about it? Is this not often the feeling?
From the Gospels, we receive very defined images of John the Baptist. He is the upright strong Caller in the desert to ‘change our ways, to rethink and turn around’. He knows his mission and lives in service of a clear purpose and a higher calling. In contrast to the usual superhuman-like images of him as a ‘conscience awakener’, one can stop short in astonishment when confronted with this unusual depiction of the Baptist.
Here he sits hunched, as if burdened; earnest, with a gaze that could seem to be nearly depressed and helpless. What is he looking at? Yet around him is not the harsh starkness of desert, not a mood of judgment. Sitting on green grass, in a forested hilly landscape, a river quietly meandering while animals peacefully populate the scene. And next to John, unobtrusively ‘naturally’ part of the scene, is the Lamb. Does the harmony and peacefulness of the surrounds emanate from this presence? Is the burden John feels somehow bearable because it is embraced by this presence, although he doesn’t seem to even notice the Lamb?
It is the voice of John and the baptism he initiated, that brought people to the awareness of their sinful nature and the need for atonement, not just for themselves, but especially in relationship to others. Among human beings the most atrocious criminal acts are done every day. And yet it is rare to speak about ‘trespasses, indebtedness, shortcomings’ between us, in fact, these are often not even felt or noted as essential. If noticed, a quick apology solves the slip-up or forgetfulness; or ‘it wasn’t so bad’ and anyway, are not the circumstances, the others at fault, what could I do about it? Is this not often the feeling?
Barna da Siena (1325 - 1360)
Indebtedness, trespasses, sin, guilt – these can immediately become concrete encumbrances when we become aware of something else: of all those omissions and lapses, things that were neglected, not done, not said, not followed through. The good intentions, that fell by the wayside and ‘should have, could have…’ but weren’t acted upon. That which has been spent before it was earned. The promises that were not fulfilled. So much lies on our path, not taken hold of, unproductive, – and yet it is truly mine! Could that be a reason for feeling unburdened, because of never really looking at this?
The Lamb of God, who wants to carry the ‘sins of the world’, those accumulated burdens that overwhelm us, can only carry what I carry, when I accept and take on what belongs to me.
This image of John the Baptist is one of comfort and encouragement when we see: He, the Redeemer, comes to those who are burdened. His presence is consolation.
The Lamb of God, who wants to carry the ‘sins of the world’, those accumulated burdens that overwhelm us, can only carry what I carry, when I accept and take on what belongs to me.
This image of John the Baptist is one of comfort and encouragement when we see: He, the Redeemer, comes to those who are burdened. His presence is consolation.
The Way, The Truth and The Life
The month of June heralds Ascension Sunday (the way to the Father), Whitsun (the sending of the Spirit of Truth) and St John’s Tide (the reminder of the need to completely change our way of life, and a reminder of the incarnating Life of Christ at the Baptism in the Jordan). This is well prepared by the Gospel reading on the last Sunday of Easter: John 14. In John 14 verse 6 we read the statement of Christ: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life”. A variation of this translation is: “I am the Way by which you progress and the Truth by which you know and the Life in which you span time”. If we go back and look at how we have come to understand our relationship as human beings to the spiritual reality of existence, we can see how various aspects have captured the imagination of people at different times. Rudolf Steiner’s characterisation of meditation in his book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, describes meditation as the life of the soul in thought which expands more and more into the spiritual reality of existence. So through our thinking we come to know the reality of the word which is much more than meets the eye.
Great seers, wise philosophers and thinkers, have contemplated what this relationship is and how to make this relationship real. Essentially, how do I live in the spiritual reality of existence and not simply in the material world? However, it is important to make this point clear: If one lives in the spiritual reality of existence, one is, by definition, also living in the material reality because the material world is a manifestation of the spiritual. If one understands the spiritual reality in its material context one has gained a very necessary insight. Some people say, I am practical, I live in a material world, when I’m hungry I need to eat, when I am thirsty, I need to drink, when I am tired, I sleep, etc.; I don’t wish harm on anyone, I can live by certain codes of certain behaviour, but at the end of the day that is to live with extraordinary short-sightedness.
To that end one of the wise thinkers of the past arrived at an understanding of how we can relate to the spirit. He was reluctant to say much about it, or even to write about it. He had come to understand it and anybody who did the exercises in thinking that he had undertaken could come to same conclusion. Along came a traveller and spoke to him and asked him to write it down. And so this seer whose name was Lao Tzu wrote down his understanding of The Way. Because if we know The Way, we know how to travel. If we can come to an internal realisation of the roadmap, we will know how to travel and we will know what journey we are on. He talked about The Way as a way of unforced action. In other words, that everything falls into the natural order of spirit. It falls into The Way. I don’t have to force anything. Unforced, effortless living. It is a way of being. He presented this picture of the way and his philosophy was then described as a religion, although I don’t think he ever saw it as a codified doctrine. This philosophical presentation which is religious in the sense that it connects us with spirit, is known as Taoism. He understood the importance of feeling yourself connected to The Way.
In 1977 I saw a film, a big block-buster at the time. It was a story about a Knight and a Princess. Somewhere in the film, a wise old man told the young knight that was going to lead the revolution that he had to feel himself one with the force. The force was undefined, but it was all around and would lead you. The film of course is Star Wars. And the expression: May the Force be with you one could say comes straight out of Taoism.
The Buddha spoke about an 8-fold path, a way to find that we seek. A way of being to live in the spiritual reality of being. And this is a practise I do every day to sustain my relationship with the Spiritual reality. That can be through meditations, lighting a candle, burning incense, study, reading, joining study groups.
Ancient Hinduism considers several ways of how you might define your relationship with the Divine. For them there are more than one path. They outline 4 principle outlines or ways, or paths to the Divine. One of those ways is through loving service to others. Consider the work of Mother Theresa of Calcutta. This Albanian woman, a school teacher for many years, really changed when she started caring for the abandoned and untouchables. She couldn’t rescue them from death, but she could provide them with dignity as they crossed the threshold. The people she gathered around her were Indian and for them it was obvious that one way to the Divine was through loving service to others.
So this desire to be one with the Force has been with us for a very long time. Lao Tzu describes the Way as a Force. His best description of The Way is as a river in which we willingly go with the current of the river. There is no need to be resistant to the current, but rather it calls on us to cooperate with the flow, to surrender. Taoism also introduces a concept of Yin and Yang. The idea of Yin and Yang is that there is always a dark and a light, a masculine and a feminine. Going forward and backward. There is always an experience of duality, the seed of light being in the darkness and seed of darkness in the light. The one transforming into the other. The symbol is two interlocking commas with a black dot in the white comma and a white dot in the black comma. The idea is that it is constantly in flow. What is masculine becomes feminine and vice versa. Interlocked, the two commas form a circle which is constantly in motion.
Truth, as a theme, is expressed in ancient times by the Rishis in the Vedas. In Sanskrit, Veda means knowledge. They were writing down knowledge – the truth by which you know. Much like Taoism, the Vedic scriptures were not strictly religious. It was simply trying to write down the knowledge of what it is to be a human being. It describes everything that was essential to material existence. It has a section on agriculture, food production, education and health. It is important to know how the human being is constituted in order to feed him, educate and heal him. They were writing down an encyclopaedia of deep spiritual insight. They wrote down how the world around them was an expression of a spiritual idea. The Upanishads is a commentary on these original writings and were incorporated in the work.
Steiner talks about the principle of Life as expressed in one of seven Esoteric Trees. One of these trees is the Tree of Knowledge, the Tree of Good and Evil, which makes its appearance at the beginning of our great cycle of creation. The next tree in the next big cycle is the Tree of Life. The times we live in now is between the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life.
Great seers, wise philosophers and thinkers, have contemplated what this relationship is and how to make this relationship real. Essentially, how do I live in the spiritual reality of existence and not simply in the material world? However, it is important to make this point clear: If one lives in the spiritual reality of existence, one is, by definition, also living in the material reality because the material world is a manifestation of the spiritual. If one understands the spiritual reality in its material context one has gained a very necessary insight. Some people say, I am practical, I live in a material world, when I’m hungry I need to eat, when I am thirsty, I need to drink, when I am tired, I sleep, etc.; I don’t wish harm on anyone, I can live by certain codes of certain behaviour, but at the end of the day that is to live with extraordinary short-sightedness.
To that end one of the wise thinkers of the past arrived at an understanding of how we can relate to the spirit. He was reluctant to say much about it, or even to write about it. He had come to understand it and anybody who did the exercises in thinking that he had undertaken could come to same conclusion. Along came a traveller and spoke to him and asked him to write it down. And so this seer whose name was Lao Tzu wrote down his understanding of The Way. Because if we know The Way, we know how to travel. If we can come to an internal realisation of the roadmap, we will know how to travel and we will know what journey we are on. He talked about The Way as a way of unforced action. In other words, that everything falls into the natural order of spirit. It falls into The Way. I don’t have to force anything. Unforced, effortless living. It is a way of being. He presented this picture of the way and his philosophy was then described as a religion, although I don’t think he ever saw it as a codified doctrine. This philosophical presentation which is religious in the sense that it connects us with spirit, is known as Taoism. He understood the importance of feeling yourself connected to The Way.
In 1977 I saw a film, a big block-buster at the time. It was a story about a Knight and a Princess. Somewhere in the film, a wise old man told the young knight that was going to lead the revolution that he had to feel himself one with the force. The force was undefined, but it was all around and would lead you. The film of course is Star Wars. And the expression: May the Force be with you one could say comes straight out of Taoism.
The Buddha spoke about an 8-fold path, a way to find that we seek. A way of being to live in the spiritual reality of being. And this is a practise I do every day to sustain my relationship with the Spiritual reality. That can be through meditations, lighting a candle, burning incense, study, reading, joining study groups.
Ancient Hinduism considers several ways of how you might define your relationship with the Divine. For them there are more than one path. They outline 4 principle outlines or ways, or paths to the Divine. One of those ways is through loving service to others. Consider the work of Mother Theresa of Calcutta. This Albanian woman, a school teacher for many years, really changed when she started caring for the abandoned and untouchables. She couldn’t rescue them from death, but she could provide them with dignity as they crossed the threshold. The people she gathered around her were Indian and for them it was obvious that one way to the Divine was through loving service to others.
So this desire to be one with the Force has been with us for a very long time. Lao Tzu describes the Way as a Force. His best description of The Way is as a river in which we willingly go with the current of the river. There is no need to be resistant to the current, but rather it calls on us to cooperate with the flow, to surrender. Taoism also introduces a concept of Yin and Yang. The idea of Yin and Yang is that there is always a dark and a light, a masculine and a feminine. Going forward and backward. There is always an experience of duality, the seed of light being in the darkness and seed of darkness in the light. The one transforming into the other. The symbol is two interlocking commas with a black dot in the white comma and a white dot in the black comma. The idea is that it is constantly in flow. What is masculine becomes feminine and vice versa. Interlocked, the two commas form a circle which is constantly in motion.
Truth, as a theme, is expressed in ancient times by the Rishis in the Vedas. In Sanskrit, Veda means knowledge. They were writing down knowledge – the truth by which you know. Much like Taoism, the Vedic scriptures were not strictly religious. It was simply trying to write down the knowledge of what it is to be a human being. It describes everything that was essential to material existence. It has a section on agriculture, food production, education and health. It is important to know how the human being is constituted in order to feed him, educate and heal him. They were writing down an encyclopaedia of deep spiritual insight. They wrote down how the world around them was an expression of a spiritual idea. The Upanishads is a commentary on these original writings and were incorporated in the work.
Steiner talks about the principle of Life as expressed in one of seven Esoteric Trees. One of these trees is the Tree of Knowledge, the Tree of Good and Evil, which makes its appearance at the beginning of our great cycle of creation. The next tree in the next big cycle is the Tree of Life. The times we live in now is between the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life.
The biggest banyan tree
This idea of a Tree of Life also captured the imagination of ancient peoples. The first ancient culture that speaks of the Tree of Life is the ancient Indian culture. They identified a real tree that for them was the symbol of the Tree of Life. They saw the spiritual idea of a Tree of Life manifest in the magnificent banyan tree that grows on the banks of the river Ganges. There is a legend in ancient India of an entire army hiding in a banyan tree. A banyan tree grows a solid trunk and then drops roots from its branches. Once rooted in the earth, these roots become subsidiary trunks and because they grow so close together, it becomes entirely feasible to hide an entire army in them. One tree becomes a forest and for the ancient Indians that was their Tree of Life.
For the ancient Persians, their Tree of Life is very esoteric. They describe it as a spiritual ideal. If you read their scriptures, you realise that the tree is rooted in water. For the ancient Persians their Tree of Life grows in water and it requires protection because it is under threat from a poisonous frog which is an ancient symbol of Ahriman. In order to protect it, two Kar fish swim in opposite direction to each other, around and around the Tree of Life. They cross twice in every circle as they swim in a circle in opposite direction. This imagination of two fish also finds expression in the zodiac as Pisces.
These were religious scriptures suggesting that you have to follow a teaching and a practise. This Tree of Life became a symbol of the Principle of Life. That Life needed protection and was connected to the Divine principle, extraordinary and precious. The Tree of Life also became a symbol of hope for the future. The two fish symbolise two streams: A stream which goes from birth to death, and the stream of the future coming towards us.
These ideas of the Way, of Knowledge and of Life had been in the mind of human beings for centuries before the coming of Christ. Now the Christ says: I am the Way. However you have tried to connect with the Divine in the past, that way is ME. I AM the Way. All these attempts to find knowledge, and trying to find out what it means to be human, He answers with: I Am the Truth. I Am that knowledge. And when we look for the principle of what it means to be alive, to be in a span of time, He says: I Am the Life. If, as human beings, we experience the Way and come to the real Truth, if you find the REAL Way, if you live a real Life, not a pretence, then I Am in you and you are in Me. And that is why the rest of John 14 is about this extraordinary relationship of the Divine in us.
Here is the trick though: Us in the Divine. We are in Christ and He is in the Father and therefore we can absolutely say that as we evolve, and we are absolutely evolving, God evolves. There is an evolution for God. There has been an evolution of God the moment creation began. The moment we create something, be it painting or something simple like sewing something or baking something, the moment we are involved in the process of creating, something in us shifts as a result of the creative process. This idea that evolution implies that we evolve from imperfect to perfect is nonsensical. Evolution is not about perfection, it is an experience, it is about unfolding, it is about the seed becoming the tree.
I am the Way by which you progress and unfold. I am the Truth by which you know the connection to a spiritual reality and the Life in which you span time from birth to death, of life to life. Saint Julia of Norwich, during her illness, saw God who opens his hand to reveal an acorn in the palm of his hand. Then she heard the words: “And all shall be well. And all manner of thing shall be well". God is in us. The Spirit and the Son who live in us relate us back to the very substance of being.
This allows us to realise that the very substance of humanity is the substance of God.
So, as Ascension heralds Whitsun and we swiftly move into the time of St John, we relate to Christ in us and to the Spirit in us and to the substance of the Father in the words: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life".
For the ancient Persians, their Tree of Life is very esoteric. They describe it as a spiritual ideal. If you read their scriptures, you realise that the tree is rooted in water. For the ancient Persians their Tree of Life grows in water and it requires protection because it is under threat from a poisonous frog which is an ancient symbol of Ahriman. In order to protect it, two Kar fish swim in opposite direction to each other, around and around the Tree of Life. They cross twice in every circle as they swim in a circle in opposite direction. This imagination of two fish also finds expression in the zodiac as Pisces.
These were religious scriptures suggesting that you have to follow a teaching and a practise. This Tree of Life became a symbol of the Principle of Life. That Life needed protection and was connected to the Divine principle, extraordinary and precious. The Tree of Life also became a symbol of hope for the future. The two fish symbolise two streams: A stream which goes from birth to death, and the stream of the future coming towards us.
These ideas of the Way, of Knowledge and of Life had been in the mind of human beings for centuries before the coming of Christ. Now the Christ says: I am the Way. However you have tried to connect with the Divine in the past, that way is ME. I AM the Way. All these attempts to find knowledge, and trying to find out what it means to be human, He answers with: I Am the Truth. I Am that knowledge. And when we look for the principle of what it means to be alive, to be in a span of time, He says: I Am the Life. If, as human beings, we experience the Way and come to the real Truth, if you find the REAL Way, if you live a real Life, not a pretence, then I Am in you and you are in Me. And that is why the rest of John 14 is about this extraordinary relationship of the Divine in us.
Here is the trick though: Us in the Divine. We are in Christ and He is in the Father and therefore we can absolutely say that as we evolve, and we are absolutely evolving, God evolves. There is an evolution for God. There has been an evolution of God the moment creation began. The moment we create something, be it painting or something simple like sewing something or baking something, the moment we are involved in the process of creating, something in us shifts as a result of the creative process. This idea that evolution implies that we evolve from imperfect to perfect is nonsensical. Evolution is not about perfection, it is an experience, it is about unfolding, it is about the seed becoming the tree.
I am the Way by which you progress and unfold. I am the Truth by which you know the connection to a spiritual reality and the Life in which you span time from birth to death, of life to life. Saint Julia of Norwich, during her illness, saw God who opens his hand to reveal an acorn in the palm of his hand. Then she heard the words: “And all shall be well. And all manner of thing shall be well". God is in us. The Spirit and the Son who live in us relate us back to the very substance of being.
This allows us to realise that the very substance of humanity is the substance of God.
So, as Ascension heralds Whitsun and we swiftly move into the time of St John, we relate to Christ in us and to the Spirit in us and to the substance of the Father in the words: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life".
Lord, teach us
by Rev. Reingard Knausenberger
During the forty days of Easter the Risen Christ is the spiritual teacher of those who had prepared themselves by having ‘followed’ him during the three years of living an earthly human life. The beginning of this intimate connection was laid when they had asked on the Sermon on the Mount: Lord, teach us to pray like you pray. They had experienced that this human being brought life and healing wherever he went. He added a new macrocosmic dimension to the microcosmic personal one whenever he spoke. He lived in a way that showed that there was always completion and fulfilment, while making clear there was ‘more to come, this is only the beginning’. He was a living mystery, a paradox, the embodiment of hope, always fully in the present moment.
“Teach us to be like you.” The Lord’s Prayer is the answer to this request. Little did they realise that this would be a teaching of how to live, that life was being prayer. We are not what we speak, we are what we think, feel and do. We become the prayer, or whatever our mantra is, so to say. It becomes our 'breath of life’. When a child is born, it becomes an earthly being through its first breath, breathing in the breath of life. It is God's gift. When we breathe out our breath carries the sting of death. Christ turned this around while living in the body. In dying, his last breath initiated new life, for eternity. For living in spirit-body, spirit-soul and as spirit-human among Spirits. This is his Easter teaching.
During the forty days of Easter the Risen Christ is the spiritual teacher of those who had prepared themselves by having ‘followed’ him during the three years of living an earthly human life. The beginning of this intimate connection was laid when they had asked on the Sermon on the Mount: Lord, teach us to pray like you pray. They had experienced that this human being brought life and healing wherever he went. He added a new macrocosmic dimension to the microcosmic personal one whenever he spoke. He lived in a way that showed that there was always completion and fulfilment, while making clear there was ‘more to come, this is only the beginning’. He was a living mystery, a paradox, the embodiment of hope, always fully in the present moment.
“Teach us to be like you.” The Lord’s Prayer is the answer to this request. Little did they realise that this would be a teaching of how to live, that life was being prayer. We are not what we speak, we are what we think, feel and do. We become the prayer, or whatever our mantra is, so to say. It becomes our 'breath of life’. When a child is born, it becomes an earthly being through its first breath, breathing in the breath of life. It is God's gift. When we breathe out our breath carries the sting of death. Christ turned this around while living in the body. In dying, his last breath initiated new life, for eternity. For living in spirit-body, spirit-soul and as spirit-human among Spirits. This is his Easter teaching.
The Resurrection of the Body and the Redemption of Humankind
Cross from Romania
(a review of Holy Week) by Rev. Reingard Knausenberger
Palm-Sunday: The Father
The Christian Father-God appears only once in the Old Testament, namely when Abraham meets Melchizedek, who brings him bread and wine, connecting his mission with the ‘God of the most High, the Father-God’. Melchizedek comes from a different spiritual stream. The God of the Old Testament is a different being, one who serves the Father-God. This is the source of much confusion, if one doesn’t hold a richer, more differentiated picture of the heavenly world. When one speaks a prayer for personal reasons and needs, then it is directed to a being which is responsible for me. The name of such a being is ‘Angel’ or Guardian Angel. When nations are at war and each side is praying for victory and safety, then the being responsible for nations and larger connected groups of people is called ‘Archangel’.
The Lord’s Prayer speaks clearly of 'Our Father’: all embracing, universal, all encompassing. This is the Father-God, everything and All, nothing is ‘outside’, everything is ‘inside’ this creative power. He is our existence, in us, around us. His being is Love. The wrath of God comes from what we add to this pure selfless power. We pollute the pure Love which underlies all creation.
The Father-God, source of All, is the being Christ, the Son-God, means.
When we pray ‘Our Father’ it is not a personal prayer, but universal in scope, and one can never speak it without Christ.
Holy Monday: Hallowed be your Name
Something is made ‘holy, hallowed’ when it is separated and put aside, reserved for a specific purpose. Outwardly and inwardly, we create a protected ‘different’ space (see Mt 6:6), a shrine where ’The Name’ can live in us. The Gospel of Mark 11 speaks of Christ cleansing the temple on this day, Holy Monday. We need to cleanse and free up space for this inner life, free of all the other thoughts and emotions that fill us. The Lord’s Prayer is, to begin with, not only a gesture of devotion and reverence, but also a ‘call to awakening, calling our Self up’, a prayerful attitude in which the soul grasps itself from within. ’Name’ is a living working power, defining the area of awakened power connected to the creative source, is formative individualised energy. Every human being has this potential power. In the name which belongs to me alone, which no one else can speak for me — in my ‘I’ — lives my true being, which remains veiled and untouchable, indivisible, even when it reveals itself. We all share this name, and yet we are all unique, like the snowflakes. Speaking this sentence with a listening ear towards Christ speaking, we carry our ‘I’ back to its origin from where it received its power from the World-Spirit-Light and plant it into the ground of the heart, our ‘holiest of holies’.
Holy Tuesday — Your Kingdom come
This, Holy Tuesday, is a day of great drama, a thinking and word drama. All the parables and questions of this day show a deep wrestling, learning, schooling of spiritual discernment. When Christ is asked about paying tax, or the scribe asks about the most important commandment (Mk 12) and is acknowledged ‘you are close to the kingdom of God’, one begins to understand it is not an either-or, but the continual activity of finding a healthy balance between the earthly and a religious/spiritual life. The apocalyptic words on the Mount of Olives (Mk13) on this evening are spoken for our time, they are not ‘future’ but ‘for now’. They shed light on the incredible problems and predicaments we find ourselves in. There are spiritual beings at work that want humanity to be at war with each other and create illusionary unsustainable situations; these support conditions that we feel overwhelmed and hopeless. Then the danger is to expect to be saved by a ‘strong leader’ or some outer event.
Yet healing can only come through the human beings themselves, just as destruction and decadence come about through humans; and this is connected with human thinking. Healing can only come when the Kingdom of God has arrived within the human being. This is what happens on Golgotha with the birth of the higher I in Jesus. God’s Kingdom is inward, within the Human Kingdom. It is about the coming of the I Am which can connect with the world of spirit in a new way in everyone. Previously this was only achieved through initiation and prophecy, because the human I was too weak. Today the wrong king (Herod) is still sitting on the throne; the egoistic ruler must be replaced with the true ruler within the human heart. When the inner presence and wielding consciousness of the human being is fulfilled with the true higher I, which is connected with its spiritual heavenly home, yet acts and works on earth, then the Kingdom of God is present, radiating blessing into the world like the sun.
Holy Wednesday — Your Will be done
This day, Holy Wednesday, is the middle of the week; this sentence is the middle of the Lord’s Prayer. A middle is the centre of something, it is what holds polarities together. Like the centre-point of scales, it is the quiet still point around which everything revolves. Will, before it moves, is pure concentrated potential. Our lives are permeated with polarities, we live in them all the time: man-woman, right-left, blue-yellow, inward-outward… The creative point is where polarities meet and interact, then something new appears which can only appear through this interaction, for instance, ideas that appear as thesis-antithesis create a new dimension in synthesis. Holy Wednesday shows this dynamic, e.g. the woman who anoints Jesus and Judas Iscariot, Judas and the high priests, Jesus and the deed of the woman, they all create a space for something new to appear, either productive or destructive. The centre space between polarities is never neutral. The Lord’s Prayer has led us through Name and Kingdom now to the realisation that I am the one who lets God’s will happen, or not. I must make God’s will into my own will. This is not the will of great stress and effort, nor of passive letting-go, it is born out of longing, the interaction between ‘above and below’, inwardness and outwardness. Out of the harmonious interplay of movement between the polarity, which arises from natural discipline, the human being becomes a co-creator, a co-worker in a new Creation. Our whole existence begins to move with great confidence and surety towards the One Goal.
Maundy Thursday — Our daily Bread
When the Christ Jesus celebrates the Passover on this day, Maundy Thursday, it is according to the sun calendar. The traditional Jewish Passover is celebrated according to the moon calendar a day later, on Friday. Christ carries forward the spiritual stream of Melchizedek (who is the King of Righteousness, meaning the King of cosmic morality). What had begun as an undercurrent with Abraham, rises up here indirectly for a moment. This is connected with the stream of the ancient Zarathustra, the servant of Ahura Mazda (ca. 5000 B.C.) Zarathustra was the initiate to whom we owe the cultivation of grasses into grains, and wild animals into domestic servants of human civilisation. He celebrated a cultus with bread and wine, saying ’this is the body of Ahura Mazda, the God of the Son’. Throughout the three years, Christ says “my hour has not come”, beginning with the wedding in Cana (Jn 2), where out of the weaving of the natural blood community and the inner weaving between mother and son, he is a catalyst for ‘water to turn into wine’, i.e. what is a given community can deepen into an inner chosen community, social warmth created by choice. Now, on Maundy Thursday, he says: “my hour has come”. Wine becomes his blood, which is again a new step in inwardness. These are steps of ever deepening intimate, existential relationship between the human being and the earth.
Bread speaks of a long history of the evolving human being into ever refined consciousness. Bread gives us the strength to carry our destiny. Wine gives the lightness and levity in the soul, uplifting from heaviness and darkness. These two substances are archetypal for the powers we need to walk our path to full humanity. When we celebrate the Eucharist at the altar with bread and wine, something happens. There is transubstantiation. In our time it is not enough to just believe that something happens, but it is important to strive in understanding. Only through our thinking, our consciousness, does what happens become a full reality, in us and through us for the earth.
‘Whoever strives with all his might, that person we can redeem’ (Goethe). This means our task is to strive and never stop. To be able to do this we need sustenance for the way. This was gifted to us on this historic evening.
Good Friday — Forgive us…as we forgive
One of the last words of Christ from the cross was: “Father forgive them for they know not what they do”. This sets a new standard and scope for what ‘forgiveness’ can mean. It now stands in the context of the death on the cross, the deed of Christ that transformed the experience of dying and death for all humankind. We know we will die. Everyone. How we choose to relate to this fact lies in our freedom. The body we have as our instrument of consciousness is a gift of the Father-God, our spiritual origin. Through the creative power of the Son-God we use it to develop our unique individuality. In the human realm everything has to become conscious and only then will it have full reality.
No child is busy with their past or worried about the future. Everything is ‘now’. Therefore the child can do no wrong and doesn’t know of origin or goal.
But the adult has more awareness. We know we can be the source of pain and suffering for others and ourselves. We know of responsibility and guilt, shame and wrong-doing. Not just through outer general norms, but through an inner knowing. Trespassing and becoming aware of indebtedness wakes us up to this inner place of moral intuition. Our modern culture leads us to overwhelming egoism and superstition as we lose a sense for community, meaning that what I do needs to be good for the whole at the same time; it lures us into connecting too deeply with the material world, which is temporal and not sustainable. We become what we connect with in thought and feeling. This is what death awakens us to: is it a complete ending or is there a life after death?
This is also, strange as it may seem, the same question that applies to our trespasses and indebtedness, as those affected and as those at fault. Where our moral human-being is affected we are in the place where death and resurrection happen in earthly life. Ignoring and denying a wrong-doing is like thinking death is an end with no consequence. Facing it grows from a thinking that looks for an ‘after’. There are three ways to deal with indebtedness: 1. It is something that can be resolved by my action, like apologising and reparation; then it is finished and healed. 2. It cannot be repaired and undone: one can only ask for forgiveness, but it depends on the other if they can forgive. 3. When it goes beyond human capacity and needs the scope of reincarnation, where in life after death we can encounter Christ and through Christ encounter the perpetrator, strengthening together the resolve to heal in a new life, i.e. through karma-healing. In all situations we can always work on it now, for instance through the Lord’s Prayer, and meaning it inclusively when we say ‘our’. Our free activity to reach out in a greater context builds trust that one day, what cannot be forced, will come as a ripe fruit towards us with new possibilities to heal what was damaged.
From this we realise that forgiveness has two aspects: one that looks to the past and can only accept what was, because it is as it is and cannot be changed. It is like the ‘evening aspect’ of forgiveness: it can only be held in prayer. The other, new aspect which Christ initiates on the cross, is like a ‘morning view’. The word itself can lead us if opened up like this: ‘fore-give’ as meaning to give up-front, give credit, to return to the original condition and begin a new building of relationship, to embrace the emptiness of possibility. When we keep ‘looking forward’ to the growing spiritual being that the other truly is and trust its becoming, then we can understand why this is the only sentence in the Prayer which is conditional, because we open through our action the possibility for this future to become a reality. We invite Christ, the power that leads what is dead into life, to work in and through us as the power of resurrection.
Silent Saturday — Lead us not into Temptation
On Good Friday at the hour of Christ’s death the curtain in front of the Holiest of Holies in the Temple tore from top to bottom, the sun darkened, the earth began to tremble. The elements and the earth responded dramatically to this event, continuing throughout Saturday into the Sunday morning. Still on Friday, the body was taken from the cross and laid into the grave. This grave was like a cave cut into the limestone rock into which a person could walk upright. Inside was an alcove cut into the side wall, and then there was a long flat piece cut out of the wall, like an altar, onto which the wrapped body was laid. Finally, a large round stone as tall as a human being was rolled into a deep groove in front of the opening, sealing the grave.
On Maundy Thursday evening there had been the Christ communion with the disciples of bread and wine. On Good Friday the Christ communion with the earth began as the blood flowed from the cross into the earth. It continued on Saturday with the body, which was laid into the grave, being taken into the earth through the earthquakes, like ash falling out of a burning log. The blood and the body of Christ have a seed quality for the earth, like holy communion has for the human being.
When the curtain tore in the temple it brought light into the dark, cubic empty room, the place where the tablets of the covenant had been kept and where the high priest entered once a year to renew the covenant with Jahweh. The first deed of Christ after death is to go into the realm of death. This was 'the realm of shadows’ and darkness, a place of being bound to the weight of the earth and deprived of its light and ’not real’. Christ brings light into this realm which had become inaccessible to the heavenly world. He opens it up for humankind as the power that can overcome this shadow state and lead into a new reality. This is often depicted as Christ leading Adam and Eve out of the clutches of the dark forces. The death on Golgotha changes everything for humanity, it is a turning point in evolution. People who have had near-death experiences express this and the temptations they experienced. The great temptations arising in our time are, for example, not to return to earth and the work required for its spiritualisation; to only be interested in self-evolving and wellbeing; to want external life on earth through technology and machines (trans-humanism). It is a temptation to not work on an understanding that the world of spirit is real, populated with beings that support human evolution and those that are intent on eradicating human evolving, those that respect human freedom and those that don’t. 'Lead us not into temptation’ is the acknowledgement that the spiritual world is our home. Light in the world of spirit is a living being, as is Darkness and they need to be met with a clear Yes and No. There is only one Being that can say in truth “I Am the Light of the World of Spirit”.
Easter Sunday — Redemption (deliver us from the Evil)
No one knew what was happening, nor what was coming. Human understanding could not grasp what was happening. The thoughts and concepts which are needed to penetrate a perception were not developed yet. The beginning of Christianity was an experience. It went deep into the soul, as no concepts and thinking could hinder participation in an experience of ‘real’. Transported directly into a spiritual sphere of living reality, this ‘real’ appears as fear and only later, with understanding, comes reverence. The empty grave becomes a place of encounter, like an altar is a place of encounter with spirit-reality even if we don’t understand and have to grapple with concepts. The moment the women lifted their gaze, ‘gave up’ their expectations and pre-conceptions, new perceptions were possible. Their love had brought them there, despite the hinderances and danger.
When warmth and light begin to flow from the human heart, then altars are created. Even today, anywhere. When light of consciousness opens the heart and in the upward glance in devotion to Our Father streams, the Risen One can enter into our midst and work with us in our doing. Not only we seek him —he seeks us— and finds us in our devoted soul, able to offer with us at the soul altar. He wants to gift the world with new life and brings the offering with us, through us. Freedom is a gift. Redemption is an action. It always wants to be achieved. It requires a sacrifice for the sake of something higher. The individual must bring this offering. We pray for the strength and power to bring the offering, to say ’no’. Deliver us from the Evil. We have the free will to discern and choose and to recognise there are things that can destroy our humanness, exterminate our “I”, that require a non-negotiable NO.
This is redemption as shown to us on the first Easter morning: the Risen One who can appear between the empty grave and the full overflowing heart of the human soul. From this image flows the fulfilment of our human-ness.
Palm-Sunday: The Father
The Christian Father-God appears only once in the Old Testament, namely when Abraham meets Melchizedek, who brings him bread and wine, connecting his mission with the ‘God of the most High, the Father-God’. Melchizedek comes from a different spiritual stream. The God of the Old Testament is a different being, one who serves the Father-God. This is the source of much confusion, if one doesn’t hold a richer, more differentiated picture of the heavenly world. When one speaks a prayer for personal reasons and needs, then it is directed to a being which is responsible for me. The name of such a being is ‘Angel’ or Guardian Angel. When nations are at war and each side is praying for victory and safety, then the being responsible for nations and larger connected groups of people is called ‘Archangel’.
The Lord’s Prayer speaks clearly of 'Our Father’: all embracing, universal, all encompassing. This is the Father-God, everything and All, nothing is ‘outside’, everything is ‘inside’ this creative power. He is our existence, in us, around us. His being is Love. The wrath of God comes from what we add to this pure selfless power. We pollute the pure Love which underlies all creation.
The Father-God, source of All, is the being Christ, the Son-God, means.
When we pray ‘Our Father’ it is not a personal prayer, but universal in scope, and one can never speak it without Christ.
Holy Monday: Hallowed be your Name
Something is made ‘holy, hallowed’ when it is separated and put aside, reserved for a specific purpose. Outwardly and inwardly, we create a protected ‘different’ space (see Mt 6:6), a shrine where ’The Name’ can live in us. The Gospel of Mark 11 speaks of Christ cleansing the temple on this day, Holy Monday. We need to cleanse and free up space for this inner life, free of all the other thoughts and emotions that fill us. The Lord’s Prayer is, to begin with, not only a gesture of devotion and reverence, but also a ‘call to awakening, calling our Self up’, a prayerful attitude in which the soul grasps itself from within. ’Name’ is a living working power, defining the area of awakened power connected to the creative source, is formative individualised energy. Every human being has this potential power. In the name which belongs to me alone, which no one else can speak for me — in my ‘I’ — lives my true being, which remains veiled and untouchable, indivisible, even when it reveals itself. We all share this name, and yet we are all unique, like the snowflakes. Speaking this sentence with a listening ear towards Christ speaking, we carry our ‘I’ back to its origin from where it received its power from the World-Spirit-Light and plant it into the ground of the heart, our ‘holiest of holies’.
Holy Tuesday — Your Kingdom come
This, Holy Tuesday, is a day of great drama, a thinking and word drama. All the parables and questions of this day show a deep wrestling, learning, schooling of spiritual discernment. When Christ is asked about paying tax, or the scribe asks about the most important commandment (Mk 12) and is acknowledged ‘you are close to the kingdom of God’, one begins to understand it is not an either-or, but the continual activity of finding a healthy balance between the earthly and a religious/spiritual life. The apocalyptic words on the Mount of Olives (Mk13) on this evening are spoken for our time, they are not ‘future’ but ‘for now’. They shed light on the incredible problems and predicaments we find ourselves in. There are spiritual beings at work that want humanity to be at war with each other and create illusionary unsustainable situations; these support conditions that we feel overwhelmed and hopeless. Then the danger is to expect to be saved by a ‘strong leader’ or some outer event.
Yet healing can only come through the human beings themselves, just as destruction and decadence come about through humans; and this is connected with human thinking. Healing can only come when the Kingdom of God has arrived within the human being. This is what happens on Golgotha with the birth of the higher I in Jesus. God’s Kingdom is inward, within the Human Kingdom. It is about the coming of the I Am which can connect with the world of spirit in a new way in everyone. Previously this was only achieved through initiation and prophecy, because the human I was too weak. Today the wrong king (Herod) is still sitting on the throne; the egoistic ruler must be replaced with the true ruler within the human heart. When the inner presence and wielding consciousness of the human being is fulfilled with the true higher I, which is connected with its spiritual heavenly home, yet acts and works on earth, then the Kingdom of God is present, radiating blessing into the world like the sun.
Holy Wednesday — Your Will be done
This day, Holy Wednesday, is the middle of the week; this sentence is the middle of the Lord’s Prayer. A middle is the centre of something, it is what holds polarities together. Like the centre-point of scales, it is the quiet still point around which everything revolves. Will, before it moves, is pure concentrated potential. Our lives are permeated with polarities, we live in them all the time: man-woman, right-left, blue-yellow, inward-outward… The creative point is where polarities meet and interact, then something new appears which can only appear through this interaction, for instance, ideas that appear as thesis-antithesis create a new dimension in synthesis. Holy Wednesday shows this dynamic, e.g. the woman who anoints Jesus and Judas Iscariot, Judas and the high priests, Jesus and the deed of the woman, they all create a space for something new to appear, either productive or destructive. The centre space between polarities is never neutral. The Lord’s Prayer has led us through Name and Kingdom now to the realisation that I am the one who lets God’s will happen, or not. I must make God’s will into my own will. This is not the will of great stress and effort, nor of passive letting-go, it is born out of longing, the interaction between ‘above and below’, inwardness and outwardness. Out of the harmonious interplay of movement between the polarity, which arises from natural discipline, the human being becomes a co-creator, a co-worker in a new Creation. Our whole existence begins to move with great confidence and surety towards the One Goal.
Maundy Thursday — Our daily Bread
When the Christ Jesus celebrates the Passover on this day, Maundy Thursday, it is according to the sun calendar. The traditional Jewish Passover is celebrated according to the moon calendar a day later, on Friday. Christ carries forward the spiritual stream of Melchizedek (who is the King of Righteousness, meaning the King of cosmic morality). What had begun as an undercurrent with Abraham, rises up here indirectly for a moment. This is connected with the stream of the ancient Zarathustra, the servant of Ahura Mazda (ca. 5000 B.C.) Zarathustra was the initiate to whom we owe the cultivation of grasses into grains, and wild animals into domestic servants of human civilisation. He celebrated a cultus with bread and wine, saying ’this is the body of Ahura Mazda, the God of the Son’. Throughout the three years, Christ says “my hour has not come”, beginning with the wedding in Cana (Jn 2), where out of the weaving of the natural blood community and the inner weaving between mother and son, he is a catalyst for ‘water to turn into wine’, i.e. what is a given community can deepen into an inner chosen community, social warmth created by choice. Now, on Maundy Thursday, he says: “my hour has come”. Wine becomes his blood, which is again a new step in inwardness. These are steps of ever deepening intimate, existential relationship between the human being and the earth.
Bread speaks of a long history of the evolving human being into ever refined consciousness. Bread gives us the strength to carry our destiny. Wine gives the lightness and levity in the soul, uplifting from heaviness and darkness. These two substances are archetypal for the powers we need to walk our path to full humanity. When we celebrate the Eucharist at the altar with bread and wine, something happens. There is transubstantiation. In our time it is not enough to just believe that something happens, but it is important to strive in understanding. Only through our thinking, our consciousness, does what happens become a full reality, in us and through us for the earth.
‘Whoever strives with all his might, that person we can redeem’ (Goethe). This means our task is to strive and never stop. To be able to do this we need sustenance for the way. This was gifted to us on this historic evening.
Good Friday — Forgive us…as we forgive
One of the last words of Christ from the cross was: “Father forgive them for they know not what they do”. This sets a new standard and scope for what ‘forgiveness’ can mean. It now stands in the context of the death on the cross, the deed of Christ that transformed the experience of dying and death for all humankind. We know we will die. Everyone. How we choose to relate to this fact lies in our freedom. The body we have as our instrument of consciousness is a gift of the Father-God, our spiritual origin. Through the creative power of the Son-God we use it to develop our unique individuality. In the human realm everything has to become conscious and only then will it have full reality.
No child is busy with their past or worried about the future. Everything is ‘now’. Therefore the child can do no wrong and doesn’t know of origin or goal.
But the adult has more awareness. We know we can be the source of pain and suffering for others and ourselves. We know of responsibility and guilt, shame and wrong-doing. Not just through outer general norms, but through an inner knowing. Trespassing and becoming aware of indebtedness wakes us up to this inner place of moral intuition. Our modern culture leads us to overwhelming egoism and superstition as we lose a sense for community, meaning that what I do needs to be good for the whole at the same time; it lures us into connecting too deeply with the material world, which is temporal and not sustainable. We become what we connect with in thought and feeling. This is what death awakens us to: is it a complete ending or is there a life after death?
This is also, strange as it may seem, the same question that applies to our trespasses and indebtedness, as those affected and as those at fault. Where our moral human-being is affected we are in the place where death and resurrection happen in earthly life. Ignoring and denying a wrong-doing is like thinking death is an end with no consequence. Facing it grows from a thinking that looks for an ‘after’. There are three ways to deal with indebtedness: 1. It is something that can be resolved by my action, like apologising and reparation; then it is finished and healed. 2. It cannot be repaired and undone: one can only ask for forgiveness, but it depends on the other if they can forgive. 3. When it goes beyond human capacity and needs the scope of reincarnation, where in life after death we can encounter Christ and through Christ encounter the perpetrator, strengthening together the resolve to heal in a new life, i.e. through karma-healing. In all situations we can always work on it now, for instance through the Lord’s Prayer, and meaning it inclusively when we say ‘our’. Our free activity to reach out in a greater context builds trust that one day, what cannot be forced, will come as a ripe fruit towards us with new possibilities to heal what was damaged.
From this we realise that forgiveness has two aspects: one that looks to the past and can only accept what was, because it is as it is and cannot be changed. It is like the ‘evening aspect’ of forgiveness: it can only be held in prayer. The other, new aspect which Christ initiates on the cross, is like a ‘morning view’. The word itself can lead us if opened up like this: ‘fore-give’ as meaning to give up-front, give credit, to return to the original condition and begin a new building of relationship, to embrace the emptiness of possibility. When we keep ‘looking forward’ to the growing spiritual being that the other truly is and trust its becoming, then we can understand why this is the only sentence in the Prayer which is conditional, because we open through our action the possibility for this future to become a reality. We invite Christ, the power that leads what is dead into life, to work in and through us as the power of resurrection.
Silent Saturday — Lead us not into Temptation
On Good Friday at the hour of Christ’s death the curtain in front of the Holiest of Holies in the Temple tore from top to bottom, the sun darkened, the earth began to tremble. The elements and the earth responded dramatically to this event, continuing throughout Saturday into the Sunday morning. Still on Friday, the body was taken from the cross and laid into the grave. This grave was like a cave cut into the limestone rock into which a person could walk upright. Inside was an alcove cut into the side wall, and then there was a long flat piece cut out of the wall, like an altar, onto which the wrapped body was laid. Finally, a large round stone as tall as a human being was rolled into a deep groove in front of the opening, sealing the grave.
On Maundy Thursday evening there had been the Christ communion with the disciples of bread and wine. On Good Friday the Christ communion with the earth began as the blood flowed from the cross into the earth. It continued on Saturday with the body, which was laid into the grave, being taken into the earth through the earthquakes, like ash falling out of a burning log. The blood and the body of Christ have a seed quality for the earth, like holy communion has for the human being.
When the curtain tore in the temple it brought light into the dark, cubic empty room, the place where the tablets of the covenant had been kept and where the high priest entered once a year to renew the covenant with Jahweh. The first deed of Christ after death is to go into the realm of death. This was 'the realm of shadows’ and darkness, a place of being bound to the weight of the earth and deprived of its light and ’not real’. Christ brings light into this realm which had become inaccessible to the heavenly world. He opens it up for humankind as the power that can overcome this shadow state and lead into a new reality. This is often depicted as Christ leading Adam and Eve out of the clutches of the dark forces. The death on Golgotha changes everything for humanity, it is a turning point in evolution. People who have had near-death experiences express this and the temptations they experienced. The great temptations arising in our time are, for example, not to return to earth and the work required for its spiritualisation; to only be interested in self-evolving and wellbeing; to want external life on earth through technology and machines (trans-humanism). It is a temptation to not work on an understanding that the world of spirit is real, populated with beings that support human evolution and those that are intent on eradicating human evolving, those that respect human freedom and those that don’t. 'Lead us not into temptation’ is the acknowledgement that the spiritual world is our home. Light in the world of spirit is a living being, as is Darkness and they need to be met with a clear Yes and No. There is only one Being that can say in truth “I Am the Light of the World of Spirit”.
Easter Sunday — Redemption (deliver us from the Evil)
No one knew what was happening, nor what was coming. Human understanding could not grasp what was happening. The thoughts and concepts which are needed to penetrate a perception were not developed yet. The beginning of Christianity was an experience. It went deep into the soul, as no concepts and thinking could hinder participation in an experience of ‘real’. Transported directly into a spiritual sphere of living reality, this ‘real’ appears as fear and only later, with understanding, comes reverence. The empty grave becomes a place of encounter, like an altar is a place of encounter with spirit-reality even if we don’t understand and have to grapple with concepts. The moment the women lifted their gaze, ‘gave up’ their expectations and pre-conceptions, new perceptions were possible. Their love had brought them there, despite the hinderances and danger.
When warmth and light begin to flow from the human heart, then altars are created. Even today, anywhere. When light of consciousness opens the heart and in the upward glance in devotion to Our Father streams, the Risen One can enter into our midst and work with us in our doing. Not only we seek him —he seeks us— and finds us in our devoted soul, able to offer with us at the soul altar. He wants to gift the world with new life and brings the offering with us, through us. Freedom is a gift. Redemption is an action. It always wants to be achieved. It requires a sacrifice for the sake of something higher. The individual must bring this offering. We pray for the strength and power to bring the offering, to say ’no’. Deliver us from the Evil. We have the free will to discern and choose and to recognise there are things that can destroy our humanness, exterminate our “I”, that require a non-negotiable NO.
This is redemption as shown to us on the first Easter morning: the Risen One who can appear between the empty grave and the full overflowing heart of the human soul. From this image flows the fulfilment of our human-ness.
Our new budding Sense of Life
by Rev. Reingard Knausenberger
What is life? To this day, a question that science has not been able to answer succinctly.
We experience that to live, we must eat. Ultimately, everything we eat stems from a seed. Seeds are laid into the soil of the earth for the earth to be fruitful and manifest life. Of its own accord, the earth is not productive, but becomes the carrier of abundant reproducing life through the seed power it holds.
It is the seed that is the true carrier of life for the earth, the carrier of a divine idea When it germinates and grows, it is making this divine idea visible by filling it out with matter taken from the earth. It makes visible for us how life forces work when they find a carrier with which to engage, for the unfolding growth does so in a specific order and sequence, rhythmically, slowly, a step at a time, over a period of time. When we harvest the fruits of the earth to sustain our life, we are holding materially manifested divine ideas in our hands.
After the first World War a young doctor approached Rudolf Steiner with the question how to make the medicines used to heal more effective. His answer was: 'study life’. So he had to ask: ‘What is life?’ And with the answer that followed, ‘Life is rhythm’, Dr. Hauschka had his life task defined as he researched and developed a completely new approach toward creating medicines and healing therapies using this principle.
If life is rhythm, then what is rhythm, how does it come about? We can see one clear expression at the beach or in the desert where wind rushes over the sand creating ripples, dunes, rhythmical forms. The same as water does with rock over time. It shows how rhythm is created between resistance and movement.
Our body as a whole is an organisation of resistance and movement, very clearly experienced in its central organ, the heart. The heartbeat, our pulse of life, is created by resistance and movement.
The Act of Consecration of Man significantly begins with becoming aware of our heart and that it may be filled with the pure life forces of Christ. At the core of this service is the divine idea of the true human being. As we ‘plant’ this Idea into our soul ever deeper, engaging in the processes at the altar as they unfold each time in a specific sequence and order, rhythmically again and again over a period of time, we may begin to realise how a new sense and experience of life is germinating tangibly. How the resistances we experience give opportunity for a weaving together of personal rhythm and Christ-rhythm, so to say. What germinates and grows, manifesting abundance, reproducing new fresh life each time, is a force we are not in charge of, but can become carriers of its manifesting.
We have a natural sense of life which will die with the physical body. We are developing with this body a new life sense through purposeful, rhythmical activities which will not die as they weave together with ‘You, who bear and order the life of the world…’ The human being becomes the seed, the carrier of the divine idea, which bears new life when the earth dies.
What is life? To this day, a question that science has not been able to answer succinctly.
We experience that to live, we must eat. Ultimately, everything we eat stems from a seed. Seeds are laid into the soil of the earth for the earth to be fruitful and manifest life. Of its own accord, the earth is not productive, but becomes the carrier of abundant reproducing life through the seed power it holds.
It is the seed that is the true carrier of life for the earth, the carrier of a divine idea When it germinates and grows, it is making this divine idea visible by filling it out with matter taken from the earth. It makes visible for us how life forces work when they find a carrier with which to engage, for the unfolding growth does so in a specific order and sequence, rhythmically, slowly, a step at a time, over a period of time. When we harvest the fruits of the earth to sustain our life, we are holding materially manifested divine ideas in our hands.
After the first World War a young doctor approached Rudolf Steiner with the question how to make the medicines used to heal more effective. His answer was: 'study life’. So he had to ask: ‘What is life?’ And with the answer that followed, ‘Life is rhythm’, Dr. Hauschka had his life task defined as he researched and developed a completely new approach toward creating medicines and healing therapies using this principle.
If life is rhythm, then what is rhythm, how does it come about? We can see one clear expression at the beach or in the desert where wind rushes over the sand creating ripples, dunes, rhythmical forms. The same as water does with rock over time. It shows how rhythm is created between resistance and movement.
Our body as a whole is an organisation of resistance and movement, very clearly experienced in its central organ, the heart. The heartbeat, our pulse of life, is created by resistance and movement.
The Act of Consecration of Man significantly begins with becoming aware of our heart and that it may be filled with the pure life forces of Christ. At the core of this service is the divine idea of the true human being. As we ‘plant’ this Idea into our soul ever deeper, engaging in the processes at the altar as they unfold each time in a specific sequence and order, rhythmically again and again over a period of time, we may begin to realise how a new sense and experience of life is germinating tangibly. How the resistances we experience give opportunity for a weaving together of personal rhythm and Christ-rhythm, so to say. What germinates and grows, manifesting abundance, reproducing new fresh life each time, is a force we are not in charge of, but can become carriers of its manifesting.
We have a natural sense of life which will die with the physical body. We are developing with this body a new life sense through purposeful, rhythmical activities which will not die as they weave together with ‘You, who bear and order the life of the world…’ The human being becomes the seed, the carrier of the divine idea, which bears new life when the earth dies.
To stand in Wonder: only a human virtue?
by Rev. Reingard Knausenberger
At any moment, often unexpectedly, it can happen that we see the familiar with new eyes and stop to stand in wonder, marvelling at the new depth of sudden revealing. Like a sudden ray of sunlight breaking through cloud cover, highlighting one detail of the landscape and drawing out its magnificence for a moment, it catches our breath. Immediately we feel uplifted, something opens up within us and expands to embrace this new insight, full of wonder.
This is a very human experience, we all know it, but can the Creator of all, can Christ also experience wonder?
There is such a moment when the centurion, a Roman military official, courageously steps up to Jesus. Succinctly and clearly he presents his petition and in the following discourse demonstrates several important virtues:
Now, in the centurion, he suddenly sees what is familiar light up from out of a human being for the first time, recognising its new depth and brilliant potential. Christ marvels and stands in wonder, embracing this new insight. This is an attitude and quality he can connect with. Therefore he can truly send the centurion, empowered to ‘go, and let it be done as you have believed.’
We, too, can recognise a familiar modern attitude and striving in the centurion, and marvel how his action gives a blueprint in how to become a participant for spreading healing in our area of responsibility. We can know the specific human qualities with which Christ can connect and work with us and our believing, empowering each individually and specifically to feel sent out and ‘Go. Let it be done as you have believed’.
Then there is no end to the wonders that will be possible to manifest, on earth and in heaven.
Matthew 8, 5-13: When he entered Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him, appealing to him: ‘Lord, my young man in training is lying paralysed at home, suffering terribly.’
And he said to him, ‘I will come and heal him.’ But the centurion replied, "Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I too am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” When Jesus heard this, he marvelled and in great wonder turned to those who followed him, ’Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
And to the centurion Jesus said, ‘Go; let it be done for you as you have believed.’ And the servant was healed at that very moment.
At any moment, often unexpectedly, it can happen that we see the familiar with new eyes and stop to stand in wonder, marvelling at the new depth of sudden revealing. Like a sudden ray of sunlight breaking through cloud cover, highlighting one detail of the landscape and drawing out its magnificence for a moment, it catches our breath. Immediately we feel uplifted, something opens up within us and expands to embrace this new insight, full of wonder.
This is a very human experience, we all know it, but can the Creator of all, can Christ also experience wonder?
There is such a moment when the centurion, a Roman military official, courageously steps up to Jesus. Succinctly and clearly he presents his petition and in the following discourse demonstrates several important virtues:
- he can distinguish between leading and serving, ready and able to do both as required.
- he is modest and expects no favours, yet stands confident and upright in himself.
- his approach is from logic and thinking, not emotions.
- he is responsible and empathetic towards those in his charge.
- he recognises and acknowledges irrevocably the need for designated responsibility, which is the principle of hierarchy.
- he has faith in what he knows of hierarchical order and power and can therefore extend his trust to greater authority than his own, without feeling diminished or judged.
- And so he stands true to himself and to the principle of authority, ready to participate in whatever is required to fulfil his request.
Now, in the centurion, he suddenly sees what is familiar light up from out of a human being for the first time, recognising its new depth and brilliant potential. Christ marvels and stands in wonder, embracing this new insight. This is an attitude and quality he can connect with. Therefore he can truly send the centurion, empowered to ‘go, and let it be done as you have believed.’
We, too, can recognise a familiar modern attitude and striving in the centurion, and marvel how his action gives a blueprint in how to become a participant for spreading healing in our area of responsibility. We can know the specific human qualities with which Christ can connect and work with us and our believing, empowering each individually and specifically to feel sent out and ‘Go. Let it be done as you have believed’.
Then there is no end to the wonders that will be possible to manifest, on earth and in heaven.
Matthew 8, 5-13: When he entered Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him, appealing to him: ‘Lord, my young man in training is lying paralysed at home, suffering terribly.’
And he said to him, ‘I will come and heal him.’ But the centurion replied, "Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I too am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” When Jesus heard this, he marvelled and in great wonder turned to those who followed him, ’Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
And to the centurion Jesus said, ‘Go; let it be done for you as you have believed.’ And the servant was healed at that very moment.
February Contemplation
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by Rev. Ulrich Becker
The heavens reach out to us. Generously, they pour out over us their grace. It is spiritual beings that offer their substance So that the earth can continue to exist. It is through their spirit-offering That life can persist here on earth. Understanding this Can give rise to deep and joyful Gratitude. Gratitude to the fact that The angelic worlds care for us, Accompany us in our attempts at Evolving. They give graciously. Their Joy Will find its fulfilment Wherever they find an echo Of generosity Of love In Between Human hearts, and Towards all beings of creation. Giving love, Spiritual beings know, Is the most satisfactory deed one can do. Every such deed Accomplished out of our free will Ennobles humanity, Links existentially to Beings of the divine worlds on the Long way to become The humanity of Christ. |
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A New Sense is Developing
Image by Cassia Holtz from her Matric Artwork
by Rev. Reingard Knausenberger
When we speak, we are breathing out. In the very beginning of time the Godhead breathed out, speaking. In so doing, the Godhead spoke out the whole of humanity and all that was necessary for its unfolding. Each human being is a Word of God. We are all born out of God.
Every night when we go to sleep we breathe out our soul. Our soul which holds every word spoken, every deed done, our every thought. We can sleep because the Godhead breathes our soul in. In this primal source of our existence we are healed, refreshed, renewed every night. Then we awaken again in this, our own, earthly body. The body which, the moment it comes in touch with the soul in waking, is our security, our sense of place and of being held. It is the place that we can touch and know of ourselves. While awake, our body keeps us connected in our deepest unconscious with the source of our existence. Every human being exists through being in touch with this existential, deeply unconscious knowing: I am born out of God.
Then one time, and it could be one time only, the Godhead breathed out its heart of hearts, the very core of beingness was spoken out. This was the turning point of time. This deepest heart-word was first laid into the one earthly body, the chosen one: Jesus the child. As a seed of love it lay in the soul of Jesus until Christ in him could bring it to fruition through his deed of life-overcoming death. Since that time, the seed of love is planted into every human body and soul that is born on earth.
As we activate and begin to germinate this seed, we begin to form a new higher sense of security. The gentle, yet powerful, experience of being touched by love is immediately also one of profound awakening and expansion. Through the weaving of bonds from soul to soul we ground ourselves substantially in community of life with others. As the seeds of love are nurtured through different seasons of germination, growth, blossoming and even wintry dormancy, we are building the foundations for an eternal becoming and unfolding.
In our waking hours of self awareness this seed is accessible to us. It is our true field of daily work. Nothing is more healing and rejuvenating than gifts of love, no deed is more strengthening. When flowing from a place of wakeful understanding, nothing is more empowering, enlightening and full of creative power. Nothing can touch us and awaken us more deeply.
We are born out of God, asleep and unconsciously. We have a future through the Christ- seed of love as we awaken to its power to touch hearts. Whatever the situation, letting the last question Christ asks a human being resonate in our heart: ‘Do you love me?’ (John 21), will usher in change and transformation.
A new sense is developing in the human being, growing up from the unconscious into full waking consciousness, as we anchor ourselves existentially in the dimension of love, and at the same time join in, now consciously, in the creative speaking of God.
When we speak, we are breathing out. In the very beginning of time the Godhead breathed out, speaking. In so doing, the Godhead spoke out the whole of humanity and all that was necessary for its unfolding. Each human being is a Word of God. We are all born out of God.
Every night when we go to sleep we breathe out our soul. Our soul which holds every word spoken, every deed done, our every thought. We can sleep because the Godhead breathes our soul in. In this primal source of our existence we are healed, refreshed, renewed every night. Then we awaken again in this, our own, earthly body. The body which, the moment it comes in touch with the soul in waking, is our security, our sense of place and of being held. It is the place that we can touch and know of ourselves. While awake, our body keeps us connected in our deepest unconscious with the source of our existence. Every human being exists through being in touch with this existential, deeply unconscious knowing: I am born out of God.
Then one time, and it could be one time only, the Godhead breathed out its heart of hearts, the very core of beingness was spoken out. This was the turning point of time. This deepest heart-word was first laid into the one earthly body, the chosen one: Jesus the child. As a seed of love it lay in the soul of Jesus until Christ in him could bring it to fruition through his deed of life-overcoming death. Since that time, the seed of love is planted into every human body and soul that is born on earth.
As we activate and begin to germinate this seed, we begin to form a new higher sense of security. The gentle, yet powerful, experience of being touched by love is immediately also one of profound awakening and expansion. Through the weaving of bonds from soul to soul we ground ourselves substantially in community of life with others. As the seeds of love are nurtured through different seasons of germination, growth, blossoming and even wintry dormancy, we are building the foundations for an eternal becoming and unfolding.
In our waking hours of self awareness this seed is accessible to us. It is our true field of daily work. Nothing is more healing and rejuvenating than gifts of love, no deed is more strengthening. When flowing from a place of wakeful understanding, nothing is more empowering, enlightening and full of creative power. Nothing can touch us and awaken us more deeply.
We are born out of God, asleep and unconsciously. We have a future through the Christ- seed of love as we awaken to its power to touch hearts. Whatever the situation, letting the last question Christ asks a human being resonate in our heart: ‘Do you love me?’ (John 21), will usher in change and transformation.
A new sense is developing in the human being, growing up from the unconscious into full waking consciousness, as we anchor ourselves existentially in the dimension of love, and at the same time join in, now consciously, in the creative speaking of God.