Topic: The Tumult of Spirit

[Michael]

'As a rule we cannot enter the spiritual worlds without passing through a deep upheaval in our souls. We have to experience something which disturbs and shakes all our forces, filling us with intense feeling. Emotions that are generally spread out over many moments, over long periods of living, whose permanent effect on the soul is therefore weaker — such feelings are concentrated in a single moment and storm through us with tremendous force when we enter the occult worlds.

Then we experience a kind of inner shattering, which can indeed be compared to fear, terror and anxiety, as though we were shrinking back from something almost with horror. Such experiences belong to the initial stages of occult development, to entering the spiritual worlds. It is just for this reason that such great care must be taken to give the right advice to those who would enter the spiritual worlds through occult training.

Such a person must be prepared so that he may experience this upheaval as a necessary event in his soul life without its encroaching on his bodily life and health, because his body must not suffer a like upheaval. That is the essential thing. We must learn to suffer the convulsions of our soul with outward equanimity and calm.'
[Rudolf Steiner]

[Michael]

'One thing is necessary for men of today if they would attain to an inwardly-experienced truth. They must have once passed through the feeling of the fleeting nature of all outer transformations. They must have experienced the mood of infinite sadness, of infinite tragedy, and at the same time the exultation of joy. They must have felt the breath of the ephemeral that streams out from all things. They must have been able to fix their interest on this coming forth and passing away again, the transitoriness of the world of sense.

Then, when they have been able to feel the deepest pain and the fullest delight in the external world, they must once have been absolutely alone — alone with their concepts and ideas. They must have had the feeling, “In these concepts I grasp the mystery of the worlds; I take hold of the outer edge of cosmic being.” This must be experienced, not merely understood intellectually, and if you would experience it, it must be in deepest loneliness.

Then you have another feeling. On the one hand you experience the majesty of the world of ideas that is spread out over the All. On the other hand you experience with the deepest bitterness that you have to separate yourself from space and time in order to be together with your concepts and ideas. Loneliness! It is the icy cold of loneliness.

Furthermore, it comes to you that the world of ideas has now drawn together as in a single point of this loneliness. Now you say, I am alone with my world of ideas. You become utterly bewildered in your world of ideas, an experience that stirs you to the depths of your soul.

At length you say to yourself, “Perhaps all this is only I myself; perhaps the only truth about these laws is that they exist in the point of my own loneliness.” Thus you experience, infinitely enhanced, utter doubt in all existence.'
[Rudolf Steiner]

[Bornamber]

At length you say to yourself, “Perhaps all this is only I myself; perhaps the only truth about these laws is that they exist in the point of my own loneliness.” Thus you experience, infinitely enhanced, utter doubt in all existence.'
[Rudolf Steiner]

When I read this I think of Ramana Maharishi’s dissolving the “I”.  That all ideas stem from the I thought. I have sometimes felt (although not held for long) that loneliness also stems from ego/I thought as an experience of separation. 

So I would say to this … is one experiencing doubt in all existence? Or doubt in the existence of The Land of Ideas?

[Michael]

'When you have this experience in your world of ideas, when the full cup of doubt in all existence has been poured out with pain and bitterness over your soul, then only are you ripe to understand how, after all, it is not the infinite spaces and periods of time of the physical world from which your ideas have come. Now only, after the bitterness of doubt, you open yourself to the regions of the spiritual and know that your doubt was justified, and in what sense it was justified.

For it had to be, since you imagined that the ideas had come into your soul from the times and spaces of the physical world. How do you now feel, your world of ideas having experienced its origin in the spiritual worlds? Now, for the first time, you feel yourself inspired.

Before, you were feeling the infinite void spread around you like a dark abyss. Now, you begin to feel that you are standing on a rock that rises up out of the abyss. You know with certainty, “Now I am connected with the spiritual worlds. They, not the world of sense, have bestowed on me my world of ideas.” '
[Rudolf Steiner]

The problem for those with a yearning for a life with meaning, is that they are unconsciously restrained by the options vouchsafed by the material world in which they, and all of us in this time, inhabit. So many options - more and more with every generation ('the infinite spaces and periods of time of the physical world'), and yet, there is something missing - the most important part!

When a person of serious intent towards their life, their sacred opportunity, begins to question everything, it can only be because they have begun on the path: a seeker of truth. As has been said, 'first meditation, then death'.

What Steiner is describing is the dark night of the soul, the doorway into disintegration of all we know, the realisation as we sit at the table of our oldest friends or family, that in truth, we don't know who these beings around us are, the uncompromising realisation that the dream which sustains our lives is nothing but a dream. And it appears to us that once we have seen through the veil of illusion, nothing remains. In fact, nothing remains for a considerable time!

This is known by sorcerers as the wall of fog - through which, we find only a desert. And yet, it is precisely that desert we must cross. That has been referred to by adepts as the Parallel Lines.

[Michael]

'While we feel we can already enter into those regions where everything is different from what it is in ordinary consciousness, a feeling arises in us, “I do not want to enter.” This feeling is very deep. As a rule the curiosity that impels people to enter the spiritual worlds is not nearly strong enough to overcome the feeling of revulsion that says, “I will not enter.” The aversion we feel at this particular stage arises with tremendous force, and all sorts of misunderstandings about it are possible.

Suppose that someone has even received personal instructions. He comes to his instructor and says, “I cannot get on at all, your instructions are of no use.” Indeed he may honestly think so. If the instructor gives him the answer due him, however, he would not be able to understand it at all. This answer is, “You can enter perfectly well but you do not want to.” The pupil honestly believes he has the will to enter because his reluctance remains hidden in his subconsciousness. Indeed, the moment he begins to realize his reluctance he lessens it. The idea that he does not want to enter horrifies him so, he immediately begins to damp down his unwillingness.

This reluctance is a subtle and insidious thing. We feel that we cannot enter with the ego, the self, that we have acquired in this world. If a person wants to evolve to higher things he feels very strongly that he must leave this self behind. That, however, is a difficult thing to do because man would never have developed this self if he did not feel in his daily consciousness that he has it in order to develop it here. His ordinary ego has come into this world in order to evolve. Thus, when man wants to enter the real world he feels he must leave behind what he has been able to evolve in the ordinary world. Then there is only one way. He must have developed this self more strongly than he needs for his ordinary consciousness. As a rule he only develops it as far as he needs it in his ordinary life.'
[Rudolf Steiner]

[Michael]

'An enormous part of our soul life is meaningless if life really ends with death; if man has no part in, no connection with a higher world. Indeed, it is not the longing for something he does not have, but the lack of sense for what he has, that impels man to follow up these questions and ask what it is that comes into the soul that does not belong to this world of the senses. Thus he is driven to cultivate something evidently without foundation in the external world. He is impelled to take up occult exercises. We would not say man has an inward longing for immortality and therefore invents the idea of it, but rather that the external world has implanted something in his soul that would be meaningless, unreal, if the whole of existence were included between birth and death. Man is impelled to ask the very nature, not of something he does not have, but of something he has.'
[R.S.]

[Michael]

'For example he would speak of light-air, or air-light. On the physical plane there is no such thing, but over there, there is. Indeed, when we penetrate into that realm we also discover what it is to be deprived of this life element, to have insufficient light-air. We feel a pain of suffocation in our soul, comparable to losing our breath for lack of air on the physical plane. There we also find the opposite condition, a fullness of pure, holy light-air when we live in it and when we perceive spiritual beings who manifest themselves in full clearness in this element of airy light and have their life in it. Those are the beings who stand under the guidance of Lucifer. The moment we enter that realm without sufficient preparation, without proper training, Lucifer gains the power to deprive us of the light-air we need. We can say he suffocates our souls.

It is not quite the same effect as suffocation on the physical plane. But like a polar bear transported to the South, we thirst and long for something that can reach us from the spiritual treasure, the spiritual light of the physical plane. That is just what Lucifer desires, for then we do not pay attention to all that comes from the higher hierarchies but thirstily cleave to all that Lucifer has brought onto the physical plane. This is what happens if we have not sufficiently trained ourselves in preparation. Then when we stand before Lucifer he takes away the light-air from us. We crave breath, and long for the spiritual that comes from the physical plane.

Let us suppose that someone goes through a training that brings him far enough to enter the higher worlds, to reach this upper region. But suppose he has not done all that belongs to the training; suppose he has forgotten that with all his exercises he must at the same time be ennobling his moral sense, his moral feelings, that he must tear all earthly ambitions and lust for power from his soul. Indeed a man can reach the higher worlds even though he is vain and ambitious, but then he takes these qualities with him. When a person has not purified his moral feelings Lucifer takes the light-air away from him, so that he perceives nothing of what is really there, and instead he longs for the things on the physical plane. He breathes in, so to say, what he has been able to perceive on the physical plane. So he may imagine that he perceives something only to be seen spiritually in the light-air. He imagines that he sees the different incarnations of various human beings. But it is not so. He does not see them because he lacks the air-light. Instead, like a thirsty being, he sucks up into that realm things of the physical plane below, and describes all manner of things acquired there as though they were processes in the higher region. Actually there is no more harmful way of raising one's soul into the higher worlds than by means of vain and earthly love of power! If one does this, one will never be able to bring down true results of knowledge. What one brings will be a mere reflection, a phantom picture of the speculations and conjectures one may have made in the physical world.'
[R.S]

[Firestarter]

Lucifer can kiss my ass. He doesnt fool me.



I did my own confessional during the purge. I looked at - had to - every "bad" thing I ever did. When I began to look, really look, at those things I realized yes, I did a lot of imperfect things. I also did the whole recap and cleanse of every single possible thing. But there is also the other, the good things I have done. And I do try to continue to make the right moves to do what i must to clear any bad karma I could have, and weave a better karma. Can I get off the wheel totally? Trying to.

But he doesnt fool me I know what he is and ive seen the effects on the captured. I got the message (photo attached). Im ready im entering. I got the message.