6 Basic Exercises of the Heart
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Greetings Initiates,
Here are six basic esoteric exercises explained by the wonderful teacher Brian Gray that we can do every day. These require no training to perform; prolonged practice and repetition only.
6 Basic Exercises explained by Brian Gray of Rudolf Steiner College:
1. Concentration of Thoughts
2.Initiative in Action
3.Composure in Pleasure and Suffering
4.Postivity (Persian Legend of Christ)
5.Freedom from Bias (Aquinas and the Church Tower)
6.Harmony by means of repetition of the above
AND
7.Evening retrospection of the day’s events pictorially.
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and It's Attainment, is one of the foundational books of Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy, and it covers the basics of a modern self-development regimen that can lead to self-initiation into the high worlds.
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7. Evening retrospection of the day’s events pictorially visualized in reverse-chronology.
This not only helps us to be conscious of our motivations and actions of daily life for reflection and improvement, but due to the reflective nature of the spiritual worlds this exercise helps to prepare us to get used to viewing inverted realities.
“An esoteric pupil anticipates this intimacy in this development. The head with its brain is only a transition organ for knowledge. The organ that will look deeply and powerfully into the world has its germ in the present heart. To become an organ for cognition the heart must be transformed in many ways. But this heart is the source and fount of a future human stage. When the heart becomes its organ, cognition will be warm and intimate as only the feelings of love and compassion are today. But the feelings will struggle out of the dullness and darkness in which they just grope today and through to the brightness and clarity that only the finest, most logical concepts of the head have today. A real pupil is preparing himself for such things. And it's only a correct preparation if he does it with the indicated sentiment in his soul. These sentiments are the mother of the perspective that he needs. I ask you to note that we'll only attain what we should attain through our meditation and concentration exercises if we do them permeated by the great, sublime goals in bright, complete clarity.I ask you to always look at and do the exercises in this sense. Thereby you fit yourself into the community of spirits in current incarnations who are supposed to be come seers and helpers of the futures. We can do no better for the world's further development than to develop ourselves. But we must do that. And once we've seen the truth about our own being and the connection of this being with the world we don't doubt for a moment that we must do this. But this can only gradually be known. It's a child of will and patience.”
-Rudolf Steiner from the Esoteric Lessons of 1904-1909
There are many newcomers on the path today who are naturally still seeking their first real experiences of the spiritual worlds. This is totally justified if we are not seeking this primarily as a proof of such worlds, but rather it should come out of a pure and noble love of the divine principles and beings we have been studying, venerating, and are longing to get closer to. Yet it is also true that even a small glimpse behind the material curtain can offer a lifetime of religious hope and certainty for students that their self-development is yielding fruit. But we must not succumb to the temptation and appeal of exotic techniques or even the aid of narcotics that promise to send our fragile human consciousness head-on into the spiritual brilliance of the cosmos; in order to navigate in those realms as free independent human beings however, we must first transform our souls on earth by strengthening our thinking, feeling, and willing, down here.
We will have spiritual experiences when we are ready for them. It is possible that we may actually delay our progress if we pursue them with a premature approach. The proper religious attitude is the key to many practices that will do nothing for most, and wonders for the few.There is an old saying which says: “One does not become a wizard by performing magic, but by seeing the magic where others only see the mundane.” Thinking, feeling, and willing, are faculties of the soul and spirit when we experience them correctly in every-day life, and this does not require spiritual vision to comprehend. The spiritual eseence of the romantic-tragedies and beauties of life can apparently even be seen by "dumb brutes".
Godspeed Initiates!
The Gods Envy Us- Scene from the film Troy (2004):
