We must eradicate from the soul
All fear and terror of what comes towards Man
Out of the future
And we must acquire serenity
In all feelings and sensations about the future
We must look forward
With absolute equanimity to everything that may come
And we must think only that whatever comes
Is given to us by a world directive full of wisdom
It is part of what we must learn in this age,
Namely to live out of pure trust
Without any security in existence.
Trust in the ever present help of the spiritual world.
Truly, nothing else will do
If our courage is not to fail us.
And we must seek this awakening within Ourselves
Every morning and every evening
~Rudolf Steiner
One of my hesitations about writing has been the acknowledgement of how 'new-age' ish my thinking can seem. I come by it naturally and have definitely not worked to acquire the appearance. I just love the positive, the healing and the hopeful. I love to learn from the truths behind these things and I love to recognize them in the minds and work of other people. As time goes on that focus only gets more pronounced although I'm not always happy and seeing happy things. I'm drawn to the work of people who are better at accepting only the eternal. This verse from Steiner used to make me laugh, though. because when you read it you think, 'Holy Cow! what the heck is coming to us out of the future? What will be so very difficult to face with calm?' And where can I go to avoid it? Now I emphasize the return to an acceptance of help from the spiritual rather than the implied variety of nightmarish scenarios that may confront a person on earth. It's the uniform irrelevance of any earthly horror, whether prophesied by Nostrodamus or not, next to the Reality we've turned away from which interests me.
The first time I ever went to the Catholic parish I'm still associated with the deacon giving the homily was talking about how nobody strives to be a good sheep. There are no seminars on how to be a good follower, he said. This is partly because sheep are seen as passive and any sort of receiving, even from mighty spiritual beings or God Himself, is really not seen as a good thing at all. I need to work on that myself. I want to get back to the frame of mind I was in when I confessed happily to the pessimist who later became the father of my daughter, "The Universe is conspiring to do me good."
