When Healing Becomes Educating, Vol. 2 - Waldorf Research Institute
When Healing Becomes Educating, Vol. 2 - Waldorf Research Institute
When Healing Becomes Educating, Vol. 2 - Waldorf Research Institute
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point of view, not merely rehashing our personal life, as it were, but looking<br />
at with the kind of objectivity we would have in looking at another person’s<br />
life, discerning what is important and what is not. This will gradually make<br />
us aware of the true powers that shape our biography. Every time we work<br />
on another piece of our life in this way has its repercussion. 3<br />
Another way to achieve reinforcement is to take hold of the “time<br />
organism.” Abstract knowledge of this does not take us to the reality. We<br />
must gain direct experience of it. Start with what lies nearest: Visualize this<br />
evening lecture at this moment and hypothetically imagine that it is seven<br />
o’clock in the morning. It would be a totally different situation and a totally<br />
different lecture, even if I were to use the same words. It would be morning<br />
mood—just awakened from sleep, before breakfast—and that would be a<br />
different reality. We have now gone through the day, heard lectures, taken<br />
part in discussion groups, and are going further into the evening. Then,<br />
imagine it is one o’clock in the morning—again a different lecture, a totally<br />
different situation.<br />
Everything that happens is the way it is not only because of its present<br />
content but also within the time organism. Where am I during the day and<br />
the night? What is coming toward me? What lies behind me? We are always<br />
within larger and smaller cycles—night and day, a whole month, a whole<br />
year. We might also imagine it to be March now, again a totally different<br />
situation for this would be a different place in the organism of the year. We<br />
may quickly think this and see that it is so and then leave it aside and go<br />
on from one moment to the next, not really feeling the reality of the time<br />
organism. We must practice a feeling for being continually within greater<br />
and smaller cycles of time and realize that the small, momentary only gains<br />
significance and value from being part of the greater whole.<br />
We get anxious when we drop out of the time organism or when the<br />
I simply lets all the powers of soul, everything alive and active in there—<br />
thoughts, feelings, wishes, drives, desires—go their own way. If it does not<br />
intervene as required, the astral body grows flaccid and weak. The astral<br />
body holds great abundance, but when the I gives no impulses and is not<br />
active within it, it grows flaccid. As a result, the astral can no longer inspire<br />
the ether body, and this, too, grows flaccid.<br />
What does flaccid mean? Depending on random external influences, it<br />
means allergic. Allergy represents a certain weakness in relation to external<br />
influences. The stronger we are in ourselves the less are we allergic. A weak<br />
ether body loses touch with the physical body, and this “drops out” a little,<br />
although not completely for if it did, we would die. <strong>When</strong> the physical body<br />
drops out just a little, anxieties and various diseases develop; the physical<br />
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