April 7, 2016: Bake Off: Thoughts and Ideas Discussion

  

Gary read to us Pg 39 to end today's meeting 

as our usual first Thursday of the week Bake Off.
     Sharleen started us off by introducing us to a book by Joop Van Dam MD, a Dutch physician who is active in Rudolph Steiner's Anthrotposophical Society, entitled The Sixfold Path: Six Simple Exercises for Spiritual Development. 

     Rudolph Steiner developed what he called six subsidiary exercises in order to achieve six soul qualities he thought it important to cultivate: 
1) Master our thoughts
2) Exercise control over our actions
3) Equanimity
4) Understand every being. See the positive. Everything contains an aspect that can be affirmed.
5) Complete openness toward everything that meets us. Hold back judgment and listen.
6) Inner harmony, which we will receive after developing the first five.

     Therefore Steiner recommended six exercises to accomplish this in addition to meditation:
1) Thought control. Think a definite idea, place it in the center of your thinking and logically arrange your thoughts so that they are all closely related to the original idea. (Example, a paper clip, a pencil.)
2)  Initiative in action -- perform some action, however tirvial that originates from your own initiative.
3)Detachment, imperturbability -- learn to regulate emotions so you master yourself through the greatest joys and deepest grief.
4) Impartiality or freedom from prejudice -- see goodness in everything, and look for the positive element evereywhere.
5) Faith -- exclude all you have experienced thus far, so you can meet each new experience with new faith. Allow for the possibility of  belief.
6) Inner balance. Result of the other five.


     Steiner recommends to do each one of these exercises in order, daily for 5 minutes for 1 month each before going on to the next, also recommending that these exercises supplement whatever meditation path or practice that we otherwise follow. One such version called "General Equirments for Anyone Wishing to Undertake Esoteric Schooling" was as early as 1906.

     Dr. Van Dam in his book apparently gives us quite a nice description of the practice of these six exercises. Sharleen brought an excerpt from his book describing the first exercise to attempt to "Master our thoughts".

     Summarizing a description of this first exercise: Focus our thinking on an ordinary object such as a cup, a spoon, or a paper clip. Either choose a fixed time of day to do this for 5 minutes or choose a 5 minutes when you are otherwise not preoccupied, such as waiting for a bus or an appointment. Either focus on the actual object or call it up in your mind. Observe and think about its characteristics such as size, color, form and then think about it. Ask questions about its make up, its purpose, how it is made, when was it made, how does its name represent it and what is its name's significance? Etc. By staying with one object for a matter of daily consideration, Steiner and Van Dam propose that we create an activity to consider in thoughts, this particular object and thus enter more deeply into its meaning, excluding the exterior world and allowing us to enter more deeply our inner world. Eventually the thoughts on this one object do become too routine and automatic and then a new object may be chosen. By engaging in this exercise, we may become more atuned to our thoughts and our so called inner world. As one is able to take active control of these thoughts more firmly, one may gradually feel more comfortable and at ease. The will of one's own thinking is becoming activated.

     Although some of Rudolph Steiner's ideas are controversial when analyzed by various scientists, philosophers and others, I found this particular exercise basically an exercise in learning to concentrate. For many people in our current world, they are unable to do this simple activity without a great deal of practice. And the simple action of learning to concentrate is necessary to move on to meditative practice. Therefore I think this exercise offers  a useful step, at least for the general population to learn meditative practices.

     If your would like to pursue these exercises further, there is a free PDF download, in fact several to choose from at the following website. Comments afterward suggest some of them take quite a while to download.

 http://www.kmgerish.com/upload/download.php?id=bf5b61e3fe61

     Our group went on to discuss various ways of looking at such practice especially a consideration of where our ideas come from and how they are formed. 

     Thich Nhat Hanh would say that we have to function as an open non judgemental observer as we meditate. He would teach that 'mind' is really a sixth sense. Like sight which has color and from, mind has thoughts.  Steiner's meditation is more directed, and less open.

     One member read a short chapter from Elizabeth Gilbert's book, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear.  This short but sweet chapter portrays ideas exist as beings or forms that icrculate around. One may try again and again to command our attention, seeking our human collaboration. That ideas are floating our there and need a conduit and are actively looking for a human conduit in order to be implemented, is indeed a magical  and quaint idea, itself, though as commented by another member of our group, not a scientific view of our mind's workings. Scientifcally one would think that the idea is in our mind but outside our consciousness and then we become aware of it in our conscious thought.  The reader of this excerpt commented that this idea really originally belonged to Plato who, unlike Aristotle, his teacher, thought that ideas exist in form. It's almost as though the so called Aha! moment is the idea and the human mind meeting in a hug.

     Other members of the discussion group today described how they have experienced creative ideas forming in their minds. One common view was that various "pots" are sitting on the stove , stewing away and then suddenly something forms in consciousness and we are aware of it. Sometimes ideas appear as we first awake in the morning, or come from a dream, or come to use as we are riding along in the car. If we don't write these down right away, or act on them, they will displaced quickly by our everyday thought processes. Keeping a noteook beside the bed, or in the car, might allow us to capture more of these creative ideas so that we can implement them more effectively.

    There was a brief discussion of