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