Don't Get Carried Away
As we move closer to summer, we are enveloped in the bliss of the senses as nature unfolds. Many people enjoy bonfires, dancing, poetry, music, theater and picnics as the weather warms and gardens grow. Without adequate grounding in spiritual practices, however, sensitive people are at risk being carried away, so to speak, by the beauty that surrounds them. Luciferic pride actively tempts us to join in the rising of spiritual forces that weave forcefully through the world. It's like a riptide of sensations that can take one by surprise. Rudolf Steiner explains what one risks by being carried away in this way:
"He encounters there—pardon the trivial expression, my dear sisters and brothers—the illusion of being in love with release from the solid earth, from the formative water force, from the creative force of air, from the selfhood awakening force of warmth; he feels delight in spiritual beatitude, dedicated to it and wishes to remain in this state of spiritual beatitude. It overcomes him because the Luciferic temptation is approaching him. Depending on his karma, he can be more or less susceptible to this temptation. If he is so susceptible that he is utterly in love with the experience of dissolving into earth, water, air and fire, the luciferic forces will apprehend him and he will no longer leave this state of mind. He succumbs to the danger of continuing in this state of mind when he returns to everyday life.
The Guardian of the Threshold must call out to him: You may not do that. You may not succumb to Lucifer. You may not merely feel the delight of bliss in dissolving in earth, water, fire, air. When you return to the physical world you must again take on the state of mind of ordinary consciousness; otherwise in the future you will be an unstable person in the physical world.
That is the luciferic danger, that upon return from the spiritual world, from beyond the threshold, one becomes an unstable, confused person, no longer versed in the ways of the world, a dreamer who confuses dreaming for idealism and who is contemptuous of ordinary consciousness. That you must not do. And the Guardian of the Threshold urgently admonishes us that we must resolve to live in the world, be it the earthly, be it the spiritual, in the way which corresponds to each."
Read more:Rudolf Steiner, Lectures to the First Class Volume II, Lesson XIV, GA 270, 31 May 1924, Dornach.
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