Love is Higher than Opinion - Steiner

Love is higher than opinion. If people love one another, the most varied opinions can be reconciled. Hence it is deeply significant that in Theosophy no religion is attacked and no religion is specially singled out, but all are understood, and so there can be brotherhood because the adherents of the most varied religions understand one another.

This is one of the most important tasks for mankind today and in the future: that men should learn to live together and understand one another. If this human fellowship is not achieved, all talk of occult development is empty.

 - Rudolf Steiner 

 At the Gates of Spiritual Science

Lecture 11, 1st September, 1906 Stuttgart

Hate & Occult Training

Two things must be completely avoided during occult training. We should never harm anyone through deeds, thoughts or words intentionally or not.
Secondly, the feeling of hate must disappear in us, otherwise it reappears as a feeling of fear; for fear is suppressed hate. We must transform the hate into a feeling of love, the love of wisdom.

- Rudolf Steiner, From the Contents of Esoteric Classes – Kassel, 26th February 1909 (GA 266)

The Water's Edge

I shall go to the water's edge,  
And thank Thee for my being.  
I shall light my little candle,  
And see how the fire does consume it.

I shall praise the light -  
And regard the fires with stern respect,
For too much life becomes as death,
As clarity itself, you cannot see -
As light on light, too bright for me.

-B.Hive

Lord's Prayer Rosary

 

We can recite the Lord's Prayer being mindful of the instruction regarding the station of each force as it conducts its way through each ending. If you take some time with this exercise there will be a relief out from the fear that inflicts you. It is surprisingly corrective simply to contemplate.

Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy Name,

(First finger, passive hand - Will of the Father.)

Thy Kingdom Come,

(Middle finger- The withdrawing powers to take us back to Heaven.)

Thy Will be done,

(The finger of obedience - third finger, passive hand.)

On Earth as it is in Heaven.

(Reverence, the power to surrender to God- little finger.)

Give us this day,

(First finger, egoic self consciousness of the present - active hand.)

Our daily bread,

(Containment of our strength and ego - middle finger.)

And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

(Third finger, of strength - active hand.)

And lead us not into temptation,

(Sexuality - little finger.)

But deliver us from evil.

For Thine is the Kingdom,

(Two hands leading up to heart meridian.)

The Power (left hand) and the Glory (right hand),

Forever and ever.

Amen

Here is the equation of the two hands in relation to the will, the higher will, the developing ego, the higher ego and the ego absolute.

-B.Hive

Honey's Favorable Effects- Rudolf Steiner

When honey is eaten it furthers the right connection in man between the airy and the watery elements. Nothing is better for man than to add the right proportion of honey to his food. For in a wonderful way the bees see to it that man learns to work with his soul upon the organs of his body. In the honey the bee gives back again to man what he needs to further the activity of his soul-forces within his body. Thus when man adds some honey to his food, he wishes so to prepare his soul that it may work rightly within his body — breathe rightly.

Bee-keeping is therefore something that greatly helps to advance our civilization, for it makes men strong.

You see, when one realizes that the bees receive very many influences from the starry worlds, one sees also how they can pass on to man what is fitted for him. All that is living, when it is rightly combined, works rightly together. When one stands before a hive of bees one should say quite solemnly to oneself: “By way of the beehive the whole Cosmos enters man and makes him strong and able.”.............

As we grow older, honey has an extremely favorable effect upon us. With children, it is milk that has a similar effect; honey helps us to build our bodies and is thus strongly to be recommended for people who are growing old. It is an exceedingly wholesome food; only one must not eat too much of it! If one eats too much of it, using it not merely as a condiment, one can make the formative forces too strongly active. The form may then get too rigid, and one may develop all kinds of illnesses. A healthy man feels just how much honey he should take. Honey is particularly good for older people because it gives the body the right firmness.

One should also adopt the plan of giving just the right quantity of honey to children suffering from rickets when they are nine to ten months of age, and continue this honey diet till the age of three or four years. Rickets would then not be as bad as it is, for this illness consists in the body being too soft, and collapsing. Of course, in the very first weeks children ought only to be given milk; honey would at that age have no affect. Honey contains the forces that give man's body firmness. 

-From Nine Lectures on Bees by Rudolf Steiner.

The Twelve Days of Christmas- Twelfth Night

• On the twelfth night we set it down and make it real

The percussive movement of the drum, by its repetitiveness and its sound, brings the intended spiritual into the physical and makes it real. On the previous night we gathered our gifts and gave them out in the form of song. This is not exactly a permeation of the physical when compared to the drum. It is no less important either. In point of fact it is a little alike to someone praying for someone who is ill (and this we could call piping the spiritual inspiration) or administering an exact remedy or food (and this would be drumming for example).

If we deliver a wonderful inspiration or truth, if we share a thought or intuitively are guided to act, this would be spiritually playing the pipes. On the other hand if we bring something into actuality by example proving a spiritual worth, being dynamic to a visible reality that is further now within the world at large, then we have drummed, so to speak, and made it real.

On this night there is a certain intent required to accompany this power of this drumming. We require the preparation of the nights before to help guide and clarify what it is that we would choose to find so important that we would have it made real through us, to incarnate through us.

These are the twelve nights of The Incarnation.
-B.Hive

The Twelve Days of Christmas- Eleventh Night

  

• On the eleventh night we come to exhibit great creation!

 

This night is the very cry and movement of the sympathetic divinities working through us [pipers piping]. Now, after having been prepared, we can give out into the world fine and wonderful creations. The spiritual worlds can sing through us by whatever means we have chosen.

On this night our meditation to take with us into the pastures of deep sleep, is of ourselves bringing back into the world such heavenly inspirations that would manifest through our being and give meaning to that which meets with us, and who we truly are.

-B.Hive

The Twelve Days of Christmas- Tenth Night

•   On the tenth night we identify with Our Father

 

This is a night of our being little gods and comprehensively experiencing the wholeness of our own domain. We have come through the ninth period to find that the working whole is doing well and we have mastery with our imagination, with our concepts, with our being, with our egos, over its entirety.

On this night we also can identify with those other men and women who have come to the same, and are lords of their own province, whose development has brought them now 'leaping' through to this stage.
[Lords a'leaping]

-B.Hive

The Twelve Days of Christmas- Ninth Night

  

• On the ninth night we come to find cohesion

New patterns will emerge, new laws, new formations of character and future. This 'dance' of the nine is ongoing and within its own terms quite magically repetitive. We can rest on a form (albeit a new form) of substantiality now becoming apparent to us. This of course has taken over from the old.

This is part of the set to which we now work with, rather than repeating the old laws and dance, formerly experienced.

On this night we can pray and be mindful of our own inner monarchy and for what we might choose within that monarchy as tenant and denizen. We set the rhythm and the pattern of the workings of our own lives. This is the very period of intuiting what it is we require here - to go faster or slower? More particular or not?

As much as we are given the power to set patterns, to work on this dance, we are also on this night given a review to the past dances of our behavior spiritually and mentally that were incorporated and used in our past just gone. [Nine ladies dancing.]

-B.Hive