Philosophical Speculations

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sun Apr 13, 2025 3:01 pm

Why keep an artificial separation between a "given traditional rhythm" of work, when we supposedly execute mundane tasks, and a meaningful activity that expresses higher development and "involves mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result" (what work is according to the dictionary)? Only because it goes in the higher development bucket and needs to be kept separate? Why do you want to separate it?

I just want to add a brief comment addressing these questions. I hope it's clear that there is a phenomenological distinction between our ordinary experience of 'mental effort to achieve a purpose-result' and that which we experience in higher development, the imaginative effort to explore supersensible intuitions. This is a subtle distinction because, normally, we indeed feel like we are quite active, intentional, and in control when we are in the midst of work tasks, for example. Just as we can say that a math problem won't do itself without our mental struggle, we may say that the work tasks won't complete themselves without that struggle. Yet there is a distinction insofar as the latter can unfold quite habitually and automatically, based on etched memory images of how we have done the same tasks and run through the same logical chains of thought that are necessary to complete the tasks, many times before.

All of that shifts as we approach the threshold of supersensible perception and experience ourselves trying to hone in on the proper intuitions and condense them into metaphorical concepts. Every time we write a phenomenological essay on spiritual activity and its depth, for example, we cannot rely on etched memory images of 'how it all works' in quite the same way. We can't start our thinking with certain premises that will logically lead us to the proper concepts to use with strict necessity, like we experience in standard academic or philosophical writing. Instead, it is like we need to do mini-meditations throughout the writing process, we need to continually concentrate on the flow of experience, purified of as many standard assumptions and habits as possible, and locate the relevant intuitions that can then be illustrated through more or less familiar examples and concepts. So when I say, "A key part of higher development is precisely to distinguish this sort of experience, of mental contents, from what we experience in our usual given rhythms", I have in mind something very similar to what Cleric described in relation to our soul grooves:

When our soul is gnawed at by dark feelings, it is as if we’re traveling through a correspondingly shaped curvature of the World groove. In our normal consciousness, we don’t see this environment but it continually shapes our mood and steers the direction of our thinking. Our needle vibrates accordingly to the greater groove and we experience the finer vibrations as correspondingly dark thoughts. Even if we try to override this by scribbling with our needle “Everything is great”, we still can’t help but feel the surrounding cold and darkness. In order to step into a different environment, our thinking has to be amplified such that it can give an impetus to a force in the depth of our feeling-life. Then something in the curvature of the World groove alters and new moods, and new thought-images flow into our consciousness. This is rarely a one-time switch. For a long time, we may need to accumulate this soul force that will allow us to switch tracks. And even then, the two grooves may meander closely together, now going apart, then intertwining again. In general, everything of the nature of sympathies and antipathies can be understood as dim perceptions of the deeper soul groove that we flow through.

We could also apply a similar experienced distinction to what I am speaking of above, especially the bold part. Any of us who write on this forum have probably experienced how much amplified thinking effort it takes to write a somewhat lengthy post about supersensible realities. We have probably experienced how many of our old habits based on normal intellectual life meander into and intertwine with those efforts. Yet, as we persist, the feeling of how they differ from one another grows clearer and starker. This is a very important differentiation to attain in our life experience, unlike any other. It is true that more and more of this higher effort should spiral into our ordinary work and personal lives over time (as individuals and communities), but again, that higher unity will only manifest if we first clearly differentiate the domains of imaginative activity in our experience, as in the image above. It is through that experiential differentiation that "all aspects of life - within the reach of one's current capacities - are to be imbued with the intentions characterizing one's choice to walk a spiritual path", as you put it.

Federica wrote: ↑Sun Apr 13, 2025 4:22 pm I am aware of and agree with this, Ashvin. And it's not hard to differentiate the domains of experience. Since meditative efforts are not something one casually finds oneself into, it's very clear when we are aiming at that different domain of experience. But all this does not change the fact that you deem these qualitatively more elevated activities you describe worthwhile and meaningful applications of your time and effort. That’s why I call these endeavors work. I don't need it to be a codified profession to call it work. I don't need it to be something to pay the bills with. It is even an ideally fitting example of what work is, at its core: a meaningful, large-time scale application of one's life time and effort, beyond past-oriented social conventions, and hatched habits. And I don’t see any valuable reason why work should only comprise cognitively homogenous endeavors. What counts is the will - what one decides to do with one’s time in life, to express meaning. By the way, I think you will agree there is cognitive variability involved in the process of writing an essay, or even in study-meditating. It's not all meditation. For my part - and of course everyone intends their own life as desired - I consider the time and intention that I put in the tasks aimed at directly improving my anthroposophical understanding and action my most important work. The remaining work I do is activities which I hope I'll be able to color with the hues emerging from the former. The difference it makes when I call it work is the consistency and vision that I want to infuse it with.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sun Apr 13, 2025 4:54 pm The thing is, it's not up to us to define the grooves we are flowing through. When I speak of "work" (or Steiner speaks of "vocation"), we are simply trying to describe objective and expansive grooves which contextualize the experiential states of modern souls. It's not a subjective configuration of mental puzzle pieces that we can lift from 'here' and place over 'there', so to speak. We can use different words to paint our intuition for these more encompassing grooves, and indeed, when I pray at night, I often ask the spirit to protect me as I "go beyond to study, pray, and work". So I understand that higher spiritual activity can also be called "work", but we still need to experientially differentiate that work+ from intellectual-sensory work, just as we differentiate mental work from physical work. As hinted above, and as I'm sure you know from experience, there are quite different cognitive faculties and methods involved.

So that is the main thing - the expansive experiential grooves are not something we define from the outset, but something we gradually unveil through our intuitive probing. What we have been called into as a vocation is one such given groove and, if we try to mash our feelings about it together with the work+, we create conditions that will maintain insensitivity to their experiential differences. And such differentiations are of vital importance on the higher path. There is a real risk that we may start to confuse the preferences of our Earthly personality in the context of various tasks with the 'hues' of "higher intentions" (which is a risk we have often mentioned in the context of mystical seekers who imagine they have reached unconditioned 'pure consciousness' when folding up the intellect). We guard against such risks by being keenly aware of when we are still within the gravitational orbit of given karmic rhythms and when, in contrast, we are attaining escape velocity into a new kind of free work.

I also realize that I often stress the continuity between intellectual and higher cognitive experience here, which is an important continuity to maintain in our mental horizon. The reason for maintaining that is precisely to help differentiate the inner strata, since it is easier to orient toward the higher strata when we are aware of how they lawfully transduce to our ordinary intellectual state. It is not to simply postulate they are all overlapping and similar, but as an inner technique to help orient toward the subtle inner differentiations that we otherwise have no reason to suspect. We should become comfortable with this technique of stressing continuity from one perspective and differentiation from another. It's the same principle by which we may stress the creation of new rhythms from one perspective and the discovery of rhythms that are 'always there' from another. All of that can be considered cognitive techniques to help attain the experiential differentiation that is needed to reach higher unities within the life flow.

Federica wrote: ↑Sun Apr 13, 2025 7:44 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sun Apr 13, 2025 4:54 pm The thing is, it's not up to us to define the grooves we are flowing through. When I speak of "work" (or Steiner speaks of "vocation"), we are simply trying to describe objective and expansive grooves which contextualize the experiential states of modern souls. It's not a subjective configuration of mental puzzle pieces that we can lift from 'here' and place over 'there', so to speak. We can use different words to paint our intuition for these more encompassing grooves, and indeed, when I pray at night, I often ask the spirit to protect me as I "go beyond to study, pray, and work". So I understand that higher spiritual activity can also be called "work", but we still need to experientially differentiate that work+ from intellectual-sensory work, just as we differentiate mental work from physical work. As hinted above, and as I'm sure you know from experience, there are quite different cognitive faculties and methods involved.

So that is the main thing - the expansive experiential grooves are not something we define from the outset, but something we gradually unveil through our intuitive probing. What we have been called into as a vocation is one such given groove and, if we try to mash our feelings about it together with the work+, we create conditions that will maintain insensitivity to their experiential differences. And such differentiations are of vital importance on the higher path. There is a real risk that we may start to confuse the preferences of our Earthly personality in the context of various tasks with the 'hues' of "higher intentions" (which is a risk we have often mentioned in the context of mystical seekers who imagine they have reached unconditioned 'pure consciousness' when folding up the intellect). We guard against such risks by being keenly aware of when we are still within the gravitational orbit of given karmic rhythms and when, in contrast, we are attaining escape velocity into a new kind of free work.

I also realize that I often stress the continuity between intellectual and higher cognitive experience here, which is an important continuity to maintain in our mental horizon. The reason for maintaining that is precisely to help differentiate the inner strata, since it is easier to orient toward the higher strata when we are aware of how they lawfully transduce to our ordinary intellectual state. It is not to simply postulate they are all overlapping and similar, but as an inner technique to help orient toward the subtle inner differentiations that we otherwise have no reason to suspect. We should become comfortable with this technique of stressing continuity from one perspective and differentiation from another. It's the same principle by which we may stress the creation of new rhythms from one perspective and the discovery of rhythms that are 'always there' from another. All of that can be considered cognitive techniques to help attain the experiential differentiation that is needed to reach higher unities within the life flow.

Ok, perhaps I better see what you mean now. But not completely, surely because I don't have enough experience with these things. From my perspective, I can't qualify the "lawfulness" of the transduction of higher strata to ordinary intellect. I only notice that efforts in one domain end up being somehow rewarded in the other, or having some effect.
And it seems to me that the differentiation you speak of is a remote goal to attain, since the karmic endeavors and the completely free ones inevitably take place the ones in the context of the others. For example, I certainly choose a meditative theme or image for concentration and not another one based on personal preferences. I am studying lectures on the topic of medicine (not with the goal of making improbable therapeutic attempts, but as a perspective to understand man in the context of the universe) and of course this is a personal preference, one that shapes the path ahead.
So I am gravitating along certain large spectrum grooves, and at the same time I attempt to gain some elevation from within their shapes. Moreover, I think it is possible to gain a level of independence from the "given grooves" - or let's say simply some maneuvering space within them - with simple ordinary will, and soul qualities. It's not exclusively through higher pursuits that active navigation in the groove landscape is realized, but also to some extent by the work of the ordinary will (even without consciousness of the overall landscape). IN other words, the groove landscape may be given in its outlines, but we can try to overcome the attraction of one particular groove (like the dark feelings in Clerics quote, or a specific vocation or job) to move towards other grooves. That would be karmic and freely determined at the same time.
All this acknowledged, it seems to me well differentiated when one decides to freely exercise the spirit, as opposed to flowing within the boundaries of the sensory-intellectual curvatures. So I am not sure I see what you mean by "the subtle inner differentiations that we otherwise have no reason to suspect"?

Federica wrote: ↑Sun Apr 13, 2025 7:44 pm And it seems to me that the differentiation you speak of is a remote goal to attain, since the karmic endeavors and the completely free ones inevitably take place the ones in the context of the others. For example, I certainly choose a meditative theme or image for concentration and not another one based on personal preferences. I am studying lectures on the topic of medicine (not with the goal of making improbable therapeutic attempts, but as a perspective to understand man in the context of the universe) and of course this is a personal preference, one that shapes the path ahead.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Apr 14, 2025 6:48 pm

Federica wrote: ↑Sun Apr 13, 2025 7:44 pm And it seems to me that the differentiation you speak of is a remote goal to attain, since the karmic endeavors and the completely free ones inevitably take place the ones in the context of the others. For example, I certainly choose a meditative theme or image for concentration and not another one based on personal preferences. I am studying lectures on the topic of medicine (not with the goal of making improbable therapeutic attempts, but as a perspective to understand man in the context of the universe) and of course this is a personal preference, one that shapes the path ahead.

Adding a few comments on this distinction between conditioned and free activity. Indeed, it's not helpful to think of anything we think or do as 'completely free', since humanity is still in the infant stages of liberating from the etched pathways of natural-cultural conditioning. So those pathways will continue to exert an influence on our activity even in our higher spiritual pursuits, as you have observed. There is a lot of overlap and, on the spiritual path, we will meander back and forth as indicated before. But a critical part of the process of expanding the sphere of liberation is first becoming more sensitive to what it means for our activity to be relatively more or less conditioned. Of course, we shouldn't be relying on definitions to establish this meaningful differentiation but on phenomenological experience and corresponding intuitions, which gradually 'thicken' and flesh out the more we approach the experiences from various angles.

A tried and true sign of relatively more free activity is the experience of a certain degree of reluctance, hesitance, resistance, and fear when approaching its enactment. That is a completely understandable experience when we consider how free activity invites us to flow outside the usual etched circuitry, without the familiar sensory and conceptual supports. We are recursively attempting to explore the second-order processes by which we accomplish our ordinary mental and physical tasks. It feels like trying to catch a bolt of lightning in a bottle. We will often procrastinate engaging in such activity like we may do with physical chores or work projects, but to a much more intense degree. We have to resist the default sympathy for ease, convenience, pleasure, and so on at a much deeper level than we are used to.

We also know from experience that this relatively freer activity doesn't necessarily lead to immediate meaningful feedback of the sort we get when engaging in physical or ordinary mental activity. When I move from point A to point B, the sensory panorama transforms like clockwork and instructs me with practically unerring precision. When I start moving my intellect to accomplish a work task, I can generally expect a flow of thoughts to feed back that are directly relevant to the completion of that task (this can vary depending on our line of work, of course). Yet it's not the same with concentrating on a meditative theme (regardless of the content) - some dim intuitions about the flow of existence may feed back, nothing may feed back, or, quite often, a storm of distracting feelings and thoughts may feed back. In that sense, the freer activity is characterized by a lack of worldly incentive, it invites us to engage in some activity only for the Love of pursuing the activity itself.

I'm sure we can characterize it along many more axes of inner experience, but hopefully, the above is already helpful in making the differentiation feel less remote. It can also be a good indicator of when we may be approaching either meditation or studying of esoteric materials in a relatively conditioned way, customizing the latter to our familiar intellectual habits and preferences. In the beginning, we probably feel like it is enjoyable and easy to get into simply because it is something quite novel, insightful, and can therefore hold our interest. Yet, over time, we should approach thresholds at which we feel like there are 'diminishing returns' from the current approach and which prompt us toward a new sort of sacrificial effort to attain expanded degrees of freedom and explore new meaningful domains of existence. We should experience and honestly embrace the hesitance, reluctance, fear, etc. Otherwise, we may simply be fitting the esoteric pursuits into our etched circuitry without realizing it.

Federica wrote: ↑Mon Apr 14, 2025 10:06 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Apr 14, 2025 6:48 pm

Federica wrote: ↑Sun Apr 13, 2025 7:44 pm And it seems to me that the differentiation you speak of is a remote goal to attain, since the karmic endeavors and the completely free ones inevitably take place the ones in the context of the others. For example, I certainly choose a meditative theme or image for concentration and not another one based on personal preferences. I am studying lectures on the topic of medicine (not with the goal of making improbable therapeutic attempts, but as a perspective to understand man in the context of the universe) and of course this is a personal preference, one that shapes the path ahead.

Adding a few comments on this distinction between conditioned and free activity. Indeed, it's not helpful to think of anything we think or do as 'completely free', since humanity is still in the infant stages of liberating from the etched pathways of natural-cultural conditioning. So those pathways will continue to exert an influence on our activity even in our higher spiritual pursuits, as you have observed. There is a lot of overlap and, on the spiritual path, we will meander back and forth as indicated before. But a critical part of the process of expanding the sphere of liberation is first becoming more sensitive to what it means for our activity to be relatively more or less conditioned. Of course, we shouldn't be relying on definitions to establish this meaningful differentiation but on phenomenological experience and corresponding intuitions, which gradually 'thicken' and flesh out the more we approach the experiences from various angles.

A tried and true sign of relatively more free activity is the experience of a certain degree of reluctance, hesitance, resistance, and fear when approaching its enactment. That is a completely understandable experience when we consider how free activity invites us to flow outside the usual etched circuitry, without the familiar sensory and conceptual supports. We are recursively attempting to explore the second-order processes by which we accomplish our ordinary mental and physical tasks. It feels like trying to catch a bolt of lightning in a bottle. We will often procrastinate engaging in such activity like we may do with physical chores or work projects, but to a much more intense degree. We have to resist the default sympathy for ease, convenience, pleasure, and so on at a much deeper level than we are used to.

We also know from experience that this relatively freer activity doesn't necessarily lead to immediate meaningful feedback of the sort we get when engaging in physical or ordinary mental activity. When I move from point A to point B, the sensory panorama transforms like clockwork and instructs me with practically unerring precision. When I start moving my intellect to accomplish a work task, I can generally expect a flow of thoughts to feed back that are directly relevant to the completion of that task (this can vary depending on our line of work, of course). Yet it's not the same with concentrating on a meditative theme (regardless of the content) - some dim intuitions about the flow of existence may feed back, nothing may feed back, or, quite often, a storm of distracting feelings and thoughts may feed back. In that sense, the freer activity is characterized by a lack of worldly incentive, it invites us to engage in some activity only for the Love of pursuing the activity itself.

I'm sure we can characterize it along many more axes of inner experience, but hopefully, the above is already helpful in making the differentiation feel less remote. It can also be a good indicator of when we may be approaching either meditation or studying of esoteric materials in a relatively conditioned way, customizing the latter to our familiar intellectual habits and preferences. In the beginning, we probably feel like it is enjoyable and easy to get into simply because it is something quite novel, insightful, and can therefore hold our interest. Yet, over time, we should approach thresholds at which we feel like there are 'diminishing returns' from the current approach and which prompt us toward a new sort of sacrificial effort to attain expanded degrees of freedom and explore new meaningful domains of existence. We should experience and honestly embrace the hesitance, reluctance, fear, etc. Otherwise, we may simply be fitting the esoteric pursuits into our etched circuitry without realizing it.

Thanks, Ashvin. Yes, I am familiar with each of these obstacles and some more, for example feeling sleepy just when approaching meditation, and even study, at any time of the day. Sleepiness can be controlled when it's not real exhaustion, but one still has to find the will to do it. About diminishing returns - yes, they encourage to quit the meditation, book, lecture cycle and begin a new one. For meditation I don't have a technique to counter that. For study, I do it by keeping organized notes and revisiting them. It is time consuming but really helpful for me. I realize it may be an intellectual "customization", but it's still better than leaving things unfinished and disconnected. Strangely enough, the sacrifices that 'only' require an activity of the mind in the moment, are consistently harder than sacrifices of long established comfortable habits. I have been estimating these relations quite wrongly, but at least these mistakes help control the thoughts better, and be more self-aware in general.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue Apr 15, 2025 1:13 pm Yeah, I am reminded of how Steiner mentions somewhere that studying the supersensible thoughts of spiritual science is a great way to get to sleep at night I have sometimes had to discontinue listening to audio lectures while driving for that reason as well.

Thanks for sharing your strategies. Personally, I have also started using the strategy of 'pray and wait'. Sometimes, it feels to me that these resistances cannot be tackled head-on, that they will only be given more fuel in that way if I grow too frustrated. I try to sense how I am in the midst of encompassing soul rhythms that need to 'rotate back' into a favorable configuration, so to speak, before I will catch an ascending current of enthusiasm, interest, concentration, etc. I know the waiting aspect can also become problematic if taken to an extreme, so I always try to remain conscious that I am putting some things off and refrain from justifying it with rationalizations, i.e., telling myself it is actually the most optimal method for "spiritual development". As long as we remain conscious and vigilant, I don't think there is too much risk in allowing certain rhythms to play out and waiting for more favorable openings. We should never stop everything completely - in the meantime, we can still do mini-exercises here and there, listen to audio lectures, write on this forum, etc.

Federica wrote: ↑Tue Apr 15, 2025 5:39 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue Apr 15, 2025 1:13 pm Yeah, I am reminded of how Steiner mentions somewhere that studying the supersensible thoughts of spiritual science is a great way to get to sleep at night I have sometimes had to discontinue listening to audio lectures while driving for that reason as well.

Thanks for sharing your strategies. Personally, I have also started using the strategy of 'pray and wait'. Sometimes, it feels to me that these resistances cannot be tackled head-on, that they will only be given more fuel in that way if I grow too frustrated. I try to sense how I am in the midst of encompassing soul rhythms that need to 'rotate back' into a favorable configuration, so to speak, before I will catch an ascending current of enthusiasm, interest, concentration, etc. I know the waiting aspect can also become problematic if taken to an extreme, so I always try to remain conscious that I am putting some things off and refrain from justifying it with rationalizations, i.e., telling myself it is actually the most optimal method for "spiritual development". As long as we remain conscious and vigilant, I don't think there is too much risk in allowing certain rhythms to play out and waiting for more favorable openings. We should never stop everything completely - in the meantime, we can still do mini-exercises here and there, listen to audio lectures, write on this forum, etc.

Yes, like in the riverbed image, we can't work against the flow but we also don't want to miss the next opportunity to imprint something of value in it. Not in a dark way, but sometimes it helps me to think about how short life is and how much more diligent I would be, probably, if I had a clearer sense of how fast it slips through the fingers while I am waiting and hesitating. So I can try to sense the entire life rhythm somewhat more realistically.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue Apr 15, 2025 6:25 pm

Federica wrote: ↑Tue Apr 15, 2025 5:39 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue Apr 15, 2025 1:13 pm Yeah, I am reminded of how Steiner mentions somewhere that studying the supersensible thoughts of spiritual science is a great way to get to sleep at night I have sometimes had to discontinue listening to audio lectures while driving for that reason as well.

Thanks for sharing your strategies. Personally, I have also started using the strategy of 'pray and wait'. Sometimes, it feels to me that these resistances cannot be tackled head-on, that they will only be given more fuel in that way if I grow too frustrated. I try to sense how I am in the midst of encompassing soul rhythms that need to 'rotate back' into a favorable configuration, so to speak, before I will catch an ascending current of enthusiasm, interest, concentration, etc. I know the waiting aspect can also become problematic if taken to an extreme, so I always try to remain conscious that I am putting some things off and refrain from justifying it with rationalizations, i.e., telling myself it is actually the most optimal method for "spiritual development". As long as we remain conscious and vigilant, I don't think there is too much risk in allowing certain rhythms to play out and waiting for more favorable openings. We should never stop everything completely - in the meantime, we can still do mini-exercises here and there, listen to audio lectures, write on this forum, etc.

Yes, like in the riverbed image, we can't work against the flow but we also don't want to miss the next opportunity to imprint something of value in it. Not in a dark way, but sometimes it helps me to think about how short life is and how much more diligent I would be, probably, if I had a clearer sense of how fast it slips through the fingers while I am waiting and hesitating. So I can try to sense the entire life rhythm somewhat more realistically.

It's interesting because I have been moving in somewhat the opposite direction. I try to sense more concretely how this life is only a single 'scene' in the movie reel of incarnations and how I will ultimately be more effective in my pursuits if I focus less on grabbing onto the transient states of sensations and thoughts and more on the overarching rhythms. Again, I realize this can become a trap if we zoom out too much from the real-time flow of obligations and tasks, neglecting them and imagining everything can be accomplished in some indefinite future. As Steiner often mentions, knowledge of reincarnation was blotted out precisely so that individual human souls could learn to value each life as if it's the only opportunity we have. Yet now it seems humanity has arrived at a new dispensation where, aligned with the restored knowledge of multiple incarnations, we can learn to 'slow down' a bit and see how various higher goals can be more patiently and smoothly pursued without too much expectation of near-term results. We should certainly engage the soul qualities of determination, vigilance, perserverance, courage, and so on, which were cultivated over the last few thousand years, yet we can also complement and temper that with more expansive insight into the long-term nested rhythms through which the evolutionary drama will unfold (at least 'long-term' from the perspective of our mental ticking states, which is not how the rhythms are always experienced). For me, the sense of rushedness that is characteristic of the modern intellect has not been helpful when translated to concentrated spiritual pursuits (I realize this probably isn't what you meant above, but I think it's a common default experience that is helpful to address).