| | Whitsun 2020: World Pandemic as Universal Pentecost
The parallels between Pentecost 33 and Whitsun 2020 are fascinating. We will explore how today's worldwide pandemic is a true gift from the spiritual world, inviting and actively enabling us to step forward into our identity and destiny as divine messengers of Freedom and Love.
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| Lelan Harris is speaking online at a gathering hosted by the Front Range Anthroposophical Café (FRAC)
Date: Friday, May 29
Time: 7:00 PM (MDT, GMT/UDC -6) Cost: Free How: At the appointed date and time, click the link below and you will be admitted to an online Zoom Gathering.
There will be an opening meditation, then Lelan will speak for 20 minutes. After his presentation, we will break up into small group chat rooms for reflection and discussion. The gathering will conclude with a question and answer time with Lelan, final thoughts, and a closing verse.
Please join us for this timely event! |
| | The following quotes are provided as recommended preparation for our gathering.
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| Awakening to Community
by Rudolf Steiner
People must come closer to one another than they used to be, each becoming an awakener of everyone he meets. Modern human beings entering life today have stored up far too much karma not to feel a destined connection with every individual they encounter. In earlier ages, souls were younger and had not formed so many karmic ties. Now it has become necessary to be awakened not just by Nature, but by the human beings with whom we are karmically connected and whom we want to seek.
~ Rudolf Steiner, Awakening to Community (lecture 9, given in Dornach, Switzerland on March 3, 1923; GA 257)
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| | Pentecost, Philosophy of Freedom, and Knowledge of Higher Worlds
by Sergei O. Prokofieff
The origin of The Philosophy of Freedom is connected with the renewed activity of the Whitsun Spirit. According to the Fifth Gospel, its appearance at the Turning Point of Time was inseparable from the event that Rudolf Steiner describes in connection with what the Apostles experienced on Whit Sunday. According to his spiritual research, they were as if fructified and at the same time awakened by the 'all-governing cosmic love . . . that permeates and enwarms the universe' (GA 148, 2 October 1913).
This cosmic love must not be confused, however, with the Holy Spirit, even though cosmic love is most deeply connected with the Holy Spirit in the universe and appears itself as the spirit of the cosmos. For we read in the above-mentioned lecture by Rudolf Steiner that at Pentecost 'the Apostles were awakened by the spirit of love out of the cosmos'.
Thus, this spirit of love that comes out of the cosmos -- and since the primal Pentecostal festival has remained connected with humanity -- must ascend during the epoch of the consciousness soul into the fully awake consciousness of human beings in order as the 'Spirit of the World All' . . . to fructify 'all other cultural elements if they are not willing to be dead'.
In other words, this permeation of culture on the earth with this spirit of love can only occur if the human being begins to act out of pure 'love of the object' in accordance with The Philosophy of Freedom. Only in this way can present-day culture be saved, which in all directions is pervaded by selfishness and egotism, and therefore turns increasingly to evil . . . .
And the power that accomplishes this liberation is above all the same one that we are familiar with already from the second part of The Philosophy of Freedom, namely the 'love for the object' or, using the formulation from the last chapter of the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, 'the love for one's surrounding world', which radiates out of the human being and penetrates all of his/her deeds.
~ Sergei O. Prokofieff, The Guardian of the Threshold and the Philosophy of Freedom: On the Relationship of The Philosophy of Freedom to the Fifth Gospel (Temple Lodge 2007 in German, 2011 in English).
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| | The Path to Freedom and Love and their Significance in World Events
By Rudolf Steiner
Our inner life is constantly deepened when we send will – our own inherent force – into our thinking, when we permeate our thinking with will. We bring will into thinking and thereby attain freedom. As we gradually perfect our actions we finally succeed in sending thoughts into these actions; we irradiate our actions – which proceed from our will – with thoughts. On the one side (inwards) we live a life of thought; we permeate this with the will and thus find freedom. On the other side (outwards) our actions stream forth from our will, and we permeate them with our thoughts. [See diagram.]
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| But by what means do our actions evolve to greater perfection? To use an invariably controversial expression: How do we achieve greater perfection in our actions? We achieve this by developing in ourselves the force which can only be designated by the words: devotion to the outer world. The more our devotion to the outer world grows and intensifies, the more does this outer world stir us to action. But it is just through unfolding devotion to the outer world that we succeed in permeating our actions with thoughts. What, in reality, is devotion to the outer world? Devotion to the outer world, which pervades our actions with thoughts, is nothing else than love. . . .
Thus you see how in the human being the two great ideals, freedom and love, grow together. Freedom and love are also that which individual human beings, standing in the world, can bring to realization within themselves in such a way that, through humanity, the one unites with the other for the good of the world.
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| ~ Rudolf Steiner, The Bridge Between Universal Spirituality and the Physical Constitution of Man: The Path to Freedom and Love and their Significance in World Events (lecture presented in Dornach, Switzerland, on December 19, 1920; GA 202).
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| | Art Credit: "Pentecost" by Jean II Restout (1732), Louvre Museum, in the public domain. |
| Gratitude & appreciation to Jodi Chandler for her significant contributions to the content and aesthetics of this newsletter. |
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