The Growing Capacity for
Gratitude for Difficulties
Here we are at the 6th Holy Night. As we move further away from the Day of Nativity, we must work harder to remember we are in the midst of the Holy Nights. Yes, with tonight's message we have completed the first half of Inner Christmas.
What have you found appearing in your soul during these nights? An insight, a feeling, an intention, a spark of freedom, a moment of love? Or have you found yourself feeling a new emptiness or perhaps a resentment? Do you wish you were paying more attention to opening up to connecting with the spiritual world and to connecting with your own emerging selfhood?
What were your goals when you began celebrating Inner Christmas? If you didn't have any clear goals, notice it. Maybe now is the time to consider (from the Latin - con-with and sidere - star). Rudolf Steiner writes, in my favorite verse, "I feel my star. My star finds me." In the bold mood of the Holy Nights, feel your star and let it find you! Let it be your goal to simply consider what finds you.
It may be difficult to trust your feeling or to want to be clear about it. Bless the difficulty.
Difficulties are springboards to inner and practical development. Difficult jobs. Difficult relationships. Difficult health. Difficult childhood. Difficult moods. Difficult days and difficult nights. It can feel as if everything you seek, even deserve, is met with resistance, a coninuing echo of "No room at the inn."
Difficulties direct us to the manger, the unexpected shelter where we give birth to something new, something glorious, something redeeming in our hearts, minds, and endeavors.
Physically, it is very difficult to birth a baby - I've done it twice. It is labor. It is transition that comes too fast and too intensely. The feeling of ambivalence in the process is unspeakable. Then the joy, joy, joy of the new. Then comes the difficulty of parenting and of nurturing the child to meet its destiny. And everybody learns lessons, grows and becomes wise with each difficulty that is faced. Some "baby" is born, some epiphany strikes the soul.
The mature, ripe soul has learned to benefit from difficulties and the wise soul feels gratitude. Our goal is to birth ourselves anew many times and labor willingly. And welcome the sudden and often painful epiphanies.
Tonight look at the lessons of the year, the moral lessons that made you a better you. How difficult was the learning? Be grateful.
To become strong enough to welcome the painful epiphanies is a goal I embrace for the Christ. Without His example and that of so many great souls like Christian Rosenkreutz and Rudolf Steiner I might not have arrived at this self-realization.
ReplyDeleteIn certain circles of like-minded people I have found some with cognizance of this truth, some people obviously trying hard not to ditch the pain and not to generate more pain in the process, but still the process is strained -- far from joyful. We need to develop a virtue of appreciation plus tolerance toward ourselves and others -- all those trying in this way -- maybe not succeeding all the time.
The rest of the world seems to be completely oblivious to this step in soul work. I am grateful that in this lifetime I have worked with souls this way. Without such witness of working though the darkness with equilibrium --not panic-- cynicism and despair would trample the spiritual heart fire.
Thanks to all those living and "the so-called dead" who have taught me about this. Upcoming times (sooner than we may think) will be exacting more development of this consciousness and strength in Christ to live in pain retaining love and faith, and growing the capacity for forgiveness.
"Difficult" is a challenge, an invitation of life for the next step, the question about loyalty to the truth. "Difficult" is a veil hanging over my head, so I cannot look through the shadows of the illusions I create. No 'goals', just be ready, be aware, in confidence
ReplyDeleteI am struggling with the difficulty of holding the experiences and stories of the spiritual world in one hand and the realities and words of the material world in the other. These have felt like swaying scales in the arms of justice and equalibrium that have been hard for me to reconcile. Just now, reading the words of a rabbi who states that we can't really know what happens after death, and if anything happens at all until we experience it (life in the material world) juxtaposed with spiritualists who have intuitions, experiences and messages from the world beyond describing our lives past, present and future, (life in the spiritual world) is a difficult wrestling place for me. Where I am on the wrestling mat is gleaning from those who take stock in the material world the challenge to look this life in the face more seriously, and make our thoughts, actions, and meaning making here really count, and taking from the spiritualists, in whose camp I reside, the reality and richness of trusted experience- the materially invisible, but truly viable, intuitively and imaginatively knowable life giving experiences. It is tough sometimes being a spiritualist in the presence of a materialist, since we live in such a materially conscious world. I welcome any insight on the wrestling mat. . . !
ReplyDelete"Bless the difficulty." Thank you for this message. I have found that it is possible to bless the difficulties, yet remain in a place very much short of rebirth. I am hopeful that these Holy Nights experiences will help shake me out of this stuck place...of recognizing the gifts that difficulties have brought, but somehow not being able to move on to a place of acceptance that brings change. My husband died five years ago, drowning in the arms of our son on a vacation that they shared as a celebration of his survival of a cancer journey. My son survived a tormented year where he considered taking his own life. He came to speak of the gifts his father gave him by his death, and his way of living showed that he had truly accepted the gifts of difficulty. I too can bless the difficulties, but somehow have not been able to move from a place of self-destructiveness and dark thoughts to a place where I am once again able to give back to others. I feel that these Holy Nights are somehow cracking the tough shell that I have built up around my soul in order to just survive. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteTaking a cue from Rudolf Steiner's line I wrote this poem:
ReplyDeleteMy star has found me.
Imagine that!
What a miracle!
Consider all the stars in the sky,
Consider all the people on earth.
For the two of us to intersect?
For my star to find me?
It's amazing!
Gratitude and Caution:
I give abundant thanks for the coincidence.
I am cautious not to blunder, to waste the gifts bestowed.