The Six Soul Exercises
"To be free is to be capable of thinking one's own thoughts..." - Rudolf Steiner
Self-directed activity in Life is the key to counter the many challenges we see within and around us at this time.
How can we take ourselves by the heart, hands, and feet to take up our responsibility from the inside?
We can take up a meditative path that ensures we stay connected to the world because it is a modern path of development that enables us to live more fully, and to be present in our experiences, feelings, and thoughts. No one else can do it for us. The questions we have asked and continue to ask, are ours.
Our everyday thinking is scattered and based on sense impressions of many kinds, but we can transform the everyday thinking into an active, living thinking that is more flexible and self-directed. With discipline and effort, perhaps accompanied by others also striving alongside, we can ensure the Self is kept balanced amidst the forces of hindrance that seek to push and pull us in different ways.
The transformation of our feeling life invites us to pay attention to our feelings and strive to experience them and observe them, as objectively as possible. In this way, we accompany our feelings; we are not controlled by them; no are we denying them.
The sooner we can start to take hold of our thinking and feeling life, the better. Our most unconscious part is our willing life, and is the most challenging to transform. The will is our capacity for doing, for moving in life and it can be ruled by instincts, habits, and desires, which we must work to notice and observe objectively, and at the same time, strive to overcome. Often we and others around us may be acting or speaking from conditioned patterning and ingrained habits and unconscious behaviours without thinking. To recognise these aspects within ourselves is the key.
Taking our thinking, feeling, and willing in control, we can choose our actions instead of following habitual patterns of reacting.
Crayon-Watercolour Artwork -Virtues research : Nisha Halai
"The will is not merely assertive, aggressive, and controlling. There is the accepting will, yielding will, the dedicated will. You might say that there is a feminine polarity to the will – the willing surrender, the joyful acceptance of the other functions of the personality".
Walking the Path of the Six Soul Exercises
Over the last 10 years, I have heard these exercises called by different names (as people fin their intuitive relationship to them).
Six Basic Exercises
Sux Fundamental Exercises
Six Subsidiary Exercises
Six Soul Exercises
The six exercises are:
The Control of Thought:
This exercise involves focusing the mind on a single thought or idea for an extended period of time, in order to develop mental discipline and control.
The Control of Feelings:
This exercise involves focusing on a feeling or emotion and observing it without judgment or attachment, in order to develop emotional awareness and control.
The Control of Actions:
This exercise involves choosing a simple action or gesture, such as walking or breathing, and performing it consciously and with full attention, in order to develop physical awareness and control.
The Path of Equanimity:
This exercise involves cultivating a sense of inner balance and detachment from external circumstances, in order to develop spiritual equanimity and resilience.
The Path of Consecration:
This exercise involves dedicating oneself to a spiritual ideal or goal, and striving to embody it in daily life, in order to deepen one’s spiritual commitment and connection.
The Path of Insight:
This exercise involves developing the ability to perceive and understand the spiritual dimensions of reality, through the practice of contemplation and insight meditation.
I have found them to be the most important self-directed activity anyone can ever take while alive. For it is only through the living thinking human being that actual wholesome change can develop.
Resources :
How to Know Higher Worlds: A Modern Path of Initiation (CW 10)
Book by Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner
Enlivening the Chakra of the Heart
The Fundamental Spiritual Exercises of Rudolf Steiner
By: Florin Lowndes, Matthew Barton (Translator)
Six Exercises by Brian Gray :
Six Exercises by Tom Van Gelder :
Online international support cycle :
Stay Connected : How to continue your relationships with those who have died
Book by Rudolf Steiner
Comments