The capacity of containing divergent ideas and visions

Ideas belong to the world of Creation: the etheric world. God created Man, Man is a most complex COSMIC “Thought” of all creative powers, of God.

Thoughts are clothed in words so we can communicate our thoughts, our ideas, our visions. They possess the power of the etheric elements.

So is “education” is an etheric – creative power of adults towards infants.

It becomes our identity. Thoughts, habits, ideas, visions form my identity.

It takes a strong will to “see” how strongly and powerful they are ego-syntonic. Trying to understand my thoughts and ideas, enhances my sense of identity through the attentiveness of my fellow human being = becoming more and more myself.

Attacking my visions can be perceived as an assault on my identity.

Denying my visions and ideas has a disastrous power, and provokes a sense of self- destructiveness upon myself.

I.

The power of denial by my fellowmen is an overwhelming experience of self-alienation. We observe in the gesture of “denial” the Anti-“ I “- forces at work, whatever their nature.

 

Above you see a schedule of “the row of denial”:

 

THIS ROW OF DENIAL PREVAILS DRAMATICALLY IN TODAY’S SOCIAL COMMUNICATION. IT IS THE SIGNATURE OF THE ANTI-“I” IN A SEQUENCE OF “FRAMING” INTENTIONAL AND AGGRAVATING DESTRUCTION OF OTHER LIVING BEINGS:

 

  1. DENIAL
  2. BAGATELLIZATION
  3. RIDICULIZATION
  4. PATHOLOGIZATION
  5. VICTIMIZATION
  6. ISOLATION
  7. (SELF)DESTRUCTION

 

This row of Denial shows the intensifying powers of destructiveness by the anti–“I“. And this anti–“I“ has to be recognized by all of us, for we all run the danger of getting trapped in it’s dynamic by Luciferic or Ahrimanic powers creeping through the doors of our souls. It is so difficult, but the more important, to keep in our hearts and mind the verses of Steiner and admonitions of Peter Fonagy and Anthony Bateman:

 

“In the spiritual awakening to ourselves,

we are dependent on the very presence of another human being on his purposeful –

  • selfless, convergent, meaningful interest in us, and the inner space he can give us

so that we can learn to understand ourselves in our search for questions of spirit and soul”.

 

 

Then some slides shown together with the image above, taken from The Nine Layers of the Earth (GA 94 Cosmogony 1906)- Rudolf Steiner.1

 

7th layer

Its substance transforms all qualities into their opposite by inverting and reversing them into their opposite movements, into their opposite.

It is the layer that is called the earth reflector.

 

8th layer

Its substance is anti-morality. It turns all the qualities developed by human beings into their opposite, these are disentangled and dispersed! All moral feelings, such as love, compassion, brotherhood, become harshness, brutality, etc. In Dante’s Inferno one finds here the Cain layer.

It is the Layer of the Earth-splittering powers, the Shatterers.

 

1 The Nine Layers of the Earth. GA 94 Cosmogony 1906 Rudolf Steiner.

 

9th layer.

Here is the layer of the magical, the evil – the black magic movements.

It is the layer of the negative earth-brain.

  • Now, when very specific evil will impulses work together today,
  • then they affect the fire layer,
  • and it can then be the case
  • that the shaking of the fire layer continues,
  • to the water layer, through the other layers,
  • all the way to the top layer,
  • and there will be earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, seaquakes and so on.

Moral will of humanity has to prevent this!

The Anthroposophical Movement is related to a very definite goal of Earth development: it has to bring about the general fraternisation of human beings; its aim should be:
to improve, to heal the Earth-Splitting powers – the 8th layer.

 

II.

We have to mention another phenomena of today: the loss of the capacity for “change of perspective”, and the loss of the capacity for “compassion”.

  • a longitudinal meta-analytical study was conducted in the US over the years 1979 – 2009 with

the key questions: ‘Has the inner capacity for compassion and honest empathy changed over time?’2 Here, again, the results showed significant negative changes in social skills, indeed a sharp decline.

The research outcomes were shocking: a significant backslide was found:

  1. In Empathy: the willingness and ability to provide empathy and inter-human care, and
  2. a significant backslide in the capacity to change one’s own perspective, which means: the competence to “change social perspective”.

 

This decline became alarmingly significant from the year 2000.

These are clinically shocking findings. They fit in today’s Pandemic of the Global Disease of Disinterest.

NB

In practice, these phenomena are usually encountered in secondary disorders of sustained traumatisation, in some personality disorders, in psychopathy, in malign narcissism, in anorexia.

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September 2nd, 2021
Board Meeting IFAPA
Henriette Dekkers

 

2 Conrad, Hsing et al in: Pers. Soc. Psychology Review 2010 Cross temporal meta-analysis of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index IRI.

 

Friedrich Glasl, Anthroposophist,

Pupil of Bernard Lievegoed THE CONFLICT ESCALATION LADDER

Source:

Rudolf Steiner,

The Nine Layers of the Earth. GA 94 Cosmogony 1906

 

 

The Nine Layers of the Earth. GA 94 Cosmogony 1906

1st layer

The outermost, physical-substantial layer of the earth: volcanic eruptions, earthquakes. Natural science only comes to the middle of this layer.

It is the mineral earth which deepens downwards to the densest warmth.

 

2nd layer

In this layer life is expelled, it is the substance-killing layer, the life-killing layer of the earth. The plant world mineralises. It is the life-destroying layer.

 

3rd layer

It is the layer of distortion, the layer of inversions. Sensations of pain become pleasure, sensations of pleasure become pain. Matter acquires quality of sensation in the perverse dimension.

It is the inverted layer of sensation.

 

4th Layer

Here we find the layer of cavities. It contains the hollow spaces, that is: it is the negative -, the template in which the substance is poured out and becomes form. Here is the counter-space of space.

It is the hollow-form layer of the substances.

 

5th layer.

Proliferating life is its primal characteristic, unrestricted chaos. It is the chick of aimless, destructive proliferation.

 

6th layer.

This layer is substantially impressionable. Its substances are entirely formed of will + sensation. This layer causes a resonance on will impulses. It cries out when pressed. This will-sensing layer is its innermost quality according to is quasi similar to fire.

It is the layer of the fire-earth.

 

7th layer

Its substance transforms all qualities into their opposite by inverting and reversing them into their opposite movements, into their opposite.

It is the layer that is called the earth reflector.

 

8th layer

5         Its substance is anti-morality. It turns all the qualities developed by human beings into their opposite,

                      these are disentangled and dispersed! All moral feelings, such as love, compassion, brotherhood, become harshness, brutality, etc. In Dante’s Inferno one finds here the Cain layer.

It is the Layer of the Earth-splittering powers, the Shatterers.

 

9th layer.

Here is the layer of the magical, the evil – the black magic movements. It is the layer of the negative earth-brain.

  • Now, when very specific evil will impulses work together today,
  • then they affect the fire layer,
  • and it can then be the case
  • that the shaking of the fire layer continues,
  • to the water layer, through the other layers,
  • all the way to the top layer,
  • and there will be earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, seaquakes and so

Moral will of humanity has to prevent this!

The Anthroposophical Movement is related to a very definite goal of Earth development: it has to bring about the general fraternisation of human beings; its aim should be:

to improve, to heal the Earth-Splitting powers – the 8th layer.

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