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Freeing the Soul From Fear: Study Guide
Dear Friends, A number of people asked me or emailed or wrote wanting to know how to set up small reading groups to go through the processes of soul strengthening suggested in Freeing the Soul from Fear. I hope this study guide helps. I suggest that a reading group that works with this guide come together once a week or once every two weeks for a year. There are other possibilities too. A group can work with one section of the book for a couple of months, put it aside, come back later and work with another section. Working in healing ways with fear is not a matter of information alone. It is a matter of going through restorative and awakening processes of the inner life. If groups who work with this guide have specific questions, I will be happy to respond to them. Questions or comments or observations can be sent to me via email at <studyguide@spiritualschool.org>.
With the Warmest Regards,
Chapter One Stepping into the Perils of Fear This guide is intended to help develop you capacities of observation and to learn more about yourself. If done carefully and thoughtfully, you will not only understand the material in a more inner way but may also find that you change considerably. We all live in a quite abstract world, so much so that we do not even realize we live abstractions. The intent of working with the questions and exercises is to be able to be present to the immediacy of experience, become more thoughtful, and find language that expresses experience. To change in these directions can help a great deal in confronting fear without in any way interfering with your freedom. A central spiritual task of our time consists in working in the right way with fear. The wrong way would be to put ourselves in a hot-house; that is, it would be ultimately harmful if we arranged our lives in such a manner that we were completely insulated from fear. Our contemporary culture approaches fear in this manner by acting as if external measures of every sort could get rid of fear. Terrible fears exist in the world. The spiritual work of this time consists of, in the face of fears, developing capacities of inner strength. Rather than try to solve the problem of fear by re-arranging all our external circumstances, the point of view of spiritual psychology begins from the inside and works outward. Freeing the Soul from Fear works with a number of different kinds of fears. I show how various world-conditions result in ongoing anxiety and fear images that live on in the soul, producing ongoing trepidation. Suggestions are provided for balancing these images of fear with images that strengthen the soul life. What happens when we live in fear?
Chapter Two This chapter describes how fear affects our body. Our whole body contracts when we become afraid. Blood rushes to the center of the heart. The sympathetic nervous system activates, adrenalin is produced, the heart pounds, the kidneys become active. Our breathing becomes shallow. We feel separated from the world and from others, as if an invisible window stands between us and the rest of the world. When we live in constant fear, this contraction then also goes on in soul life. At first, imagination goes wild and we have all kind of fantasies connected with our fears. Then, after a while, imagination shuts down altogether and we become numb. The senses become dulled and nothing seems alive anymore. And life itself does not seem worth much anymore. It is very important to work in conscious ways to keep the senses open and flexible, and help our body to go through fears without shutting down or narrowing the possibilities of experience. The following questions and exercises provide suggestions for retraining a liveliness of bodily life and therefore of soul life.
Chapter Three Chapters three, four, and five work with some of the ways fear now shows up in the world and how to work to keep imagination and soul life active to balance different kinds of fears. It is too abstract to think of fear as a single response to something that threatens us. There are different qualities of fear, related to the different sources of fear in the world. Each kind of fear works to diminish soul life. Each form of fear diminishes some specific capacity of soul life. In order to work with fears in a healthy way, we have to notice which soul capacity is reduced, consciously work to develop that capacity through specific concentration exercises, and then learn to work consciously with that soul capacity in daily life. Something that was previously natural, some soul ability, gets shut down when we live in fear. We often do not have it without our power to not be affected by the fear. We do have the power to make sure that the soul capacity is not permanently affected. Only then is it possible to do something to counter the specific fear without creating more fear in the process. Each of these fears and how to restore the soul's vitality is covered in each of the three chapters. The following exercises amplify what is spoken in those chapters. Some of the exercises are in the book, but are stated here in more detail so that they can be done in a group. In the group, tell what you were doing when you heard of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. What was your response? How has this event affected you? How do you work with the fear brought by this destructive act? Similarly, discuss how the threat of bioterrorism has affected you and how you work to release the fear that may have affected you. Include in your description consideration of how each of these events seem to affect soul life, bodily life, and spiritual life in an ongoing way. What are you doing as an individual to balance the fear inspired by these events? The kind of soul work that must be done to balance the presence of terrorism in the world is to develop the capacity to experience our body as a living activity. This exercise is in Freeing the Soul from Fear, but now you have the chance to do the exercise together and discuss how the process went.
(adapted from Bernard Lievegoed, Man on the Threshold )
The second part of Chapter 3 concerns the fears that now center on our experiences of time....the anxiety that we don't have enough time, or that time is speeding up, or that there doesn't seem to be much time life. Take a portion of a day and venture into the world. Go to three places in which time is experience in three different ways.. Describe each of these places briefly; then make an image - in the form of words - of the qualities of each of these places. Finally, describe the time of each place. Does the experience of time speeding up relate in any way to the fears we now have to live with around the presence of terrorism? The fears around the experience of time have to do with the fact that tempo has come to dominate the experience of time while the experience of duration is being lost. We can consciously restore the experience of duration through any kind of meditation. In relation to the experience of time, it is not the type or the result of meditating that is important, but the fact that it takes us into a different and needed quality of time. The following exercise is described in the chapter. Do the exercise in a group and discuss the process and how the meditation changed the experience of time for you. Make an inner image of a paper clip. Then begin to circle this image with all the ideas that belong to the paper clip: it is made of metal; it is oblong in shape; it holds papers together; it comes in different sizes; it can be used over and over again. Then, you take all of the ideas and try to make them live within one idea. This is like taking a progression of ideas and condensing them so that they all live within one idea. Then, dwell for a time with this one idea. The intention of this exercise is not to have some sort of spiritual experience, but rather to enter into the experience of duration. At first, our thoughts go from one aspect of the object to another. Then it begins to feel like the whole idea is there all at once. Going from one thought to another has a tempo; gradually this yields to duration. The third part of this chapter works with the ways in which anger is increasing in the world and the fears anger brings. There is not an exercise in the chapter that works with anger. Here is an exercise. It is somewhat difficult and requires practice; it is an exercise through which we can become aware of the anger that lives within us that instills fear us and in others and makes possible the healing of anger..in ourselves and in the world. Remember an incident in which you experienced being angry. Make an inner image of that incident....what happened, who was there, the course of the experience. Once you have an inner image of that incident, then back up the picture to the moment before the anger occurred. Feel what it was like right before the anger; try to feel the anger as it emerges from that moment right before. Through this exercise you can begin to get a sense how anger is often autonomous; it is as if it has a life of its own. Once you have the presence of mind to sense this autonomous nature of anger you will be less prone to letting anger take you over. As anger decreases in you, so will fear.
Chapter Four Our relationship with money is the one of the biggest sources of fear in our lives. We are living in volatile economic times, with many unstable economic factors, such as:
Money fears are different now than they have been in the past. Money is now more abstract and the manipulation of the economy is now the typical practice of the Federal Reserve Bank. Many of the economic schemes such as lowering interest rates and giving tax refunds do not seem to produce the desired results. Something seems radically wrong with our economic thinking. For most of us, the fears around money have much to do with the way we are treated in our jobs. Most of us would be happy to earn less money if our jobs were fulfilling and meaningful. And, if the world did not put so much value into money and had more a sense of inner wealth, money fears would lessen. We do not go to work anymore; we go to be worked. The soul sense of doing a work in the world no longer exists, so money becomes the primary motivation for work. We might work on the fears around money better by working to restore a soul and spirit dimension to our work. This chapter begins with this concern. The following exercise begins to restore the sense of our jobs as spiritual work as well as world-work. The exercise is presented in the chapter, but doing it together in a group makes possible conversations concerning work fears and how to face them. Picture in your imagination a scene that is typical of your daily job. You may, for example, picture writing at a computer, or teaching a class, or preparing a legal document, or laying bricks - whatever your job consists of in its most daily way. Then, when you have this inner picture and have stabilized the image so that it does not disappear or change into something else, dissolve this picture into a ball of light. Then let this light re-form into a figure - the figure of a man or a woman, though it may take other forms, such as a troll or an angel or another sort of being. Then ask this being - What is your work in the world? What does this figure say? Carry on a conversation with the figure about its work. After the conversation is completed, thank the being and let the figure again dissolve into a ball of light and then let the light return to your own image of your job. A second area where fear has always visited, but seems to be doing so with much greater intensity these days is in our relationships. Among the many ways fear shows up in our connections with others are:
Fears enter into relationships particularly when there has not been practice in developing a conscious soul connection in our connections with others. We typically simply expect relationships to work based on initial attraction or mutual need, or mutual interest, or familial ties. Then, when strife comes, fear increases and finds a foothold within the relationship itself. A new form of developing relationships is needed to assure that fear does not so easily insert itself. This new form of relating consists of developing soul empathy for the other person. In the group, divide into pairs. One person in each couple then tells the other person what their most significant fears are and how they work in his or her life. Then, after fifteen minutes, the other person of the pair talks, focusing on the same theme. The full exercise is to be carried out as follows: The first aspect of this exercise consists of consciously turning our attention toward our partner in an attitude of openness to the existence and destiny of the other person. Speak with each other; introduce yourself, tell each other a bit about yourselves - become interested in each other, but not out of curiosity, or self-interest. Try to be completely interested in the other person. Tell your partner some of your most significant fears and how they work in your life. You must find this capacity within, and identify it clearly; it feels like an open space, but one that you have to find, first by being aware of whatever motives might be present, and, in effect, being aware of them as best as possible, releasing them until this open space can be located. Locating this capacity is a conscious process; it will not be there in the foreground of consciousness, which is going to be filled with all of our self-concerns. Once activated, self-concerns dominate. Thus, there must be an initial, conscious clearing of these interests. This clearing is not a mental process, but one of getting out of usual mental processes and moving into an inner soul region of silence. Look for it and you will find it. The second aspect of this activity consists of dwelling, for a short time, within the inner qualities of the other person. This phase is the most difficult. It does not consist of our usual way of knowing. The more we want to know, the less possible it becomes to achieve this particular way of meeting the inner qualities of the other person. What can be experienced lies more in the nature of a feeling, but does not consist of what I feel about the other person. The feeling quality is more like a mood, a color, a sea of impressions that one dwells within in a purely receptive way, not being concerned about remembering what is experienced. The third part of the exercise consists of returning home, to the part of ourselves that was left in encountering the other person. An echo or resonance of what was experienced while dwelling in a feeling-knowing way within the interior of the other person remains; this resonance now lives within us as an inner image of the soul of the other person. Such an image can gradually be brought to understanding through contemplation. Then, reverse the procedure and the listener now becomes the speaker. After completing this part of the exercise, speak with your partner, tell of the soul image you have of him or her. Then share these images with the whole group. Based on the section of the book under the heading Fear of Suffering and Death, together as a group create a meditative exercise employing inner imagery which could serve to strengthen the soul to be able to encounter suffering in a healthy way. Describe the exercise in detail. Write out the exercise. Do this exercise in the group and discuss it together, describing what happens.
Chapter Five Fear is now spreading through the outer world due to the way we thoughtlessly treat the world. Steiner, in the statement above, is not suggesting that we cease creating technological devices. We must, however, become aware that it is necessary to balance in the soul the fear that these device....some of which are clearly destructive, others which are helpful...bring into the world. Here are some of the recent world events that have instilled fear now all around us. Even though these events have happened and are finished, the soul effects are permanent and need to be balanced. World events which picture the spread of fear throughout the physical world:
Occurrences in the physical world such as these, affect the soul, which then lives with images of fear. This fear, in turn circulates back out into the physical world. World Events which picture the spread of fear throughout the life world:
Take one or two group sessions and discuss how many of the things we now do that look like technical progress are actually bringing more fear into the world. So that this discussion does not become political or heated, give very specific examples and do not judge whether these things are good or bad; simply look at them and the relation between them and fear. What, for example happens to the fear? When cloning was first announced, people were very afraid. Then it became commonplace. It is, however, never commonplace for the soul. Fear that circulates now in the natural world due to the things we do to instill fear, can be balanced by exercises which keep the soul's imagination of the natural world awake. Fear dulls this imagination. Here is an exercise to do in the group that helps keep this vital imaginative capacity central to the life of the soul. Look at a plant. Then close your eyes and make an exact inner image of that plant. The way to do this is to build up the image. If you look at a plant, close your eyes, and try to make an inner image of the complete plant, it will not be a precise image but either an abstract idea, or a vague memory of what you saw. Instead, close your eyes and build up the stem and one leaf. Then open your eyes and look again. Upon closing your eyes, add the next leaf to the plant. Continue doing this until the complete image has been built up. Naturally, as this is being done, it is necessary to exclude any other images or thoughts that try to intrude. Once the image has been built up, hold the image stable for a few moments. Do not let it fade away or take on other qualities or shift into anything else. Then, in your imagination start removing the plant-image by removing each leaf that has been built up, one by one, starting with the leaf that was added last and proceeding in the reverse order to the building up of the image. When all the leaves have been removed, then remove the stalk. At this point there is an empty void. Hold this void for a few moments, listening into the emptiness. This kind of exercise strengthens the soul's capacity of receiving the archetypal, creating powers of the plant world. It develops the capacity to sense the creative beings of the natural world. Such soul work also invites those presences back into the life world. Imagination is a real force, not just a subjective, inner state. As we begin to operate more from the conscious capacity of imagination that is connected with the life world, fear also diminishes in the world of life forms because we now take up the responsibility of returning to them what has been taken away. We can tell this addition is indeed taking place because our level of fear and anxiety gradually diminishes. This exercise, like all of them, but even more so, cannot be done just once. It has to be done on a fairly regular basis for a while ---once a day for a month. After that, do the exercise periodically to check up on whether this aspect of imagination seems awake and capable.
Chapter Six The process of doubling is very prevalent in the world and is the central result of living in ongoing ways with fear. Doubling is an extremely subtle process. When people live in constant fear, gradually the fear itself is no longer felt. But it is still there. It works on the soul and contracts the soul. Imagination dulls. The senses dull. The body dulls. We begin, unknowingly, to live more an automaton life. We are not ourselves anymore, but do not realize, or only vaguely realize that we are not ourselves. We begin to do things that we would have never done before...like being cruel to others, being manipulative in ways that are way out of proportion, placing ourselves first in everything. It looks like egotism, but it is more than that. As a good image of the double, rent the movie The Game, with Michael Douglas. It is not a wonderful film, but it is a very good imagination of someone who has become doubled. Show the film one evening in the group and then discuss the problem of doubling in the world in relation to fear. What other films seem to be working with an imagination of doubling? In the group, have each person carefully describe an incident in your life which seem to be an encounter with someone who seems to be doubled. This kind of experience is quite subtle and may be a bit hard to catch hold of. Tell why these experiences seem to have the qualities of the appearance of a double and tell how you reacted upon recognizing them as such, and what was the result of these experiences in your life. (It would be well to read over and contemplate the chapter on the double several times before working with this question, not because the material is difficult, but because the phenomenon is not only subtle but also tricky). In the group, speak of how you can sometimes feel the tendency toward doubling in yourself. Relate specific experiences and speak the relation of these experiences to fear. Describe in some detail the presence of an institutional doubling in the present world. The primary protection against doubling in oneself is the strengthening of conscience. Read the chapter on doubling, the section on conscience, to make sure you understand conscience as a soul process rather than moral standards inculcated in us by others. Here is an exercise that will help strengthen the soul process of conscience: This exercise is called the "Evening Review". In this exercise, the day's events are reviewed in reverse order (starting with the more recent and working backwards), feeling remorse for hurts caused and opportunities missed, and gratitude for help given and received. This requires objective observation and intelligent judgment and evaluation of these events. This exercise should not become a cause of brooding or depression or guilt feelings; the events must be put out of mind after the review has been completed. The "Evening Review" exercise does the following: a) it trains us to be observant; b) it empties the 'subconscious mind' of fears. Eventually, this exercise can become more of an ongoing conscious process throughout the day, and constitutes a 'prayerfulness' way of living.
Chapter Seven This chapter develops an extensive picture of the many forms of love that are gifts from the spiritual world to human beings. All love counters fear. In the group, take a half hour and allow people in the group to speak of very specific instances of the following kinds of love and how the presence of that kind of love dissolved fear. The group as a whole has to be very careful not to make any judgments, but just to listen with the heart:
Bodily Love (does not necessarily entail having sex) In the chapter, it is stated that these many modes of love are not hierarchical; our soul task to experience them all, in depth. Love is One, whole, but it expresses itself in the world in these multiple ways. There can be 'gaps' between one mode of love and another mode of love. These 'gaps' are where 'bridging forms of love need to be developed, and are the most important forms of love to develop as a counter to fear. Not much is said in the chapter concerning these 'bridging forms of love, so a group discussion would be very beneficial. Between bodily love and emotional love, the bridging form of love is self-love. Between emotional love and spiritual love, the bridging form of love is friendship. Between spiritual love and creative love, the bridging form of love is community. Do the heart meditation described at the end of the lesson for three successive days. Describe the inner experience of doing the meditation. How did the meditation proceed on each of these days? Describe any effects the meditation produces - bodily, on consciousness, on outlook, on feelings, on your relationships. The effects might be quite subtle.
Chapter Eight Beauty cannot co-exist with fear. Thus, if we make our lives beautiful, fear has been conquered. This chapter describes how to go about being present in our senses in a soulful way so that we begin to live beauty. Beauty here is not meant to be merely 'aesthetic.' To be able to live in beauty is one of the strongest, most forceful ways to live a conscious soul life. There is nothing sentimental about it. The exercises suggested in the chapter can seem a bit daunting. I have since realized that some preparation may be needed to step into the world and be present to the beauty of soul-sensing. Here is an exercise that can be done in the group that, when done over time, helps develop the soul's capacity for beauty. Incidentally, with the group exercises, it is good to do them in the group once or twice, but then to continue doing the exercises individually. It is also helpful, after you have done them individually for a time to then do them once again together in the group. Go to your local florist and buy a single, long - stemmed rose. Take it home and put it in a proper vase. Observe the rose carefully. Then close your eyes and make an inner image of the rose. Do not remember the rose, but make an inner image, one that exactly mirrors the rose you observed. Stabilize and hold the image steady. Try now to be aware of the qualities of the rose image. After a while, try to "step" into the image. Be aware of the qualities now experienced. Then extinguish the rose image and remain as long as possible in the void of silence, and listen into the silence. Then, open your eyes, but do not immediately turn to other tasks. Try to be aware of the qualities you now feel. Write a careful description of what occurred in the exercise. Include in your description the how of what you experienced, not just the content of what you experienced. If fear was present as you tried to do the exercise, describe how it worked. Describe in particular, the qualities of the rose that went beyond what you sense and know of the rose.
Chapter Nine This chapter describes how fear comes to be installed in the very processes of our consciousness. I do not mean that fear can come to dominate the content of our consciousness - our thinking, our feelings, our motivations - though that can certainly happen. Going through this study guide will go a long way toward eliminating that danger. But, fear can begin to infiltrate the very processes of consciousness as well as content. When, for example, fear has installed itself into the processes of consciousness, memory become dulled, feelings are more or less absent, and thinking becomes more like a string of opinions hanging together rather than the intricate and beautiful movement of the development of thought. The best place to begin working to counter fear entering the processes of consciousness is the realm of thinking because this realm is more conscious to us than the processes of feelings or the processes of motivations, or will. Here is an exercise to strengthen the soul process of thinking: Fear works in the intellect by making us feel we have thought something but have not thought it through to the end. We are always having thoughts, but typically do not think them through to the end. A picture of how this works is given in the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. Theseus goes into the labyrinth, following the thread of Ariadne. At any point along the way, he may encounter the Minotaur. Following a thought is like following the thread of Ariadne. In the labyrinth of thought, it may seem like we have come to a dead end. At that point we become afraid. The monster may be lurking around the next corner. So we stop or turn back, refuse to follow the thread.
This exercise consists of following a thought through to its end. In order to concentrate on a thought, we will do so meditatively, much as other exercises have done with an image. Take the following thought:
Perfect Love Casts Out Fear
Follow the thread of this thought through to the end by meditating on the thought and closely following it, step by step. What is "perfect"?; what is "perfect love"; how does "perfect love" have power? What is like to "cast out fear"? In the group, take fifteen minutes and silently, together, meditate this sentence. When you meditate a sentence, first say the sentence in an inner way. Then, let one word of the sentence come to the fore. Like, Perfect love casts out fear. The whole of the sentence is then considered under the light of this emphasized word. It becomes the link between all of the words in the sentence. After the meditation, each person can talk about what happened in the meditation. Doing an exercise like this periodically strengthens the processes of consciousness so that fear cannot come in and begin to take hold of the processes of consciousness.
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