Avent

Rudolf Steiner’s lecture on “The Mission of Anger” and Its Tie to Prometheus and Zeus Anger is not your enemy. According to Steiner, it is your teacher. The human beings 4 fold nature:
 Physical body, Etheric (life) body, Astral body (the vehicle of pleasure, pain, and desire), and the "I," the inner name only you can speak. The physical body's laws decompose it at death. The etheric body holds them back while you live. The Ego:
 The Ego passes from life to life, working on the three lower bodies. Where it transforms them, they become Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Man. Redi showed that life comes only from life. Likewise, soul and spirit come only from soul and spirit. Each life is the result of earlier lives and the start of later ones. Percepts and concepts
 Percepts come through the senses. Look at a rose, then turn away. The inner image that remains is a concept, a possession of your soul. That is where the sentient soul begins. The three members of the soul Sentient soul (astral body): inner images, sympathies, antipathies. Intellectual soul (etheric body): reflects and judges. Consciousness soul (physical body): turns inner experience into knowledge of the outer world. The Ego created each one unconsciously. It is a two-edged sword. It must grow rich in itself, but if it hardens and cuts itself off, it impoverishes itself. It must become independent and selfless at once. The mission of anger:
 Anger arises in the sentient soul while the Ego is still dormant. It educates you before your judgment matures. It teaches independence, because the Ego stands against what offends it.
It teaches selflessness, because swallowed anger deadens ego-feeling. Unchecked, it degrades into rage that serves egoism. Purified, it turns into love. Anger is a passion to be transmuted, not dodged. Righteous anger is a necessary stage. Now the myth Prometheus
His name means "forethought." He was a Titan who sided with humanity when the gods wanted them kept weak. He gave humans speech, writing, knowledge, and fire, stolen from Olympus in a hollow fennel stalk. Every gift enriches the Ego. He hands humanity its selfhood. The insult 
 He tricked Zeus at the sacrifice. Bones wrapped in glistening fat, the good meat hidden under the hide. Zeus chose the bones. The king of the gods was made a fool. And he knew it. The punishment
 Zeus took the fire. Prometheus stole it back. So Zeus chained him to a rock in the Caucasus. Every day an eagle tore out his liver. Every night it grew back. Steiner’s view on the myth:
 Zeus's wrath chaining Prometheus mirrors how swallowed anger checks the Ego. The secret
 In Aeschylus, Prometheus knows a marriage is coming whose child will overthrow Zeus. Zeus threatens torture for the name. Prometheus refuses. Steiner reads the legend as foreseeing Zeus succeeded by one born of a mortal: Christ. Anger transformed into the loving Ego. The god of wrath falls. Love takes the throne.

George Gurdjieff’s Self Remembering: An Ultimate Guide — Richard Ruach SELF OBSERVATION: THE FOUNDATION Self Observation is the prerequisite to Self Remembering. It is the study of the human machine and its three cylinders: intellectual, emotional, and moving. This is Personality: the human mask shaped by heredity and the outside world. (More detail in the comments.) Self Remembering is NOT Self Observation. It rests on a different teaching: the distinction between Personality and Essence. ESSENCE is the “Divine spark,” the eternal element that passes from life to life. Personality is formed in this lifetime; Essence is perennial. Self Observation is a technique. Self Remembering is a state of consciousness and being. THE FOUR LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS Gurdjieff describes four levels: 1. Sleep. 2. Ordinary, everyday consciousness. 3. The awakened state (sometimes called Self Remembering). 4. Objective consciousness. The technique for entering Self Remembering is DIVIDED ATTENTION (see diagram in comments). DIVIDED ATTENTION: THE KEY Imagine someone looking at a tree. An ordinary person sees the tree, but may not notice the representations and associations arising within them. Divided attention means remaining aware of your inner world while also attending to your surroundings. Consciousness becomes BIDIRECTIONAL rather than moving in one direction; eventually, it can become MULTIDIRECTIONAL. For example, imagine suddenly becoming sad while walking down the street, without knowing why. Through Self Observation, you would recognize why the sadness arose. THE SECRET THIRD THING With sustained practice, you may sense a “secret third thing” (Essence) observing the process: the arising and entering of an impression. This is neither thought nor emotion. You are turning away from the human machine (Persona). RECOGNIZING SELF REMEMBERING P.D. Ouspensky describes its “flavor” as similar to being a child visiting a place you have never been before—not nostalgia or the “inner child.” The state is slippery: you can enter it and lose it without noticing. Someone speaks to you, and suddenly it is gone. Do not force or manipulate it. Remain as natural as possible. Richard Ruach offers another technique, ROLLING ATTENTION, to maintain the state. See the comments for my notes and his fuller explanation. THE GENIUS MIND AND THE FILTER A genius can filter out distractions and concentrate on one thought. A chess master, for example, filters out bad moves rather than calculating every possibility. But an extremely strong filter can disconnect you from reality. Intellectual people therefore struggle with Self Remembering. The aim is not to strengthen the filter, but to LOOSEN it, allowing consciousness to expand and experience the world. This may help explain why geniuses sometimes have breakthroughs while dreaming. THE EFFECTS OF SELF REMEMBERING The area of consciousness expands and more impressions enter. You notice things previously overlooked; perhaps you hear something new or the world seems more vivid. When looking at another person, an image or reaction may arise within you. Ruach describes this as not coming from you, but as that person’s internal world. He calls it “Extra-Normal Phenomenological Perception” (like telepathy, but not exactly). Do NOT get caught up in this. Thinking about “having telepathy” can pull you out of Self Remembering. BEING-PARTKDOLG-DUTY: THE DEATH OF THE OLD SELF Everything in the human machine has arrived from an external place. Through Self Remembering, you attempt to draw solar force into the machine and reorganize it into something else. Gurdjieff calls this “Being-Partkdolg-Duty” in Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson. This is death: the old self is replaced by Essence. It brings to mind Christ’s words: “Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” — John 3:3

Rudolf Steiner's Blossoming and Withering exercise for developing supersensible perception Steiner taught that this exercise cultivates a kind of higher sensory tools and organs in the soul and spiritual body. Through it, the soul world, the so-called "Astral plane," begins to dawn for the student, and growth and decay stop being vague impressions. The exercise: 1. Observe a living, growing plant.
Take in its form and details with the greatest possible precision. Do not rush into interpretation or emotion. Simply see it fully. 2. Become still.
 Only after you have observed it completely, surrender yourself to whatever sensations and feelings arise from the plant itself. 3. Switch to a withering or decaying object.
Repeat the same process: observe precisely first, then become still and let the feelings come. What you are looking for: Steiner distinguished the inner experience of the two. A sunrise-like feeling accompanies growth. A moonrise-like feeling accompanies withering. The essential principle: Do not manufacture a feeling. Do not decide beforehand what something should evoke. The feeling must arise from your soul's own encounter with the particular object. The test: If you experience the same feeling regardless of what you observe, you may be imposing your own mood rather than perceiving what is actually before you. This exercise requires repetition. Steiner emphasized that these perceptions become increasingly vivid through continued practice, alternating your attention between growth and decay. Patience is paramount.

Rudolf Steiner on Courage and Fearlessness on the Path of Initiation What he teaches specifically in his book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment: Courage and fearlessness are qualities a candidate must bring to the path of initiation. The student should deliberately seek out situations that develop these qualities, systematically, as part of esoteric schooling. He adds that ordinary life is itself an excellent school for this, perhaps the best. The inner mindset he teaches: When facing danger, the student must be able to look at it calmly and get through difficulties without wavering. At the moment of danger, he is to summon the thought that his fear serves no purpose, that he shouldn’t have it at all, and that he should think only about what needs to be done. The goal is that, in situations that once caused fear, becoming afraid or losing heart becomes impossible, at least in his deepest feelings. Why this matters: He says this self-education develops specific forces needed for initiation, comparing it to how the body needs nerve force to use the senses: the soul needs the force that only courageous, fearless natures develop. So, in his framework, it is not a moral decoration. It builds a capacity upon which higher schooling depends. One thing worth noticing: The exercise isn’t to suppress fear or feel nothing. It redirects attention from fear to the next right action, which is why it pairs so well with equanimity. Real courage means feeling the fear, experiencing the adrenaline, and composing oneself. This also ties into the encounter with “The Two Guardians at the Threshold.” The chapter on the Guardian of the Threshold says there are two Guardians, a lesser and a greater, and carries a warning not to cross the Threshold until you feel entirely free from fear and ready for the highest responsibility. Know that I am paraphrasing. Read the book yourself for more practical results.

“It is possible to think for a thousand years; it is possible to write whole libraries of books, to create theories by the million, and all this in sleep, without any possibility of awakening.” ~George Gurdjieff