Facing Each Other and Ourselves

by Patti Smith and Chris Burke

Immediately following the end of World War I, Rudolf Steiner spoke about the importance of developing new forms of social connection in our individualistic age. In “Social and Anti-Social Forces in the Human Being” (Bern, 12/12/1918), he stated:

It is possible for human beings to meet one another for years and not know each other better at the end than they did at the beginning. The precise need of the future is that the social shall be brought to meet the anti-social in a systematic way. For this there are various inner soul methods. One is that we frequently attempt to look back over our present incarnation to survey what has happened to us in this life through our relations with others. If we are honest in this, most of us will say: Nowadays we generally regard the entrance of many people into our life in such a way that we see ourselves, our own personalities, as the center of the review. What have we gained from this or that person who has come into our life? This is our natural way of feeling. It is exactly this which we must try to combat. We should try in our souls to think of others, such as teachers, friends, those who have helped us and also those who have injured us (to whom we often owe more than to those who, from a certain point of view, have been of use to us). We should try to allow these pictures to pass before our souls as vividly as possible in order to see what each has done. We shall see, if we proceed in this way, that by degrees we learn to forget ourselves, that in reality we find that almost everything which forms part of us could not be there at all unless this or that person had affected our lives, helping us on or teaching us something.

At the Center for Biography and Social Art, we use social activities to support individuals in better understanding themselves and the roles other people have played in shaping their biographies. The October national conference in Atlanta, “Facing Each Other: Freedom, Responsibility, Love,” was therefore a perfect opportunity to introduce this way of working to a broad audience. We were invited to lead a short activity following each keynote lecture and in the final plenum. We led the participants in an effort to connect them with each other in a meaningful, participatory manner, and to relate the conference themes to people’s life experience. Attendees sat at assigned tables during these sessions, so they were able to work on each exercise with the same partner, fostering a deeper connection between them.

Vivid Images

Our first exercise followed Patrick Kennedy’s inspiring keynote, “How Practicing Spiritual Science Means Becoming Truly Human.” We invited each participant to reflect back to the beginning of their journey with anthroposophy and to find a person who played an important role in taking that first step. We asked each participant to sketch a memory of that relationship and then to share the story with their partner. In asking participants to draw the memory, we are following Rudolf Steiner’s recommendation that we train ourselves to let images pass over us as vividly as possible. In these short exercises, each participant has an opportunity to practice reaching into their soul for meaningful memories. Expressing these memories in a sketch expands one’s field of view to the broader context in which the event occurred: What was the setting, what were the details of what happened, who else was present, how does this experience live on in my life? Learning to build the deep vivid pictures of this expanded inquiry, one becomes more present in daily life, at times able to glimpse the work of one’s own wiser person within, weaving karma and destiny.

Deep Listening

Following the lecture by Andrea De La Cruz from the Goetheanum Youth Section entitled “The Future of the Society: Freedom, Commitment, and Youth” we introduced the second exercise focused on freedom. We gave each attendee a postcard—a hallmark of biography and social art work—and asked them what about the image reminded them of a time they had a strong feeling of being free. In biography work, postcards (or other artistic images) are used to evoke genuine soul response to biography questions. We find that letting such images speak to your soul helps prevent the head’s more surface-level, often short-sighted tendencies from guiding the process.

Sharing responses with a partner, in turn, allows participants to experience the art of deep listening, first listening for their own inner response to arise and once again by giving full attention to their partner. Listening creates a chalice that holds a person in a selfless gesture, beholding that person, if only for a moment, as their truest self. It might be that this is the great social art of our time. As one participant recalled, “I worked with a person I already knew somewhat, but I felt that I had gotten to know him much better, and that I had brought something of myself into the conference”. And another person commented, “I’m learning about the transformational power of listening. Learning to notice opportunities to listen more deeply and experiencing the power of being given attention when I speak.”

Preparing the Future

At the final plenum, we turned to the responsibility theme, asking people to consider the future, writing about a next step they would take. Biography and social art exercises expand our capacity to understand how we participate in preparing the future. We have a tendency in these times to focus on ourselves, making sure our point of view is at the center of each conversation. Questions such as the ones asked at the conference can be added to daily practices, reflecting on our own experiences to create vivid images of the people who have touched you/us in important ways. We can even imagine these people at the center of the story and ourselves at the periphery, to develop the capacity to experience the other with the same level of attention we give ourselves. This practice moves us away from self-centeredness to selflessness.

This work is important for preparing a new lifetime and the next epoch. It invites us toward quiet spaces within ourselves seeking the counsel of the wiser person within that will lead us away from self-focus toward the capacity to understand the connections with others and our debt to those we meet in our life. By practicing biography exercises we live this life more consciously, able to glimpse our past and prepare for the future.

Patti Smith and Chris Burke are board members of the Center for Biography and Social Art. Learn more about the Center, its training program, and its work in the world at biographysocialart.org