16 minute read
Sacramental Conversation: Experiencing Our Humanity
by Christopher Schaefer
This article is based in part on a public Zoom talk to members of the North American Council for Anthroposophical Curative Education and Social Therapy, (www.nacouncil.org), on April 24, 2020.
William E. Stafford, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other”
In the last six months we have had two extraordinary experiences, the ongoing pandemic of Covid 19 and the widespread demonstrations for Black Lives Matter following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Each experience raises the question of what it means to be human in this time, to be afraid, to face illness, isolation and possibly death, and to be prejudiced or systematically to be discriminated against, incarcerated, or murdered because of the color of your skin. So when and where do we experience our humanity and our mutual indebtedness most strongly and directly and what can such experiences teach us about the values needed to heal ourselves and society?
The Intentional Nature of Community Life
Those of you active in curative education and social therapy have the gift of being in a community of service, living in a house or village dedicated to the mutuality of sharing life with people of differing abilities. This life in community, even if you are now isolated in individual homes, offers perspectives and activities which are deeply life and humanity affirming because behind the activity of service lies a rich image of mutuality, of interdependence and of the abiding value of human encounter and conversation.
Implicit in this statement, which holds true for many life sharing communities and communities of service, are a number of principles made quite explicit within Camphill communities and many other initiatives inspired by anthroposophy. These I would like to explore while focusing in particular on the gifts of human meeting and conversation, which are now being severely challenged by the pandemic.
Perhaps the most fundamental of these principles or attitudes is the view that human beings are spiritual beings now living in a body and a soul. How we manifest in this particular life, with our gender, race, temperament, age, disposition, and abilities is never a full expression of our eternal being or higher self. A connected thought is that the teacher and child in school, or the co-worker and resident in a curative home, or indeed all of us in relationship, serve the other in our journey of becoming. Furthermore, these relationships can be seen as having an intentional karmic quality, that we intended to be together, to learn and serve each other in this life, in this place, even when such learning is difficult.
This understanding of the mutuality of karma rests on a picture of repeated earth lives, of reincarnation, described in some detail by Rudolf Steiner.
Rudolf Steiner, Karma and Reincarnation: Two Fundamental Truths of Human Existence, Rudolf Steiner Press, 2001
According to his research, we create the outline of our earthly destiny together with our karmic brothers and sisters before birth and then enact these intentions in life, seeking to become wiser, more loving beings. So it is ultimately we, and our friends, community members, colleagues, partners and children, who sculpt the learning plan for our lives while life itself becomes the great school. We therefore all provide “support and are allies” to each other in life, even if we are often not aware of it. Martin Luther King gave a true picture of this reality when, describing racial prejudice in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” he stated:
Our mutual destiny expresses itself most directly through human meeting and conversation. It is, after all, through relationship that we are born, learn language, become part of the human community, and discover who we are. It is through the gifts of our parents, siblings, teachers, friends, and colleagues that we become ourselves, with our unique talents and limitations. It is also through meeting and conversation that the whole social world is created. Families, shops, schools, concerts, curative communities, towns, and nations are all created and sustained through human dialogue. This is why Rudolf Steiner refers to human meeting and conversation as the “archetypal social phenomena,” the source of our human becoming, and that activity from which the entire social world emerges.
The Gifts of Conversation
We have all had the experience of deep conversations and meetings with another in which we have felt met and understood. We experienced ourselves as fuller, more creative and insightful, and also more trusting and hopeful about the future. Perhaps in moments such as these we have also felt our kinship, our deep karmic bond with the other, feeling gratitude for the soul sister or brother we have had the joy of meeting.
My great concern about the present pandemic and its likely evolution is that this central human experience will be curtailed and distorted, blocking the deeper experience and awareness of our karmic mutuality. Socially distanced, masked, and resorting to Zoom or other electronic media, while helpful, will not give us the eye-toeye contact, the face-to-face meeting, in which the full experience of our humanity and karmic bond can be felt, not to mention the sense of co-creating with the spirit that often accompanies deeper one-to-one conversations or intimate group dialogue.
Here I am reminded of a recent article in the NY Times by Kate Murphy called “Why Zoom is Terrible.” [April 29, 2020] She argues that Zoom is exhausting and distorting because the images it gives of the other are altered, spliced, patched, and synthesized, with the result that we are uncertain and confused as our subconscious facial cues of authenticity, truthfulness, and interest are undermined. I would add that in face-to-face meetings we have real eye-to-eye contact and that our etheric and soul bodies connect and interact adding a rich, subconscious, and humanity-affirming context to our meetings, which cannot happen through the medium of a screen.
Suppose the virus never goes away entirely, and that the costs of using teachers in schools, of meeting and being together at work, and of travelling to conferences is seen as prohibitive in a new time of austerity. The virus then provides the perfect rationale for curtailing and in many cases eliminating face-to-face meetings, resorting to electronic communication and blocking the working of human destiny. From this perspective Covid-19 is the perfect tool for those forces in the human and spiritual world seeking to undermine the experiences of our spiritual and karmic possibilities, attempting to rob us of our future as beings trying to learn to love in freedom. The very same forces behind the corruption and decline of our institutions, namely greed, egotism, fear, suspicion, dislike, and hatred, can then be further strengthened by the media, and will not be balanced by the healing leaven of personal meetings.
So I turn to you and ask whether you as members of healing, life-sharing communities, based on a deeper imagination of what is truly human, can dedicate yourselves once again and newly to be guardians and protectors of authentic human meeting and conversation. I believe that within Camphill Communities there is a canon that is often sung in gatherings— “Guardians of the light we have been given, Living Light for which the Gods have striven…”—Can we all, but especially people living in communities dedicated to the living light in each of us, cultivate a new awareness of the blessing and deep soul and spirit working which happens in personal meetings between two or more people? And if we bring our conscious attention to such meetings and develop a new dedication to the practice of mutuality in dialogue we will, I am sure, have experiences that answer many of the challenges which Covid-19 and which the racism and corruption in our social life present us with.
You and I meet. We speak, listen, and develop some level of mutual understanding. This is itself a small miracle since in speaking we are transforming a thought or feeling, an aspect of our consciousness, into audible sounds which the other person hears and is able to then integrate into their awareness. Through deep listening and conscious speaking, through focusing our attention on the other, and through speaking to and responding to what is said, we are manifesting interest. While this activity is mainly happening in the mind, it is accompanied by feelings and intentions. If these too are open and attuned, we are manifesting not only an open mind and an open heart but a caring will, a desire to serve a genuine meeting between two or more people. This builds trust and a feeling for mutuality.
If we pay attention, we will also notice a dance in our consciousness in conversations between being awake to the other in listening, though more asleep to ourselves, but in speaking the reverse—awake to ourselves and what we want to express, and more asleep to what is happening in the other. Deep listening, when we are allowing the other into our soul, is a supersensible experience, like true meditation, and we resist it and often quickly resort to judgements, and comments such as, “Have you thought of...” or “How can that be true?” or the classic, “Yes, but...”
Steiner suggests that a remarkable process of karmic recognition is happening just below the surface of consciousness in our speaking and listening. In listening to the other we for a moment have an image of our future karmic connection to the other and in speaking a tableau of our past connections. [Steiner, Approaching the Mystery of Golgotha, SteinerBooks, 2006, pp.8,9] We have had moments of karmic recognition on meeting someone for the first time, or on seeing each other after a long separation, where we feel here you are again, my heart has longed for you and missed you. Perhaps that experience can give us an inkling of what possibilities lie within human encounter and dialogue as a way of awakening to the reality of our mutual karma. In 1913 in London, Steiner suggested that the ability to bring these imaginations of past and future karmic connections to consciousness would be a birthright of increasing numbers of people in the 21st century, if such capacities were not destroyed. [See the inspiring book by Harry Salman, The Social World as Mystery Center: The Social Vision of Anthroposophy, Threefold Publishing, 1999, in particular pp. 99-134] I believe that biography work, as well as dyad work and other dialogue methods are a preparation and foreshadowing of these important karmic experiences.
There are of course many distractions and disturbances which stand in the way of a deeper and authentic meeting and conversation between people. These are also important to pay attention to because they reveal what needs to be transformed in us and in the world. These forces can be described as anti-social in nature and they live strongly on our thinking, feeling and willing life.
In my experience they manifest a kind of polarity. In our thinking life doubt and criticism on one side and dogmatism and fanaticism on the other. We listen for a moment to the other and then we are off, expressing either criticism or asserting the truth of our own opinions. I frequently experience this in myself when trying to listen to my older brother, a conservative Republican, but also know it only too well in everyday life.
Our feeling life is strongly affected by the polarity of likes and dislikes, of sympathy and antipathy. Such feelings are strengthened by the media, advertising, and our peers, and they color our reaction to everything, especially people. They influence our perceptions and behavior and are often enemies of true meeting as they tell us more about ourselves than about others. As such feelings are often semi-conscious it takes considerable work to unmask them and to avoid the phenomena of projection, where we ascribe to others what lives strongly in our own soul. We see this playing out in the political arena quite forcefully during this presidential campaign.
Our will, expressed in acting, is largely unconscious and swings between the polarity of anxiety and fear on the one side and an illusionary egotism or magical belief in self on the other.
The three soul forces of thinking, feeling and willing help us to have self-consciousness, but without schooling they become anti-social, strengthened by all the manipulations of our “me first” culture. Steiner suggests that the anti-social forces in our soul also represent aspects of our shadow, our double, which need to be transformed if we are to realize our true nature as human beings. Thus others, our children, partners and colleagues are often the annoying mirrors showing us what needs to be worked on in ourselves. Yet they are also an invitation to develop interest in the other, to experience empathy toward the other in our feeling life, and to engage in acts of love and mutual service. Thus relationships, meetings, and conversation are truly the mystery centers of modern life, the place where a soul and spirit drama of mutual transformation takes place.
I Behold the Other (I)
with Interest (II)
Doubt/Criticism....................................Dogmatism/Being Right
Thinking/Open Mind
with Empathy (III)
Dislikes/Hatred.........................................................Likes/Self Love
Feeling/Open Heart
with Love (IV) Fear/Anxiety................................................................Ego-Inflation
Willing/ Serve the Other
Anti-Social Forces.....................................................Anti-Social Forces
Conscious Social Forces
which make visible the reality of Karma
In the diagram you will note that development of interest in the other, of empathy for the other and of love for the other is a balancing activity in our thinking, feeling and willing life between the anti-social extremes of doubt and dogmatism, dislikes and likes and fear and egotism. It represents the invitation which others provide us with in meeting and conversation. And it is the mutual practice of “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
Sacramental Conversation
Conversations and small group gatherings can have a sacramental nature. This is not only because we can experience the mutuality of our destiny connections and the spiritual striving of the other, but also because we have the possibility of co-creating with and being aware of the inspiring presence of spiritual beings. Most of us have had moments of startling insight in conversations, a sense that we have been given a gift from the Gods. We have also had a fleeting sense of what I would call a star-filled space between us in small group gatherings, aware that an invisible being is present with us for a shorter or longer time. The possibility of such conscious co-creating with spiritual beings is described by Rudolf Steiner as the raising of our collective consciousness into the angelic realm.
When we manifest a living interest in the other through deep listening to word and gesture, a warm feeling toward the other arises. When this has occurred and is not interrupted by likes and dislikes, lengthy monologues, or expressions of impatience, a certain soul space is created which allows feelings of mutual empathy to live. Into this heart space positive-working spiritual beings can manifest, creating a communion experience, a Whitsun event. This is implied by the four stages suggested in the diagram above. We enter a common space and behold each other as beings of body, soul and spirit (I). We then listen to the other and the conversation with deep interest (II). We then, out of deep listening, develop empathy for the other, and openness, wonder at what is unfolding in this meeting and conversation (III). Lastly we can have a communion experience, a sense of spirit blessing (IV). These can be seen as the four stages of the reverse ritual, as described by Athys Floride in Human Encounters and Karma or as the “Four Domains” presented by Paul Gierlach in this issue on page 19.
Athys Floride, Human Encounters and Karma, Anthroposophic Press, 1990
Rudolf Steiner expresses the horizontal/social and vertical/spiritual dimension of sacramental conversation beautifully in the Threefold or America Verse:
May our feeling penetrate into the center of our Heart,
And seek in Love to unite itself with Human Beings sharing the same Goals,
And with Spirit Beings, Who Bearing Grace
And Strengthening us from Realms of Light, and Illuminating our Love
Are Gazing Down upon our earnest Heartfelt Striving!
Another way of describing the conditions and activities of Sacramental Conversation in more common language was developed at a series of conferences in the late 1990’s on the topic of Group Synergy sponsored by the Fetzer Institute and the Institute of Noetic Sciences. The participants at these conferences noted both a needed horizontal gesture of human warmth, interest and commitment, and a vertical one of co-creating consciously with spirit. The conditions mentioned included:
» A mutual commitment to each other and a clear shared human and spiritual purpose.
» Developing an atmosphere of safety, confidentiality and trust.
» Speaking from the heart and out of experience.
» Respect toward different spiritual orientations.
» An ability to deal with differences and conflict.
» Creating a sacred space open to spiritual guidance and inspiration.
» A joint commitment to inner development and learning.
» A meeting that is prepared, held and guided by a clear process and form of facilitation.
Fetzer Institute, Robert Kenny, Group Service and Group Synergy, Kalamazoo, MI, 2001
When these conditions are met, and a sacramental mood achieved, we feel an enhanced level of trust, mutual encouragement, a sense of spiritual presence and guidance, and greater creativity and will to serve the world.
Practicing Sacramental Conversation and Group Dialogue can thus become a powerful antidote to the ravages of Covid 19 and the ever present anti-social qualities of racism, prejudice, and egotism. So let us commit to conscious listening and dialogue. It can work small miracles and perhaps great ones, giving us an experience of what it means to be human in these difficult times.
Christopher Schaefer, PhD (christopherschaefer7@gmail.com) is most recently the author of Re-Imagining America: Finding Hope in Difficult Times (Hawthorn Press, 2019), reviewed in our last issue. He lives with his wife Signe in Great Barrington, MA, and is co-director of the Hawthorne Valley Center for Social Research.
