The Heart Speaks!

Qualities needed in our times for social art and social healing

by Holly Koteen-Soulé

In 1999, Virginia Sease and Manfred Schmidt-Brabant, both at the time members of the Executive Council (Vorstand) of the General Anthroposophical Society, gave a series of lectures at Chartres Cathedral. Due to a scheduling conflict, the room in which they were to have spoken to the conference participants was unavailable, and they ended up delivering their talks in the crypt within sight of the cathedral’s celebrated Black Madonna.

The lectures were later collected in book entitled The Archetypal Feminine. I bought this book more than twenty years ago, and it sat unopened on my bookshelf until this year, when it literally fell into my hands. Now it has become an important key to my current research on the feminine aspect of divinity.

Towards the end of this book, in a chapter concerning three important female esotericists of the twentieth century, Dr. Sease lists seven qualities she feels modern women can offer to the art of life. Although she describes these qualities as more natural to women, she ends by saying that they are equally important practices for both men and women in our times.

The qualities she describes are, for me, qualities of the heart, especially of the “thinking heart,” or the heart on its way to becoming a sense organ as characterized by Rudolf Steiner. As such, they belong not just to one gender, but to every modern spiritually striving human being.

In various lectures and writings, Steiner described the heart as a mysterious mediator between sensory impressions and the development of will impulses, between head and limb systems, between past and future, between earthly and cosmic impulses. For Steiner, the processes of the heart are not just physical but, in their essence, spiritual processes. Through the circulation of the blood that culminates in the heart, our everyday experiences are united in our spiritual core with our moral conscience, and throughout the course of our life, starting with the onset of puberty, they continuously create the forces for our future karma.

When I relate this picture of the heart as a spiritual instrument finely tuned to the qualities described by Dr. Sease, I see a hopeful path that, despite ever-present dangers of divisiveness in our current social life, may lead us more consciously toward social healing and social justice. The qualities listed below (originating from Dr. Sease’s work) are followed by my own comments.

Being fully present

Attentive parents and educators, professional counselors and mentors, meditants and spiritual teachers cultivate this quality in order to create the space for another being to be able to speak and to be heard. It allows us to learn to listen to nature and to spiritual beings as well as to our fellow human beings.

Immersing ourselves in perspectives other than our own

As students of anthroposophy, we are asked to try out various points of view, practice taking views opposite to our own, appreciate the biographical journeys of our life companions, and follow another person’s thinking. These practices create in us the flexibility of soul that ultimately becomes the source of our own creativity.

Learning to pose the question of the moment

Living with questions is usually more fruitful than acting out of already formulated answers. It requires us to stay awake to changing circumstances and the larger contexts from which answers may come. Being willing to give voice to our questions puts us in relationship with others; being comfortable with not knowing allows us to learn from them.

Asking oneself what is coming out of the future

Intuitions about one’s unfolding destiny can help us recognize our unique contributions and what we are being called to do.

Taking hold of the potential for transformation in all aspects of life

We are all a part of an earthly and spiritual evolutionary process, of taking hold and letting go, of dying and being reborn in every imaginable way. It makes a difference if we participate in these processes more consciously.

Trusting in others

Dr. Sease writes that trust in others is the fruit of the ego, which is to say that trust is the foundation upon which the ego and self-confidence unfold. Those of us who work with young children know that this is true with regard to child development. But how does learning to trust others become the source of our own ego strength?

Willing to collaborate

We need others to know ourselves. We need others to call forth our highest self. We need to work with others to solve social problems and create new social possibilities.

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In all of these activities we are asking ourselves to mediate––like the heart––between extremes and between outer and inner realities. We are also being asked to listen deeply and be selflessly responsive to constantly changing circumstances, another archetypal capacity of the heart. The heart knows sooner than the head when it hears an answer to a question that it has been carrying. The heart knows when it has struck karmic gold in a relationship (whether it is an easy or a hard one) and how to remake itself anew. The heart pulses tirelessly day and night as long as we have the will to live. Provided it does not harden into joyless ideology, it will find a way in everyday life to be more whole and more filled with love.

There are masculine and feminine archetypes in every aspect of existence, and at this time in many cultures, these archetypes are becoming less and less connected to males or females. Because the most recent millennia have been overshadowed by male archetypes, it is not surprising that today humanity is looking to the forces of the heart and perceptive human feeling, and to processes of conversation, collaboration, and community-building to bring about new evolutionary possibilities. In certain lectures Rudolf Steiner referred to Anthroposophia as a feminine spiritual being who would accompany the development of human beings for the remainder of our era.

In the same way that the heart, as the central harmonizer of our bodily community, knows what is needed in its every part and keeps us whole and in balance, perhaps these heart-inspired activities can hint at how we can work both individually and as groups towards harmonizing and healing our social organism.

Holly Koteen-Soulé (hollyksgarden@gmail.com) received her BA and MA from Antioch University in Seattle and studied Waldorf education at Emerson College. She was a Waldorf Early Childhood teacher for 25 years, at the Seattle Waldorf School and the Bright Water School where she pioneered Parent and Child classes in the Seattle area. A founding member of Sound Circle Center, she serves as Director of Early Childhood Education. Holly is a member of the WECAN Board and a member of the Pedagogical Section Council of the School for Spiritual Science of the Anthroposophical Society.

References:

Holdrege, Craig, ed., 2002. The Dynamic Heart. Association of Waldorf Schools of North America

Prokofieff, Sergei, 1996, 2006. The Heavenly Sophia and the Being Anthroposophia. Temple Lodge Press

Schmidt-Brabant, Manfred and Sease, Virginia, 1999. The Archetypal Feminine in the Mystery Stream of Humanity. Temple Lodge Press

Selg, Peter, 2012. The Mystery of the Heart. SteinerBooks