Recalling the Deed, Living with Its Shadow

John Bloom

One accomplishment of the 1923/24 Christmas Conference was the culmination of Rudolf Steiner’s efforts to organize lived anthroposophy as a healing force in the world. His purpose was to create an associative movement that cultivated the exercise of spiritual guidance in the affairs of human life. This moment in the evolution of anthroposophy was intended as a turning point for reawakening spirit as a reality in practical life, a microcosmic reflection of the Mystery of the Christ-Sun. Rudolf Steiner embodied this flow between spirit and matter and devoted his life to evolving research and practices that furthered others’ engagement in it. Living anthroposophy is not just the understanding of its concepts, but rather the degree to which each of us has taken these indications into our being and doing.

The heart and esoteric essence of the Christmas Conference resides in the Foundation Stone Meditation. This meditation provided and continues to provide esoteric substance by expanding time and space as experienced through the sense world—past, present, future, and in the four directions—into the cosmic constellation of spirit beings, light, and movement. Working with the rhythms of this meditation, one can internalize the unity and duality of spirit and matter that Steiner articulated as essential for the future of humanity and the evolution of consciousness. From this perspective, the Christmas Conference and all that it represents are more relevant than ever.

The Statutes formulated at the Christmas Conference were an attempt to frame organizational agreements in a way that all the participants could freely support. Rudolf Steiner even indicated that the Statutes were meant to be an example of healthy organizational life rather than fixed laws. For me, the Christmas Conference is the imagination of a worldwide spiritual network with a foundation in social life and shared agreements that transcend geopolitical boundaries and cultural differences. We have yet to fully realize the ideals of the Christmas Conference, the integration of spirit-self and worldly-self, individual and community. But then it sometimes takes reality to make the ideal visible.

In the last few years, I have experienced that my capacity for such integrative practices has been challenged by all the divergent factors and perceptions around Covid, by issues around racism, by economic, political, and relational uncertainty, and by the polarization in response to, and materialization of, what feels like virtually everything. It is as if, in the last few years, a blanket of darkness has been cast over the ideals of the Christmas Conference, as if demonic forces sensed an opportune time to undermine or attack what had served as the apparent foundations of a social and spiritual contract within the Society, and more broadly a shared understanding of the value of being human and human dignity itself. Some of this disruption has been good (as there is often good tucked somewhere in evil) as it has made the profound weaknesses and injustices in our wider culture and ecology evident and made it clear that members of the Society are not immune from such social trends. However, much of what has been made of these social trends in the US points to old power structures exacerbated by overaccumulation of wealth, even as there are initiatives attempting to transform how we work with power and capital for social good. I might characterize the situation in the following way: Democracy-based political power, one person one vote, has been co-opted and corrupted by commerce and the economic sector into hierarchical power maintained through the control of capital and natural resources with an eye toward commoditizing the human being, again.

While no one has been immune from the suffering of the last few years, whether directly or indirectly, there are three casualties made spectacularly visible: freedom, truth, and authority. The question of freedom, spiritual freedom, has played out in the battle between the personal and the public, individual and community. Freedom has turned into a political battleground because it is exercised as a right, without regard to individual responsibility in light of a social ethic. Truth, the moral foundation of spiritual freedom (“the truth shall set you free”), has become a matter of the power to fabricate and disseminate propaganda whether based in fact or simply serving some belief or end. Authority, the capacity to take responsibility for one’s own experience, has been disempowered by a reliance on centralized authority promulgated by those “experts” who know better. Without such disempowerment, the rise of an authoritarian state would be impossible. And of course, freedom, truth, and authority are interrelated and need to be viewed as parts of a whole.

How do we recognize and name the power of moral and ethical corruption? Can we co-create new ways of working that reflect the ideals of the Christmas Conference as an inclusive practice where we can act locally or regionally yet do so with a worldwide consciousness? Can we collaborate in a new leadership, transforming culture, politics, and economics so that Good may become?

I can say unconditionally, I am profoundly grateful for the reflective tools given in anthroposophical practice, esoteric and exoteric, as a way to work with and maintain equanimity. Such a way of knowing and acting extends beyond what arises as self-knowledge, to recognizing and understanding others as colleagues on a path of navigating the space, time, and spiritual world within which anthroposophical knowing stands in service. The moral atmosphere in which spiritual and cultural freedom can guide being in community awaits the renewal of a true social ethic in which truth and authority arise from love. That is the healing task ahead.

John Bloom was General Secretary of the US Anthroposophical Society from 2016–2023. He is an artist, author of several books, and organizational advisor, and lives in San Francisco.