(PORTUGUÊS) (NEDERLANDS)
Yoga & More
Wednesday, July 24, 2024 - 10:00am
Bombeiros
Santo António das Areias
Human beings and their behaviours have fascinated me since childhood. My regular readers know that by now. Of course, I fall within that fascination myself. After all, there is nothing easier (in a practical sense then) to get to know human beings, through self-observation. I always have myself at hand. I don't need anyone to do it and above all I can do it wherever I am in this world and it costs absolutely nothing.
Not saying the process is easy and yet I regularly do it with healthy reluctance, simply because I have no choice if I want to get out of that vicious cycle. The reason I got into that has everything to do with unconscious thought.
Rudolf Steiner puts it this way:
The first basic rule for studying man is not to think too much. That will seem strange to you, but you will understand what I mean in a moment. Of course, thinking does not make a man particularly wise. When he is brooding about what he has been watching, as a rule not much sense emerges.
So if one wants to learn about the things of the world, one should not expect too much from thinking; it is not that important. If the facts call for it, one should think, but after observing something one should not take it as one's main objective to start fretting about it to find out how things are.
One should look at other things, compare them with each other and look for a connection. The more one looks for coherence, the more one becomes aware, for example, of nature. All those who have been thinking about nature have found nothing more in the ground than they already knew.
If someone is a materialist then he also talks about nature materialistically because he already is. He is not discovering anything new. If someone talks idealistically about nature, he does so because he is an idealist anyway.
One can always experience that people, through thinking, only find what they already knew beforehand.
Correct thinking only arises when one is simply guided by the facts.
https://ridzerdvandijk.wordpress.com/2022/09/20/denk-niet-te-veel-2/
Rudolf Steiner - GA 348 - Über Gesundheit und Krankheit - Dornach, 10 January 1923 (page 237)
But then, what is "thinking in the right way"?
That keeps me busy. I read about it, study all kinds of approaches like yoga philosophy, psychology, trauma experts like Maté and Bommerez, anthroposophy and more, I train myself (for years now, mind you) and little by little something begins to dawn on me. Sometimes it is possible to be aware of the circle I am in and ... to step out of it. I now know how that works. Of course, that doesn't mean I can't end up in that circle of thought anymore.
My interpretation of hatha yoga is a good way for me to learn to understand thinking too. After all, yoga has everything to make us whole as human beings, to heal us. It gives you a strong body, you learn to feel (of course you already can, I understand it and I am talking about feeling what is happening in your cells), your head becomes calm and your thinking stable. In the process, it can also heal the sick physical or mental body when you get serious about it.
All my teachings are based on my life experience. I am always looking for beauty, truth and goodness in everything I do - including my thinking. When any of the three is disturbed by something outside me as truth was blown off its pedestal by someone a few weeks ago, I feel the discomfort in all my cells. Only when those are all filled one by one (it never happens in one fell swoop, it takes time) with, in this case, that horrible feeling of betrayal, does it eventually flow away on its own like pulling the plug out of the sink. Only then do the circular thoughts stop, silence returns and I am free. Cleansed and in this case also wiser in how far I can trust people.
Until tomorrow or else until the next encounter.
Regards from the heart, Liesbeth