Can you hear how We are One?

Can you hear now?
How We are One?

And far from now we'll still be struggling to be
but we can at least hear our Oneness now
not from one voice but from Our voices

It's the Spirit of the Times
the consciousness of the times
to know Our Selves
Not I
but US

And from that Oneness we'll embrace daylight
and meet the needs of each and every realm of life
and thread each moment with humble pace
to be
to be as One

Life is the stage on which we actualize our Oneness
It is threaded with children's laughter and pain
old people's suffering and forgiveness
young and mature people's love

It is our daily bread
to struggle forth
ahead of time
in time to be

And die each second
without regret of letting go
having given everything
to the whole

FOF Blog. women and malignancy in the FOF -We are One.

I just found the following posts in the fofblog. Anna's observation is so very valid. But women are only just beginning to actually speak out there which is wonderful! The voices are clearer. It's also good to hear them in a sort of "dialogue". We were unable to do that when I participated.  It was easier to attack what was not wanted to be said out loud. 

On the subject of malignancy in the fofmembers I don't think that there is such a thing as "conscious malignancy", but unconsciousness. What is most shocking about brainwashing is not that people become malignant at will but that everything they do becomes justifiable within the context of the formatory apparatus' adaptation. Mr. Haven was the mind behind the cult and managed to convince each and every member that his interpretation of Robert's whims, eccentricities and atrocities, needed to be accepted, worked with and sublimated. In every sense, his own weaknesses were sublimated if Robert's were. What he did with himself became at least "normal" if he managed to convince everyone that what Robert did with his self and the men around him was "divine". 

The deep tragedy for the people in the fof is that they don't realize the extent to which they've hang up their lives in the tragedy of two sick men willing to support and justify each other's acts at all cost: the members.

Evil is widespread in every cultic institution if by evil we understand the ability of some people to act against an individual's freedoms and rights. One cannot understand the damages people go through in such an institution if one cannot understand rights and freedoms objectively. That is, as innate qualities necessary for human development.

Freedom of speech, freedom of expression is not just the ability of someone to say what he or she thinks but the life giving activity in no matter what community that allows people to evolve. If "evolution" is the objective, we need to realize that the human spirit cannot evolve in constriction and blind obedience. Every individual must participate in the social process of no matter what institution he or she belongs to. Participate fully in every decision on how life is to take place. Men as much as women and increasingly children must be able to realize that they are in the hands of people able to dialogue with each other with profound love and respect for life. 

There is no freedom to "be" in cults and the cult turns against all the participants but they justify the horror too weak to hold their own self above the brainwashing. Brainwashing in cults is the most weakening and effective brainwashing of all institutions because it is performed with the innocent willingness of the members. They systematically turn against themselves not because they are consciously malignant but because they were unable to reach any level of consciousness that could hold their "self" above the status quo and the authority of the Guru's godliness. Cults, are the epitomy of dictatorship in the sphere of religion. People's emotional centers are meticulously trained to sacrifice their own self at the service of the guru who is adapted into a Whmiraculous figure whose all acts are beyond human standards allowing him or her to get away with murder. The guru is a psychopath that has been sculpted into one by the blind obedience of his followers no matter how much talent of his own he had before. The cult is a social phenomenon, that is, it is all the participants what make it so, not just an individual doing evil things. Looked at objectively, what we should be able to explore is the relationships we human beings have to authority. Why, when we are too weak to be our own self and apply our wisdom to our lives, we allow others to take the reigns of our will. Why in our times children are hurt so badly that adults are still too hurt and immature to take the reigns of their own lives and instead, willingly submit to the rule of a guru they've turned into a pseudo King-Priest just as willing to suck out their lives. 

Then the question of "life" itself gives us the opportunity to observe what "freedom" and "rights" mean.  An individual cannot develop without freedom and a society cannot evolve without rights. "Obedience" without consciousness of "life" is madness. Anyone can be turned into a "bee" in that condition. 

The rights in constitutions are not just political ideals made to hold a government in place, they are the understanding that life flows generously amongst the people when the individual can move freely within the framework of the law. If the laws turn against the individual and submit him as is widely happening in our societies and institutions, then life ceases to be "life-giving" and authority and power turns against the people. Blind authority, sublimated authority at the service of a "beyond" without practical understanding of our lives and the scope of their reach within our "communities" makes its followers as blind and deadly as their leaders. The inability to stand up for "life" in all its dimension, that is for the right to live out one's self with all of one's mistakes together with the people that one happens to be and instead submit one's self to the rule of no matter what man or woman willing to annihilate one's will for no matter what ideal, is deadly in our times: The King is Dead and every time we assume a hierarchic nobility in our present relationships, we are denying our selves, that is, every individual, to act on his own consciousness.  The issue today is not only that the King is Dead but that the Priest is also Dead. Divine authority, that is, the right to "consciousness" belongs to each and every human being. We are each responsible for "life". We are each responsible for each other and we are each responsible for our world and everything that happens in it. 

It is not only that every man is called upon to find the solution, it is that every man is in his and her own self, the solution: "life" and the ability to stand up for it wherever he or she walks the land. 

To know that we are not only not just people at the service of power allowing it to enslave us in multiple forms in our daily struggle but that WE, each human being is "life", that is, that each human being carries within himself the "Spirit" able to stand, defend and actualize what is good, beautiful and "decent". And by "decent" I don't mean the morality of immorality but the ability to protect and pull our selves away from our most vicious and criminal behavior and reinstate our will as human beings replacing the animal within us by the Human being in us. 

Authoritarian organizations, cults and institutions are good for animals in nature but culture cannot survive in dictatorships. Culture is life in a society just as creation is life in the individual. The individual cannot create if he or she has to submit their will to another man or woman. To become objective about our selves as human beings, means that we are mature enough to understand that we, each and every one of us, is responsible for the whole. What, when and where, who, by whom and at what time. Why. Everything that happens around us is our responsibility. Leaving "life" for someone else to organize and submit us reveals our immaturity as human beings and reveals our "clan" animal behavior. "Mass" behavior is nothing else but the instinctive animality in human beings. 

That we are each able to respond for life and that in so doing there is a harmonious response does not mean that we are acting on mass but that the individual has become mature enough to respond "objectively" to the needs of the moment. If, for example, "we" act to protect the Earth from the unconsciousness of greed, it does not mean that we are giving up our individuality or consciousness of it, it means that many of us understand the objective need to act in the protection of our home: the Earth. 

That we, the people of today, the people whose "lives" are being lived in these times, stand above our conditionings and state that this world be protected from the rampant corruption and abuse of the authorities in the different realms of power in all institutions, means that We the People of this World have become aware of the objective power of our lives and our responsibility with the human being as a developing entity. That we in our times, do our part to protect our world for future generations to grow and develop, is not just a duty that we are to perform with obedience but a right that we are to perform with joy. 

It is not our duty to obey, it is our duty to BE. "Being" is the state in which the individual is able to incarnate "life" and its "life-giving" force against everything that acts against it. The conquest of "our selves", the conquest of our consciousness of our selves as One Human Being struggling to actualize the power of "life" in the realm of the physical, is the most beautiful endeavor that any man will ever begin. That we "paint" this world with our acts and live our selves out in its disappearing "reality"only to state that we have "lived" a "decent" life, that is, that we have loved and responded consciously for everything around us and left it a better place for coming generations, makes every life heroic. The hero knows that the only thing that needs to be preserved is life itself and in his and her consciousness a human being IS life itself: the summit of creation: the ability to create and recreate its principles in our every day practice, for the short period of our existence.  

http://fofdiscussion.wordpress.com/2011/08/30/fellowship-of-friendsliving-presencepathway-to-presence-discussion-–-part-111/

95. Anna - September 3, 2011

Josiane, Shirley,

Post under a man’s name. You get treated better.

Trust me. I’ve tried it.

96. Shirley - September 3, 2011

I’d like to add that I don’t have well-defined thoughts about good and evil. Perhaps like many people, I know what repels me, but can’t always articulate why. For ex., why do I feel that RB is in a different class of malevolence than the guys doing the Meet Up groups? Is it the scale of RB’s acts, and how he deliberately misguides so many people who are “searching for the miraculous” (etc)? On the other hand, I looked at one of the Meet-Up sites when Ames mentioned it, and saw Ames’ comment, before Abd. removed it. I think the removal of Ames’ comment indicates the lack of openness of the Meet-Up sites, and that those sites are not for true discussions but to encourage new people to find themselves attracted to the FF people leading those meetings and, before you know it, find themselves at FF prospective student meetings.

97. For the record - September 3, 2011

Josiane and Shirley,

Something to think about: Maybe your inability to see malevolence in your former fellow fof followers is the same inability that most of us had for a certain amount of time in seeing the malevolence in Robert Burton.

I won’t try to answer that for either of you — you’ll have to do that for yourselves. But for me, that was definitely the case. Just as it was difficult for me to believe that someone I considered a friend in the FOF would knowingly lie about important matters, it was difficult for me to believe the same about Robert Burton. Eventually I could see that Robert Burton was “a liar” — which by the way, just means someone who habitually lies.

It takes no stretch of the imagination to realize that his closest followers would adopt and imitate and manifest the same trait. When you’re defending your tenaciously held view of the world that you have stubbornly held onto for many years, and especially when the ego gets involved defending your supposed superiority over others, lying seems like a small thing.

The more you push back at Bruce and X-Ray, the more I wonder whether or not you’ve entirely escaped from the cult and its group think. Remember: Probably the main ingredient for keeping people on board with everything is to convince them that things really aren’t that bad, and that people in the group really aren’t that bad. At some point, sensing a malignancy is the only way to really remove yourself — both physically and mentally and emotionally. 

The fofblog moderator

http://fofdiscussion.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/fellowship-of-friendsliving-presencepathway-to-presence-discussion-–-part-109/

46. J. D. - August 17, 2011

fofblogmoderator

I’m not very active on this blog and I’m no devil’s advocate, but I have to say that you are in some measure accountable for the childish time-out handed to the bloggers. Not much for enforcing it, but because you have failed to address the abuse shown on this blog for quite a while. It has been brought to your attention before, when it was quieter, but you failed to take any action. Is it some kind of fear or just apathy? This form of bullying has gone unnoticed or ignored for a long time, me included, until now (Ty GV) and I find the indifference displayed by most of us quite troublesome. It is quite hypocritical to think that we are somehow carrying on a healing process from the conditioning of the cult, and yet we remain blind to things like this in our “home”.

Elena:

It's strange to observe how long it takes for people to acknowledge the truth about a situation. I personally believe Steve has done a great job being practically invisible in the fofblog and that there is an advantage to that "take" on "moderation" but a moderator should be so much more than that. That people settle for the same invisible moderation that is far from just or conscious and makes the decision to ban those who question them more than they are willing to take, simply states the level of being of a population that left a cult to fund another one. The subtlety of the excuses do not alter the facts. That we cannot ask for more than what we are and that it takes years and years for people to acknowledge their flaws is the process of growing up into what we could have done, had we been more mature.

Stating at last that Steve failed to address the abuse shown on the blog for quite a while must be an oxymoron if I understand correctly what oxymoron means. He allowed abuses for so long that the play was written out so that I would in turn become as hopelessly abusive as them and they would then have the excuse they needed to ban me. Not that the banner of victim suits me, I hit as hard as I could, but the banner of innocence and lack of responsibility for what happened suits them a lot less. This means that I am not inclined to justify my abuses in the fofblog. I acknowledged them already enough times and apologized. The opportunity that this gives us is to observe how long it takes a group of people to watch themselves and their behavior and begin to acknowledge the truth about what actually happens. 

They didn't ban me, I mean you if you are reading, because I said swear words, that was only the excuse they needed, they banned me because they were questioned to the bones about the passive position they took in relation to the Fellowship Cult. They banned me because I called for action, real, serious and definitive and labelled their fascism in not doing so. 

"J.D:This form of bullying has gone unnoticed or ignored for a long time, me included, until now (Ty GV) and I find the indifference displayed by most of us quite troublesome."

To hear someone acknowledge how troublesome it is to realize how they ALL remained silent to the abuse and the deep questions that were fought between us, is like balm to my heart. It is not that being banned was not positive for me, I have much learnt from it. I realize that had I been stronger and healthier and not just come out of a cult after seventeen years, I might have had the patience and the love to hold myself in the position that I understood necessary without offending anyone but that my abuse came long after I was abused by too many without the intervention of the moderator or others, is a fact. The strange thing about the truth, the facts, is that they continue to act on our being and straighten themselves out one way or the other in the long run. 

The second time I was banned for pointing out the manipulative questioning Ton was doing to me and getting harshly insulted by Nigel without reacting negatively to him, did show the level of biasness that the moderator and others have reached. That biasness in order to avoid confronting the real issues is what becomes criminal in all organizations, “cultish”. They “banish” what they don’t want to see or hear.  That Brucelevy, who I nevertheless firmly admire and respect, turned his whole weight against me because I "over did it", together with others who never "took me" and that in chorus they protected their act of banning me does not in any way diminish the fact that they did so because they were unable and unwilling to face the deep issues: 

That the Fellowship cult needs to be confronted, questioned and closed for good

That cults of the kind need to be overcome by humanity

That we are mature enough to acknowledge the harm they do to people and able to close them down.

That we, ex-members of the fellowship cult need to take responsibility for those leaving and help them out assuming the job of helping them find jobs and support. That we need an equally powerful institution to take responsibility for the institutions harming people.

That were we fully conscious of the horror we've been through we would continue our work fighting cults everywhere in the world because the fellowship is only one minute experience that is repeating itself everywhere with frightening possibilities. The “dismembering” of the human being into cults, parties, industries, sports, scientists, artists is an schizophrenia that individuals in every single activity are suffering beyond comprehension.

In the sphere of the religious, the human being today is at the mercy of gurus who take the suffering of people for their profit succumbing into an even greater slavery than the one they were running away from. Its an imperative for the human being of today to be able to confront his and her own life and participate in society without pretending to live out his emotional-religious life in a cult. 


Isolating our selves in a cult, in a political party, in the arena of sports or as mad scientists separated from the rest is just that: madness. Every human being must develop every side of his religious, political, physical, intellectual, sexual, artistic being. That we actualize all aspect of life itself: religious and political, social and economic, artistic and physical without separating them into cults of their own is necessary to avoid the schizophrenia on the individual.

The individual, in "our" ignorance, does not realize that the world today is in a race of separating spheres that will destroy it in the long run if they are not checked and healed. The experience of "unity", of "harmony", of "coherence" and "cohesion"  in social "life", is an aspect of a "civilized human". 


We cannot continue to allow for the religious aspects of our emotional life to be banned from our lives and hidden in cults away from the current of socio-political life, just as we cannot continue to allow for the political aspects of our intellectual life to be reduced to hierarchic parties without objective responsibility. NO ONE is doing this to US. We are all part and parcel of a process that is living itself out, the process of becoming human beings in our own right. We are ALL equally responsible, and equally responsible for each other.

It's strange to observe how a man who served the Fellowship cult all his life continues to serve the people with his death. That having served the darkest side of the Fellowship and being discarded for it can now serve to open other member's eyes about their situation. It is a good thing that all things can turn into positive ones, that we do not live our lives in vain. Life itself is like a child’s learning to walk through the fall and in its scale, death wrings our hearts into an understanding that cannot be avoided forever.

The real miracle is in the fact that "life" is threads of a force that we cannot see but are living themselves out. That the physical reality simply knits but that it is in the physical reality that we are meant to actualize our love that is no other than the actualization of our being and its unity, diversified. We are fish in the Ocean of Life and it lives itself out in our swimming.

To become objective about our lives means to understand that the institutions that govern its experience are critically important. That we are one with the governments, one with the religious activities that mark its pace, that the arena’s in which we move our bodies and the laboratories in which we explore our possibilities are ALL part and parcel of our own personal responsibility. That WE ARE ONE WITH EACH OTHER AND EVERYTHING AROUND US and acknowledge for ourselves a bond of love in conscious responsibility. That we human beings know ourselves part of each other and are willing and able to act on our behalf for the benefit of each and every individual. That we no longer allow governments, industries, universities or any other institution to run along unchecked by the objective principles of humaneness. That we do not allow gurus to abuse their power or governors to steal the taxes and use them to their personal advantage in detriment of the whole. That we do not allow abuse from anyone anywhere because life is too beautiful to do so and that we are willing to stop the rampant crime with the necessary compassion. 

We are One

I wanted to share with you my love that after the war is peace and all youth is like war

Like a scent

The winter of the soul rises

The white snow of life

The sweet coldness of solitude

In the obscurity of silence

Multicoloured butterflies

The joy of being

Suffering runs amongst the people

The noise of injustice is let loose

The shadow of pain Is with us

Life amongst the children runs

The light of young people who in obscure strokes

Condition our selves to a life

Of reparations

And forgive our selves

In just one instant

Standing up

Face to our selves

Karma is not a condemnation

But a condition

The opportunity to visit anew

The forgotten corners

The lost keys

A space and time to confront one’s self

A foal that fights the harness and tames itself

Both at the same time 
Conscious that the reign is not a torture

Nor the seat a suffering
and the weight of one’s self: a joy

Life is...

Life

Buds that sprout

In spite of the winter

In spite of the summer

In spite of the odds

And grow pink in spring

We are

We grow amongst our selves

Like peal and fruit at the same time

Soil and manure

And what was karma becomes destiny

What was suffering becomes firm earth

Being is

And when it is, we Are

There is no other Being

Than what Is

It is not I who is

Because when I am,

It Is

But this is just another way of saying I Am or
We Are

If we could understand it like that

My deepest being

is not “mine”

It is ours

In that dimension

We are One

Without it

We are not

I is the karma

We

The destiny

But don’t think about us when you remember your self

When you remember yourself, don’t think

Thought is not a key to that dimension

Consciousness is not a thought but an attribute of being

We are so childish, 
such teenagers while convinced that the mind can be

When it is only the reigns of karma

The ink that inscribes it
A tool

Not the source of life

Don’t think about Us

Or make a religion of Us

Even if all religions are about that connection
Be
Us
in the human within

We are not a thought

We cannot “think” our selves

We have to “be” our selves

Live our selves out

“Make” ourselves 

Its what we Are in our Acts what expresses our consciousness
Acts what sculpt it

Not what we think
the mind is a slave to the king in power,
the will on the throne
The joy and the inspiration that come from the mind comes from the exterior
From within it's the will that inspires
Each human being is a Sun and there are many already out there

We Are

That

That we call human

And that we treat with such contempt while making a line at the

theatre, the bank or refer to “the tourists” "the masses" and those in the barricades that we offer so easily to death without thinking

Not the American, the Russian or the Latin, the European or the Arab, the African, the Asian or the primitive from the Amazones but the American, Russian, Latin, European, Arab, African, Asian and the primitive from the Amazones

We are

One human being

A life filled with lives

Cells in Earth’s skin

Atoms in the heart of the Universe

We are One

Hi Will,

How would you connect the different alchemies or the one alchemy in different spheres? and the exoteric and esoteric?

You invite me and tell me that when I come you'll show me things but I am here and if you have anything you wish to show this is your opportunity. It is also fine not to show anything and simply share ourselves without making up excuses of why we enjoy being together or presenting little baits so that we come even closer! When there's no agenda to be together then we settle in our selves, contented. Wouldn't that be the alchemy of being? To let each other be without competing? What competes, cannot be real.  To be delighted in each other's presence and not have to justify that? To let each other give all of our light (and every human being has as much of it as any other no matter where they come from or what they do, if you give them the opportunity, they will each give as much light as anybody else. And "giving" the opportunity is not placing them in a pedestal but remaining there for them without closing doors and erecting walls of separation justifying the pedestal in which one's ego has placed one's self in the suffering of not being).

We want to be loved because we don't know what being is. When we ARE, we love without wanting. The question of desire roots itself in "beinglessness": the ego wants what it doesn't have. When we achieve inside what the ego is looking for, we can take what is there with joy and gratitude but the ego is never satisfied, it has to deny. It is always putting everything and anything around itself down so that it can float above convinced that it shines in the mud. We are all there in different degrees and we are all out of there in different degrees. Life is life: the commitment to unity and the endless struggle against separationism, today, in our inner selves as much as in our communities and the world at large.

We are One, we're just not conscious of our oneness and in that unconsciousness we separate each other from each other in our acts: that is suffering. When each of our acts connects us to each other then life pours its light in our selves and everything we do gives delight. Every job, every creation, every relationship is an act of giving, every individual in his and her own way is a giver. When we don't deny each other what we are giving, then creation is possible because we are each endless creators. The whole system of injustice today does not come from the economic sphere but from the unconsciousness with which we treat each other's being neglecting to acknowledge our humanity.

The system of hierarchies in which the political and economic spheres place people is a symptom of our unconsciousness, not the cause. The economic differences and the relationships of power cannot change until we are each more conscious of our Oneness as human beings.

Thanks for sharing.

We are One!

“Look at any process you please. I throw a stone in a horizontal direction. It moves in a curved line and falls to earth after a time. I see the stone at successive moments in different places, after it has first cost me a certain amount of effort to throw it. Through my thinking contemplation I gain the following. During its motion the stone is under the influence of several factors. If it were only under the influence of the propulsion I gave it in throwing it, it would go on forever, in a straight line, in fact, without changing its velocity. But now the earth exerts an influence upon it which one calls gravity. If, without propelling it away from me, I had simply let go of it, it would have fallen straight to the ground, and in doing so its velocity would have increased continuously. Out of the reciprocal workings of these two influences there arises what actually happens. Those are all thought-considerations that I bring to what would offer itself to me without any thinking contemplation.


In this way we have in every cognitive process an element that would present itself to us even without any thinking contemplation, and another element that we can gain only through such thinking contemplation. 
When we have then gained both elements, it is clear to us that they belong together. A process runs its course in accordance with the laws that I gain about it through my thinking. The fact that for me the two elements are separated and are joined together by my cognition is my affair. The process does not bother about this separation and joining. From this it follows, however, that the activity of knowing is altogether my affair. Something that I bring about solely for my own sake. 
Yet another factor enters in here now. The things and processes would never, out of themselves, give me what I gain about them through my thinking contemplation. Out of themselves they give me, in fact, what I possess without that contemplation. It has already been stated in this essay that I take out of myself what I see in the things as their deepest being. The thoughts I make for myself about the things, these I produce out of my own inner being. They nevertheless belong to the things, as has been shown. The essential being of the things does not therefore come to me from them, but rather from me. My content is their essential being. I would never come to ask about the essential being of the things at all if I did not find present within me something I designate as this essential being of the things, designate as what belongs to them, but designate as what they do not give me out of themselves, but rather what I can take only out of myself.


Within the cognitive process I receive the essential being of the things from out of myself. I therefore have the essential being of the world within myself. Consequently I also have my own essential being within myself. With other things two factors appear to me: a process without its essential being and the essential being through me. With myself, process and essential being are identical. I draw forth the essential being of all the rest of the world out of myself, and I also draw forth my own essential being from myself.



Now my action is a part of the general world happening. It therefore has its essential being as much within me as all other happenings. To seek the laws of human action means, therefore, to draw them forth out of the content of the “I.” Just as the believer in God traces the laws of his actions back to the will of his God, so the person who has attained the insight that the essential being of all things lies within the “I” can also find the laws of his action only within the “I.” If the “I” has really penetrated into the essential nature of its action, it then feels itself to be the ruler of this action. As long as we believe in a world-being foreign to us, the laws of our action also stand over against us as foreign. They rule us; what we accomplish stands under the compulsion they exercise over us. If they are transformed from such foreign beings into our “I’s” primally own doing, then this compulsion ceases. That which compels has become our own being. The lawfulness no longer rules over us, but rather rules within us over the happenings that issue from our “I.” To bring about a process by virtue of a lawfulness standing outside the doer is an act of inner unfreedom; to do so out of the doer himself is an act of inner freedom. To give oneself the laws of one’s actions out of oneself means to act as a free individual.


The consideration of the cognitive process shows the human being that he can find the laws of his action only within himself.
*
To comprehend the “I” in thinking means to create the basis for founding everything that comes from the “I” also upon the “I” alone. The “I” that understands itself can make itself dependent upon nothing other than itself. And it can be answerable to no one but itself. After these expositions it seems almost superfluous to say that with this “I” only the incarnate real “I” of the individual person is meant and not any general “I” abstracted from it. For any such general “I” can indeed be gained from the real “I” only by abstraction. It is thus dependent upon the real individual. (Benj. R. Tucker and J. H. Mackay also advocate the same direction in thought and view of life out of which my two above-mentioned books have arisen. See Tucker’s Instead of a Book and Mackay’s The Anarchists”  


Elena: Is this Steiner at his best? 
“To bring about a process by virtue of a lawfulness standing outside the doer is an act of inner unfreedom; to do so out of the doer himself is an act of inner freedom. To give oneself the laws of one’s actions out of oneself means to act as a free individual.”
This could not be more beautiful! I could not agree with it more fully but here Steiner is talking about a mature I, a developed man, one who can trace his fate all the way through his karma and in that karma, does not avoid responsibility for everything that happens to him. No one has practically understood that better than Steiner, that is why his System of knowledge is called Anthroposophy and even his System is being dogmatized and misused to reinforce separations by many an anthroposophist. The understanding of individuality does not exclude the understanding of unity amongst all beings. That is what you and I have been disagreeing about Ton. The stronger the individual, the more freedom he experiences from the struggles of his time but that freedom does not mean that he excludes his self from them but that he suffers through them and brings his own light to them. It is not by running away from mankind that the individual matures but from embracing it whole that he himself becomes the man that he has the potential to be. Human beings are different, each one has their own destiny to fulfill but they are equal in their humanity. An individual's superiority does not reside in his or her power and position but in his capacity to "love". That is why men who have had that love have been religious leaders and not politicians. Mankind today needs that all men and women reunite love and power in everyday life, religion and politics and their expression in science and art, so that the sole power of politicians does not reign over their lives.  


Going back to the text, is Steiner not basically submitting the intellectual center or the mind or knowledge to the I and establishing its power and their connection? Does that mean that the individual and mankind are separate or does it mean that what Steiner needed to challenge in his time was the same tendency to follow authorities like the Church that Stirner was rightfully protesting against? “The thoughts I make for myself about the things, these I produce out of my own inner being. They nevertheless belong to the things, as has been shown. The essential being of the things does not therefore come to me from them, but rather from me. My content is their essential being. I would never come to ask about the essential being of the things at all if I did not find present within me something I designate as this essential being of the things, designate as what belongs to them, but designate as what they do not give me out of themselves, but rather what I can take only out of myself.” Elena: Is Steiner not saying that I can take the being of the things only out of myself because we are part and parcel of the whole? Let's repeat:

"I would never come to ask about the essential being of the things at all if I did not find present within me something I designate as this essential being of the things", 


Is he not also including the idea that I can only perceive the being of other things according to my own “level of being”? and if he’s not, I would argue that that would be the case so what he states about what we know about other things depends solely on the place in our own selves from where we are looking at them. If we are not ourselves “whole” how could we perceive the wholeness of the world?
A child comes into this world “embedded” in other people and is strongly determined by these people throughout the first period of life. These people actualize for the individual the reality of being human in that particular period of time. As the child grows up he and she develops an outer psychological skin that will help him “participate” in the “current” of his times. This outer skin is not the individual but the “natural” response of the individuals to his environment. It “looks” like individuality but every act is conditioned by what that individual has received from others. There is no individuality until there is a mature I. 


Individuality does not mean that one can protest every human enterprise for the sake of one’s selfish pleasure as Stirner proposes but that one can embrace every human enterprise and move far beyond it into the spirit that gave life to it. What I am protesting about the status quo is not the legitimate effort that men of all times have done to improve the living conditions for themselves as much as their contemporaries, what I am protesting about the status quo, is the conviction people have that humaneness, is only for the few in power and by power I don’t mean those with money, I mean those with positions of power who use it to abuse their privileges in every single institution. What matters today is not only how money is distributed but how “life giving life” is distributed: Life, culture: the creative power in each human being: the I itself, the right to be and participate without having to pay the price of submission for being under every self-imposed authority that thinks that being the doorman allows him or her to mistreat the public and from the doorman to the boss there is no difference in the inhumanity we are witnessing. There is no individuality until an individual comes into contact with his own self and when an individual does that, he confronts himself with his humanity. There is not one great man or woman that can mistreat another. The self and with it, the creative power of an individual is far from disconnected to other individuals. The individual is in a permanent and necessary dialogue between his and her self and others. You cannot isolate the individual from the rest of mankind and expect him to “create”. We are at the dawn of “creation” and the death of “the job”. The purpose of life is not to “work” but to create!


When the individual “grows up” enough to “digest” the “life” that s/he’s been “imbued” with, s/he’s not only capable of connecting to his self but to the reality of the world and the “time” in which s/he has “matured”. You cannot isolate one from the other and still pretend to understand either one. There is no society without individuals nor individuals without society. No individual is independent of his time and no individual is subject to his time all of his life. It is the power of his and her individuality what frees him from his time’s conditionings and in that freedom s/he propels a regenerative process that imbues the whole of mankind. Every single human being has this power of generation and regeneration within his and her self. Every life is a “miracle” not only for the individual living it but for all of mankind “receiving” from it. Each human being is a “gift” to all others. That is why life, each life, is sacred. We do not honor our selves when we submit each other to inhuman conditions thinking we have more “rights” than others justified by our position or imaginary “status”.  


The time is now O:OO It’ll be good to rest!
 Thank you again for the opportunity to look at what I see. Hopefully you will see better what you wish to look at.

We are One

Just to make sure that we understand what we are talking about Ton, you will never hear me say anything better than We are One. If all I ever understood in this life was that We are One, it was a life worth living!
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We are One!

55. Elena - April 17, 2010 [Edit]
Hi Ton,

We are One. This is my belief. You do not have to believe it and that’s O.K. It is the loveliest and greatest realization I have actually lived for and have no intention of letting go of it now that I understand it but have equally no intention of hurting you if you do not agree with it.

We are One
This Earth on which WE live is OURS.
We are all responsible for each other and nature
We are all humans beyond our race, education and nationality
First “humans”, not Americans, Colombians or Japanese, English, Egyptian or South African.
What is not human in America, Colombia, Japan, England, Egypt or South Africa is not human and must be challenged by every human being living no matter where.
We are human.
We are not only the owners of our planet we are the owners of our destiny.
We are not only the owners and the people responsible for this earth and each other we are the beneficiaries of this earth’s and each other’s goods and life. Life must be protected because it is life giving.
The people of each nation must use and protect their goods and the goods in each nation must be valued as equally good as the goods of other nations. The amazon forest must be protected by all of us because we all need it for our well being but protecting that good must be included in the distribution of responsibilities other nations have towards the income that Brasil, Colombia and other nations are not being able to withdraw for protecting the forests.
We must look at OUR plight from a human perspective, not an individualistic perspective. Individualism was a necessary step towards maturing as human beings and leaving behind the authoritarian hierarchic structures present in the clan mentality. It is not necessary now, it has served its purpose. Now it’s necessary for the individual to go beyond his own self into the realm of our selves, our Earth, our nations, our people, US, as human beings.

The first world is in need of the third world and vice-versa, not only economically but humanly. The first world cannot survive without the help of people from the third world particularly in Europe. America’s plight is different, they are imploding from within, like cults and they are hurting people in other nations with their policies. Individualism is over. It is time for US.