Penny for Your Thoughts
I’d give you gold if I could afford it. I really, really want you to think your own thoughts…
Abba Anthony said, Whoever strikes a lump of iron, first considers the thought of what he intends to make, a scythe, a sword, an axe. So also we ought to consider what kind of excellence we should pursue, so that we do not toil in vain.
The whole outer human life must be imbued with spiritual insights in the course of our world today. It must be realised that what is today considered science in materialistic circles must gradually disappear with its consequences from the life of the earth.
And all the struggles that we are now enduring and those that will still have to be endured in the future are, and will be, only an outward expression of a spiritual battle, just as the present war is ultimately also an outward expression of the opposition between materialism and the spiritual world view. For however deeply things may be hidden – behind the infinitely sad events of the present time lies the struggle of materialism against the spiritual worldview.
This battle must be fought. It will take on different forms, but it will have to be fought because people will have to learn to endure whatever is necessary to acquire the spiritual worldview for the coming future of humanity.*
The (w)hole of thought
The battleground of this war is in the mind of each and every individual, no matter age, gender, race, ethnicity, or any other perceived illusory differences between people. What is the mind but the comings and goings of thoughts. It has been said that our thoughts determine our lives.** In other words, our life takes the shape of our most dominant thoughts throughout each day. This is because the greater number of our thoughts are “repeats;” they are rarely “new” thoughts. Worse yet in these “modern” times very few of our thoughts are original i.e. not of our own creative energies. From a spiritual perspective it can be argued, if not demonstrated, that much of our thoughts are not who we really are; they do not reflect the Higher Self that dwells deep within our consciousness but rather the passion-driven lower self. But I digress.
The key to winning this current war is the taking control of one’s own thoughts. Concurrent with this (often difficult) effort is generating wholly original, cognitive, original thoughts that come from within, independent of outside influence. Rudolf Steiner had this to say about controlling our thoughts:
We are now in a period when a significant change must come about: People must become thinking people instead of thinking machines. It is terrible, is it not, when you say something like that, because people of our time take it for granted that they are thinking people, and if you ask them to become thinking people, they actually find it an insult. But that is how it is.
Since the middle of the 15th century, people have become more and more like thinking machines. People surrender themselves to thoughts, as it were; they do not control them. Imagine what it would be like if you did the same with your limbs as most people do with their thinking organs today. Ask yourself if the modern human being can be inclined – I say can be – to randomly take in a thought and randomly shut down a thought. Thoughts are bubbling up in people’s heads today. People cannot resist them; they automatically surrender to them. A thought arises, the previous one disappears, it flies and flashes through the mind, and people think in such a way that one could best say: it thinks in the human being.
Imagine that your arms and legs would behave similarly, that you would be able to control them as little as you can control your thinking. Imagine a person walking down the street, his arms moving in the same uncontrolled way as his thinking organ moves! You know how much goes through a person’s head when he walks down the street, and now imagine how he would continually gesture with his arms and hands in the same way that he does with the thoughts in his head!
And yet, we are facing the age when people have to learn to control their thoughts in the same way they control their arms and legs. We are entering that era. A particular inner discipline of our thinking is what has to occur now and from which people today are still exceedingly far away.
We must strive to control our thoughts. But first we must regain and reclaim our own power of thought so that what we think comes from within. We are not parrots, we are human beings endowed with the ability and power of creative, original thought. Our thoughts fashion our life, what we experience from day to day. If we do not control those thoughts, they inevitably control us. And if our thoughts are not our own, then we are merely lemmings being led by the pied piper to the precipice of forever, giving up our own ambition to live a creative, full life.
* This is an edit of a Rudolf Steiner quote. The edits I made were to make the quote relate directly to the world’s current state. The meaning of his quote has not been changed by doing so.
** Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica