TOWARD A ROSE CROSS MEDITATION PART III OF IV
Preparation for meditation begins with
these three simple questions – “Who Am I?” “Why Am I Here?” and What Do I
Want?” Steiner urges us NOT to go ahead with the Rose Cross meditation unless we are really being truthful with
ourselves. Do we want to change, or not?
Why be false with ourselves? If we are NOT really seeking to
transform even a simple imperfection, come back to this later when we are ready. Self-deceit
creates another imperfection.
Clear?
This is the preparation, the time to be honest. Don’t go into the meditation if
you don’t want to do it. Read this section over until you are sure.
WHO AM I?
Are you clear about the Three Simple
Questions.
Step 1 – Visualize who you are as a
human being compared to a plant. Visualize yourself next to the plant. Live
with the visualization. Are you not way more complex, more “perfect” than the
plant? The plant has roots and is attached to the ground. Has a stem. And
leaves which sprout out of the stem and a blossom. And you? You are not chained
to the ground. You have feelings and desires to move and then you turn your
feelings into desires and then into actions – you move. What motivates you? Can
anything motivate the plant to move?
Step
2 – The plant follows the pure laws of growth, follows the sun, and the
seasons. In a way, the plant is chaste and pure – it lives its life without
passion, anger, fear or desires. We have purchased our freedom by permitting
passions and desires into ourselves. We can love and take noble actions or
impure actions which sully our Human Spirit. We have choices and we have values
and morals.
Step 3 – Visualize the green sap
flowing in the plant. This is a passionless expression of the forces of growth.
This is what plants do. Then visualize how the red blood flows through the
human’s veins – through your veins. This is an expression of instincts,
passions and desires.
Who
are you? Visualize yourself and the plant for a while.
WHY AM I
HERE?
The second phase – “Why are you and the
symbolic plant here?”
You are capable of free will. You choose
why you are here. The human being is capable of evolution and change. But, change requires that you, the human
being, choose to change; to live at a higher, level requires we become
purified, that we eliminate impurities in our action, feelings and thoughts.
Impure feelings seem to arise on their own
simply because we are free to have any and all sorts of feelings – as if to
confirm we are free – an array of tempting feelings may arise. Like pride.
Possible financial reward.
Some feelings are familiar and we may have
sought or struggled, to control them, and we may have eliminated these same impurities
in our lives previously. They are part of our free life like the green sap is
part of the plant life.
The Rose plant transforms the green sap,
its version of our free feelings (which
include impurities), into growth force which drive leaves and stem into the red
of the Rose. The Rose becomes our symbol of transformation of feelings which
may include impurities.
Visualize
the green sap transforming into the Red. The red is symbolic of the blood which
carries our passions. You and the plant symbolically share the capacity for
transformation.
WHAT DO I
WANT?
Phase three - we want the preparation to
evoke in us deep feelings – “grave feelings” - as Steiner calls them.
If the Rose can symbolically transform a
chaste, pure, thorny past driven, by the natural forces of growth into a
beautiful blossom of the Red Rose; is it not then possible for us to transform the
impure or erroneous feelings in our free desires during such a symbolic
meditation?
Are we prepared to change?
We
humans have freedom. We can evolve and overcome and eliminate some of our old,
negative habits like harsh words or angry attitudes, or being too proud to
acknowledge we are imperfect – or staying cold and distant. If we approach our
transformations, no matter how small, with grave feelings of their importance,
acknowledging they are what at once seems minor but has major implications for
WHO WE ARE tomorrow; then, when we eliminate even the tiniest impurity we can
feel “liberating joy” as Steiner says, that our red blood has become transformed into the bearer of inwardly
purified experiences.
Yes, this is possible for us!
Visualize
the green sap in the stem transforming into the Red Rose blossom.
Before attempting the Rose Cross Meditation, we are asked to live deeply with these
preparatory thoughts for some time. We are instructed to “confront” these
thoughts because they are the architecture, the structure, of the meditation.
© Copyright
2015, Jean W. Yeager
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