ARDUOUS कठिन beschwerlich ardu 艱鉅 つらい и взрывоопасных مشکل

WHO AM I?

This is an arduous time for many of us.  Arduous, or “tough” times mean you are being challenged and tested by life.

How much "grit" do you have? Grit is comprised of determination, willingness to withstand the pain. To call forth determination or courage means that you are willing to sacrifice for your goal.

The times have called forth significant challenges.

Those have been added to your personal challenges which you have faced hanging on to the big goals you had before the pandemic.

That means you have had to rise to all these challenges by growing, learning, and gaining experiences. This oh-so-difficult time has meant you have had to work perhaps the hardest in your life.

Is it any comfort to know that the harder you have worked, the greater the capacities you developed? The more exceptional capabilities you have earned so that in the future you will be able to accomplish and achieve even more than before things became so arduous.

That means your life may become more abundant. The more abundant your outer life becomes, the more inner strength you have.

    

WHY AM I HERE?

The challenges we receive lead us to the fate we have for our life. That fate and those experiences are directed by the Star your Spirit-Self has chosen to follow.

Is it you who is finding your fate, or is your fate finding you?

Is it your Star that you are following? Or, is the Star leading you, drawing you forward into the future you know nothing about?

As you move forward on your path, you may begin to realize that we must have challenges, a path, fate, and a Star; otherwise, our struggles seem random and meaningless.

 

WHAT DO I WANT?

What is the gift your Spirit-Self wishes to receive? What is the source of all this?

Who is the Giver?

 

As the Rudolf Steiner verse reads:

 

“I feel my star,

My star finds me,

I feel my fate,

My fate finds me.

 

My life and the wide world are one.

 

Life grows more abundant for me.

Life grows more radiant within me.

Life grows more arduous for me.”

 

     This is a time of testing.

     Why in the world would anyone want their lives to be more Arduous?

 

Taken from the collection of short essays:

Th3 Simple Questions: Slice Open Everyday Life

© Copyright 2015, Jean W. Yeager

AUTHOR SITE – Listen to old comedy radio ads – www.the-three.com

AMAZON AUTHOR SITE: http://tinyurl.com/jk9a6e7

https://shorturl.at/aotN3

 ==============================

BUY ONLINE THE BOOK THAT ANSWERS TH3 SIMPLE QUESTIONS

A GREAT BEDSIDE READ!

https://www.amazon.com/Th3-Simple-Questions-Slice-Everyday-ebook/dp/B0793P18M8

 

DEVOTION BECOMES SACRIFICE

 

VIRTUES OF THE MONTH

Rudolf Steiner’s “Calendar of Virtues” is a monthly practice. The virtue of the month changes on the 21^st of each month so that the power of regularity helps with maintaining the practice over the months and years. Each month a new virtue transition will be offered for participants to consider.  While considering a Virtue transition, one is also asked to consider the opposite.  

Take time to observe the Virtue each month in nature, your community or yourself. Then journal your experience in 100 – 150 words about what you observe – outer and inner.

https://calendarofvirtues.blogspot.com/

 

MARCH 21 - APRIL 20

 

VIRTUE OF THE MONTH: DEVOTION BECOMES SACRIFICE

THE OPPOSITE: Not caring.

 

Here is an example which I wrote in 2014.

 

WHO AM I?

     I am the Seed. I am all about Devotion. In me I have bound together all of the genetic matter required to reproduce my species. This has been gathered over successive generations of plants. Some qualities have stayed, others have fallen away over time. And, I can protect this special cargo for a very long time. Because I am a plant seed, I have enclosed the germplasm in a very hard seed-case.

   NOTE:  Human Devotion is a virtue and gains strength when one spends time with something or someone important to you- including your future plans and dreams.  Like the seed, a practice of Devotion is an active gathering together all the knowledge, insight and experience possible within yourself – and this can take time, lots of it.

 

WHY AM I HERE?

    Sacrifice. The Seed is all about Devotion AND Sacrifice. When the time is right, I have got to be able to transform myself – to sacrifice one form - the form I am at the moment most comfortable with, have spent so much time perfecting -  to become another form – sacrifice my beautiful hard-shell to become re-born, transformed as a plant. I'm gonna need some help. When I’m planted in the dark earth and broken down by water, warmth, and life in the soil, that to which I have been devoted – will be released. Without Sacrifice the "new and improved me" cannot be re-born.

    NOTE: Self-sacrifice is terribly uncomfortable. Sometimes if you are in the midst of personal change it can actually feel as if something within you is dissolving, something hard or fixed is breaking down.

 

THE OPPOSITE: Not Caring

    The Virtues of Devotion and Sacrifice depend upon Care. There is a risk that they can draw you in to a type of hyper-devotion such as dogmatism or fanaticism. To guard against these excesses, many may develop an negative virtue of distancing themselves by not caring or cynicism. The soul question is how to stay objective but devoted and engaged. How to come close without merging.

 

WHAT DO I WANT?

    The questions I ask myself are: Has Devotion been easy? Hard? Has it gotten stuck? And, how is it going with your self-transformation? Is it time to practice the Virtue of Sacrifice and give up that to which we are devoted so that something new can come into the world, and into yourself?

 

© Copyright 2014, Jean W. Yeager

All Rights Reserved

 

AUTHOR SITE – www.th3simplequestions.com

AMAZON AUTHOR SITE: http://tinyurl.com/jk9a6e7

 

APRIL 2014 - BLOG POST SYNOPSES

4/24 - I AM THE PAUSE BUTTON ON LIFE. - Much of life today is on automatic pilot. Trains of cause and effect, pulling cars loaded with habitual thought, leave our stations bound for a one way journey to a predetermined outcome. The pause or gap, is all about freedom. We at least should be free in our heads and responsible for our actions if life otherwise has us boxed in.

4/22 – CALENDAR OF VIRTUES – APRIL 20 – MAY 20 – HERE’S HOW TO PARTICIPATE - Here's how to participate in the slow research project and follow the calendar of virtues.

4/22 – DEVOTION BECOMES SACRIFICE: THE SEED - I am the Seed. I am all about Devotion to my species. I am also all about Sacrifice in order to transform myself into a plant. I think I'm gonna need some help.

4/21 – MONSTERS WHICH KEEP US SAFE KILL US - Have we created a world of monsters that are now raging against us? How do we protect ourselves against outer monsters? Anguish. But even that is not enough.

4/19 – I AM GALILEO AND FACEBOOK IS MY TELESCOPE - I have concluded that you have been under a significant mis-apprehension! Things are NOT as they seem.  The individual citizen is NOT the center of your society any longer. Your Citizen-Centric society has been an ILLUSION caused by geometry! There is a new and larger entity that influences all the other spheres. This discovery explains why certain things are not as they seem to you and why others gone so wrong!

4/15 – I AM THE TONGUE OF THE LIAR - It's a great era to be the tongue of a liar!  A Golden Age. This is the age of massive lies told with sincerity.

4/8 – I AM YOUR MASK - Inside me is the real person you're working on becoming - the REAL you.

© Copyright 2014, Jean W. Yeager

All Rights Reserved