"DEATH BY LETTER"

BRAINZ is an on-line writer's group for experienced writers. Once a month the BRAINZ-MEISTER sends out a word which all participants write about. If you are an experienced writer and would like to play along (seriously or the BRAINZ-MEISTER will kick you out), then send me an email and I will send you a link to the last month's compilation. You can read it and contact the BRAINZ TRAFFIC GUARD and appeal for mercy.)

Does a letter really mean anything? I mean, can a person actually die because of one letter?

When I was born, there was a life or death battle going on between my mother and I. You see, I had red blood which had an outer protein layer called an Rh factor. There are two different Rh protein layers which are deadly to one another.  

I was born with an Rh negative factor written Rh-. My mother had a Rh positive factor written Rh+.

This difference is called “Rh-sensitivity” meaning that if any of her + red blood cells crossed the placenta, her + red blood cells would destroy my – red blood cell at a rate faster than my body would have been able to replace them and I would die.

So, yes, death by letter is possible.

The doctors even as long ago as 1949 when I was born, knew that if a woman had extensive bleeding during pregnancy, then Rh-sensitivity may be the case. The story I was told was that my mother was very young, and panicked to the point that she was going down the phone directory looking for a doctor – any doctor - who would take her case. Remember, in the 1940’s, in conservative Texas, “out of wedlock” pregnancy was culturally rejected.

Also in the late 1940s, at the end of World War II, there were many of us little bastards fathered by happy G.I.s; so many that, in fact, there was a name for us all: “Scoop Babies”.

My parents had the perfect profile for adoptee parents of a “Scoop Baby”: in their 30s, employed (my dad a veteran) unable to conceive, wanting a child. So, when a young girl “in trouble” found a doctor with patients like my parents, “scoop”.

There was even a script which was passed around North America to parents to tell their “Scoop Baby”: your mother was a young girl who did not have a family to bring you home to, and she wanted the best for you, and we very much wanted a child, so we picked you!”

So, yes, death, or ­life because someone knows how to read and interpret that letter is possible as well.

(c) Copyright 2016, Jean W. Yeager / All Rights Reserved
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TOWARD A ROSE CROSS MEDITATION PART III - PREPARING TO TRANSFORM OUR SELVES

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

All Rights Reserved
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