“There slumber in every human being faculties by means of which he can acquire for himself a knowledge of higher worlds. Mystics, Gnostics, Theosophists — all speak of a world of soul and spirit which for them is just as real as the world we see with our physical eyes and touch with our physical hands.”
-Rudolf Steiner
What would the world look like if we were paying attention to it? Like really paying attention to all it's little parts.
There are a number of experiences I've had, and others I can point to that have been written in regards to the experiences of other people, that lead me to believe we aren't seeing everything available to us, that we are blind to parts of the world. And that this blindness is almost self induced, that we either ignore them on purpose out of fear, or in believing that there is nothing else, or in ignorance of not knowing what else there is or what to look for.
The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.
-Nikola Tesla
Our culture seems content to look for all the answers in material things, studying material sciences, working towards our goals and answering questions based on what we know to be here already, we focus all our attention on the physical. But what are we missing? What is here to see and hear, right in front of us, that we have blinded ourselves to?
In Rudolph Steiner's book How to Know Higher Worlds, he takes us through a few examples of the types of study required to develop the spiritual faculties necessary to observe the "world of the soul and spirit." The way to develop these senses is by observing the world in different ways. Observing how things make us feel: life, growth, flourish vs death, decay, wither, animals vs plants vs rocks, the difference in sounds animate and inanimate objects make. These types of exercises in observing our subtle feelings are different from what we learn growing up, attempting them forces us to look at the world in a different way, eventually revealing more information that we have been missing.
Even just walking and observing how we feel instead of being focused on our thoughts is a great way to start to see that maybe our own mental perspective is distracting us from much of the beauty and detail and knowledge that the world is constantly showing us. We get so buried in intellectual understanding that we don't realize there might be another type of understanding, an intuitive one.
Beginning to look at the world in uncommon ways is one of the steps towards finding the magic in the world.
My challenge to you today is to attempt a practical exercise to see how things make you feel when you observe them. Either observing nature, observing our bodies and the pain we hide in them, observing a child and trying to understand how they see the world, taking a few minutes to look at ourselves from a 3rd person perspective and the actions we take throughout the day, seeing how a growing flower feels vs one that has been uprooted and is decaying on the ground, closing our eyes and observing, not following, the thoughts that come up.
Throughout this observation it is important to leave out intellectual inquiry where we start trying to piece the puzzle together and determine what we believe is happening. Rather, we simply observe. What comes up will almost assuredly surprise us, because how could we possibly know these things in any way other than what we've been told or read in books. We get our own answers, other people can only point us in the right direction.
You don't need to spend the whole day doing this exercise, everyone is busy and if we're working or prioritizing tasks and responsibilities that is no problem, but when you have free time maybe take an evening walk through the woods or sit on your porch and watch your kids playing and just observe life, dig into it in ways that go beyond the surface to feeling, and see what you find.
@jakeybrown