Dear friends,
We will never be able to achieve truer and longer-lasting spiritual, psychological and physical health without embracing the cultural historical imperative to raise our consciousness beyond the confines of the physical-material world, in order to perceive more expansive dimensions in which our whole selves live and move and have their beings.
No other way exists for us to emerge — as individuals and societies — from the imprisoning restrictions of a no longer useful materialistic worldview and the natural science and medicine that have evolved out of it.
Failing to doing so, we will not be able to attain holier, healthier relationships with the living beings of the natural and spiritual worlds, which is vitally important for the entire biosphere to survive and thrive.
The health of our fellow humans and other living beings whose destinies we affect, for good or ill, will continue to progressively deteriorate without our 1) clear recognition of the enormous importance of this transformation and 2) actively fighting for its advancement on all available fronts.
The following reflections from Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts (1924-1925), by Dr. Rudolf Steiner, indicate our present dilemma and point to ideas we might consider including in our thinking about our common humanity, the Cosmos and the Earth:
“Man is a being who unfolds his life in the midst, between two regions of the world. With his bodily development he is a member of a ‘lower world’; with his soul-nature he himself constitutes a ‘middle world’; and with his faculties of Spirit he is ever striving towards an ‘upper world.’ He owes his bodily development to all that Nature has given him; he bears the being of his soul within him as his own portion; and he discovers in himself the forces of the Spirit, as the gifts that lead him out beyond himself to participate in a Divine World.
“The Spirit is creative in these three regions of the World. Nature is not void of Spirit. We lose even Nature from our knowledge if we do not become aware of the Spirit within her. Nevertheless, in Nature’s existence we find the Spirit as it were asleep. Yet just as sleep has its task in human life — as the ‘ I ’ must be asleep at one time in order to be the more awake at another — so must the World-Spirit be asleep where Nature is, in order to be the more awake elsewhere.
“In relation to the World, the soul of man is like a dreamer if it does not pay heed to the Spirit at work within it. The Spirit awakens the dreams of the soul from their ceaseless weaving in the inner life, to active participation in the World where man’s true Being has its origin. As the dreamer shuts himself off from the surrounding physical world and entwines himself into himself, so would the soul lose connection with the Spirit of the World in whom it has its source, if it turned a deaf ear to the awakening calls of the Spirit within it.”
Ultimately we must begin, in all earnest, to ask deeper questions and to strive for more comprehensive, effective solutions to the current problems of humanity. Without achieving a better understanding of higher aspects of our whole selves and of the much larger environment in which we really live, move and have our being, we will fail to make the indispensable progress demanded of us at this time.
Take a few moments to look inside and all about you. Perceive the current state of your physical and psychological health. What do you see as your purpose going forward? How do you feel about the increasing social chaos and environmental destruction surrounding you?
By now, in the wake of all we have experienced collectively over the last 100 years, it should be all the clearer how imperative it is for more and more of us to want to hear, and be able to hear, from deep within ourselves the wake-up call of the Spirit. Let it awaken us more fully to our more broadly visioned duties and responsibilities as human beings within the planetary and cosmic order.
Whom will you serve — the forces of Light or the forces of darkness??
Not all people are interested in individual, social and planetary progress, of course. Many live in fearful paralysis and prefer the known darkness to the as yet consciously-unknown Light. This is written for those who seek, for those prepared to learn from true sources of knowledge, for those prepared to practically work to accomplish the individual and social tasks required of us so that we might move forward in harmony with the Divine-Spiritual Plan.
And I ask you, where else but from higher sources of health and sanity should the love, wisdom, strength and courage come that we need to overcome the dark forces of opposition?
Our healing and medical practice strives to help individual patients not only become healthier physically, psychologically and spiritually, but also to cultivate a deeper, more definite relationship with higher aspects of their whole selves, which already exist in higher dimensions and await their conscious exploration and discovery.
Warm regards,
Joseph Michael Contrada
Divine-Spiritual Healer and Energy Therapist
Heilpraktiker (Lic. German Alternative Medicine and Psychotherapy Provider)
Medical Historian and Philosopher
The drawing above is entitled “The Golden Triangle” by Dr. Rudolf Steiner