[Rudolf Steiner's six essential exercises offer] ways you can gather the powers and depths of your soul so that you are truly available for tasks of your own choosing.... In a sense, the six powers, and the exercises that promote them, simply represent intensifications of inner functions that we all know we need to develop.... The intensive practice of these more or less familiar features of the soul can lead us into unfamiliar territory. The various abilities in question (thinking, feeling, willing) can undergo a deep transformation. ~ Michael Lipson, Stairway of Surprise: Six Steps to a Creative Life (published 2002). .... each separate exercise places us into a spiritual reality in which we now participate. An aspect of the self that was previously concealed is activated and becomes a real point of departure for the way we lead our life. Such practice can then be experienced as a process of spiritual birth. ~ Ates Baydur introduction to Rudolf Steiner, Six Steps in Self-Development: The 'Supplementary Exercises' (published 2010).
Practical life engagement, soul exercises, and spiritual research are deeply interconnected. One cannot be done without the others. ~ Lelan Harris, paraphrased from A Leading Thought Regarding Exercise 6 (April 09, 2021). |