Note from Lelan
Dear GET Friends:
I have returned to Reno from my two weeks in Minnesota. During that period I was fully engaged with the needs of one of my brothers and his wife, both of whom are permanently disabled from traumatic brain injury (TBI) and physical disabilities, compounded by mental illness and dementia secondary to the TBI. They have both been experiencing a period of rapid body and soul deterioration, compounded by environmental and contextual factors. In my brother, this was causing nearly continuous explosive and violent harm to self and others. My brother and his wife are now temporarily stabilized enough for me to return home to re-engage other priorities that need my attention.
In addition to reconnecting with Julie and other family and friends, I am so much looking forward to resuming spiritual conversations with each of you! My thanks to all who sent notes, prayers, and love to me and my family over the past couple of weeks.
Update: This week we will recommence our weekly GET gatherings at the regular time on Wednesdays from 5:00-7:00 PM PDT (UTC -7).
Big news: Beginning with this week's session we will begin actively working with Rudolf Steiner's book, Guidance in Esoteric Training. Making initial progress will also require us to engage three other "basic books".
Over the past 22 GET sessions we have focused on getting to know one another and developing a sense of community characterized by authenticity, trust, and appropriate self-disclosure regarding our spiritual paths and experiences. Along the way we have been introduced to myriad "guidance in esoteric training" topics. With that as our foundation, it seems time now to dive into the book from which our gatherings take their name.
If you do not yet own copies of the following four books by Rudolf Steiner, I encourage you to order them – or seek out online copies to download – so that you may read along during our gatherings, as well as study and work with the exercises between sessions:
How To Know Higher Worlds - A Modern Path of Initiation (1994 translation recommended)
An Outline of Esoteric Science (1997 translation recommended)
Theosophy: An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man
(1994 translation recommended)
Guidance in Esoteric Training: From the Esoteric School (1998 translation recommended)
Also in preparation for our session, you may be interested in beginning to reflect upon our leading thought for this week (and possibly for some weeks to come):
The necessary precondition for all the exercises:
We can, however, understand from this how necessary it is that human beings should not demand entry into the spiritual world until having first learned and understood certain essential truths of that world by the simple exercise of everyday intelligence, developed in the physical world. If spiritual development follows the right and normal path, then before aspiring to enter the supersensible world the pupil will already have mastered with ordinary intelligence the whole of the earlier contents of this book.
~ Rudolf Steiner, An Outline of Esoteric Science [originally titled
Occult Science: An Outline], Chapter V: "Knowledge of Higher Worlds – Concerning Initiation".
Blessings,
Lelan
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