Jogging Along with Old Opinions

52 Weeks of Steiner – Week 31  
(This is part of a weekly serial started on Michaelmas 2023. To see the other entries, please see the post linked HERE and scroll down to the bottom for individual links)

People who call themselves practical imagine that their actions are guided by the most practical principles. When you look into the matter closely, you will, however, frequently discover that what they call their practical way of thinking is not thinking at all, but the mere “jogging along” with old opinions and acquired habits of thought. You will often find there is very little that is really practical behind it. What they call practical consists in this: they have learned how their teachers, or their predecessors in business, thought about the matter in hand, and then they simply take the same line. Anyone who thinks along different lines they regard as a very unpractical person. In effect, his thinking does not accord with the habits to which they have been brought up. In cases where something really practical has been invented, you will not generally find that it was done by any of the “practical” people.”

Rudolf Steiner, Practical Training in Thought
January 18, 1901

Ah, the practical people. I once thought myself extremely practical, and then realized I was only continuing old habits that made me feel comfortable.

Have you ever thought of where your thoughts and actions originated? How much of what you do truly originated out of your own freedom, and how much is the result of imitating those around you? Are your opinions your own, or have the grown in the gardens of others and you’ve just transplanted them into your own? Have your actions, the way you do things, developed from your own thought or are they echoes of someone in your life?

Rudolf Steiner placed a huge importance on the freedom of the individual. This freedom comes from being able to bring consciousness and clarity to our thought so that we are no longer living in habit responses and are able to see the world objectively, through open eyes. He devised six exercises to help build these capacities and I thought I’d spend a bit of time with each one over the next six weeks.

The first one is clarity of thought, sometimes referred to as balance in thought or control of thought. It is a way to practice keeping your thoughts focused on what is instead of all over the place. Generally the practice is to take an inanimate object (often people start with a pencil or paper clip) and observe it, keeping your thoughts on it and only it, building up to five minutes daily. You are creating an image of this object in your mind. Initially, you start with the physical aspects, then you might move to the materials, and then to the humans who created it.

It sounds so simple, but it can prove more challenging than you think! Keeping your thoughts from wandering to something unrelated is sometimes like herding sheep! But over time, you begin to see improvement at each sitting.

But what’s the point? Well, being able to focus on something clearly allows you to build the capacity to observe without judgement or preconceived notions clouding objectivity. That something could be another person, an event, an occurrence, and in the case of teachers, a child. For teachers it builds the capacity to see the children in our care with clear eyes and an open heart.

Some of my foundations students really struggle with this, not only keeping their thoughts on task, but with the fact that they see it as boring. They don’t have the will or drive to follow through with the exercise, usually because they don’t see a point. They already feel they have clarity in thought. So sometimes I provide alternate methods as a way to bring the process into new light.

1. Choose an object, focus on it for one minute, and then paint or draw it. Create a new drawing each day, following the same format, and see what differences there are between the first and the seventh.
2. Choose a person and create an image in your mind of their features. Really study the person and create as much detail as you can in your mind of just their physical features. Then, once you have as complete a picture as you can create in your mind, move towards looking at those features as part of a line of heredity and individualism.
3. Plant a seed. Look at it daily and make a mental image of the differences each day. If desired, create an image through painting or drawing WITHOUT looking at the seed, only from the picture images in your mind.

These smaller steps to observing an object for five minutes can be referred to as a crutch to some anthroposophists. But I firmly believe starting somewhere is more important than starting at what others see as the beginning. I haven’t had a student yet who couldn’t build to Steiner’s control of thought exercises and see the bigger picture. I haven’t had a student who didn’t see the value in clarity in thought.

This week, I’m going to focus on this exercise. Will you join me?
(a reminder that this is an activity for adults, not children)

Until next time,
Marina