Lose Yourself to Find Yourself

52 Weeks of Steiner – Week 35  
(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)

When I forget the narrow will of Self,
The cosmic warmth that heralds summer’s glory
Fills all my soul and spirit,
To lose myself in light
Is the behest of spirit vision
And intuition tells me strongly:
O lose yourself to find yourself.”

Rudolf Steiner, Calendar of the Soul Week 9

Lose yourself to find yourself.

This is one of my favourite soul verses. If you aren’t familiar with Steiner’s Calendar of the Soul here is the preface he wrote to the second German edition from 1918.

The year’s cycle has a life of its own. The human soul can feel this life as it participates in it. If the soul is sensitive to the life of the year and its changing expressions from week to week, then it will rightly find itself. It will feel forces spring from this communication that strengthen it from within. The soul will realize that these inner forces are waiting to be awakened by its own interest in the significance of the world’s natural cycle as it unfolds in the course of time. Only in this way, the soul becomes aware of the delicate but purposeful threads that connect it with the world into which it has been born.

In this Calendar a verse is given for each week so that the soul may be able to participate in what is unfolding within this particular week as part of the enire life of the year. The verse is meant to express the note sounded within the soul as it unites itself with that life. A healthy feeling of “being at one” with the flow of naturea and, resulting from this, a strong sense of “finding oneself”: this is what is tended here, as it is believed that a feeling of participation in the nattural course of the world is something the soul longs for, if it but rightly understands itself.”

I choose not to add commentary to this week’s 52 weeks entry. Instead, I invite you to carry those words with you and see what meaning comes from it for you.

Until next time,
Marina