Unwired

SQUIRRELS AND CHIPMUNKS HUSTLE

It may well be that these critters were busy all summer, but I have certainly been noticing them this past month, especially while cycling to the university for morning classes. The squirrels in Edmonton tend to be smallish and red, with somewhat scrawny tails. The ones here are of the grey variety, with splendiferous bushy tails. They are so big that I mistook one for a hare, and another for a cat. They run across the bike path with their tails streaming gracefully behind them in a horizontal S-shape. And the chipmunks run so quickly, they are downright comical! Those stripes along their sides must be the original racing stripes.

I am truly receiving the total immersion experience in Waldorf/Anthroposophy that I wanted, when I decided to come to Keene. Isolating myself from family, friends, and my usual life activities is a sacrifice that creates space in my life and in my consciousness for that which I came here to learn. Most mornings there is no need to rise early (pure luxury, I know!) and I am able to allow my thoughts free rein, to ponder questions from my reading, revelations from my lectures, or creative ways to fulfill various homework assignments. Wonderful ideas have arisen this way!

A lot of 'thinking noise' has been eliminated through simplifying my daily habits, and through cutting way back on my exposure to media. I don't read the newspaper, watch television, or listen to the radio, and I don't even listen to music. Gary (one of my house mates) keeps me up-to-date on economic trials and tribulations, and Ken makes sure I'm informed about stabbings on Greyhound buses and Canadian football scores (no, I'm not a football fan). Current events seem to be capable of marching along, without my presence in the audience. My extracurricular/social life is virtually non-existent. I cook for myself using fresh, basic ingredients, I walk or ride my bike to get to where I need to go, and I've been in a car only twice since my arrival in Keene five weeks ago! It's a simpler life than my usual one, an almost unwired life. I do spend a lot of time on my computer--I rely upon it, in fact, to communicate with the university, to do research and some of my homework, to check the weather forecast so that I can dress appropriately, and to connect with Home through emails and cheap Skype phone calls.

My friend Audrey asked about what I am studying.

PAINTING
On Thursday we learned that no two people can observe the same rainbow at the same time. Picture an observer standing on the ground, and imagine a line passing through a point at the height of the observer's eye, at a 42-degree angle to the horizontal line of the ground. A rainbow is observed at this angle of 42 degrees, determined by the ground and the position of the observer's eye. Your rainbow cannot be the same one as my rainbow. In general, we are learning about Goethe's Colour Theory, his colour circle, and his fifteen colour combinations, used as the basis of the Waldorf painting curriculum. According to Goethe, colour is objective, with each hue having specific inherent soul qualities, rather than subjective. Blue and yellow are the two mother colours. They reach down together to form green, the Doorway to Earth. As yellow rises, it becomes more concentrated, tending toward gold and then orange, whereas blue tends to dissipate and 'frees up' into purple. They reach upward toward each other and give birth to red, the Doorway to Heaven.

EVOLVING CONSCIOUSNESS
In our study of the spiritual (not religious) origins of the Cosmos and humankind, we learned about Atlantis and its oracles and mystery centres, each associated with a different planetary consciousness. The highest spiritual consciousness was that of the Sun Being, the Christ principle (although this was long before the Christ being was incarnated on Earth). Misuse of human powers (which we no longer have) to affect plant and animal forces of growth and reproduction led to depravity. In anthroposophy everything affects everything else: messing up plant life messed up the water element; thus, the continent was destroyed by the Great Flood. (According to Tanis Helliwell, pigs are the result of egregious genetic experiments on Atlantis, involving human and animal. This is why I don't eat pork.) There is a link between some parts of Ireland, and remnants of Atlantean consciousness, through the hybernian mysteries (which I know nothing about, yet!)

PHILOSOPHER/EDUCATOR
We (in my class) each have a philosopher/educator as the topic of a major research paper. Mine is Leo Tolstoy (yup, the Russian author), who ran and taught at a free school on his estate for the children of his serfs. When I say 'free,' I mean that those children were free to attend or not, to participate or not, and quite free in terms of Behavior and Decorum. It was all very 'easy come, easy go,' right down to the fact that the headmaster up and abandoned the school 'experiment' after four years, ending this opportunity for the children so that Tolstoy could head off on a new and different life adventure. He was an extreme non-conformist; a flamboyant, eccentric rogue!

I intended to review all of my courses here, but I'm realizing that I lost most of my readers (picture throngs of avid fans here!) back when I typed the words, 'what I am studying.'

September 29 was Michaelmas, the autumn festival that is celebrated in Waldorf schools as one of the four major annual seasonal festivals. In Steiner's Calendar of the Soul this marks the midpoint of the soul/seasonal year, week 26. This week's verse and the verse for the first week after Christmas are the only two that include the significant phrase, sense of self.
Voila:

Nature, your maternal life
I bear within the essence of my will.
And my will's fiery energy
Shall steel my spirit striving,
That sense of self springs forth from it
To hold me in myself.