It should not be expected that what is spiritual can be brought before the eyes, before the senses. It must be experienced inwardly and spiritually.
Most actions derive not from your own initiative but from your family circumstances, your education, your calling, and so on. You must therefore give up a little time to performing actions which derive from yourself alone. They need not be important; quite insignificant actions fulfill the same purpose.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Our actions are often influenced by our surroundings and circumstances, but finding time for self-directed actions is essential for personal fulfillment.
Rudolf Steiner highlights the idea that many of our actions are shaped by external factors such as family, education, and societal expectations. He suggests that in order to cultivate our individuality and true self, we need to intentionally set aside time for actions that are genuinely our own, even if they seem trivial. This practice allows us to explore our inner desires and motivations, fostering a deeper connection with our authentic selves.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a personal development workshop discussing the importance of self-initiative.
More from Rudolf Steiner
All quotes →In ancient, prehistoric times, the temples of the spirit were outwardly visible, but today, when our life has become so unspiritual, they no longer exist where we can see them with our physical eyes. Yet spiritually they are still present everywhere, and whoever seeks can find them.
Only a person who has passed through the gate of humility can ascend to the heights of the spirit.
Love is higher than opinion. If people love one another the most varied opinions can be reconciled - thus one of the most important tasks for humankind today and in the future is that we should learn to live together and understand one another. If this human fellowship is not achieved, all talk of development is empty.
We will not find the inner strength to evolve to a higher level if we do not inwardly develop this profound feeling that there is something higher than ourselves.
Man only becomes independent of this physical world when he learns to consider the objects around him as symbols. He must, for this reason, seek to acquire a moral relationship to them.
Similar quotes
How can I lose faith in the justice of life, when the dreams of those who sleep upon feathers are not more beautiful than the dreams of those who sleep upon the earth?
The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.
The tragedy of a species becoming unfit for life by over-evolving one ability is not confined to humankind. Thus it is thought, for instance, that certain deer in paleontological times succumbed as they acquired overly-heavy horns. The mutations must be considered blind, they work, are thrown forth, without any contact of interest with their environment. In depressive states, the mind may be seen in the image of such an antler, in all its fantastic splendour pinning its bearer to the ground.
We are citizens of the world. The tragedy of our times is that we do not know this.
Man's nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.
We put this 15-year old girl on the cover of a fashion magazine, and tell everyone she is the epitome of sexual perfection, but we jail anyone who touches her for another three years.