Steiner's Theosphy

I am grateful to be able to attend the first half of my school's Faculty Meetings on Thursday afternoons. This year's meeting is devoted partially to study. Part of the first half is used to read sections of Theosopjy. Steiner's works can be really hard reads for me, but this one seems a bit different. It seems that since this is the third or fourth book of his that I have stumbled through, that it is becoming dare I say easier to read. For one thing there is repetition of ideas. For example the four-fold human being is being discussed. The ether, astral, ego, and physical portions of the human being. I have been exposed to Steiner's explanations of these bodies in Education of the Child, Cosmic Memory, Study of Man. each time I am exposed to these difficult to grasp concepts, it seems I am meeting an old friend. I feel less uncomfortable. yes that's it...at first I felt uncomfortable because I was so clueless as to what was being discussed.
in Theosophy I took the time to read the preface. The writer discusses exactly how one must read Steiner's works and why Steiner wrote in such a difficult to understand manner. he says,"It (reading Steiner) demands the careful and exacting training of faculties that are for the most part dormant in the human soul today....It's readers will have to work their way through each page and even each single sentence the hard way. This was done deliberately;it is the only way this book can become what it is intended to be for the reader. Simply reading it through is as good as not reading it at all. ...This book is consciously written in a manner that requires enhanced activity by the reader....To become inwardly active to an extent far beyond that required by most reading is the challenge of Rudolph Steiner's books. "

It almost feels like exercising. I am developing muscles to understand better. If I go a few days having not read anything "Anthroposophic" I feel my muscles weakeningg...I start to fall of course in my thinking and being. it reminds me of the meditation work I had done for a while with a type of Yoga. the more works and teachings I read of the spiritual masters , the more I stayed on track...but that work was way too ascetic and rigorous. I felt I could not live in the real world and study that degree of yoga meditation. Anthroposophy seems to allow. Even enhance my everyday life, especially, most especially my work with young children.

Things that I have read just seem to come up for me in the moment of my interactions with them. For example, in Kingdom of Childhood, I read that we are so far off if we become annoyed with a child's behavior. We need to look at ourselves and see where our own headspace is...or rather look at the energy of the room and see what is amiss. Also, if a child's behavior is particularly off we ate wrong to feel anger or annoyance, but rather compassion for this being of light who is trying to manage reinsertion into the physical realm.I am paraphrasing of course and shedding my own insight on those words..but that is what comes out for me...and I often hear these words when a child is really struggling against me over something. In the past I felt I was being wishy-washy by not using my will to sternly guide them where it was they needed to go...but I am finding my way now without the"stern.". There is such joy and compassion in my work now, yet the children still feel the will that is speaking to them respectfully. I was trying to imitate other teachers ways of working with the children in those challenging moments, but was missing the mark. I still have a lot to learn..It is like learning how to float at first. I can do it for a little then I start to sink again. there is a constant remembering I need to enforce in my practice.

Deep stuff my friends.