Six Exercises for Discovering Hope (from Another Group)

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Six Exercises for Discovering Hope

Adapted from A Way of Seeing, by (Lindisfarne Books, 2003).

beth Kubler-Ross described five distinct

stages before one can accept death: denial, anger, bargaining,

depression, and acceptance.

In an essay called "Discovering Hope" by Davy, the author served

that Kubler-Ross's five stages to accepting death are actually very

similar to six exercises by Rudolph Steiner that will lead a person to

harmony and hope!

If, like most of us, you need more of a sense of hope in your life, consider these thoughtful exercises:

The first exercise concerns the life of thinking.

We are asked to spend a few minutes each day (for about a month)

focusing our attention upon a single thought. We must exclude from

consciousness all thoughts which do not relate directly to the object

of our thinking. This exercise can be seen as a fitness program

in the "soul-gym" for dealing with denial. Whenever we refuse to admit

the possibility of something, our thinking skates and slithers about on

the thin ice of rationality, inventing explanations and excuses.

The second exercise brings self-disciple into the

will. We choose to do a simple and quite unnecessary act at the same

time each day (perhaps for a month). The task may consist of

transferring keys from one pocket to another, or of untying and retying

a shoelace. The value of this exercise is that it is essentially

"useless" of no significance outwardly; it is then free of all

compulsion. In disciplining our will-forces, we form a basis for the

reining-in of anger, so that instead of lashing out we may attend to

the issue.

The third exercise requires us to find a

relationship to personal experiences through which we can view them

with complete equanimity. It is better at first to look at some event

in the past than a present issue; but essentially we must learn to

regard joys and sorrows equally as the weather of the soul. At each

time each day a mood of inner tranquility is established in the soul,

an din these moments we become able to contemplate reality without

being swept back and forth emotionally. We then learn to "own" whatever

is ours, and to let go of whatever is not.

The fourth exercise is a challenge to view

everything with positives, to say "Yes" to every experience which comes

to us. This exercise aims toward the development of a positive gesture

toward every aspect of life. Every situation is an opportunity for

learning; even the deepest experience of depression then becomes a parable.

The fifth exercise extends this positivity further,

to develop an open-minded attitude to the whole world. This implies

having no prejudices, and being able to imagine that anything might be

possible. Hence this particular exercise, through which we develop

open-mindedness toward life in all its forms as it streams toward us.

To arrive at acceptance requires such an open gesture.

The sixth exercise involves balancing the soul's

developmental needs through our continued practice of these exercises

in relation with one another, an activity which is different in the

case of every individual.