The Kingdom of Childhood
In ‘The Kingdom of Childhood’, Steiner tells us about the very fragile and dream-like consciousness of small children under 7 years. Adults who grew up in my generation, around the world, report childhood memory experiences very similar to mine. We remember our childhood like a hazy dream; there aren’t really any distinct events, or specific recollections of interactions with discrete people. But it is like an amorphous all-encompassing image experience, from which general vague stories, happenings, and feelings are recalled, but never is this recollection intrusive. And, interspersed here and there, perhaps less for some and more for others, are bright, intense, emotionally charged and vivid memories, with a distinct narrative, of this event or that. These little snippets are easy to recall and, often intrude on our daily awareness even if we don’t want them to. The marked distinction between these two types of recollections goes almost completely unnoticed (or hidden) in society. Have you noticed that?
Pulling from my own lived experience and direct knowledge, I have begun to piece together what these experiences are. One does not need to intellectually concede to Steiner about childhood consciousness; it is readily there and accessible to anyone who genuinely pursues experiencing it. Memories of childhood, once foggy, vague, and seemingly smoothed over by a monotonous feeling-image, becomes more lively, interactive, and fun. More and more details and nuances, and experiences are perceived within these memories. Remembering becomes a kind of game! Much like remembering one’s dreams-the process is almost exactly similar. The states of consciousness only need to be remembered, and bridged. Instead of remembering dreams as a foggy, image-feeling without much detail, dreams become interactive worlds of creative intent, and experienced immersively. As a very skilled lucid dreamer will attest (as well as anyone who remembers their dreams); dreams happen in such a realistic and lived way when we experience them, it is as if we are living in reality. But we are living the dream, and the dream is reality. It’s just not the waking reality.
Because memory is inherently tied to the state of consciousness that that memory was experienced in; remembering dreams becomes an exercise in changing consciousness states. So, too, does remembering childhood. As I said before, they are almost exactly the same process. If you can access one, you can easily learn to access the other.
Herein lies an important and fundamental challenge; the mind. While the dream-like quality of early childhood is inherent and natural, this consciousness is also extremely fragile. It is not that the mind of a child is not yet active, nor even developed; rather, the Consciousness of the child is not yet ready to become aware of the mind. Power follows attention. The consciousness of the young child is in his body. His physical body. He lives, wholly and entirely in his physicality. One can easily observe how a young baby screams with his whole body and consciousness in hunger; glows in the glory of happiness; cannot in any manner become aware of anything outside of himself. Even the environment and everything in it, for a baby, is his body.
Incarnating into a physical body as a Soul-Spiritual being is an excruciatingly delicate process. It takes the human being many years to be able to fully accomplish this awesome feat, and of course it is not done without help. Tremendous help, from extremely powerful beings. The process is delicate and dependent upon outside forces. One of the very foundational things that can go wrong, and almost always does in our society, is that the Soul-Spiritual being doesn’t incarnate fully into the physical body, and becomes enmeshed more and more with the Mind.
Mind Control
Everyone is mind controlled.
And I do mean everyone.
The mind is the part of the human being which receives and hosts emotion-thought forms. It relates to material reality and holds narrative in language; it is the host of everything that happens linguistically, emotionally, and gives impulses to our will. It is responsible for perceiving discursive, cold, logical and rational material-emotional thought forms. A distinction can be made about emotions and feelings; many become confused about the two. Emotions are strictly a Mind-state resonance; they always relate to something material; they have a material “cause” and are the material “effect”; whereas feelings are truly nearly the opposite. They resonate in the spiritual planes and have spiritual causes which produce a spiritual effect; a feeling experience which is so profound one might initially confuse it for having died and become totally absorbed into Christ (the Cosmic Christ, not necessarily any religious entity).
The will is mostly not mind-controlled, but is co-opted through our exclusive focus on the mind. Simply put, if you listen to thinking, emotions, and make decisions or act accordingly, you are mind-controlled.
This doesn’t require some vague and undefined “other” or “they” perpetrating mind-control conspiracies behind the curtains. We are all our own prison-guard. Reference to fantastical power groups and bloodlines as controllers of the world is a nod to (and an inherent handing out of power to) some exterior and diabolically opposed force. There is never any need to cede an iota of a percent of our own power. We created the problem. We are the cause. We are the solution.
Being mind-controlled means nothing more, and nothing less, than making the mistake of focusing awareness on the mind and it’s contents.
That’s it. That’s all it is.
Even just a small, teeny-tiny fractional increase of awareness of anything outside the mind decreases the mind’s control over you. Your ability to Think, Feel, and Do, automatically expands past the bounds of the mind. You are instantaneously much less mind-controlled. When the very seat of Thinking, Feeling and Willing shifts from primarily mind-hosted, to primarily Self-hosted (Spiritual Thinking, Feeling, and Willing aka; Imagination, Intuition, and Inspiration) then mind-control ceases to have any real power. Forgetting from time to time about where our focus is, does not negate that mind-control has lost it’s power. Rather, it is a confirmation of it! Do a small experiment; ponder what you are, what you might be, stripped of all content, all worldly ideas, thoughts, emotions, everything which relates to the material world. What is left?
Do not take this information lightly, however. The mind is an incredible tool and will do whatever it can to cunningly entangle your awareness back into itself.
What does mind-control have to do with memory?
Simply, that one might easily discern, as soon as some skill in changing consciousness states is attained, that these snippets of high-focused, emotionally charged, and narrative-driven childhood memories are nothing more than trauma-anchors holding conscious awareness to the Mind. Remember that the mind is language-based; there are always narratives associated with the mind’s thoughts and emotions. The mind is foundationally a material organ; it relates only to cold, rational and logical thinking outside of the spiritual spheres. The mind can only perceive superficial emotions(emotion = thought in motion) and not the deep direct experience of spiritual feeling. In fact the mind cannot perceive the spiritual world at all; which explains why both dreams and childhood memories are difficult to recall in waking adult consciousness.
Steiner rightly admonished Waldorf teachers that a most important and necessary attribute of an early childhood educator is to know that the young child must not be jarred from his dream like consciousness too early. The dream image quality of the young child is such that he lives in and through his physical body. He must be respected-revered- in his wholly appropriate state of consciousness for his level of development. It is only ignorance and fear motivated compulsions that allow parents, caregivers, educators, to address young children in with a cold, rational adult consciousness. This must be avoided at all costs; for the adults are taking from the child his rightful powers needed to incarnate physically and redirecting them into using his mind prematurely. A child addressed in mind-focused consciousness cannot respond in his natural consciousness in any way that would satisfy such an adult; the mind-controlled adult is in a state of consciousness which is totally blinded to spiritual realities. A mind-controlled adult is like a blind elephant lumbering about and the children are traumatized into responding lest they perish under it’s weight.
Further, it is easy (although unpleasant) to work out how mind-control is perpetuated and reproduced in every generation without any necessity for some nefarious agenda or controlling elite. It only requires that parents, caregivers, and educators remain ignorant and under mind-control themselves.
Healing, and Seeing
Healing is a matter of awareness. If mind-control is the mistake of focus on the Mind and it’s contents; so Freedom is the non-focus. Freedom is a type of refusal of content. It is the revolutionary ability to become aware of the act of thinking- or rather, the appearance of emotion thought forms in the Mind. The awareness of seeing the Mind becomes more and more a default form of consciousness the longer one practices. One might be interested in observing the Mind, but it does quickly become boring-! Then the immeasurable vastness of spiritual reality is open and beckoning awareness witness a direct experience to. The Mind and it’s contents becomes not only boring, but somewhat of a nuisance; or just a reminder that it is how most human beings still invest their awareness.
To start; know that intrusive thoughts and memories are signposts to healing. As I became aware of my intrusive childhood memories, I could identify Parts; parts of mySelf which had their own awareness and persona and purpose! These parts were split-off from my Self, usually by and for the event represented in the intrusive memory. The events weren’t always traumatizing in and of themselves. The trauma was in the inherent distortion of natural consciousness- the perceived or real need to contort critical developmental energies and redirect it elsewhere in order to survive. This always causes catastrophic damage to the child’s ability to incarnate into the body. And, it’s permanent until healed. And, it’s not always preventable. Make no mistake, there’s no bad-guy, here; ignorance or mind-control can be perceived as one avenue for challenges to be placed in our paths of Spiritual development. All of these challenges are placed in our path to overcome, and grow thereby.
As I became more aware of my Parts, they became less intrusive. Once this happens, it is imperative to develop one’s own Will as an independent act from materiality. As I made a habit of rhythmically revisiting my diminishing Parts, they all became less and less distinct from my Self. I found it easier to be in my body. The consciousness(energy) which each Part had borrowed was returned to my Self, and increased awareness of my Self(bodily incarnation) became possible. It is a complete fallacy that one should leave one’s body to be spiritually aware; the exact opposite in fact the reality. One must be intimately incarnated, meaning in the body. It is the very organs of the body which are most adept at perceiving spiritual realities. Leaving the body for the astral plane- that is where the Mind is.
Rhythm is a component of the Life Body; the rhythmic revisiting as a willed act is a spiritually empowering practice; one that is independent of the Mind. As I strengthened my Will as an independent act, my spiritual forces strengthened. And so it went, as each Part became less distinct in itself, ‘I’ became more aware of my Self, more in my body, and more perceptive to spiritual realities, and more free of the Mind.
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