[stbpro id=”download” shadow=”true” bwidth=”2″ color=”F0FAFF” bcolor=”1F2DA6″ bgcolor=”78C0F7″ bgcolorto=”2E7CB9″ image=”null” mtop=”1″ mbottom=”1″]Exercise Six[/stbpro]

Developing Perseverance
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[stbpro id=”download” caption=”1. The Exercise” image=”null” collapsing=”true” collapsed=”true”] By practicing the five exercises and understanding how they each effect you, the sixth exercise (perseverance) comes into effect.

What needs to be done

• Choose group of exercises for the daily practice:
  • Groups of two
  • Groups of three
  • Groups of four
  • Groups of five
  • Note: this does not include the etheric streams or standing postures.
• Understand the purpose of each exercise.
• Relate the forces of thinking, willing and feeling to the three bodies: physical, etheric and astral.
• Spread the exercises throughout the whole day. Try to notice that only your own ‘I’ can give rise to and carry out the exercises, how each exercise and how each exercise unfolds.

What should be avoided

• Just practicing the exercises separately and not discovering the harmony between them as a whole single exercise.
• Trying to find and develop relationships intellectually which do not arise from the actual experience of practicing the exercises.

What is important

• Understanding that all five exercises work together as a single organism (sixth exercise) in creating your spiritual reality.
• Experiencing within yourself the qualities of each exercise.
• Understanding that this exercise enables our normal thinking, feeling and willing to be elevated to higher level.

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[stbpro id=”download” caption=”2. Etheric Stream – Feeling Energy Exercise” image=”null” collapsing=”true” collapsed=”true” ]

A feeling of joy and satisfaction, as though you are expanding beyond your body, becoming a radiating being raying out from the earth and through the earth into the world of spirit, thus uniting the earth with that world. 

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[stbpro id=”download” caption=”3. Gesture – ‘I am on my way to the spirit, to myself'” image=”null” collapsing=”true” collapsed=”true” ]

The Sixth Position of ‘I think speech’

‘I am on my way to the spirit, to myself’

The words
Radiant human being. Thinking is no longer directed towards an object, whether material or thought. We move beyond the form into the formless, we don’t connect with the object, we focus on the pure interrelationship between the objects. The evolution, the journey from one to another. As spirit, the human being is always journeying, evolving and becoming.

The position
The arms are now lifted vertically upward and the legs together. The body resumes a vertical straight, stretched form. The cross of the first position has passed through the various stages to become a ray shining outwards. The human ray-being connects the earth and all that is earthly with the spirit, universe. The human being becomes himself, his own spiritual form.[/stbpro]

[stbpro id=”download” caption=”4. The Effect of these Exercises” image=”null” collapsing=”true” collapsed=”true”]The sixth exercise helps us overcome the chaotic effect of the Asuras, who most forcefully oppose the human being’s development into a spiritual form, into spirit. The strong connection with our strengthened thinking also strengthens the physical body, diminishing the effect of gravity on our thinking capacity. The Asuras are more powerful than Ahriman and Lucifer. Ahriman can only affect the etheric body, which is not subject to the strict laws of matter and gravity. Lucifer can only influence the more spiritual astral body. The effect of the Asuras, affects us directly in the world of matter and form. Creating chaos, disconnected and haphazard thoughts, taking us further from ‘guiding our own thinking’.

In this exercise “good will’ and harmony is developed in our thinking.

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[stbpro id=”info” caption=”- Spiritual Forces and Their Effects on Us.” image=”null” collapsing=”true” ccolor=”2e7cb9″ collapsed=”true”]

Negative Spiritual Forces

There are three supersensible, spiritual forces or beings, called in anthroposophy Lucifer, Ahriman and the Asuras (Asura in singular). These beings affect the evolution of the various bodies of the human being:

• Astral body – Lucifer
• Etheric body – Ahriham
• Physical body – Asuras

These beings have received the task of opposing the human being, in order that they may develop and evolve. It is essential to understand how these beings effect us. The human body is the physical expression of our thinking ego-being; and thinking on the physical level is the foundation of human nature. The Asuras specifically attack this thinking, where we find thoughts arising in us of a lower, sensual, emotional, self-involved kind.

We have to raise our thought forms setting a higher, new, living thinking, so that the Asuras begin to ‘starve’, and we will be able to overcome their influence. So exercising positivity creates the counterbalance of the negative and its effects which Lucifer has woven into our astral body.  In fully keeping with this positivity, we stop seeing these beings as adversaries or enemies, rather seeing them as giving us the opportunity in developing ourselves, our own particular powers and capabilities. We see them as trainers and begin to see them as being an enormous help to human beings.

Positive Spiritual Forces 

The three ‘trainers’, Lucifer, Ahriman and the Asuras, are the chief providers of the opposition (negativity) which human beings need to develop and transform their three bodies (physical, etheric and astral). There are, however, three, far mightier beings who counteract them, who act as guides and helpers of humanity, ensuring thatLucifer, Ahriman and the Asuras remain within the bounds of their task. These powerful beings (The Hierarchies) belong to the highest being-levels of the universe, and protect the human beings’ three bodies:

• The Spirits of Will (Thrones) protect the astral body.
• The Spirits of Harmony (Cherubim) protect the etheric body.
• The Spirits of Love (Seraphim) protect the physical body.

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[stbpro id=”download” caption=”5. Spirit Guides: The Spirits of Love (Seraphim)” image=”null” collapsing=”true” collapsed=”true” ]

They release the physical body from the force of gravity.

Looking at the human being on earth, the physical body appears as the foundation for earthly life, for incarnation. Without the body we cannot live on the earth. As the human being’s foundation in earth, the physical body corresponds to the universal foundation of all existence. The foundation is pure, universal love. Love is the power and substance of all existence, which streams out from the Spirits of Love.

From love-substance, all parts of the whole, all forms are shaped as cosmic space, and move in harmonious relationship with each other. The Spirits of Love observe this space, which is brought into eternal evolution by the Spirits of Harmony.[/stbpro]

[stbpro id=”download” caption=”6. Transmissions” image=”null” collapsing=”true” collapsed=”true” ] [/stbpro]