Everything must be new.

While reading Rudolf Steiner’s “Whitsun: The Festival of the Free Individuality,”(1) three points shine out: First, that the Christ Impulse lives within each of us, and can be deepened, but only through our incarnations on Earth.  We must incarnate again and again to find new Christ-inspired ideas, feelings, and will impulses appropriate to the time. Second, that this Impulse is deepened through striving to perfect ourselves.  Steiner says, “The more we perfect ourselves, the more we can feel that the Holy Spirit speaks out of our inner being.”(2) Thirdly, that through the Holy Spirit each one of us can speak out of the Christ Impulse, through our unique individualities.

I will admit I struggled with all three of these points.  What is the Christ Impulse living within us? What does it feel like? This question has lived with me for a long time.  Back in the late 1990s, when I was new to anthroposophy and considering membership in the Sacramento Christian Community, I had a conversation with one of the priests, Franziska Hesse.  The question I remember asking was, “How do we know if we feel the presence of the Christ within us?” Her answer: “That’s a good question to have.”

The second point gave me pause because I have struggled mightily with perfectionism. This tendency may have been with me pre-birth: I dimly-sense a previous life as a medieval mystic monk, striving, striving, striving for purification. In this current life, I’m an adoptee, and I felt survival depended on being perfect.  A driving belief was “If I’m not perfectly perfect, they’ll send me back.”  When I discovered anthroposophy in my thirties, the focus shifted from behaving perfectly to the ideal of achieving absolute purification of my subtle bodies.  I repeatedly fail on both counts.

The third point tripped me up because of the paradox I couldn’t resolve.  I’m not sure how to locate the Christ Impulse within and I can’t hope to be perfect; yet Steiner seems to say that the Holy Spirit can speak out of the Christ Impulse through human beings. But does this mean even with our imperfections?

With this in mind, I want to share a bit about being a member of several Circles(3) of biography and social art (BSA) facilitators. I’ve belonged to the Heartland Circle (BSA facilitators based in the Midwest) since 2016. More recently I’ve become co-leader of a Trauma/Transformation Circle and a Spiritual Research Circle.  I’m a participant in a Karma and Biography Circle. And I joined a year-long exploration of Parsifal, that incorporated BSA exercises within a Circle.  I’m beginning to understand that these Circles are efforts to “practice Whitsun” in our time.  I will briefly describe how I am experiencing Steiner’s three points when engaging in “Circle work.”

We gather on Zoom.  Each Circle has a specific format, which helps to hold the space.  (It differs from Circle to Circle.) There is shared leadership.  Each person is given a chance to speak.  We ensure time is used equitably.  There is a commitment to confidentiality.  Courage and vulnerability are often on display:  We do not hesitate to bring difficult topics or questions or interpersonal challenges into Circle work.  As a group we practice true listening: Setting aside judgmental thoughts, quieting habitual verbal responses and facial expressions, and striving to be fully present.  We don’t interpret or analyze. We practice meaningful biography and social art, dependent on sound Goethean phenomenological practices.(4)  How we are together matters.

Regarding the Whitsun experience, first: More and more, when I am in a Circle, as a speaker, I become aware of an impulse to share a particular thought or idea or experience; one that might differ greatly from what I thought I’d say. This inner impulse to speak feels like a “not-I” impulse.  It’s not a leap to follow where that feeling leads: “Not I, but the Christ in me.”

Second: More and more, when I am in a Circle, I feel inspired.  I receive new impulses, new ideas.  I see things in a new way.  I feel and see our individual strivings to learn, to grow, to be better.  Moving away from my previous pursuits of perfection, I instead behold the beauty of the striving human being. Circle work is about developing the capacity to perceive the Christ ideal before us, the Archetype of the Human Being, beckoning to us from the end of the Seventh Epoch.  It’s about having the courage to say out loud to other human beings, “This is how I’m not there yet,” and feeling, hearing, and seeing their listening, their support and acceptance. 

Third: More and more, when I am in a Circle, as a listener, I become aware that the person speaking is expressing something to which I can completely relate.  I understand what she’s saying, even though her experience is uniquely hers, and I have no experience similar to hers.  I feel and hear and see the effect of my Impulse-driven words on others in the group, and I feel the effects of others’ words on me.  Out of our flawed humanity, our wounds, our failures—our strengths and joys, too—Light shines through; Warmth surrounds us.  Perceiving this Light and Warmth is HEALING! A revelation of the Christ Impulse!

I believe that this kind of Circle work is what’s needed now, in our Consciousness Soul era.  It provides an antidote to what ails us, individually, socially, culturally.  It is work for the future.  And it is available now, to ALL, if we will but practice together.

1 Steiner, Festivals and their Meanings, Whitsun lecture given in Hamburg on Whitsunday, 1910

2 Ibid

3 “Circle” is capitalized throughout to indicate the sacred nature of these working circles.

4 See for example Marjorie Spock, The Art of Goethean Conversation, 1978, St. George Publications

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