The Jewish Bride (Dutch: Het Joodse bruidje) is a painting by Rembrandt, painted around 1667.
by Joop van Dam
The third exercise - Controlling our feelings
The point of the third exercise is that you seek control of the world of your feelings and that you don’t become your feelings, but to have feelings and to learn how to use these as a way to perceive yourself and the world. While doing the first three exercises you are looking as it were over your own shoulder to the way you are using the faculties of your soul. You look – as an outsider – at your own thinking, willing and feeling. With the first exercise it comes as a surprise to discover how inconsistent one’s thinking can be. Doing the second exercise makes you wonder, while you have a full and busy life, how few actions you perform using your own initiative. Looking however at the world of your feelings is the hardest to endure. While working with groups of people, I have noticed that this exercise gives rise to an inner protest: Is that really necessary, to control your feelings? Is it wrong to have your feelings run freely? Would such an exercise not dampen feelings? When you look at your feeling life, it first seems as though you hardly have any feelings. Shortly thereafter many painful, if not negative feelings appear to live in our soul; the number of harmonious, positive feelings we can identify is only very small. Observing this is what causes the protest. It is worthwhile sticking this out. It increases your self-knowledge.
A first step in the still unknown area of feeling is to make an inventory of the type of feelings we have on a given day. In doing this, it is helpful to take a sheet of paper and literally chart the feelings you had in the course of the day, as if it were a garden: a large field of irritations; a valley of doom, a little cluster of gratitude, a small bed of respect and so on. The map that evolves can vary from day to day, even though specific elements will return time and again. When you have observed your feelings in this way for some time, you may discover that there is still another, a secret garden inside you that hosts feelings which you have, but which are obscured by more powerful feelings which stand in front of them. This garden consists almost entirely of tender feelings, like the mood the blue of the sky evokes in early spring, or the feeling that you may get when you enter a room with an open fire in winter.
About the third exercise, Rudolf Steiner says that this concerns the expression of our feelings. This helps to resolve the misunderstanding that this exercise would result in suppressing one’s feelings and removing spontaneity. It goes without saying that it is good to cry in case of sorrow and to laugh when there is joy in our heart. These feelings should not be pushed aside, but you can direct them in such a way that you do not drown in your tears or lose yourself in laughter. What matters is that you acknowledge the feelings that exist within you and identify them and give them a name. That way they become part of you and accessible. When you then take your feelings to the outside, you can be their companion and guard. This way you can not only express your feelings but ‘impress’ them also. That is to say, you can try to observe what it is that the feeling wants to express. You notice for instance that there is unrest in your soul and you try to look for where this is coming from. You retain the feeling as it were and seek to look through it as if it were a window.
It is our feeling which connects us with the world. Once you have discovered this bridging role of our feeling life, you will soon notice that a dual way runs over this bridge. An impression coming from outside of us evokes a feeling in our inner self. A skipping child for instance can give rise to a feeling of lightness. Thus a message of the world is carried onto the soul. Conversely, it can be the soul to start with that tells us something. The memory of a teacher you had difficulty getting along with as a child and who was often wearing the color green can cause the color green to arouse a feeling of antipathy in you. In other words, a feeling can tell us not only something about the world outside of us, but also about ourselves. If we manage to keep these two aspects apart, feelings can lead to knowledge of the world around us and also to knowledge of self.
Becoming conscious of your own world of feeling makes some of us discover that he or she is a person of strong emotions and others that their inner experiences are weak and take a long time to surface. In both situations there is something out of balance. Probably each person carries both aspects within himself and it depends on which small part of the outside world you encounter which aspects show up. In doing this exercise, particularly the strong emotions catch our attention and it is the expression thereof which we seek to control. But it is at least as fruitful to foster the dreamlike and hardly noticeable feelings. Often it takes a while for this process to grow and you have to create the inner space for it. Placing this in the perspective of the ‘feelings garden’: some forceful feelings ask to be trimmed; conversely the tender feelings only develop when the seeds are being planted. Many strong feelings announce themselves and are unmistakable; you cannot possibly overlook them. Of other feelings you have to become attentive, listen to them as it were, like the mood the snow evokes in you, or a rainbow, a spring shower, the beginning autumn. But also the sphere at certain places, how different the sphere is in Groningen compared with that in Amsterdam and how different the sphere is at a nursing home compared with that at a school.
When you perform the feeling exercise for a longer time, you can take several steps. The first is to map the ‘feeling garden’ set out above. The second step is to be the gardener of your soul and trim the feelings that are too loud and plant the seeds of your quiet sensations. Having done this for a few weeks, you can take the next step: expressing feelings.
We are not accustomed to utilizing feeling as a means of communication. In most cases what we experience is ‘packaged’ in the form of a thought. Not: ‘I am sad’, but: ’the way you say something to me makes me sad’. With the first you have someone else share in a feeling. The second calls for taking a stance (in thoughts). A feeling that has not yet gelled into a judgment but is worded as a pure experience, presents an inner movement which can grow. An expressed feeling is always in statu nascendi (in a stage of growth). In taking it outside of us, deeper levels of our feeling can be born. Another person can understand you better that way and with less bias. In doing so a fourth step becomes visible. The way you can help yourself to become better aware of your inner motions by expressing them carefully, is by assisting another person in expressing his or her feelings by listening without prejudice, move along and perhaps ask some open questions. It will be clear that this last step cannot be taken until after the preceding steps have reached a certain skill level.
There are few areas so conducive for feelings to thrive as the realm of art. That goes as much for performing in an artistic way as experiencing art. Actively experiencing art always occurs through feeling. When you have looked for fifteen minutes at the Jewish bride of Rembrandt, you will be able to notice that very distinct feelings have awoken in your soul. Also when you are an artist you will be guided by your feelings. When playing a sonata of Chopin your feeling will tell you at what speed you should play and where the focus points lie. Feeling will become this way, in the true sense of the word an instrument.
The feeling exercise is a matter of finding the right balance. When Rudolf Steiner speaks about ‘equanimity’, this does not mean that you will have to temper your feelings or suppress them, but instead, in spite of the rolling waves of emotions, you stay upright and in balance. With feelings you always have to deal with polarities: with comfort and discomfort, joy and sadness, sympathy and antipathy. One carries the other; one also enables the other to come to fruition. The tender beauty of a birch makes it possible to experience the robust power of the oak. This mutual balancing also applies to the relationship which exists between powerful emotions which arise without effort and have the tendency to become exaggerated and the ’silent’ side of your feeling life, for which you have to create space and time. If you succeed in tempering somewhat the forceful and rapidly rising feelings, you save as it were energy for the hidden and tender motions of your feelings. And the reverse also applies: religious feelings or perceiving nature can put enough weight in one scale to see to it that the powerful emotions in the other scale do not upset the balance.
Contrary to the two previous exercises you cannot fix the feeling exercise at a particular point in time. What matters is that you grasp the moment at which the feelings announce themselves and to make sure that you not only express these feelings but also ‘impress’ them. At the start of the day, just before you step into the morning, you can hold back briefly and plan to perform the exercise during the day. Looking back at the end of the day shows you the moments where you succeeded, or where you missed an opportunity. Looking as an outsider at the feelings that presented themselves during the day is an aid to have the presence of mind needed to catch the precise moment when it presents itself. By exercising you will learn to live in the present. Your communication with the world, the breathing between the inside and the outside world is being strengthened.
The third exercise - Controlling our feelings
The point of the third exercise is that you seek control of the world of your feelings and that you don’t become your feelings, but to have feelings and to learn how to use these as a way to perceive yourself and the world. While doing the first three exercises you are looking as it were over your own shoulder to the way you are using the faculties of your soul. You look – as an outsider – at your own thinking, willing and feeling. With the first exercise it comes as a surprise to discover how inconsistent one’s thinking can be. Doing the second exercise makes you wonder, while you have a full and busy life, how few actions you perform using your own initiative. Looking however at the world of your feelings is the hardest to endure. While working with groups of people, I have noticed that this exercise gives rise to an inner protest: Is that really necessary, to control your feelings? Is it wrong to have your feelings run freely? Would such an exercise not dampen feelings? When you look at your feeling life, it first seems as though you hardly have any feelings. Shortly thereafter many painful, if not negative feelings appear to live in our soul; the number of harmonious, positive feelings we can identify is only very small. Observing this is what causes the protest. It is worthwhile sticking this out. It increases your self-knowledge.
A first step in the still unknown area of feeling is to make an inventory of the type of feelings we have on a given day. In doing this, it is helpful to take a sheet of paper and literally chart the feelings you had in the course of the day, as if it were a garden: a large field of irritations; a valley of doom, a little cluster of gratitude, a small bed of respect and so on. The map that evolves can vary from day to day, even though specific elements will return time and again. When you have observed your feelings in this way for some time, you may discover that there is still another, a secret garden inside you that hosts feelings which you have, but which are obscured by more powerful feelings which stand in front of them. This garden consists almost entirely of tender feelings, like the mood the blue of the sky evokes in early spring, or the feeling that you may get when you enter a room with an open fire in winter.
About the third exercise, Rudolf Steiner says that this concerns the expression of our feelings. This helps to resolve the misunderstanding that this exercise would result in suppressing one’s feelings and removing spontaneity. It goes without saying that it is good to cry in case of sorrow and to laugh when there is joy in our heart. These feelings should not be pushed aside, but you can direct them in such a way that you do not drown in your tears or lose yourself in laughter. What matters is that you acknowledge the feelings that exist within you and identify them and give them a name. That way they become part of you and accessible. When you then take your feelings to the outside, you can be their companion and guard. This way you can not only express your feelings but ‘impress’ them also. That is to say, you can try to observe what it is that the feeling wants to express. You notice for instance that there is unrest in your soul and you try to look for where this is coming from. You retain the feeling as it were and seek to look through it as if it were a window.
It is our feeling which connects us with the world. Once you have discovered this bridging role of our feeling life, you will soon notice that a dual way runs over this bridge. An impression coming from outside of us evokes a feeling in our inner self. A skipping child for instance can give rise to a feeling of lightness. Thus a message of the world is carried onto the soul. Conversely, it can be the soul to start with that tells us something. The memory of a teacher you had difficulty getting along with as a child and who was often wearing the color green can cause the color green to arouse a feeling of antipathy in you. In other words, a feeling can tell us not only something about the world outside of us, but also about ourselves. If we manage to keep these two aspects apart, feelings can lead to knowledge of the world around us and also to knowledge of self.
Becoming conscious of your own world of feeling makes some of us discover that he or she is a person of strong emotions and others that their inner experiences are weak and take a long time to surface. In both situations there is something out of balance. Probably each person carries both aspects within himself and it depends on which small part of the outside world you encounter which aspects show up. In doing this exercise, particularly the strong emotions catch our attention and it is the expression thereof which we seek to control. But it is at least as fruitful to foster the dreamlike and hardly noticeable feelings. Often it takes a while for this process to grow and you have to create the inner space for it. Placing this in the perspective of the ‘feelings garden’: some forceful feelings ask to be trimmed; conversely the tender feelings only develop when the seeds are being planted. Many strong feelings announce themselves and are unmistakable; you cannot possibly overlook them. Of other feelings you have to become attentive, listen to them as it were, like the mood the snow evokes in you, or a rainbow, a spring shower, the beginning autumn. But also the sphere at certain places, how different the sphere is in Groningen compared with that in Amsterdam and how different the sphere is at a nursing home compared with that at a school.
When you perform the feeling exercise for a longer time, you can take several steps. The first is to map the ‘feeling garden’ set out above. The second step is to be the gardener of your soul and trim the feelings that are too loud and plant the seeds of your quiet sensations. Having done this for a few weeks, you can take the next step: expressing feelings.
We are not accustomed to utilizing feeling as a means of communication. In most cases what we experience is ‘packaged’ in the form of a thought. Not: ‘I am sad’, but: ’the way you say something to me makes me sad’. With the first you have someone else share in a feeling. The second calls for taking a stance (in thoughts). A feeling that has not yet gelled into a judgment but is worded as a pure experience, presents an inner movement which can grow. An expressed feeling is always in statu nascendi (in a stage of growth). In taking it outside of us, deeper levels of our feeling can be born. Another person can understand you better that way and with less bias. In doing so a fourth step becomes visible. The way you can help yourself to become better aware of your inner motions by expressing them carefully, is by assisting another person in expressing his or her feelings by listening without prejudice, move along and perhaps ask some open questions. It will be clear that this last step cannot be taken until after the preceding steps have reached a certain skill level.
There are few areas so conducive for feelings to thrive as the realm of art. That goes as much for performing in an artistic way as experiencing art. Actively experiencing art always occurs through feeling. When you have looked for fifteen minutes at the Jewish bride of Rembrandt, you will be able to notice that very distinct feelings have awoken in your soul. Also when you are an artist you will be guided by your feelings. When playing a sonata of Chopin your feeling will tell you at what speed you should play and where the focus points lie. Feeling will become this way, in the true sense of the word an instrument.
The feeling exercise is a matter of finding the right balance. When Rudolf Steiner speaks about ‘equanimity’, this does not mean that you will have to temper your feelings or suppress them, but instead, in spite of the rolling waves of emotions, you stay upright and in balance. With feelings you always have to deal with polarities: with comfort and discomfort, joy and sadness, sympathy and antipathy. One carries the other; one also enables the other to come to fruition. The tender beauty of a birch makes it possible to experience the robust power of the oak. This mutual balancing also applies to the relationship which exists between powerful emotions which arise without effort and have the tendency to become exaggerated and the ’silent’ side of your feeling life, for which you have to create space and time. If you succeed in tempering somewhat the forceful and rapidly rising feelings, you save as it were energy for the hidden and tender motions of your feelings. And the reverse also applies: religious feelings or perceiving nature can put enough weight in one scale to see to it that the powerful emotions in the other scale do not upset the balance.
Contrary to the two previous exercises you cannot fix the feeling exercise at a particular point in time. What matters is that you grasp the moment at which the feelings announce themselves and to make sure that you not only express these feelings but also ‘impress’ them. At the start of the day, just before you step into the morning, you can hold back briefly and plan to perform the exercise during the day. Looking back at the end of the day shows you the moments where you succeeded, or where you missed an opportunity. Looking as an outsider at the feelings that presented themselves during the day is an aid to have the presence of mind needed to catch the precise moment when it presents itself. By exercising you will learn to live in the present. Your communication with the world, the breathing between the inside and the outside world is being strengthened.
