The Spiritual Path - The Four Seasons and the Hours - Winter
Introduction
Winter is the last stage symbolically of the spiritual path
It takes its symbolism from the main activity that takes place during this stage
purification or ‘whitening’ in some alchemical symbolism
which leaves you ‘Snow White’
This stage goes from Midnight and North to Dawn
on our diagram [East symbolically]
and it is a gruelling stage
leaving you a little Grumpy
The symbolism and events that happen during Day 4 and Rebirth
- The Dark Night of the Soul the Midnight Hour -
are treated in most symbol systems
as a stage in its own right and called ‘Purgatory’
And we have kept to this separation simply because it is rich in symbols and stories
Cinderella, Beheading, and Fire are all involved.
A separate video covers the subject
So this video covers Contact, Purification and Relearning
which eventually involves Redemption
and the final push to the states of ‘Moksha’ and ‘Nirvana’ on Day 7
Contact
If one successfully passes through rebirth,
then contact with you is gradually made
Through dreams or even visions, you find your Higher spirit
Symbolically you as the Personality may ‘climb’ the red rope [prayers]
or ‘swim’ up the blue river [listen to your intuition]
to obtain that contact [or both!]
And, if you are a Princess, you get to meet your Prince,
who may arrive with the gifts of insight and wisdom
Or, if you are the Prince, you get to meet your Princess,
waiting patiently in her tower
Some Princesses have had to wait so long before the Prince catches on,
they lie virtually comatose.
And others are sometimes made almost permanently comatose
by the poisoned apples of knowledge and ego they are fed
But the added contact connects or reconnects you with the spiritual world
and provides you as a consequence with more help
And what may result is a symbolic ‘baby’,
new projects, new ideas, new direction , new insights...
And the more contact you have with the SEVEN symbolic Planets on your ascent
The bigger the baby grows
Hieros Gamos
From this moment on you and your Higher spirit are “Lovers”
The Masculine and Feminine [Sun and Moon] in your character
will be in balance, Emotions tempered by Reason.
Giving you wings to fly.
This is then known as the Chemical wedding,
the Mystical Marriage or Hieros Gamos
Purification
There are three main activities during this stage
of Purification and Relearning with symbolic Water.
Questioning examining and doubting all your beliefs
with the aim of ridding your Memory of false memories and erroneous beliefs
Ridding [expunging] your Memory of ‘demons’ - which are memories of hurt
- demons you have inflicted on others
- demons inflicted on you by others
- and demons that are self inflicted
Continual suppression of the ego ‘the big I am’ that gives you that impression of
- false self esteem
- an Individual Self
- false self confidence in your ‘rightness’ [and maybe everyone else’s ‘wrongness’]
In other words a search for genuine humility
Meanwhile your aim is to try to Stay healthy,
because the rigours of this stage can be exhausting
Continue the search to Know yourself
How to Know Higher Worlds Rudolf Steiner
We advance even more quickly if we fill our consciousness with admiration,
respect and reverence for the world and life.
Anyone experienced in these things knows that
such moments awaken forces in us that otherwise remain dormant.
Filling our consciousness in this way opens our spiritual eyes.
We begin to see things around us that we could not see before.
A basic mood of devotion to everything truly worthy of reverence
suffuses our entire life.
This one fundamental feeling becomes the centre of our soul’s life.