Happiness is what happens

In his introduction to six practices based on Steiner’s lectures, practices to develop the ‘something extra’ about being human, Michael Lipson makes the following comments.

… ‘the derivation of the English word happy… comes from the same root as happen. To be happy is to be of the same substance as what happens. We participate in what fortune brings, and so we are fortunate. Instead of feeling separate or holding ourselves back from what is going on around us, we are happy when we co-create the events of the day. For most of us, this is far from our lived experience. We either look on passively or we rush around in self-centred activity. To take the middle route between these is to fully embrace and participate in what is happening. Yet this requires practice for most of us. It doesn’t come naturally, but requires our creativity. The everyday powers of the soul that we take for granted can, in their developed, intensified forms, uncover our unity with all that is happening.’

(Lipson M 2002 Stairway of Surprise: six steps to a creative life, Anthroposophic Press, p. 19.)

The Great Web: the mind, how we see the world, and magic

 

From Neil Douglas-Klotz 1995 Desert Wisdom: Sacred Middle Eastern writings from the Goddess through the Sufis (citing Brian Swimm and Thomas Berry 1992).

‘Among the greatest challenges linguistically is the change from our present efforts at an exclusively univocal, literal, scientific, objective language to a multivalent language much richer in its symbolic and poetic qualities. This is required because of the multivalent aspects of each reality. Scientific language, however useful in scientific investigation, can be harmful to the total human process once it is accepted as the only way to speak about the true reality of things (p. 258)’ (Klotz p. xxxii).