GUIDING PRINCIPLE #2 in Rudolf Steiner’s philosophy (commonly called ‘Waldorf’) is BEAUTY. This is a guidance about the nourishment children are needing and are receptive to from the change of milk teeth to puberty. We can help the growing child focus on imbuing work and actions with beauty, with something more elevated, with an artistic response. This is a time that music lessons and lessons in art provide nourishment to the unfolding child. It is a time to cultivate refinement of their feeling world.

He was filled with joy at the magic the earth had created.

As an example we can see the intrinsic ability in the child to respond to nature’s beauty. This ability exists at least until it has been dampened or obliterated by our school systems and mass media.

It is daunting for me to try to encapsulate the teaching of Rudolph Steiner in this tiny summary, nor am I a scholar of anthroposophy that could intelligently put forth all the background meaning (which can be found on the internet). Nevertheless in my personal experience I did find for instance, that when I had a class of grade 1’s, they were able to respond so beautifully to their lessons being taught more imaginatively, more colourfully, and when I suggested we could try to make our work more beautiful, they were very responsive, and their work really was impressively beautiful. Similarly, when raising my boys, at times when I wondered, at the right response to some dilemma – “What is the right response to this?” – I often did fall back on endeavouring to elevate their feeling world, to imbue beauty into actions.

This is an interesting notion, and certainly a truth which our education system and our mass media does not offer our children. So I think in some ways they become crippled internally, for lack of what would really help them, or rather would have helped them at the time of their unfolding.

(from anthroposophy – aka Rudolf Steiner’s ‘Waldorf’ philosophy)

Sometimes when raising my own children, it was often difficult to know what the best response from me would be at certain times, or in certain situations. What would be a gift to my children rather than a hindrance?

There is so very much more to Rudolf Steiner’s elucidations than what I write of here, but these three foundational understandings were always helpful for me when I struggled with finding guidance at certain times, even for my students at school. We can think of these principles more as answering the question, what is the developmental imperative at this age? For the unfolding personality, what is the budding person thirsting for, or what is the unfolding human naturally sensitive to learning at this time?

These main foundational principles stretch over larger sweeps of time all the way to adulthood: from infancy to the change of milk teeth #1, from the beginning of the adult teeth to puberty #2, and from puberty to adulthood #3.

The first principle, from infancy to the change of milk teeth is GOODNESS. Let us immediately understand, ‘goodness’ does not refer to the old fashioned expired thought construct, expressed by the question – often asked by grandmas – “Is he a GOOD baby?” This question has everything to do with how convenient and pleasing the temperament of the baby is for us. This has nothing to do with ‘goodness’.

At the outset, GOODNESS, for the small child, has everything to do with building a foundational faith in the goodness of the world. Depending on what we focus on in this struggling world, we can see anything but goodness. There is much chaos, and even evil afoot in this world. Nevertheless, we must stand guard and make a golden protective shield around our child at this age (from birth to change of teeth) so that there is as much as possible a trust that the her world is safe and good for her, that adults are taking care of the problems, that good will prevail. This trust in the goodness and rightness of all things is what builds in the child the resilience and power to become in adulthood, the person who is working to set the conditions right.

This is why I feel that writing books for young children is a sacred trust. Books for young children can be measured by inspiration, written in spirit. They need to embody goodness given out of ourself. It is about connection to all others – people, animals and nature. Kindness, thoughtfulness, even reverence and gratitude must prevail. Sincerity should colour the book, not cynicism nor adult humour. On the whole, the books we read can certainly can be funny, but then others need to embody wholesomeness – that which is life-enhancing and nourishing.

Small children learn to be gentle with each other, to pet the cat gently, to take turns, to give something to someone. To say ‘Thank you’. They can learn to observe insect and birds, to touch gently the flowers. When they pick a flower they can also say ‘Thank you.’ They take their cue from us.

Eliore discovering thankfulness.

At this young and tender time of life, our books should be representing the world as safe and good. It is exactly this that gives power and strength in adulthood, a trust in their path to solve some of our real problems. We can not burden a little child with problems the adults have created when the child is as yet unformed.

How do we represent the world to our young children?

Long ago in 1971, a young woman wrote and illustrated Mary of Mile 18, a story representing the normal life of the children she was teaching, living in northern British Columbia. She felt it a loss that the children did not see their life reflected in the books around them. Similarly, we now have many books, written with the same intent, by authors, wanting to reflect indigenous life, or black lives, or immigrant lives, and I suppose also LGBTQ life (I don’t know all the add-ons). It is very important for children to see their own lives reflected, but also other lives, to widen their perspective.

If you look into anthroposophy, which is about the only philosophy for life I have found which includes guidance for young children, as well as the whole education system, agriculture, medicine and more within a framework that includes the presence of the inner worlds, we learn something more. Rudolf Steiner brought forth many guiding principles. The three simplest ones will come forth at my next writing.

It offers us another dimension to evaluate our children’s books, aside from also representing our lives as they are.

It may well be true that telling stories and the need of the child to hear the narrative of the human world he/she lives in is one of the most defining elements of being human. And so we must truly examine the quality and intent of the books we read as our little ones are becoming shaped. What is this book saying to the child? What is it representing? What is this book giving to our child? There is so much out there that is good and healthy, but there is also much that is poison, even evil, and there is a dearth of books representing the wholeness of our greater world, that which includes the hidden worlds.

Particularly for me, when reading the books my grandchildren are exposed to, I see only the material world represented. There is not even a hint of the spiritual ever alluded to. Think how many toddler books there are focussed on language development, pictures of concrete objects and animals, even also now wonderful books teaching feeling words.

But children have come to us from the worlds of light, “trailing clouds of glory” (I believe Wordsworth said), and how is it for them to be deadened and confined to this material pushbutton reality, whose only aim is to satisfy our senses and create desire. Without the attention paid to the streams of glory, how can the children have words, a language, to relate to their inner perceptions and quickly diminishing realities as they are immersed and acculturated to this world as we have made it to be. They came to us touched by the divine, how can we nourish that?

How to portray the ineffable Oneness of the hidden inner worlds?

Below are my attempt at the worlds of light. This is from Little Star and Eliore, when the children are touched by the inner worlds because of the state of loving surrender they are in – so earnestly singing for a dead baby bird.

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I have sometimes been told, “You should write books like this (the Llama Llama books).”

But those books are already written, and furthermore there is certainly no shortage of lovely and captivating social-emotional books for children. What there is a shortage of is inspired books for children. Inspired – in spirit. When my children were growing up in the ’80’s and early 90’s, there was a plethora of small publishers putting out very creative books with divergent ideas and certainly they were touching on the edge of ‘in spirit’, which could have seen further development. But instead of developing further those publishers and books have been swept away. You can still find books along traditional religious lines, of course. But we are in startlingly new times. Shocking actually.

Traditional religious institutions have been summarily dismissed by the overarching Western materialistic mainstream. Dismissed by a dogmatic science, dismissed by technology’s incursions into our mindset bringing the focus on entertainment and pending doom. The very mention of God brings silent eye-rolling in the young. God is a word dragging so much baggage from the abuses and failures of the past centuries that it can hardly find a landing spot in the consciousness of these times. I say ‘failures’ as well as abuses, because traditional religions have failed to bring about transformation of consciousness, have failed to bring about the connection to divine realities we are in such need of.

With the generation of my grandchildren I have been dismayed by the lack, the absolute dearth of inspired books for children. If you don’t choose the old traditional religious books, there is not a book to be found where there is the slightest incursion of the spirit inhabiting the pages. Therefore, we can’t talk about it.

This is why I have written The Star Children books, hoping to find a way to allow a little bit of other-worldliness into the stream of the story.

Eliore falls through the clouds, from Little Star and Eliore

Eliore falling through the clouds to land on earth is very symbolic of our own fall into our difficulties. Maybe too much desire and wilfulness obliterate wisdom and care?

It is quite possible, of course, that when we have deactivated both the black and the white dog, that the spiritual dimension does not respond instantaneously. (The black dog here connects to self-recrimination and the white dog, connects to the urges to be a different person, to be the way the personality itself thinks we should be, or should have been.) Allowing either activity to dominate just creates a constant see-saw of inner activity that blocks our connection to our spiritual essence. The image itself speaks to me, saying ‘Be still. Be restful. Be at peace.’ If we can take that attitude, the non-reactive view, we are allowing ourselves to begin to be available to our souls.

Sometimes, though, we have perhaps not come close enough to true peaceful surrender. In my life at such times, and even all the time, I use gratitude as a practice.

Even at the most discouraging and difficult time, there are always many parts of our body that are working (‘Thank you that my hands are able to work’).

Socially we have at least one person who supports us or is friendly to us.

Financially we have at least one coin in our wallet or a dish with some dimes and nickels lying around and more money will come.

Thank you that there is some food in the fridge and cupboards.

Thank you that I have a warm cozy bed.

Thank you that I am not fleeing something.

Then beyond that, no matter what your childhood was like, there were always somewhere a gift of love and wonder.

Thank you that I have been helped by many people along the way. Thank you that I have been helped by the spiritual dimension along the way.

Thank you that I have been given some spiritual teaching and knowledge to refer to.

And going out into nature, thank you for grass and trees and flowers. Thank you for the birds singing.

And going out into the larger galaxy, thank you for the stars shining, thank you for the glorious sun, our Solar Logos. Thank you for the wonder of creation.

Thank you for the gift of my life. Thank you for the Breath of Life wherein I can connect and be at peace.

A breathing practice is a lovely way to culminate this navigation of the shoals of turbulence.

Picture this. Two greyhound type dogs lying peacefully, one white and one black. Though peaceful, their heads are up, alert and watchful. The white one is in front for us visually, looking left, and close beside, the black one looking right.

This image is from a Tarot Key from our school, and while I was meditating on this key, the image of the dogs spoke to me very strongly. I was trying to understand what it meant and why the dogs were in the key. The dogs seemed to say to me, “Be restful, be at peace.” It seemed to symbolize the polarized sides of my human nature. We can understand that we want the black dog, the shadow side of us, to cease and desist. But what about the white dog? Does it not then represent the higher values of the soul? But an animal cannot be used to symbolize the soul. Suddenly I understood, that the white dog represents our personality’s conception of the spiritual part of us, but that is not the real, not the part of us that is the alive spirit spark calling us within. In emotional turbulence, the real spiritual part of us is blocked – by ourselves! The personality then operates on its own conception of the spiritual – what we think it should be by our habits and learning and yearning.

If in the moment of our low (or high) emotional turbulence we try to amplify and activate our white dog, we are creating an inner see-saw, and further, we are activating our personal selves – the very part of us that continually veils our deepest essence.

In my case, it was the act of becoming peaceful and restful internally that opened the windows and doors to the real, and inspiration and guidance started to flow in. It seemed for me, the image of the restful dogs, spoke so clearly, “You can solve this self-criticism by stopping. Stop all the personality’s efforts. Embrace restfulness, peacefulness and the obstructions to the spiritual will fall away.”

My journey, from not “feeling like writing”!

Have a beautiful day!

As mentioned earlier, we may have noticed that forgiveness for others or for ourselves cannot be made to happen, even by our will or our mental decisions….otherwise, I say to myself, why am I still thinking about it, why am I mentioning it? If you have forgiven, it should already be swept away as so much detritus of life, swept away by the rivers of livingness.

I found I had been a bit hard on myself for neglecting my website and blog writing for so long, but the very state of being hard on myself – as in criticism or self-judgement – created low turbulence within me, within the personal house of my existence, the vehicle I reside in, that I try to look after as the temple of God. It is as if the doors of the house are locked and the blinds are drawn.

Even though it might be for a good reason one is hard on oneself, anything within us that is low turbulence or even more turbulence, nevertheless interferes with our accessibility to the divine forces, the transpersonal energies and consciousness that is always trying to actually get a hold of us and guide us on our way.

That see-saw between being hard on oneself for not doing what one “should”, and then actually doing it, is a bit of a catch – 22. So finally, that is the preamble to tomorrow’s blog, FORGIVENESS 3.2, what got me out of the slump.

Today’s post has been created, but is not ready for publication. It is longer than I wish, and convoluted – too much so? I need another day to mull and craft that piece. Have a beautiful day.