As I say in my “Profile”:
I never quite fitted in life, but had a good start, and have plenty of intelligence. This ongoing “grit in the oyster” has been my wake-up call, and though not quite as old as Moses, I have done key spiritual-scientific research, and have practical experience and help to offer. I steeped myself in Steiner’s Anthroposophy. I worked with the Christian Quest Community in Glastonbury for ten years, and hold strong vision for a similar community here, in future. I welcome all interest, and plan to start a Zoom spiritual-drop-in slot soon.
I am a climate sceptic (I studied climate science). I’m interested in crop circles. I’ve done serious research on Star Wisdom and the great Star Ages.
I believe I have been given great and precious keys to understanding our times. It would be remiss of me to neglect explaining my keys before I die. I have hesitated for a long time, wanting to be sure enough of the truth of them, and to avoid upsetting others. Yet sometimes truths need to be spoken out, even if some choose to take offence. And I feel Great Spirit telling me, It is time.
Always the Christ Spirit has been in the background of my spiritual discoveries. This means not just spiritual awakening and gaining self-awareness, but also helping in the best way I can, where I see need both on my doorstep and for humankind. And that means thinking and prioritizing, separating essentials from non-essentials. It means recognizing the great contributions that all religions have made to advancing our lot on earth; it also means staying with the best but “speaking truth to power” where weeds and dogma have overgrown the true way, as best I can. It means recognizing and appreciating the methodology of Science while still turning to Great Spirit, and giving thanks at all times “especially when I don’t feel like it”.
I wasn’t brought up Christian but could not deny Yeshua when I heard him speaking to me direct, answering my deep needs one by one.
I also had experiences in Nature, when I had lost my way and was seeking within, to find my direction and purpose: I began to see light and colour around plants, always after my inner work. This made me aware that what is taught as Biology should really be called Necrology. Life – Bios – has to be experienced, transmitted, lived. It cannot be fixed in substance or books or curricula or beliefs except temporarily. A plant, given the right environment, has to do what plants do: grow according to its etheric pattern unfolding through Time. This pattern we can start to perceive directly, in inner illumination that is connected with our inner search, experiences, and integrity.
These two powerful experiences led me to Rudolf Steiner, a saint, a seer, and a genius trained in modern science. Steiner first showed how, in Thinking itself, we have proof of Spirit, and it is a proof that is stronger than anything Science can prove in external realities – but we have to experience it, by catching it fast enough, before it condenses, out of the spiritual realms, into Thoughts.
This gave me the path to self-confidence, and self-awareness, that I needed, to stand my ground with integrity, when challenged or under attack. Neither School nor Home nor Church had taught me this.
Steiner subsequently taught the fundamental esoteric science of our human makeup as threefold, sevenfold or ninefold Beings of body, soul and spirit – coming into the world in seven-year stages of development – we can use all these mutually enriching variations of the great Pattern of Humankind, to reach great insights and intuitions. So clear, so archetypal and simple, so hand-in-glove with the evidence of Science – when freed of the limitations of materialistic interpretations – so head-and-shoulders better than anyone else.
In the last years of his life, Steiner gave great lecture-cycles that enabled interested professionals to build the basis of spiritual transformation of the great areas of Life – Education, Special Education, Medicine, Church, Agriculture in particular, but a lot more, including Astrosophy which is neither Astronomy nor Astrology yet touches both.
There has really been nobody like Rudolf Steiner, ever.
The fact that he does have limitations that we now need to deal with, and that some of his followers may have serious limitations at times, should not blind people to what a blessing Great Spirit has given us through Steiner. I was blessed exceedingly by him, and I wanted to give thanks by passing back help to Anthroposophy, as I had been helped. But what came through for me to offer is what is laid out in this blog: challenges!
The insights that have come to me should actually help Anthroposophy in a very real way. All religions fall short of their founders’ high aims, radiant saintliness, spiritual perception, and ability to bless and heal. But with luck, there will still be a way through, through Listening and Reform, to that precious accepting and valuing of Experience – however low, simple, apparently a failure, or even just boring – because that is the ground in which our vision, ideals, hopes and plans – which are even more real – can take root and flourish.
None of this wisdom was taught me at either school or university, yet surely it ought to be central to all the rest of Education! When, partly through suffering Asperger Syndrome without knowing, I ran into difficulties at University that my high exam results could never have predicted, it was Rudolf Steiner who essentially came to my rescue. With his help I could reconnect with a profound sense of purpose which recognized the validity of the words of Christ and also my early clairvoyant experiences, and taught me ethically how to handle them – as for example above – see also his classic works, Philosophy of Freedom, Theosophy, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. I studied basic Anthroposophy (Steiner’s lugubrious word) for a year at Emerson College, worked with Steiner people for another year – and then felt I had to move on, move out. I still could not explain and justify his wonderful gift to others, without losing the spiritual energy Steiner had imparted to me; I needed to figure out how to do this.
So I stepped forth again, without degree or any further qualifications, but now following my spiritual path. All I needed was enough to survive, to get books, and be open to Great Spirit, the calls of Life, and the questions of how I could best serve humankind – which always has to come from the overflowing of joy with God. Thanks to Steiner, I now knew how to pass through the challenges of Scientific Materialism and everything Life threw at me, and come through with clear thinking and with joy, even if not with formal qualifications. I’d enrolled in the University of Life. Eventually I decided that Great Spirit did not want me to have a degree in this lifetime.
In time, and with major synchronicities, I discovered the Quest Community in Glastonbury, just as they were starting. I became a founder member and was with them for 10 years, helping Quest survive. Run by an Anglican vicar whom God called unexpectedly while on a day visit to Iona, it flourished during my time there. But alas, Fate took a hand in moving me out, to my great distress.
Gradually I came to realize (and I had to be sure) that all this was in the Divine Plan; that the “bad” times had given me key experiences I needed; and the “good” times reminded me I could do it. I was to return to Glastonbury, after Quest had stopped altogether. I was still carrying the visions – as it were, for “Quest the Next Generation”. I realized that it cannot this time be “under” the Church, as was the original Quest. But the original was truly a gift from God, and it had had to be that way, a start, a demonstration of feasibility and worth for the “next generation” which has to be open to apocalyptic challenges to Christianity itself (which I have been prepared for and can handle). I saw that I could not only do all the many kinds of practical work involved in a spiritual / Christian community, but could also carry the vision forward at both visionary and practical levels.
(t.b.c.)
Anne Stallybrass (sometimes you’ll find me online as Lucy Skywalker)