The Meditating Farmer

 

In lecture three of the Agriculture Course, Rudolf Steiner touches on the role of mediation as a way of becoming inwardly sensitive to the spirituality carried by the nitrogen in our surroundings.

As a picture we might say that in devoted meditation we withhold some of the carbon dioxide that we would normally breathe out, this carbon dioxide is a poison and acts as a death force that we would normally inflict upon the world. Into the space made by holding back the death force of our own egotism, the resonant open listening space of our self renunciation, the spiritual atmosphere of the surrounding world is able to reverberate. Through being touched by the inner activity of nitrogen as a carrier of world astrality, of the world soul, we become sensitive to the spirit in the world around us, the world harmonies of the cosmic music resound in us.

In a practical sense, through this spiritual listening, we can become aware of the flow of time and events, attuned to our surroundings, we may notice a tool in the morning that we suddenly need in the afternoon, or time an event for today that as it turns out could not have been done tomorrow, we begin to live into the becoming of time.