I had the exact same experience at 17. Aptitude test. “You can do anything you want.” Outside of be a brain surgeon. (The only place I didn’t score high was super-fine finger dexterity.) They said to me: “Your challenge is going to find a way to combine all of your talents into something that will allow you to be satisfied with your life.”

You just shed light on that experience for me, on the challenges I’ve since had in finding my inner light and founding a life based on it!

Thank you so very much for posting!

Thanks for your message about the outer conditions.
I would like to make some addition with your permission.

In addition to describing the needed outer conditions to be able to BE, one could do more.
One could develop the sensibility for and (inner)knowlegde of the necessary conditions that enable animals being animals, plants being plants, minerals being minerals and precious metals being precious metals.
Perhaps out of that understanding modern man, gets a glimpse of what are the necessary conditions in order to be human and consequently one’s responsibility towards animals, plants, minerals and precious metals.

Thanks and have a nice day

I have always struggled with the concept of sin and original sin. I still struggle with it some, but not to the same capacity as within the years that I was trying to make sense of the catholicism I grew up with. You revealed within me a sort of epiphany that suddenly puts the concept of sin into a light in which I can accept and appreciate. What I derived from your writing was a meaning of sin in which sin would be the actions/thoughts/intentions that separate us from our higher selves and therefore detach us from spirit self and Spirit. I have always imagined Steiner’s concept of soul as a portal or doorway between physical self and spirit. As I read and reflected on your piece here, I thought of sin as these actions, etc. that narrow that portal, or close that door. This really could be like living in a Hell, especially, once one would become aware of it.
Anyway, this feels good to me. To understand this religious word in a new way and to be able to reach beyond the words and baggage, into the deeper meaning in which I can connect the universal truths seen within in all religions and paths of enlightenment. Thank you!

i’ve been thinking about ‘original sin’ lately…ive been wondering how anyone could worship a being that condemned all the generations of adam and eve to suffering of any kind. if this where a human ….they would rank with the hitlers of evil people. i am not to blame for anything eve did.

my bitterness to organized religion aside. i love your thoughts sin as a metaphor for what troubles me and why i seem to punish myself from some unknown place deep inside. why are some of my earliest memories centered around something being wrong. you seem to be hinting at there’s a lot of weight on the side of nature in the nature / nurture debate ….that maybe we aren’t born a ‘clean slate’.

“Could we be self-aware or self-developing, without the shadowy contours of sin and the desire to be sinless?”

this is a hell of a question…..my degree of self-awareness and development is intricately tied to my guilt and shame. of my flight from guilt and shame….hiding, pretending?….. to my super low threshold of shame and guilt. if i was born free of sin i sure found way early on to experience this nasty tag team.

thank you