Learning to See

Each child we receive into our care is really an amalgam of two beings. Each of us are born with these two beings, both of these aspects, within us. Our lifelong task is to chose which aspect, which being, we will nurture and strengthen and that choice will ultimately determine who we will become. I am speaking about what Rudolf Steiner calls the individuality body and the hereditary body. We are born with both of these aspects. One holds our true potential and the picture of who we intended ourselves to be before we returned for a new birth and the other holds all the things that may result in the obstacles and challenges we might experience in the children; they things they came to earth to overcome. Our task as teachers is to see the child and help them to hold themselves to the being they intended themselves to be, the one they chose to be before they were born.

It is really important for all teachers in Early Childhood to remember that Steiner makes it clear that the task of the first seven years is for the individuality body to overcome the hereditary body. Of course this is work for each person’s entire life, but those first seven years, while the clay of our being is still so malleable there is so much potential for what Steiner would say is our highest calling as teachers; to support the child to overcome their karma, and actually to facilitate the healing of the child. He says this knowing that each of us are born with something in need of healing. This is the hereditary body we bring with us. If we disregard this mandate, we are not doing our work.

This is why Steiner gives us the following as a meditation, “I am doing the work of the Gods between death and a new birth.” Karl Koening describes the images behind this meditation in a beautiful way. He says that after we die, as we are headed to the sun sphere we have to make a brief pause at the border the moon sphere before we can enter into the sun sphere. We have to leave something there, and that something is a bundle of our karma. We leave this bundle behind for a bit and enter into the sun sphere with the desire to form a new perfect being that will be ready to descend to earth again sometime. He says the Gods, and all the spiritual beings, come forward to help us weave this new perfect being that will become the individuality body for our next life. These beings help us not by forcing us to become anything or doing the work for us, but they point us in the direction of where we might need to look to find the right threads for our own weaving. When we are ready, we begin again todescend to earth for a new life taking this perfect self with us , but on the way there is something we have to pick up; we have to pick up that bundle of old karma and that is what will form the hereditary body that we will also bring with us. These bodies unite at conception and they amalgamate into the being of the child we will get to know when they enter our classrooms.

So what does this have to do with observation? In order to do our work, we have to learn to see. We have to learn to see each new child that comes into our care as an individual. Steiner tells us how not to do this, and then he points us towards what we will have to learn to do in order to be able to do this. He is very clear about the “how not.” He tells us we must not do as the Philistines do

and divide the children along the lines of “normal and abnormal.” He warns us that this will lead to the drawing of conclusions, conclusions that may reflect some reality if we were only looking at the hereditary body, but conclusions that would result in doing “heaven knows what” which would ultimately destroy the genius of the child. In other words, the individuality body. We do not want

to do this. We do not want to be Philistines, we do not want to form conclusions and we do not want to be destroying anyone’s genius. Another way of saying this is that if we do not learn to see we are left with only symptoms, and the symptoms will lead to a diagnosis; a label. The accommodations for those labels are examples of what Steiner means by “heaven knows what that destroys the genius.” So what does Steiner suggest we do? He tells us we have to learn to see what is right in front of us in the child, in other words we have to learn to observe. This sounds simple, it may sound so simple we want to disregard it. In my experience it is not so simple.

We are not taught how to truly do this in most teacher trainings, and so we draw conclusions without even knowing it.

What is a true observation? To learn to do this is to learn to school your own inner life towards true neutrality. Equanimity. Soul balance. It is a way of working that will strengthen your ego body and out of that you can begin to act because you will have first learned to see. This means learning to just observe the physical body without any kind of judgement, either one leaning more out of sympathy any more than one leaning out of antipathy. It means a description such as “Brown eyes, with straight eyelashes. Ears that sit close to the head. Fingers that are shorter than the palms. Fine, straight, light brownhair.” If we say things like, “Open, friendly face. Or sour, argumentative expression,” then we are working out of our sympathy or antipathy and this is not an observation. These things are judgements, whether they are positive or

negative, and they will both have undesirable results.

Why do we want it to be so neutral? This is the image we will hold up to thespiritual world each night as our meditation on the child. We have to train ourselves to hold up only the facts, not our opinions about the facts. If we allow our own opinions to enter in we are telling the spiritual world that we do not need their help, we already know better. They will hear that, and they will not help. We have to learn to put aside our own egotism for the higher good of the child. We are holding up the empty vessel of our observation for the spiritual world to fill with their reality, which is the reality of the higher self of that child. This is the image of the individuality body. This is the image of the person the child came to earth to become. The conclusions of Philistines are just the shadows formed by the hereditary body; not the truest reality of the child. When we get stuck at just those kinds of conclusions we will create exactly what the child does not need. The hereditary body will grow stronger and the chances of the child overcoming it will grow slimmer.

This training, to put ourselves aside and just see, is so simple and so profound because when we can leave our egotism at the door we create a room in our hearts where we are inviting in beings who will teach us not only to see, but also to listen. We will see the child in their own perfection and that becomes the star that guides us. We will also hear the true melody of the child’s being, the music of their soul forces; thinking, feeling and willing. This is probably the most healing thing we can do for anyone; to see them, to hear their music and then inwardly and with real love, which is the balanced point between sympathy and antipathy to hold that other person in their best light.