Extending the Art of Healing Through Anthroposophy

Chapter-5---Awakening-our-Understanding-of-Illness--100-years-of-Fundamentals-of-Therapy.mp3
( This transcript is a Machine Auto translation )
Welcome to extending the Art of healing through anthroposophy. With Doctor Adam Banning and laurascappaticci. This podcast is your invitation to engage with a new perspective on health and your own healing processes, while learning more about the fundamentals of anthroposophical medicine. Today we are discussing chapter five, plant, animal, Human Being from the book Fundamentals of Therapy by Rudolf Steiner and Ita Wegman. This chapter focuses on a new viewpoint that considers the different substances in our body, including mineral substance, living substance, sentient substance, and ego substance. This chapter was a little challenging for me, but as Adam says, it's asking us to keep our thinking mobile, and luckily he does a great job explaining these substances and how they work inside of us and influence our health. As Adam says, medically, this framework gives us a whole new orientation. It can help us ask what substances can be completely individualized? What is substance that's completely my own? No longer something of the outside world, but it's really completely me. And what does integration or lack of it mean for our body and health? Thanks for listening. Please follow and share the podcast and if you have questions and comments, you can now email us at. Extending the Art of healing at gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you. Adam, so nice to see you.

Nice to see you, Laura. Looking forward.

Yeah. Me too. Here we are. And, um, I, I am really okay. Let's just tell everyone what we're doing first. We are on chapter five, plant, animal, human being of the book Fundamentals of Therapy, which is having its 100 year anniversary. Um, and we're working through, um, Edith Eggman and Rudolf Steiner concepts here. And I thought maybe we could start out a little bit by, um, just talking about why why this chapter was one that you chose for us to, to explore a bit because it was such a challenge to me. Um, and I just I can't wait to get into it and talk about it with you.

Yeah. Yeah. Great. Well, I think we're really getting into some of the challenging material now, and there are 20 chapters. We're not going to do all 20 chapters, but this fifth one is really a challenge to make your thinking mobile that that's my It's actually one of my favorite things is working with this chapter. And it takes some time because once you start trying to think about different levels of activity or different levels of substance, um, medically that kind of gives you a whole new orientation that doesn't exist. Like what is substance that is completely individualized? What substance? That's completely my own, um, that I've transformed it in such a way that it's it's no longer something of the outside world, but it's really completely me. That's a really interesting question. Like, um, I think that relates to our immune system, probably to our digestive system, um, but also to our creative processes and our our social life. Like, where are the moments in our day when we're doing something that we're really completely saturating and penetrating with our own intention? And I think those are little tiny glimpses that happen. Little moments. Um, but it is something that we're doing physiologically all the time. So maybe this chapter could also be different levels of claiming or reclaiming or refining. Um, yeah. And I think it's very interesting. I was trying to think of an analogy earlier for these, these different levels. And I came up with thinking about a poem. And I really love poetry. I don't read it enough, But. But sometimes a poem is just a beautiful, perfect expression of something. And it's pretty easy now to find something in the internet as a poem. If you know the title or the person who wrote it, and that's like the mineral substance of a poem. I don't know if this analogy will completely work, but let's try it.

It's already helping me. Okay.

So like the poem is typed and stored somewhere, and that's the poem on one level. On a different level. Um, the poem starts become to become alive for us when we actually read the poem. When we move through the thoughts, when we read the words. And in some ways we could say unless somebody is actively thinking or speaking the words. The poem stays on that more mineral level, but it gets enlivened every time we work with it. And I don't know, maybe in high school or in college, I read a lot of poems and some of them were very interesting, but I don't remember them very much. And some of them really spoke to some kind of deep, archetypal experience in life. And I would say those really go into your feeling life, into your soul life, and they resonate with something that's living inside of you. And I think that resonance on an experience level, on an emotional level, um, that's that's part of a third level. And of course, we're going into an example before we've even discussed these levels of substance, but maybe this makes it a little easier. Um, and I think sometimes you could read a poem about love or a poem about heartbreak.

Or a poem about the beauty of nature. But if you yourself haven't been in that place, maybe it doesn't resonate quite as much that there has to be something in your life that knows about that, that particular experience. And then I think maybe a fourth level, which is really quite individual, is when we have a profound experience and we write the poem and it's completely our own words, which maybe are going to resonate for somebody or maybe not. But, um, we're not just reflecting or memorizing or reading somebody else's poetry. It's really Our words that try to capture something. So maybe that's for poetry and we could think about it on different levels. Um. And this is chapter, which is also fun but challenging to kind of do arrows. Like how does one thing move into another? How does that move into a third? How does that move into a fourth level? Um, so maybe we'll we'll get through some of that too. But I think this is really in the, the realm of meditation, this fifth chapter.

Hey, I mean, that's very reassuring because I the whole time I was reading it, I was like, I don't think I'm ever going to understand this. However, the while I was reading it, I was like, think like a doctor. Think like a doctor. What would these substances mean? As a physician. But now I'm like, think like a poet. Think like a.

Yeah.

A No, I think that's really helpful. So just just for everybody listening in in this chapter, if you haven't read it, which we hope you will, um, you know, he, Steiner and Bregman, they talk about these, um, these substances and what you were just describing in the poem again is, you know, the, the, the mineral substance, um, is the paper where we would find the poem. It's very it's not very living, but it exists. It's there. And just like we would think about rocks on the ground and things like that, they're they're they're absolutely. Yeah. Yes. But it's different than encountering a plant. It's different than encountering an animal. And then we um, and it's in different, different than encountering, um, something that has feeling to it, which is this other level as well. Um, and then it's different than encountering, um, something within yourself that you've created. So, um, so I'm just restating it essentially, uh, in relationship to the poem, and we go through these different substances in this, in this chapter. So get ready, everybody. We're gonna we're gonna dive in. Did I get that right?

Absolutely. Yeah. We're we're gonna swim and swim in substances. And, uh, it's really a really dynamic picture.

Yeah.

I think that's that's why it's hard to hold is you've got to be moving it the whole time. Um.

Like. Yeah.

Watching the stream flow, and it's, it looks like the stream is just there and it's flowing, but it's always water that's flowing past, and it's always new water that's going past. There's something about these streams of substance, but I think the the parts that we really anchor on that seem very constant, that sort of this more mineral part. But, um, yeah, there are other places where in the book it's spoken about how substance that comes into us, we assume is in the same state when it comes out of us.

Right.

And I think this is this is really a chapter to say, no, there's there's a whole transformation that's going on.

Right. And that's like when I was thinking about like, think like a doctor, I was like, okay, well what what does this mean then? Because then there are parts of me that are like, maybe I don't know, my nails or something, or my hair, like, this is very mineral, right? And then I think I just like, eat food and something happens and that's. But there's some maybe some other thing going on. And then there's something even further, um, happening with things that I, um, that are a part of me or that I encounter that's in my what I think, um, like, medicine of today would just say, oh, that's all just part of you. And it's all the same form. It's all the same substance, but it's actually there are these other layers to these parts of us that maybe are unaccounted for when we look at, um, traditional, you know, allopathic medicine that we're just not taking into account these layers, maybe with the immune system, there's a little more understanding there. I don't know, I'm, again, not a doctor. That's you. Um, but. Yeah.

Well, maybe we could try and take a little journey with substance.

Um, yes.

Because in the chapter, it's speaks about how mineral substance. Um, goes through a transformation when it is lifted into living substance. And that that happens through etheric forces through through life forces, which we talked about in the last episode. And maybe one way really crudely to think about this would be what's the bioavailability of something that we eat.

Right?

I can see, oh, I want to take this vitamin, this mineral, this supplement, um, and it's got this many milligrams. And I'm putting that into me. And if I'm just a machine, Um. Or I'm just. I'm just substances. Mixtures of substances. Then it seems like all of that should come in. But really, it has to be accessible. It has to be available. And it's not just that it gets absorbed into my system, but it's absorbed in a way that I can really make use of it. Um, I think we do the same thing with information, um, that we have to be wakeful and we have to enliven the information that we take in. Laura, you could tell me the secret of life. And if I'm distracted or tired, um, I don't know that it comes in. I can't quite move it into a living thought, or it just stays like. Oh, that's that's interesting. Thank you for sharing. But. But I can't really do anything with it. So I think this enlivened, this enlivening step means that we can take something and we really start to make use of it. Um, and there's a nice description about how a plant, a tree is always enlivening substance and then releasing substance back into the mineral state.

Right into bark or into like, yeah. Branches too or. Yeah. Mhm. Well that's that's hard. Yeah.

Yeah. Well I think um certainly the leaves those are very dynamic. Those are, those are sprouting when the substance is really most alive. And then in the, in the fall when it's no longer being held and that enliven state, it falls off and it's really Being released back to mineral substance, um, is really interesting because we've got the wood on the inside and the wood is not dynamic anymore. It's pretty steady, and the bark on the outside has been released back to this mineral, earthy state. But but right in the middle are these, these streams of substance, um, one stream which goes from the tree down to the roots, um, and one which goes from the roots up into the trees, phloem and xylem, if I remember that correctly from biology, these very, very small but incredibly dynamic streams of substance. And I think probably we've got a similar kind of activity happening in the lymph where we've got very, very delicate streams of substance from everything that we take in, through digestion, through the gut. We've got streams of blood in the lungs where air comes in from the outside. We've got, um, streaming of cerebrospinal fluid around the brain and the spinal cord. Mm. So I, I have this picture that if we could really picture all of our streaming's, it would just be phenomenal. It would be, I don't know, a thousand times more than what we're seeing as as physical substance.

Yeah. That's an incredible picture. Thank you for just giving me the and everyone listening. The, you know, the parallel process in the human body there. That is really fascinating. Um. Like what? What's what's streaming in the tree? What's streaming in us? Huh?

Yeah. I think if you've if you get some swelling in your feet, um, because your socks are too tight or you're on a long play plane ride or something like that. Um, that's a picture that. Oh, actually, this streaming isn't happening so much.

Right.

And some of the fluid is, is pooling a little bit. Mhm. Yeah. And then you mentioned hair and nails and I think that's exactly right that um we can release, we can release substance, we can clip our fingernails or get a haircut. And um, that's in a realm where it's back to mineral substance again.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm just thinking a little kid saying, why doesn't it hurt when? When you cut. When I cut my hair. Right. Because it's a different substance than your hand. Yes. Or your bone, even. Which you would think you know, but that also hurts. It does. You know, it seems hard, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have things streaming in it all the time. And yeah. Anyway.

Yeah, I think bones, teeth.

Um, right.

Those are, those are pretty mineral, but they're not completely static. They're actually turning over and changing as well.

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And there's more, more in them than your hair or your nails or. Yeah. It's not as simple. Not as simple. More complex.

Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. So I think the, the part of us that's like the plant that's going between mineral, earthy substance and enlivened. It's not quite plant substance, um, because we keep going further with it. But I do think it's really interesting that not in these chapters, but in a different place. Rudolf Steiner spoke about a kind of plant world that was inside of us. This was in the 1920s. And actually, if you look at his descriptions, um, it fits very much with a picture of the microbiome of the healthy bacteria that's inside of us. So he he didn't use the words we're using now, but he described this, this plant world, this very dynamic realm of enlivened substance, um, inside. So I think that's pretty interesting as well.

Yeah, it's so funny because that's one of the questions I had for you that I wrote down. I was like, okay, is there anything in this chapter or in this book that he said that now, you know, modern science is like proving because I feel like that happens with his stuff all the time. There was just not the technology to say, oh, actually XYZ. And so this is one of those things you're talking about with the, the biome that, you know, now we're talking about more and more, um, and not and not just the gut that's like the whole skin and every it's everywhere isn't it.

There's this like it is entire.

Yeah. Each of us a world in in ourselves. Right. Um, in a way. So.

Right. I think there are statistics that there are more bacteria, um, on our body, in our body than maybe we have our own cells. Um, it's it's incredible the kinds of. Yeah, pictures of actually this enlivened activity is really, really important. Um, but mostly taken for granted because we don't we don't feel it so much. It's a pretty, pretty sleeping process.

Mhm. Yeah.

Of course. Okay. Well you picked a few quotes out here and there were some that. We've already touched on some like the bark formation of the tree a little bit, but I was, I was really interested um, in this where he's, where he says, uh, he talks about the self conscious spiritual life. A threefold stream of substance comes into being. And this the human being's inner and outer shape arises. Thereby it becomes the bearer of self-conscious spiritual life. The human being is, in their form, a result of this ego organization down to the smallest particles of their substance. So, okay, we've talked about mineral. Maybe we've talked about sentience to a point. Or is this.

I think the the sentient substance is is a step before this self-conscious spiritual life.

Right?

Um, and yeah, sentient is is not a word that we use very often. It really means sensing. So something that's capable of sensing, of awareness. And if we think about sentient substance first. Then I think maybe we can we can get a little more of a picture of that self-conscious aspect. Great. And, you know, maybe, maybe one way to think about it is just what are the parts of our body that we consciously connect to. So obviously our senses, our taste or smell are touch our balance. All of these things are very much awake. But it's very interesting that we do have a lot of part of parts of us that are kind of in between where they can be highly sensitive. So one of my favorite examples is think about your left fourth toe.

Um.

Okay.

Sometimes you have to wiggle it.

But.

Often with without touching it, you can say, oh yeah, there's my toe. And probably you can go the whole day without thinking about your fourth or your left. Sorry. Thinking about your left fourth toe. Um, but you can do it when you want to. And I think we would say, well, that happens because our central nervous system connects to peripheral nerves. And now we can feel that. And yes, that's true. So we could look and we would see that there's more nervous system activity when we connect to it. But I think it's also happens because of this shift from just enlivened substance that's carrying out a task pretty much sleeping to one that we're really consciously engaging with. Um, so taking this chapter is a picture. I would say it means that there's something about the way I am sensing in my body that moves and connects me to my toe. And now my toe is lifted into a sensing process. Or I could shift to a different part of the body. Or, um, when we're really stressed, we tend to feel, oh, the muscles of my neck. My throat is sore. Um, my breathing's tight. Oh, I feel my heartbeat. Oh, my stomach's in a knot. We can have this shift of a lot of things that most of the time, fortunately, just go on their own process. And I don't have to be thinking about breathing. I don't have to be thinking about my heartbeat. I don't have to be thinking about my stomach and digestion. But I can shift in my activity and they really get turned on. And I think that's a that's really a picture also of this shifting sentience, the shifting sensing.

Thing.

And then sometimes, um. Spend some time on the sun, on a sunny beach and do a relaxation exercise and you realize, oh, my forehead is so soft, or my jaw muscles are so relaxed. And I didn't even realizing I was holding them. But probably when you do that, you're releasing back more into enlivened substance and not needing to hold it consciously. I think that's something about the shift from enlivened substance to sentient substance.

Got it.

Thank you. And then. And then this this shift and enlivened substance isn't the same as the. Or it is the same as the spiritual. Like the ego. The ego substance.

Well, I would say, um, mineral substance and live and substance being what's brought into the etheric body, sentient substance being what's brought into the astral body. And then we could say I substance, ego, substance. Yeah. The way it's described here is substance. That's the bearer of the self-conscious spiritual life.

Yeah.

Boy, that that's really hard to capture in one word.

Um, it really is.

But I do think when. When we're going through an illness process, um, or we get dysregulated and we say, okay. This is something that's been developing inside of me, but actually it doesn't fully belong to a healthy state of being. Um. Which could be. It could be something like, oh, there are abnormal cells that are starting to grow in my body. And they're really not participating in an integrated way with the rest of my health. And so actually, they don't fit anymore. They they don't belong into what I'm doing. And then our immune system steps in and says, no, actually this is not fully penetrated substance. And I need to release this out. And um, I think we do that on a cellular level. I think we do it also when maybe we're surprised by learning that we have a particular habit or a particular point of view and going, oh, that's the way I've been carrying things and reacting for a long period of time. And now I realize that it's time to change that, or I want to make that flexible in some way.

And then we really have to step into our more usual predictable emotions, are more predictable preferences or dislikes. Um, and say, no, I'm really going to craft this in a very individual way. And I think when we do that, it's not just a spiritual process, it's also a substance process. Um, I mean, it reminds me a little bit of a study I saw which spoke about meditation and a part of the brain which is the insula. And the insula lights up in us when we perceive physical warmth. It also lights up in us when we perceive social warmth. We see someone that we like. We're in a familiar, comfortable environment. Um, but it also lights up when somebody who's very practiced in meditation gets distracted and then pulls back to their meditation. So it's not it's not really when they're just blissed out in steady, perfect meditation, but you go somewhere else and then you say, oh, actually, my intention is to come back. And I think that that redirecting, that refining, that's something about this, um, the substance, this bearer of self-conscious spiritual life.

Yeah.

Very interesting that there's a part of our brain that we can see on a functional MRI that lights up for physical warmth, moral warmth and distraction in meditation. That gets corrected back to intention.

I mean.

Yeah, that is remarkable that we we we can see that. You know, it's funny because and how to know higher worlds. And one of the later chapters he talks about like these how the brains splits into two parts, I think he says he talks about the actual brain and like and how it changes because it's carrying these capacities now and and, you know, maybe again it's like this. How could he look in there and see at the at that time. Right. But, um, maybe he's talking about this part of the brain. Who knows. Like and it just. Right. Yeah. Do you remember that from the book. It's it's it's very particular thing. And I'm always like when I'm trying to explain it to people, I'm like, okay, well, he says this thing about the brain and I'm like, I'm not sure how he could know, but here we are.

Yeah, well, I think it's like like the biome. I mean.

You're right, like the biome.

There's I think when he's he's looking. I think Steiner and Wegman are looking at processes, at streaming, at transformation. Um, yeah. I really think about every two years there's some radical new discovery about medicine, which is somewhere in the medical lectures, and it's fascinating to see that confirmed. And I don't know that you could you could measure this as much as it's really in this realm. Of function.

Right.

Because on a regular MRI scan, you can look at the brain and you can say, oh, this part of the brain is this many millimeters. Um, you can see the size and the density, but the functional MRI is somehow lifting us a little bit out of this pure mineral realm to see where seeing where these activities happen. Yeah. Um, yeah. So that it would be interesting to just think about what are places in the body, because I think probably the insula in the brain is not the only one where we are Consciously really taking hold and really refining what we're doing.

Mhm.

Um. The immune system is everywhere. So we're really doing this in.

A.

Very, very dynamic, continual way. Because if we think of something like cancer that develops we could say, yeah, that's that's no longer substance, that's fully integrated. It may be alive. It may be sensing, but it's not a healthy part of us. And so part of the activity of of trying to meet and refine and transform, I think, is probably happening on this, this level of the I organization.

Mhm.

Next episode I think we can talk about mistletoe.

Okay, great.

See how that is really an important contributor to this process?

Yeah.

Yes. And I know in, in the first two episodes, or I think particularly in the first one, we did talk about plants and they're. You know, I mean, we're just talking about a tree. It just makes me just opens my awareness again to how everything is connected and similar and in so many ways.

Um.

But I wanted to talk about this AI organization for a minute. And, and cancer. You said in particular where you talked about these abnormal cells. And then I started thinking about what we inherit, um, and how we inherit trauma sometimes. And we might take it into our bodies. Um, or it might be intergenerational, like, we don't even realize that we're carrying that. And then how that is not an integrated part of us, just like these cells in a way. Like they're there, but they're not. And and then you, you sort of said, well, then, you know, like with the habit, you might say whether we inherited it or we created this habit. We say, you know what? I don't I don't want to do that anymore. That's that's there. But it's not me. That's not me. And so, I don't know, I was just thinking about that connection there. That's not me. That's that's from my mom or that's from my, you know, trauma from generations down or what. What is me and what is it? Me and how do I let go or integrate? And then what does that mean in our our physical bodies as well? Well, not just our physical bodies, because we're talking about all the bodies and substances.

We're talking about all the bodies here.

Yeah. Yeah.

Um. Well let's see. So That's interesting to think about things that are inherited, because it wasn't so many years ago that it was felt, oh, if we can just figure out what's in the human DNA, we'll have the answer to everything. That's that's kind of the mineral picture. His DNA is really we could say it's really a crystallized form, and it carries information, but it's not. It hasn't proven to be destiny.

Right.

Um, because how genes are expressed is variable.

Mhm.

And some people, it expresses very strongly. And other people may have the gene and not have it show at all or very subtly. I think what you're describing in terms of trauma. That's something. Yes, it gets it gets passed on to us. And that's a really interesting question to think. Where does that passing on happen? Is it in the DNA? Is it in sort of the life forces that we pass from generation to generation in terms of habit, in terms of custom, in terms of things that are. Yeah, rhythms that we unconsciously carry. And then there are patterns that we also take on, I think in our sentient sentient life, in our soul life, where if there's trauma and we're born into a world where we can feel this anxiety or this loss or this need for vigilance that that that comes into our own experience as well. Um, and I think you're exactly right that whenever we can meet something and it doesn't mean that we're rejecting it, it means that we are looking at it in a new way and really try to see, does this belong to me or not? Is this helpful for me or not? Then I think we're getting to this realm of self conscious spiritual life. So I know a lot of people who had traumatic experiences early in life and can get to a place of saying, yes, that small child part of me is is watching, um, is protecting, is guarding. And it's doing a really good job, but maybe what it's guarding and protecting against is something that I don't have to be carrying still right now.

Yeah.

And I think that's something that lives in our feeling life that that protecting or that reactivity.

Yeah.

And then we can say to it, thank you for taking care of me. And in this moment and in this space, I can move to something different. Right. Um, so I think that's the I organization stepping in.

Yeah. Great. Mm.

And I, I think there are lots of other places where we carry an experience, where we carry a habit, and we don't move beyond it by ignoring it or embracing it. But we recognize this. This is part of me. Um, this is a true part of my biography, a true part of my experience. And today I meet it and I, I work with it again. And each day I'm working with it.

Um, yeah.

So I do think that that is a process of reclaiming.

Mhm. Mhm. Yeah.

And maybe in 50 years we'll have technology which can show us. That there are little parts of our brain or little parts of our spleen or little parts of our heart. Um, That really change when we do this? Um, if we go back to warmth. I found an interesting study in the last year where people were showed pictures and they showed a picture of a young woman and measured people's warmth with a Thermo Graham. And there was no change, but they showed a picture of a baby. And when people see babies, um, you know, optimism and love and affection and really this kind of moral warmth comes up and they can measure that. People's noses get warmer. Um, or so, actually, maybe even our nose can become a bearer of this self-conscious spirit.

Because.

Very subtly, our circulation changes.

Um.

When we see things that we really love, that we really want to care for. Um.

That's sweet.

Yeah. So this, this really challenging chapter is, is asking us to move from mineral substance to enlivened substance. But then says enlivened substance goes back to mineral. So that's maybe one loop. But in a an animal or a human being, the enlivened substance goes up to sensing substance but is also released back to living. And I think when we're very aware of some part of our body and then we can just release it, let it go back to its sleeping function. Maybe that's some of that release. And then in the human being, the sensing substance goes to self-conscious spiritual activity. And I don't think any of us can be in that place all of the time, not consciously. So we release back to our our habits and our likes and dislikes, um, which also fortunately carries us. A lot of the time. So you could drive to work and say, wow, how did I get here so fast? I don't even remember. And, um. Then we've been in our sentient activity, but not so much in that self-conscious activity.

Um.

I hope someone listening will draw us their depiction of this. I think it'd be really interesting to have it illustrated in a way, you know, just like this, this process. So if you're listening to this and you want to send us a drawing, go ahead. That'd be pretty cool.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Layers and connections of the substance. Yeah. That I understand so much more now. Thank you. That was that was super helpful. From the poem to the examples within health and our own health. That's very helpful. And of course, the the plants always helped me to just to be able to have those pictures. Um, and I feel like the medicine works so beautifully with that realm. Um, and, and like you said, we're hopefully we'll talk about that next time. More those connections. Um, because it's coming each time we've talked, we've, we've been connected to the, the plant realm in one way or another. I think so, Yes.

Yes, absolutely. And if we were in the middle of a medical training, um, and we're studying this chapter, we could look at therapies, we could look at medicinal substances that kind of act specially on these different levels.

Right.

So sometimes you can feel, oh, this is a really important period of time to help, um, someone be very self conscious and self-determining.

Mm.

And gold aurum is very helpful in that way. Um, or you could say, wow, the soul life is just overwhelmed and it's really hard to let go and get back to a regenerative place because we're so consciously holding everything. We're holding the whole surroundings, and we're holding our body in this very conscious way. And then something, sometimes something like camomile, um, or there's an anthropomorphic medicine, which is a film that can be very nice to kind of help that release just just back to a living, regenerative, enlivened place.

Mm.

I think I gotta get me some of that.

Good stuff.

Good stuff.

Oh.

Yeah. Right. And and. Yeah. And it works with the qualities of minerals and the qualities of plants that are like this, that are. Yeah. That is so great. I feel like you were just talking about anxiety a little bit, which I hope at some point, you know, this, it's just such an. I don't know, people use the word like so easily and so um, in such an undefined way, like I and and I tried to with the students I work with and the people I work with, try to have them explain the experience a little bit more, because I think we just say, oh, I'm, I'm anxious or I'm overwhelmed and I need some of them, you know, they don't say that, but, um, they there's but there's again, um, I feel like if if someone came to you with that, would you be asking them to like, parse it out a little bit more and try to talk about the experience in their body or in their mind or in their. What would you ask them? I don't know, I just went down a different street right now, but absolutely.

Well, part of it is, is trying to look and see what are the rhythms of sleep, What are our rhythms of digestion?

Rhythms.

Right. Um.

And how are we working with these different levels of substance?

Um.

And I would say with anxiety, it's really easy for so much of us to be caught up in things that need to be actively sensed all the time.

Right?

Like, we're just paying attention to so many things.

Yeah.

Either because we feel responsible for them or because, um, we're always being fed more information.

Mhm.

Or the world is just changing really quickly and we feel like, whoa, I need to keep track of what's going on because it is continually changing. So our social life, the sentient aspect is really, really really busy.

It's busy. Overworked.

Busy. It's overworked. Yes.

Yeah.

And. That makes us more tired. Because it takes a lot of work to do that. I think it also changes this balancing between and live and substance and sensing substance that really our physiology kind of resets so that we're always primed to be sensing and reacting.

Mhm.

So um. Part of the way that we work with that is trying to say okay how much sensing is enough. What, what can be my information diet for the day. Um but really to be able to make that determination. I think we have to lift up back into that self-conscious spiritual life and say, all right. I've looked at emails or I've checked my social media or I've streamed something, or I've read something and actually is a place where more information is not going to make me feel more relaxed. Um, or I'm trying to make this decision, and I've thought about it already 14 times today, and thinking about it five more times really isn't going to help me. Because our astral body are sensing it can just keep going with that over and over and over again. And it's when we say, either I've thought about it enough or I'm going to make this decision, this is my direction. This is my intention. That's the I. So the I organization helps us determine when's that place that we shift. Um, and then anxiety is also balanced by having spaces where we can really relax into more of just this enlivened state without being so, so vigilant all the time.

Right.

So a medical visit might be trying to see is the biggest help. Just trying to build us up again because we're really tired. We need to be enlivened. Or is the biggest help to release from that sensing space, or is the biggest help to try and be a little bit more self conscious and self-determining? Um, So actually, there are lots of different ways to approach anxiety through through anthropomorphic medicine and therapies.

Yeah, I actually I think that turned out to be a good illustration of these different substances. So yeah. Um, yeah. So thank you. Yeah, that was like a real life example. Not that I'm ever anxious. That's not me. I'm just joking.

No, nobody is today.

No one for everyone.

So. Yeah. Except for everyone. That's right.

Oh my goodness.

Yeah.

That's great. Thank you so much. So I guess is is there anything else in this in this chapter we want to look at a little more closely or do we feel, you know, I hope people will send us their questions too.

Um.

Sure. I would say what we haven't really explored is, is trying to look at these four levels in terms of other activity?

Yeah.

You know.

If.

If somebody is working in education and you're trying to help somebody. Not just receive information, but work with it so that it becomes enlivened and then feel that it's important because you resonate with it and then hopefully do something out of your own experience, your own initiative with it, like I think.

Right.

That would be the ultimate goal in terms of education. Not that we could do that with everything that we do, but sometimes we really want to see. Just a beautiful representation of, of of what somebody carries within them and, and provide something completely new. Um, so whether it's education, whether it's sculpting, Whether it's looking at social dynamics. Um, I think this chapter could be taken in a lot of different directions, and you could do all kinds of really interesting pictures or charts with arrows or, um, yeah, kind of imaginations of how we can move between these different levels.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's great. Gosh, there's so much, so much to be offered from this to to medicine. It's just it gives it such a, I mean, to every aspect of our lives. Like you just mentioned education. Um, it's just such a deeper, more enriched perspective than the mineral perspective, which I feel like so many things are just in that realm. Right? Right now in the world. It's it's. Yeah. And that that misses a lot or and sometimes you know sometimes it's just in the that soul realm or that astral or just sort of dead end in the mineral. Not that the minerals and serving substance like a purpose, but, um, yeah, that integration is, is the thing and the flow between is the thing and how it goes back and forth as it moves up. Um, within, within a system or concept or within our understanding. So. Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah. It's a beautiful picture.

I think.

It really.

Is.

And one that we'll keep developing and, um. I think even when technology can't quite precisely measure all these things We can have real experiences where we know that it's true. Um.

Yes, absolutely. Especially if we just just listening to this, just having this conversation. Um, I'll just be more attuned now to it and be able to sense it in a way. And I do think, I do think things like plant study help you attune to like, those different layers of life, um, you know, how to know how the world we observe the plant, the mineral, the plant, the animal, the human, um, those that helps you attune to those those layers as well. But.

Um, so.

Absolutely.

So practice is good. And how to know higher worlds could also be a title for this little fifth chapter.

This little chapter.

Yeah.

Yeah. Do you have suggestions for people listening, like an activity that they could do to work with this chapter. In addition to listening to us.

Well, I would say, um. An outer activity would probably be to go in nature. And just try to notice how dynamic things really are.

Mhm.

And I think maybe it's not so easy to see the, the self-conscious spirit in those moments. Um, but just to see how much nature is changing if things are blooming or budding, notice how that enlivening process has really happened. Happening all the time and and also how that enlivening process gets sculpted and refined lots of different ways. And maybe an inner exercise would just be to see with the information that you take in. When are the times or places that it becomes important to you? Because we get a lot of information every day. And if you remember it, that means. Something moved in you. You took that information and it it took on some life. And then when it's really interesting or really annoying, um, what is working in you in terms of your, your feeling life, your social life, your soul life. And then maybe just notice if there are those little moments where you really kind of reclaim or self define. I think that's the way to really work with this. It's actually happening all the time.

Yeah, right.

I think it's great. It's the noticing. It's the noticing that it's the act there that really makes the difference.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. Well. Wow. Thank you. Thank you. Okay.

Thank you. Laura.

Yeah. It's been a good. This is a great chapter. Now, now, I think it's a great chapter.

Okay.

At the beginning, not so sure, but.

Now.

The beginning. I was just like, I don't understand this chapter, but I get it. Thank you for the really helpful pictures. To understand it and to bring it so close to all of us in a way that we can digest it. And, um, yeah, just for being open to the questions. So I think that's it's great. So what? What are we on to next? Just so everybody.

Knows.

Next, we're going to move to a chapter which talks about how. Healing substances. And the example is iron. That sometimes we take in something that we can't completely transform. So we got to work with it all the time. And it's healing for us because it makes us be more active and develop capacity, which is a very different kind of medical picture, because usually you say, well, I took this substance and it healed me and that can happen. But this is a picture of sometimes I take something in that really challenges me and in that challenging DJing enlivens me and that makes me stronger or helps me make a change. Kind of like if you ask somebody, is there ever something really hard that happened to you that was really valuable? Uh, that's not the title of the next chapter, but it could be. So we'll work on that next time.

Okay, great. Thank you so much. And we look forward to all of you joining us next time. Thanks a lot, Adam.

Thank you.

Bye bye. Bye.