What is the experience ofweight and how does it relate to the development of the 9-10 child.It is often said that a person with authority orknowledge carries weight.This is a kind of observational measure of the truth, substance or impression of the ideas of a person, and the way (as a kind of force) those ideas are delivered and received/impressed to our own feeling life, ideas or our own knowledge.
Weight of our deeds, in relation to the consequences of our actions can also be related to a kind of truth, and this can be clearly observed in the task of Anubis the Egyptian god who weighs the deeds of those who pass into the after life.
Perhaps more poignant to the 9/10 year old human being is the weight of the feeling life.The child at this age begins to experience the weight/impressions of the emotional life more deeply.Joy and happiness can be seen as lightness, and sadness can be seen as a kind of weight or burden imposed on them. The state “why me” is often experienced at this age.Stories for the 8 year old (animal fables) that convey the experience of the burden of the melancholic donkey for example, or the powerful choleric bull may give the child an opportunity to experience how we meet (or not!!) our tasks in daily life through our temperament.Although these metaphorical yet phenomena related stories that describe animal qualities may now be related more directly to the different temperaments of the human being. i.e, so and so is pig headed, a bully, stubborn as a mule, has an eagle eye, sheepish etc. I feel these these kinds of comments are often percived more inwardly at this age and taken into the feeling life and impresed with a certain weight or feeling. That is things begin to hurt and linger emotionally, and it is a time when the child really starts to form an image of themselves in relationship (or not!) to the outside world.
The phenomena in relation to the human being
What are we striving towards when we consider the metaphysical phenomena of weight.Within the idea of weight there is the possibility to experiance the extremes, to be filled with elated ideology and become disconnected with the world and float off into a world of insane fantasy, or on the other hand become too engrossed, then overwhelmed and pulled under by the calculated causal ‘predeterminedness’ of depression.What is asked of us is to find equanimity and balance in the face of what we are confronted with in our daily lives.
Weight is an interesting phenomena physically and metaphysically.One can say that the concept of physical weight conveys to us an equivalent picture of a metaphysical or supersensible weight. Steiner certainly alludes to this. The closest we can get to defining a metaphysical concept of weight within conventional science is the discipline of Physics. There we actually come in to play with forces which can actually get us closer to the supersensible experience (if we don’t get too distracted by the technical theory and formulae) of weight outside the human being and turning that outside in we can experience those same forces in the feeling life.
In Physics weight is determined by the amount of force it takes to bring an object to stillness, there are many external factors that can influence this. Likewise in the feeling life there are many things to influence us towards sympathy or antipathy, elation or depression. Weight is a condition of balance.In its earthly state an objects weight is what keeps something connected to the earth, remembering also that the earth is holding the object and giving it resistance so it doesn’t pass through. There is a balance in the natural world (world spirit wisdom?) that keeps things in check.What is the force that keeps things in check in the emotional life of the human being (Human spirit wisdom?). Without balance/equanimity and a sense for the phenomena in the feeling life we can easily fall prey to the very real forces that want to pull us one way or the other.
This is to say nothing of our 'capacity' to experiance the phenomina in the first place! Developing the emotional capacity to experiance the phenomena in its fullness is another discussion altogether.
References
Steiner, R. Meditations (monthly, over the course of the year)
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