Dear Friends,
The sixth step in our meditations on the First Beatitude comes from Robert Powell’s translation of the Lord’s Prayer Course, available on the Sophia Foundation’s website as pdf. (For the first of these meditations, and their background motivation, see here; for the second meditation see here; for the third see here; for the fourth see here; for the fifth see here).
The first Beatitude: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Imagine the Baptism in the Jordan: The wings of the dove as the working of the spirit, not only horizontally, but also vertically. Imagine the clouds. The dove is a picture of force streaming in from the right and from the left, winning space from Ahriman and Lucifer, i.e. not only in a line descending from above, as in the case of the prophets, but taking possession of the whole human being, so that Ahriman and Lucifer—who are otherwise right and left in the human being—are driven out. This complete taking possession of the human being is the meaning of “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” after having become empty and “poor in spirit.”