Where Thought Wakes and Will Sleeps

In thinking the child is awake, in feeling the child dreams, in willing the child sleeps (until awaken).  —study from The Study of Man

These words carry a picture of the human soul as an interconnected consciousness. Thinking stands most awake, in clarity. Feeling drifts like a dream, neither fully within our control nor entirely beyond it. Willing, meanwhile, moves in the deepest sleep carrying forces we do not yet grasp.

When I first met this concept, it gave me a new way of seeing the child. For within every child live these states of consciousness at once (the threefold). In their thinking, they reach towards waking—reflecting, learning, and questioning. In their feeling, they are like dreamers, carried by joy and sorrow (through sympathy and antipathy) within their own inner world (personal experiences). And in their willing, they act with the intensity of life that is streaming with sleeping forces (and deeper awareness)—running, building, and creating.

To teach, then, is to meet the child in all three realms. We speak to their thinking through living pictures, so that thought does not dry into shadows. We guide their feeling through beauty and art, so that dreams are shaped towards truth and goodness. And we accompany their willing, not by controlling it, but by giving it direction, so that in time, what sleeps might become awaken and alive.

Perhaps this is why Steiner saw education as sacred work. He urged us to understand that the child is not only learning to read and write. They are learning to awaken, to dream, and to carry their will into freedom (to life). To see the child as a threefold is to remember: they are mysteries in motion (half awake, half dreaming, and half asleep—waiting for the dawn).

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AND

Watch the wonder of the Early Years here.

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Read from other blog post below.

The Living Tapestry of Time

What Sleeps in Me, Wakes in You

Where Memories Grow