This document discusses exploring values and thinking through the lens of different "windows" - the open window of what is known to self and others, the blind window of what others know but the self is unaware of, and the unknown window of future potential. It examines how values are expressed through actions but can be inconsistent, and explores the trail of developing trust over time and how thinking has become estranged from our ancient participative thinking. The moral is that we don't always trust what we think we value, and once we found meaning in ideals but are now left with only discussing "values".

8. The Spiritual Science
of Everyday Life
www.spiritualscience.co.uk

9. – Unit 14 –
The Open Window
♣ Exploring values and the trail
of trust.
♣ Exploring ideals and the
trail of thinking.

10. Known Not known
to self to self
Known
to Open Blind
others
Unknown
Not
Hidden Land of
known Serendipity
to others
♣ In the Open window can be ♣In the Blind window are things
seen all the things you know other people know about you but
about yourself that others also of which you are unaware.
know.
♣In the Unknown (Land of
♣In the Hidden window are the Serendipity) window is your
things you know about yourself motivation and potential future of
but choose not to reveal to which neither you or others are
others. aware. It waits, dormant, until
something causes it to be
revealed.

11. Known
to self
Known ♣ for example –
Open Blind
to
others ♣Physical appearance
Unknown ♣ Behaviour
Hidden Land of
Serendipity ♣ Everyday rituals
♣ Personal qualities
♣ In the Open window can be seen
all the things you know about
yourself that others also know. ♣ How would someone portray
you?
Values express themselves
in our Willing. ♣ Values – Ideals?
They appear to drive
♣ Who do I trust – is this in the
everything we do – Open Window?
and in our actions they appear
in the Open Window.

12. But values are slippery creatures...
Are they truly consistent in every situation?
Organi- Environ-
sation mental
Economic
Values Values
Values
Group
Values
Personal Values?
National
Family Values
Scientific
Values
Values
Can they be „codified‟?
Can we trust them?

13. Play -
♣The Yes But No But Values Game
Object of the Game:
To identify values.

14. Personal Values?

15. Our values may be seen through our
Open Window but their essence
remains hidden
in our secret life.
I smile when I‟m angry,
I cheat and I lie.
I do what I have to do
to get by.
But I know what is wrong
and I know what is right.
And I‟d die for the truth
in my secret life.
Leonard Cohen (2002)

16. The Trail of Trust
We have
Storyline Increasingly
absolute trust –
memory self-assured but
in the pictures
emerges. By our sense of self-
of the world
9 yrs old – trust developing
around us & no
“where do I „within the
distinction We want to find
fit in?” home‟.
between me & our own way -
that world. question ideas
we had
previously
trusted.
... We may ask
again, “In what We trust in those values
or in whom do I we‟ve developed to date
trust?” The & get on with making
direction we take sense of the world. But
for an answer can stuff happens...
set the course of
our future.

17. The Trail of Thinking Before the trail begins...
A picture & symbolic thought life living in and
directly drawn from the spiritual reality of the
world. („Trust‟ not a „value‟ but a living ideal.)
We begin to think for ourselves – but a
thought is still experienced as drawn from
the world. Thought expressed in words
reflect our feeling for that connection.
„Disconnection‟ increases through to Plato
& Aristotle. Growing self-dependence.
With awakening self-consciousness,
thought is experienced as arising from
within – but infused with religious
conviction. Trust in the Church – when the
“Pultes Scotorum!” 9thc Scot, Eriugena, said he trusted his
(Scots Porridge) own reason he was condemned with ...
Thinking between 9th & 14th c. continues
theologically based – but self-possessed.
What links my thought to existence?
Reason was being asserted – in the west &
through the influence of Aristotle, in the
east. Look outside – trust inner thought.

18. The Trail of Thinking /-
Out of the Renaissance there trumpets
forth – “Cogito ergo sum” – I think
therefore I am. But what did he mean by
„I‟ – me or “I”? On the one hand we derive
knowledge from (Aristotelian) observation
& experiment. On the other, we derive
knowledge from an „outside‟ (Platonist)
world of ideas.
We‟re left with Descartes dilemma:
Is all knowledge to be found in the mind
or in matter or in some combination or
unification of the two?
In what or who can we trust as a
guarantor that we‟re not fooling
ourselves?

19. The moral of these two trails?
“We don‟t always trust what we think we value.”
Thinking has become estranged, died
away, from the living participative
thinking of our ancient past.
We may have a Feeling for what we
value but our feeling life is relatively
dreamy, semiconscious.
Our Willing remains deeply
unconscious but, prompted by our willing
Thinking and Feeling, it expresses feeling
itself in our actions – what we do. thinking
The capacity and capability to re-connect with the flow of our
enduring “I”, in wakeful consciousness – strengthen and trust
intuitive living thinking, woven through with feeling, and
reconnect to a world infused with spiritual vitality.

20. Once we drank the wine of
our ideals.
Today we’re left with the sediment
– clothe ideals with “values”.
“Each of us experienced from one another
that we had taken on the same mission in
life: to strive for the rise of true culture
enlivened and formed by humane ideals,
and to stimulate people to become truly
thoughtful human beings.”
Albert Schweizer on Rudolf Steiner