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Maybe it's poetry.

Or maybe I just need to read it as though it is.

I find it very confusing. Maybe that means that I'm melancholic myself, in spite of not being all that tall or slender, since I'm having trouble with this particular aspect of expression.

HK, you obviously did not click the link for "read in full context". I promise you, through the wondrous explanatory power of google, all will become clear.
In one sentence.

{giggle}


Well, further down the page, my inquiring mind encountered:


Maybe I'm to understand this as a sort of metaphysical multiple-personality disorder. Is that even a DSM thing at this point? I forget.

It has to be noted that one of the more wonderful cognitive dissonances inherent in the Waldorf movement is that all the constraints placed upon the pedagogy by the esoteric mumbo jumbo (which is not supposed to be religious at all, but rather a form of epistemology, a supernatural way of understanding scientific truths) are supposed to have the goal of the freedom of the individual, who will be empowered to his or her own supernatural understanding of scientific truths - without being constrained by others. Which I suppose is one of the reasons the whole worldview behind it is deliberately NOT made explicit. It does not need to be, because after being empowered, the student will understand and believe all the truths anyway. That's what makes it different from explicit religious instruction.
Oddly, it a way it kinda works. Case in point, the experiences the PP described, which resonates with what many successful individuals have to say about their Waldorf experience.
Another case in point, my own grandmother, educated at the original Waldorf school just after it was founded - it made her immune to nazism, and when she had to move to a public high school as a junior shortly after hitler came to power, she almost got in trouble for her independent thought.
Of course the reason she had to leave was the death of my great grandfather, one of Steiners early adepts, due to his refusing to be helped by modern medicine, preferring homeopathy and divination - when she screamed at the adults to get.a.doctor.already, it was too late and he slipped into a coma and died.
She appeared to have no problems to hold both the gratitude and the resentment in her mind.
Similarly, my mother is still enamoured by many parts of the Waldorf pedagogy - the ideas about "balance", the 'creativity," the idea that a child can be "too much in their head", her comment on hearing about a special needs child in the family that the reasons must be that the family lacked "a musical side" - all while being completely supportive of her early reader and early maths children, rolling her eyes at the karmic (sorry, past lives) ideas, the temperaments, having no time at all for homeopathy...it is, I believe, the typical attitude of a Waldorf parent and it is very odd to me.

Not that I have to admit to often experiencing the same sort of stunned incomprehension that HK described when I read modern catholic writing. No, it doesn't make this bible passage, or whatever, any clearer, or more logical, or easier to accept and live by. Don't even try. It's religion, not science, it can't be falsified, so don't even try to verify. It's okay if a religious text is merely beautiful and mysterious.

I think that word thingy you are talking about is trying to say that the melancholic is self-absorbed with their own arthritic condition and it's causing problems with them getting to work on time.

I'm thinking that it has to be true as well, in order to be valuable. Meaning that if it isn't true, then it doesn't actually have a right to exist.

Granted, there are certain things that aren't true, in as such that they are tools. It looks like this Waldorf thingy has a tool aspect to it, when applied to the correct people.

I still need to dig through Bion's stuff to see what I can dig out of it, because he made some very excellent tools.

You've got to understand whether you are applying the right tool to the job. Depends on the person.

And in any event, language, itself, has the problem that it often both reveals and conceals.

God, I love browsing on that open Waldorf site. Try the Steiner says page. That man was such a crackpot. In a way, it is great his only legacy is a few questionable schools,
I admit to occasionally buying Demeter products, foodstuff produced according to Steiners ideas on organic agriculture. Sometimes it is the only organic product around that meets my criteria for healthy nourishment, even though I have to deliberately ignore that little voice in my mind that says "do you really want to pay for a crackpot farmers need to incorporate astrology into his agricultural decisions?". Well, no, but like Waldorf parents fleeing from a horrible public school, I prefer it to paying for pesticides, antibiotics and gmo crops.
Modern life is such a mess sometimes.

need to incorporate astrology into his agricultural decisions



Wow.

Not in an effort to conceal anything, here, but I'm rendered speechless by this concept.

now I'm sad I didn't go to a steiner school - I like fairies.

This is all very Satre - esque. I want to believe so I will, no need for any reasons, just I like fairies.

The benefit to using astrology is that it makes the choices for you, so if your problem is inaction due to paralysis, it will make sure that you choose to do something rather than nothing.

Economists don't like it when I tell them that I think of them as modern day astrologers.

Astrologers don't like it when I tell them that I think of them as medieval economists.