Adam Naming the Beasts ~ the Power of True Listening

Uplifting each other through the Saturn Path

In Genesis Adam is asked, by God, to name the beasts.
What is truly described by this biblical myth? God has created all things;
All our experience, inner and outer, is of the created world, the inner world and the outer world.

Our senses bring us a jumble of colour, light, sound, texture. Only in our inner activity do we distinguish between cat and dog, table and chair, night and day. In naming these things we give them outer reality. Extreme examples like the cuckoo or the redwood tree show how our inner life experiences this being’s nature and names it from that. Where do you experience, in yourself, the soft glow from butter that applies itself to the butterfly? Are not Brambles given the name Blackberry Bushes at certain times of the year?

This is Adam naming the beasts; The inner activity of Conception chosen as a complement to the outer/sense activity of Perception.* The archetype that creates the beast/plant/stone offers us also the experience that leads to their name.
The inner world and the outer world are twin creations. Our role is to link them, through naming.

When we delve into our deeper feelings, seeking to name what moves within us we are Adam, naming the beasts. When we truly, deeply listen to another describing how their heart feels; describing, as a process of observation their own inner life, we can again be Adam; finding in our own deep consideration the right names for the beasts parading before us.  What is our inner life but a jungle? We may have dug and planted the edges, but just over the hedge is the teeming jungle of Creation. We all have to deal with this. Life, and relating to others who live, is a process of taming our jungle, naming our beasts. Most of us have no idea how to truly do this. Most of us would rather build higher walls.

Saturn Path, as practised in the Space Between retreats, is process of walking together to the edge of the jungle and beast-naming.

Un-named, a beast can never be tamed. To have another human being lovingly/non-judgementally naming the beasts is to expand the garden within which we live.

Painting of Adam Naming the Beasts   by Joan Shaver 

*Described in detail in The Philosophy of Freedom, Rudolf Steiner’s ground breaking philosophical treatise of 1894