Why on Earth?: Biography and the Practice of Human Becoming

What liberates is the knowledge of who we were, what we became; where we were, where into we have been thrown; where to we speed, wherefore we are redeemed; what birth is, and what rebirth. -- VALENTIUS, 2nd-century GnosticLife today poses many questions, both in our personal lives and in our participation in nature and the broader culture. We often focus on the outer needs for social, political, technological, or environmental change. However, can we really meet the challenges around us without also attending to our inner life and to our own evolving biography as it reflects and informs the outer world?This book starts from the premise that each of our lives expresses uniqueness of spiritual intention within the unfolding of universal rhythms and possibilities. Can we wake up to the developmental opportunities offered to us through different life phases? Are we able to step out of the narrowness of the dualistic nature-nurture argument and experience that we are both more than our genetic composition and more than a product of the social and educational influences that have shaped us? Can we come to appreciate the learning that our I has received through heredity, ethnicity, schooling, and gender without losing a sense of our true individuality?Waking up to our unique self as it grows through interaction with the world and other human beings helps us recognize the significance, we all play in one another's biographies and in the unfolding of our larger human story.We should actually retain the possibility, all through life, of rejoicing in the coming year, because each year charms forth the divine-spiritual content of our own being in ever new forms. I want to emphasize this point. We should really and truly learn to experience our life as capable of development not only in youth, but through its whole span between birth and death. -- RUDOLF STEINER (Sept. 1919)Why on Earth? invites us to explore our own meaning-filled life journey, to bring conscious attention to how we go our path, so that we may more freely perceive our possibilities and our responsibilities along the way of our personal and shared becoming.