Note:  The word junkie in this article is used as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as:  a person who gets an unusual amount of pleasure from or has an unusual amount of interest in something.

A motorcycle junkie typically has things around him that are related to motorcycles.  We find motorcycles in his garage,

we might find some completed ones and some incomplete ones.  We will find pictures of different motorcycles all over, helmets, gloves, leathers and so on, perhaps some models or miniatures, and more.  His contacts list on his phone will include the names and numbers of bike shops, biking buddies Butch, Nkosi, Rabbi, Thugknuckles, Angelheart, and more.  In short, a true motorcycle junkie will be surrounded by the above at least.  It could go further where we would find his vacations planned around bike trips, bike shows, bike service appointments and the like.  There is a pervasive connection to bikes in everything around Chris our dedicated motorcycle junkie.

In spiritual science we have concepts that enable us to understand a lot about this scenario.  If we did not have these, we would not be able to write the following. Firstly, there is no mineral, plant or animal that could be any kind of junkie at all other than what they are predetermined by nature to be.  Being a junkie is therefore exclusive to human beings.  Therefore, we are now dealing with something distinctly human.  We know, as spiritual scientists, that the human being has an ‘I’, as well as significantly developed soul capacities when compared to animals.  Chris, our motorcycle junkie, must therefore be engaging something of his I and soul capacities in being this junkie.  He has a ‘passion’ for motorcycles that lives in his soul – as he is not physically any different from other people.  This passion somehow moves into his will – his hands and feet – and ends up in him moving through the world in such a way that these motorcycle things gather from where they were found into quite a concentration around him.  Paper and computer memory gets filled with things related to motorcycles as well.  Chris thinks about motorcycles, allows for a personal moral feeling about what he thinks, and then either does something about these feelings or does not.  In other words, Chris exercises his soul capacities of thinking, feeling and willing.  His thoughts, spiritual in nature, end up manifesting around him via his will, depending on the strength of feeling that he has allowed towards his thoughts.  To the extent that Chris is conscious of this process, he is in his ‘I’ capacity.  The reality is that Chris is probably not aware of the concepts of spiritual science and simply acknowledges his passion and lives ever more deeply in the recognition of his ‘status’ amongst mankind and serves this societal position with dedication.  From spiritual science we know that what we hold in our souls manifests around us – we are the changing of our environment through our thinking, then feeling, and then will.  While modern society has led us to believe that we are dualists – that the world of ideas (the spirit) and the material world are separate realities – we are in fact monists by reality.  This means that what we allow to live in our spiritual nature, our world of ideas, is what in fact comes into being in the material world – that is not the world of nature but – what we do with nature and make with nature products.

If we leave Chris as he is, a happy motorcycle junkie, then Chris serves what lives in his inner life, probably, as said before, unconsciously.  Chris becomes a slave to his inner earthly passions.  In spiritual science, we know that in order to start ‘becoming’ something more than our material selves, we need to get some consciousness of our inner selves and begin to form it and create it ourselves.  We could have a discussion with Chris on the following basis. “Chris, we are all motorcycle junkies in one way or another.  If we remain this, we will have exactly that spoken about us at our funeral.  If however we decide to add develop something new to or in addition to our existing junkiness for motorcycles, another ‘junkiness’, this would require that we recognise that we can add to ourselves, but only with inner effort as no physical exercise is required;

• that what we add to us originates as an idea;
• that this idea must be something that we bring our own moral commitment to in the way of a feeling;
• and that we then do something about this with our will.

What will then happen is that you, Chris, will be having to work with what is not already part of you, and that it will become part of you.  You will have to work with openness and positivity that this is going to be the case, as well as on your thinking, your feeling and your will.

We are asking you to become a pianist with only your personal growth as the objective.  Chris takes on this challenge.  He becomes a pianist through hard inner work to keep to the idea, to keep the moral justification for the idea, and to exercise the idea through his will in practising and commitment.  We see how Chris’s environment changes from only motorcycles to a piano, music sheets, new contacts on his phone, time allocation in his planner to music, the way he speaks to others, what he speaks about and more.  In essence, we see monism as a reality.  We see what lives in us becoming expressed in our environment.  Chris is encouraged to watch this happening and to experience monism at work, to experience his humanity, his connection to the world of ideas and how this directly relates to what appears around him, to his freedom.  At Chris’s funeral, a lot more is spoken about.  Reference to his self-mastery, his shifting of relationships to others and the world, his ability to see, listen, follow through, discover and understand are now added to his original motorcycle junkiness.  Chris developed a degree of freedom for himself that previously he did not have.

Anthroposophy offers these concepts to us so that they can be connected to daily life in the most detailed and finest of ways.  They are concepts without which only the current understandings we hear daily are possible.  Without these concepts, the world will remain the ‘junkie’ impulse driven world that it is.  With them, I can understand my inner impulses and be the change that I want to see in the world.  In our daily lives where we can take on the challenge of doing something right first time, for example, we are becoming free, not becoming someone else’s slave, if we approach these things with the concepts of spiritual science.  Allowing ourselves to be an unconscious junkie of any kind is not human development and will not lead the individual or his/her society anywhere new.  Any organisation adopting this approach will die.  Only those asking for and encouraging personal growth – human development – will be able to form themselves ever anew with relevance to society at large.  With the knowledge that I can choose what lives  in me and therefore what appears around me, I can be that meaningful part that I deeply want to be.