Speed into the future in your mind and write a letter to yourself from there. This is what therapists advise when life is hard. Your future wiser and more loving self radiates into the present and allows you to soar. The reverse is also true.
Sometimes it is good to think of yourself as younger, more willing to take risks, and more impetuous – this is how the next step succeeds. The issue is always the integration of time, inviting your own future and your own past into the present in order to experience the fullness of life. Life holds three presents available: the present of what has been, the present of what is to come, and the present of now. In ‹Forest and Cave›, where Faust turns inward in reflection and briefly turns away from Mephistopheles, and where Faust sings a hymn to the power of life, the young and the mature Faust meet in the production at the Goetheanum. Turning inwards is the integration of time. Turning inwards becomes a tableau of life, we practice dying as a hymn to life.
Photo: Wolfgang Held
