Activity around the Foundation Stone Meditation in Vancouver  by Susan Koppersmith

20 Apr Activity around the Foundation Stone Meditation in Vancouver  by Susan Koppersmith

In March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, a small group of us met over Zoom at 8:30 every morning for several months working with the Foundation Stone Meditation. Each day we worked with the rhythm of the day incorporating comments from Sergei Prokofieff and others in our study.  

The following year in 2021 this same group with added members took this Meditation out into nature every

Taking the Foundation Stone
Mediation outside

Saturday from the end of January to the end of May. We met in the early afternoon at a designated park in the Lower Mainland, recited the words and then offered prayers to individuals, groups or nations in distress. Many  of us experienced a sense of inner health when we did this. Also we felt a stillness coming from outside of us, as if all of Nature was listening and reverberating with the words of this mantra.

In September 2021, others of us met at the Rudolf Steiner Centre North Vancouver with the idea of continuing the work with the Foundation Stone in preparation for our Society’s 2023 celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the Christmas Conference. Our Council is calling the celebrations: A Festival of Initiative. 

In preparation for this, our group started reading Steiner’s lecture of 17, June 1909: “Evolution, Involution and Creation out of Nothingness” because it is all about the importance of cultivating initiative. For many anthroposophists, this is a favourite lecture where Steiner makes many remarkable statements, including:

at the end of evolution, we will bear within ourselves what has been gained through our own efforts, not what has been given to us but what we have created out of nothingness.

Patricia Smith led us with recitation of parts of the Foundation Stone. We shared stories, poems, journal reflections  and creative work coming “out of nothingness” which meant starting with something small and then adding to it. We were shut down again by Covid restrictions. A few of us continued to share observations about the Foundation Stone in emails to each other.

Gundula Kientzler

One of our group is Gundula Kientzler, a mostly self-taught painter, though she has studied life drawing, pottery and art therapy at APAKT in Munich. She says that for all her life, whenever  she hears music, she sees colour, sculpture or movement. When she looks at a plant, she can hear a sound. Every smell has a colour. This condition has a name: synesthesia.

With the Foundation Stone, Gundula speaks the words inwardly several times and feels a movement in her body. With the first panel, she feels herself step into an ocean; a colour rises up (blue) and she experiences herself in a Being. She immerses herself in this Being and “goes with it” for a short time. Then she steps away from it — lets it go. She does this practice over several days.She says, “It is important, initially, to make  myself “empty” when I start

The Ocean Being of the Spirit, by G. Kientzler

to paint. Blue comes up when I am filled with the words of the first panel. I then experience a relationship with other colours which want to be expressed. Through a process of breathing, a dialogue unfolds with the words. I step into the words of the mantra and encounter its Being.” 

On April 8, restrictions with vaccine cards will lift in BC; hopefully we can meet in person again to keep working with the Foundation Stone Meditation as a preparation for 2023 celebrations. Steiner brought the Foundation Stone to our Society in order to give the opportunity to transform thinking, feeling and willing, thus opening the soul to true self-knowledge and a way forward to the new mysteries.

Are there any other groups working in Canada with this meditation? If so, it would be wonderful to read in this eNews of your working together.