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# Drowning In The Wrong Waters
- URL: https://seeingbeyond.tech/drowning-in-the-wrong-waters/
- Published: 2026-11-11T16:02:07.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-11T16:02:07.000Z
- Description: This can then spread through the general vitality of the body, of the etheric body. One can thus carry the awakened inner sun throughout bodily movements.
- Author: Diane T Adams
- Tags: #Threshold Diaries, Threshold Diaries

Joseph Campbell wrote: “The schizophrenic is drowning in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight.” I was thinking about this today, and about a man I once saw on the street in Dallas. He was dressed in dirty rags, obviously homeless. He was pacing back and forth, holding his head in his hands and talking to himself. The misery and suffering experienced by people in his condition is truly horrible. There are no easy answers.

Campbell would say that this sort of problem develops when certain people step into the spiritual realms without preparation. They are literally drowning and do not know how to navigate the place they have entered. They are, in fact, stuck in their heads and cannot comprehend the spiritual realm into which they have been thrust using the intellect alone. No one can.

Rudolf Steiner's spiritual science observes the same human difficulty from another perspective, summed up in the words of anthroposophical teacher Philippe Lheureux in his essay \*How Abstract Thinking Can Become Healing Spiritual Activity\*. Lheureux wrote:

“Abstract thinking has dissociated itself from immersion in the soul and body. But it is ‘abstracted’: it exists in itself and has no real connection with any perception. … Stripped of life and soul forces, it easily burns down the nervous system. The nervous system risks then becoming like electrical wires stripped of their protective sheath.”

Another way of saying this is that a person suffering from these types of nervous system symptoms is too much in their head and not enough in the heart or rhythmic system. Over-intellectualism can further damage a compromised nervous system, breaking down the barriers between this world and the subatomic realm, the lowest spiritual plane. The cure for this is to learn to enter the realms of the heavens, not the dark realms. This must be done with the heart, not the intellect.

As our society moves ever deeper into materialism, the problems people experience from being stuck in their heads grow as well. While materialism seeks answers in chemical concoctions and the constant rehashing of the things that cause us pain, Lheureux describes a different path:

“Fear can grip the heart, or the abdomen, but taking on a culture of the heart, involving the heart, is awakening the solar plexus, namely the sun within, thus the Christ sphere. All this is then addressing and activating the 'I' which is rooted precisely in this heart-solar plexus region.

It is to say more presence and grounding can result, where otherwise retreat into the head can turn into spinning and endless, inefficient ruminating.”

“Addressing and activating this middle sphere, the heart-lung or rhythmic sphere, is then key in spiritual development. The awareness of the nascent, awakened heart-sphere can be carried throughout the day. It can be cultivated as a center of all activity. This can then spread through the general vitality of the body, of the etheric body. One can thus carry the awakened inner sun throughout bodily movements.”

There is no material cure for a spiritual difficulty. At some point, it is necessary for humanity as a whole to recognize that we are spiritual beings. Until we begin to embrace spiritual wisdom and apply it to the ever-present and growing problems we see today, including damaged nervous systems and painful encounters with the lower spiritual realm that leave people in agony and without help, the man clutching his head on the street in Dallas will become more and more a part of our present reality.