20. How Does the Soul Find Its True Essence?

So one can say that, on the one hand, in our time there is a tendency to passively let everything affect us. But spiritual science must demand the opposite. The soul must actively work on itself. In this way, however, what the souls of the present day need most for their spiritual and mental health is poured into them: activity, strengthening of the will, strengthening of the powers of thinking and feeling. And they need the inner strengthening of something else as well. When one lives in the world of loneliness, one encounters great obstacles. Every feeling of unkindness that one has ever committed against people and animals is like a barrier. A completely unloving person, when developing the powers I have called powers of judgment, comes up against this unlovingness, which he finds everywhere, like an outer world surrounding him. Thus, spiritual science will suggest to people the necessity of developing the deepest, most life-giving power of love to an ever-increasing degree. And those who know how much love the life of the future will need also know what spiritual science must mean for the entire life of the future and the present; they know how the strengthening of the forces of love must be the means by which the soul finds its true essence, because unlovingness erects a barrier in the spiritual world.