Hi Lucy
Steiner's main work concentrated on our Universe's evolution and structure from the beginning into the future, as well as our human evolution in the Universe's evolution. Very interesting work.
http://www.defendingsteiner.com/articles/steiner.phphttp://www.rudolfsteinerweb.com/http://www.steinercollege.org/rs.htmlColonialism did have to happen throughout the world as part of our development process mainly -World Unity. It was and is imperative for our Intellect side to develop into free thinking; our universe is expanding we need to expand with it coupled with knowledge and understanding of our place in the universe and therefore we take accountability for ourselves and are not reliant on a God to save us (although indeed ultimately we are, we are reliant on His magic to keep it all together) we save ourselves; we are part of His creative plan and have our free ticket - we dont want to be a hinderance in other words our aim is to become together because we want to.
Colonialism and the generations of modern society enables us to develop our rational mind in life challenges; we learn how to cope and deal with situations and in turn gain experience through the life lessons. Moving away from the 'dream state' which comes from our origins and so instead of thinking 'i am not responsible for the on-going creation of the world, its not my job' (albeit humble, yes we must be humble) we realise that we are the makers of our own destiny; i don't think God would want it any other way. So modern day society is crucial for our development; we learn to stand on our own feet as opposed to living in a collective part of the pack state.
Always though we have the influence of 'the fallen angel' - without this influence our progress would have been one happy joyous journey. But this influence is here - and it challenges us further and surely we become stronger for it. Colonialism was brutal in its approach and could have been done far more gentler with diplomacy but again we learn from this and hopefully realise the mistakes that our forefathers made in their approach and hopefully break the wheel of karma from these mistakes. Colonialism broke the 'dream state' that African was in.
African people can be very cruel to one another and very jealous of each other; one cannot have more than the other but it is this cusp of dream state and intellect that African is going through for the past century or so. Always with the negative force 'behind the scenes'.
i do feel our path in evolution is on the right track and it is because of us - we contribute far more than we realise although the deeds may seem very small. Our energy and our thoughts, now becoming individual intellectually collective - beyond the dream state - we are making it happen with an abundance of Blessings from our Spiritual parents. It is wonderful - challenging, heart breaking at times, confusing but wonderful knowing we carry within us the divine spark.
Thanks for the Jacob Needleman link - nice, i will be reading it through today. i do have his book 'Modern Esoteric Spirituality' he co-authored with Antoine Faivre also a good read.