Knowledge precedes Love

We are really liking the reading of Counsel of Perfection for Christian Mothers. It has many things to ponder about.

One of the sentences that I am thinking is the one that says that Knowledge precedes Love, and it then follows some time later describing the two kinds of knowledge:

"There are two kinds of knowledge. The one resides in the minds.....is worth little or nothing. If it does not stimulate the heart and direct the conduct, it will be a source of condemnation.

The second kind of knowledge is that which is acquired by meditation, that is to say by fixing the mind on the things of God and contemplating them seriously and profoundly; but above all, it consists in loving them."

I have been long striving for the knowledge to stir my heart, I can see in my practical life how I can be lead astray by the first kind of knowledge, to the point that it serves not my first-hand intentions, rather hinders and blocks them.

With the children for example, how can we love them better? If we take the route of knowledge, besides some general ideas on child development and so on, we should strive to know in a deeper level our child. Once an art teacher told me this great idea: "Take some newsprint paper at night, when the child is sleeping, and with a white chalk, go into the child's room, sit down and draw the face of your sleeping child, slowly, following the contours of the face, etc..."

This gives you a very delicate moment of holding your child in your thoughts, and perhaps in the following days some insight or revelation about the child's needs, or character will come into your mind.

Very recently I read an article by someone actually denying the benefits of observation of children, and I have to say that they are right in the way they understand observation to be done, which is in a cold manner, without the heart, and ending with a set of labels for the child. We should aim to be away from this kind of observation, which is the first kind of knowledge described above and renders the subject of observation with lack of freedom and the observant with negative debris.

On the other hand, I think observation that is done through the heart renders many benefits and it is of utmost importance for the children and all things of life. It is indeed very remarked in Steiner's book the Study of Man, that it is by observing itself, that already the healthy effects of observation are accomplished, it is in the act itself of observation that love is increased through knowledge.