The Hesychast and the Ten Commandments - Sixth Commandment: You shall not be unchaste
20/09/2007 Filed in: Church
Fathers & Mystics
As we progress
through the commandments, we are dealing with ever more
‘mundane’ matters. This one is about our sexual lives
and more generally our contact with the opposite sex.
Gregory Palamas gives a few tips on how to follow this
commandment, in a sufficiently straightforward for me
to post it in full. What is at stake here is a matter
of habit changing: training oneself not to succumb to
excessive attraction to the opposite sex. Note that
there is no mention of the word 'desire', which in our
mundane use has 'degraded' its meaning to something
akin to lust (for a list of posts developing the notion
of true desire, click
here). Here, the commandment
is addressed to a male audience, but I’m sure you
can translate it for better relevance to you.
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More...
The Root of All Evil: 2 pillars and 5 consequences
14/09/2007 Filed in: Martinism
Is God responsible for all the suffering and evil in
the world?
Is the world completely evil?
What is evil?
Does free will have anything or everything to do with evil?
Age old questions indeed, used as arguments both for an against the existence of a God. These questions were recently raised during an interesting discussion with some friends, so I decided to give a short summary here of the way in which Martines de Pasqually approached the matter in his Treatise on the Reintegration of Beings. Read More...
Is the world completely evil?
What is evil?
Does free will have anything or everything to do with evil?
Age old questions indeed, used as arguments both for an against the existence of a God. These questions were recently raised during an interesting discussion with some friends, so I decided to give a short summary here of the way in which Martines de Pasqually approached the matter in his Treatise on the Reintegration of Beings. Read More...