So much in our lives is intoxicating. Toxic eating habits, toxic emotions, toxic thoughts, toxic beliefs. Not to mention what TV, radio, and the internet throw at us continuously. If we decide to take a break from all that and to purify our lives for the healthier and happier, it can be difficult to know where to start. Though identifying the source of the filth may give us some valuable clues.
We are all fundamentally made up of the same stuff: bodies, senses, emotions, and thoughts that all overlap to a certain extent. And the way each of those parts interact with the others and with the outside world determines to a great extent our health and happiness. Maintaining a good balance is key to leading the most fulfilling life in the physical, emotional, moral and intellectual realms. Read More...

Tags: Ideas, Desire, Meditation, Virtues

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. Read More...

Tags: Gregory Palamas, Hesychasm, Orthodox Church, Virtues, Commandments

“Honour your father and your mother” (Ex. 20,12), “for it is through them that God has brought you into this life, and they, after God, are the causes of your existence.” However, Gregory introduces a twist: “thus after God you should honour them and trust them, provided that your love for them strengthens your love for God. If it does not, flee from them, yet without feelings of hatred”. This reminds me of Matt 19,29 And everyone who has left houses, brothers, sisters, father, mother, children or land for the sake of my name will receive a hundred times as much, and also inherit eternal life. Read More...

Tags: Gregory Palamas, Hesychasm, Orthodox Church, Virtues, Exile, Commandments, Reconciliation

The scholarly approach I usually take on this website and blog would be meaningless if it didn’t translate into our day-to-day lives. It should go without saying that intellectual endeavour, spirituality, and everyday life should balance each other out so that they produce the most harmonious experience of the world possible. So now that I have set a workable theoretical background through other posts on this blog, I will start addressing the more down-to-earth concerns we may have, whether we are already advanced in the spiritual career or not.
As I have spent some time describing the importance of desire and contemplation, I thought I would start with a short how-to approach to meditation and prayer that will help us engage in the “art of contemplation”, which is at the root of an infinite progression towards our ideal. Read More...

Tags: Prayer, Meditation, Contemplation, Reconciliation, Hesychasm, Virtues, Commandments, Desire

This post is the second in a series examining St Gregory Palamas’ New Testament Decalogue. The first of the series can be read here.

2. “You shall not make an image of anything in the heavens above, or in the earth below, or in the sea” to which St Gregory Palamas adds: in such a way that you worship these things and glorify them as gods. In the KJV, Exodus 20:4-5 gives “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them”. I mentioned the iconoclast movement which took this commandment without its qualifier. Read More...

Tags: Gregory Palamas, Hesychasm, Orthodox Church, Contemplation, Virtues, Desire, Literalism, Commandments

This is the first part of a series of short posts discussing Gregory Palamas' "New Testament Decalogue". Stay tuned!

How did the incarnation of Christ transform the Ten Commandments of the Mosaic Law? How does Christianity incorporate the basic moral framework of the Torah? These questions are central to the notions of reconciliation and reintegration that I have presented before (follow the "reintegration" and "reconciliation" tags in the sidebar), because they lay out the most fundamental virtues that one must cultivate in order to live in accordance with the Christian faith. One of the most contemplative and introspective traditions of Christianity, the Orthodox hesychast movement, has given us a profoundly pastoral summary of Christian moral teaching, that weaves together “worldly” codes of conduct and finer theological positions.
Read More...

Tags: Contemplation, Universe, Hesychasm, Orthodox Church, Gregory Palamas, Virtues, Commandments

Part 4: Migration and Virtues

The tension caused by our awareness of our entrapment in time and space, and by our glimpses of a spiritual life beyond and above it, give us the desire to seek further, and urges the soul to set on a journey towards eternal goodness:

“Because true goodness is clearly opposed to that which is not good, we are faced with a contradiction. It follows that persons who separate themselves from that which is not beautiful become attached to true beauty which constantly and at all times remains good. Such a gesture has nothing to do with the temporal order; rather, the good always preserves its own integrity. The human soul migrates towards this good from its corporeal existence after it has exchanged the present good for another one that is impossible to see clearly because we are burdened by this fleshly existence. However, we can have a notion [of this change] and draw a certain parallel between it and a possible withdrawal from that knowledge which pertains to this present life. No longer does corporeal existence weigh us down nor are we influenced by the weight of opposing elements, for this struggle within our human constitution is equally distributed and maintains our health.” (Concerning Those Who Have Died, J.34. )

Indeed, St Gregory likens the movement of the soul towards God to an upwards migration, leaving behind the weight of its present, “fleshy existence”:

“Let us now attend to the words ‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,’ and ‘What advantage is to man in his labor under the sun?’ In my opinion these words represent a soul stripped of its present condition here below when it migrates to the life it yearns after. If a person pursues life’s nobler aspects, he views his earlier condition in a harsh light and despises his present experience in comparison to what he has discovered.” (Commentary on Ecclesiastes, J.291).

“Persons who believe their origin lies in heaven call themselves heavenly. As Paul says, they have migrated to the heavenly way of life and resemble the heavenly [Christ].” (Against Apollinarius, J. 145).

The return of our human nature to its original state, as St Gregory writes, can only be accomplished if his desire of things more spiritual is greater than his enjoyment of his present state:

“Although the stage attained [of letting the Word enter one’s heart] is indeed greater than what a person had earlier, this stage does not limit his good; rather, the limit of his achievement becomes a beginning for the discovery of higher blessings. The person rising never stands still. He moves from one beginning to another, for the beginning of even greater blessings is never limited. The desire of a soul thus rising never remains in its knowledge, but by an ever greater desire, it moves onwards. The soul thus progresses through higher realms towards the unbounded.” (Commentary on the Song of Songs, J.247).

An important aspect of Man’s migration to God is that it is a perpetual process, in which previous experiences are less important than those ahead. Indeed, when guided well, our reconciliation with God is a gradual and directional evolution towards God:

“All heavenly bodies that receive a downward motion [...] are rapidly carried downwards of themselves, provided that any surface on which they are moving is graded and sloping and that they meet no obstacle to interrupt their motion. Similarly, the soul advances in the opposite direction lightly and swiftly moving upwards once it is released from the sensuous and earthly attachments, soaring from the world below up towards the heavens. And if nothing comes from above to intercept its flight, seeing that it is of the nature of Goodness to attract those who raise their eyes towards it, the soul keeps rising ever higher and higher, stretching with its desire for heavenly things ‘to those that are before,’ as the Apostle tells us, and thus it will always continue to soar ever higher. Because of what it has already attained, the soul does not wish to abandon the heights that lie beyond it. And thus the soul moves ceaselessly upwards, always reviving its tension for its onward flight by means of the progress it has already realised. Indeed, it is only spiritual activity that nourishes its force by exercise; it does not slacken its tension by action but rather increases it. This is the reason why we say that the great Moses, moving ever forwards, did not stop in his upward climb. He set no limit to his rise to the stars. But once he had put his foot upon the ladder of which the Lord had leaned, as Jacob tells us, he constantly kept moving to the next step; and he continued to go ever higher because he always found another step that lay beyond the highest one that he had reached.” (The life of Moses, in From Glory to Glory, Jean Danielou and Herbert Musurillo, New York, 1961, pp.57-8).

This spiritual evolution stands in contrast with evolution in the material realm, in which its directionality is necessarily cryptic. Why cryptic? Extrapolating from Origen’s and St Gregory’s theosophy, it appears to me that the motor of apokatastasis is man’s soul. Thus, if the root of evolution in its material and spiritual manifestations is immaterial, this cause will remain entirely hidden from the material eye. Yet, the spatial imagery that St Gregory uses in order to describe spiritual growth rests upon a moral implication. As such, behavioural implications of spiritual evolution must arguably influence evolution in every realm, in time. Indeed, the practice in our everyday lives of virtues is, according to Gregory, the true essence of our migration:

“Everything considered earthly, dumb, and speechless joins the sound of its own chords to the great voice of the heavenly choruses. The stretched chords in such an instrument are steadfastness and immovability before evil in every virtue. The virtues unite the cymbal’s pleasing harmony with chords when the sound of cymbals arouses our eagerness for the divine choir. To me this signifies the union of our nature with the angels. ‘Praise the Lord with the sound of cymbals.’ I understand this as the union of the angelic [nature] with the human when our human nature attains its original state and gives forth that sweet sound in union with others in thanksgiving.” (Commentary on the Inscriptions of the Psalms, J.66).

Tags: Orthodox Church, Gregory of Nyssa, Soul, Virtues, Exile

Part 3: Contemplation and Desire

As we have seen previously, Gregory of Nyssa taught that man must leave his current predicament and make his way towards God. However, this requires him to abandon complacency and self indulgence, to leave behind his old ways and to remain constantly vigilant -

“But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up.” (Mt 24:43)

But how can one summon enough strength to practice the virtues and reach the purity that are required for walking the narrow path of reconciliation?

“There is a wide interval between those who have been purified, and those who still need purification. For those in whose life time here the purification by the laver has preceded, there is a restoration to a kindred state. Now, to the pure, freedom from passion is that kindred state, and that in this freedom from passion blessedness consists, admits of no dispute.” (In The Great Cathechism)

Therefore,

“if we must describe the masonry, then let incorruptibility and impassability mould the house which justice and freedom will adorn. Let humility and patience shine in another part of the house along with piety befitting God. Let love, the noble craftsman, fashion all these virtues in a marvellous way.” (Commentary on Ecclesiastes, J.325.)

In other words, the object of man’s desire, and love, is God’s Wisdom rather than his own:

“And so it is equally reasonable that he who is enamoured of wisdom should hold the Object of his passionate desire, Who is the True Wisdom; and that the soul which cleaves to the undying Bridegroom should have the fruition of her love for the true Wisdom, which is God.”

And what better way would there be, if one desires to become a temple for God’s Wisdom, than to follow Christ’s example of ‘detachment’ from sin and ‘immutability’ in virtue?

“Because Christ received the first fruits of our common nature through his soul and body, he made it holy and kept it in himself as unmixed and uncontaminated with any evil; by offering [the first fruits of our common nature] through incorruptibility to the Father of incorruptibility, he might draw all those of the same kin and race (Eph 1.5) and adopt the disinherited and God's enemies to share his divinity. Just as purity and detachment united the dough's first fruit with the true Father and God, we, the mass of dough, should cling to the Father of incorruptibility by imitating the mediator's detachment and immutability as far as possible.” (On Perfection, J.206)

The bishop of Nyssa considered that our desire to resemble Christ is born from the contemplation and the perception (theoria) of infinite Good. And God being infinite, that desire itself must be infinite:

“Since, then, those who know that is good by nature, desire participation in it [God as absolute virtue], and since this good has no limit, the participant’s desire itself necessarily has no stopping place but stretches out with the limitless. […]

“Hope always draws the soul from the beauty which is seen to what is beyond, always kindles the desire for the hidden through what is constantly perceived. Therefore, the ardent lover of beauty, although receiving what is always visible as an image of what he desires, yet longs to be filled with the very stamp of the archetype. […]

“This truly is the vision of God: never to be satisfied in the desire to see him. But one must always, by looking at what he can see, rekindle his desire to see more. Thus, no limit would interrupt growth in the ascent to God, since no limit to the Good can be found nor is the increasing of desire for the Good brought to an end because it is satisfied.” (Life of Moses, pp. 31, 114, 116; translation by Malherbe and Ferguson).

“We need an unceasing desire for higher things, which is not content to acquiesce in past achievements; we ought to count it a loss if we fail to progress further.” (On the Beatitudes, p.130)

In addition to sight, St Gregory uses another worldly metaphor to convey his thought of ‘theoria’, the perception of God: the scent of the divine – an imagery that was to become popular amongst kabbalists of the middle ages with regards to the immolation of the sacrificial lamb (holocaust). Whereas the fumes of the holocaust attract the divine to earth, it is the opposite movement that St Gregory has in mind, although both lead to the same goal:

“I will take up again what I said at the start of this homily: let no one who is passionate, fleshly and still smelling of the foul odour of the old man [2 Cor 2:16] drag down the significance of the divine thoughts and words to beastly, irrational thoughts. Rather, let each person go out of himself and out of the material world. Let him ascend into paradise through detachment, having become like God through purity. Then let him enter into the inner sanctuary of the mysteries revealed in this book [the Song of Songs]. […] The souls, therefore, draw to themselves a desire for their immortal bridegroom and follow the Lord God, as it is written [Hos 11.10]. The cause of their love is the scent of the perfume to which they eternally run; they stretch out to what is in front, forgetting what is behind. “We shall run after you toward the scent of your perfumes.” (Commentary of the Song of Songs, J.25, J.39).

Again, one sees that infinite desire can lead to eternally migrating away from the “foul odour of the old man” and towards the ‘scent of the perfumes’ of the ‘bridegroom’.

Tags: Orthodox Church, Contemplation, Gregory of Nyssa, Exile, Reconciliation, Virtues, Desire