NatlGeo:"Jesus" special issue

[eish]

Why is it that you date that pedestal-placing of women to the Renaissance particularly, eish ?

About the "nous", i remember the 1st time i read that term. It was paradoxically in a copy of that OCA journal "Ascend", was that the name of it ? Which was edited by the future OCA Met Jonah [Paffhausen].

I immediately thought the word sounded pretentious : "Look how intellectual we St John of San Francisco monastery monastics are !"

The term sounded so nebulous that thereafter, my eyes glazed over whenever it appeared in some treatise.
There was NEVER an adequate definition of the word provided.

So, eish, you are saying that it really means intuition ? That sounds more comprehensible than all the high-flying descriptions one sees.

I agree, throwing around esoteric Greek terms, especially in an effort to impress new arrivals, creates nothing but confusion in their minds.
Hence it is counter-productive. Instead, simple, clear explanations in English can succeed.
 

 

Certainly.

The pedestal-placing of women to which I refer is the romanticism of the late Medieval period (i.e. Renaissance) onward. Prior to this there was certainly a concept of courtly love, but the whole "knight in shining armour" coming to save the perfect pure princess whose poop doesn't smell (forgive me the expression) has a historic context. The further back you go, we see marriage being treated more as a duty to the family rather than a happily ever after story. I am not an expert in this so if someone wants to add nuance or dispute it then I'm all ears but I go by what is commonly understood. Notice that I also mentioned the knight in shining armour, which is the reverse because although I was originally speaking of male painters and their female interests, when we look at the full picture I believe that expectations were distorted for both sexes.

The Greek word "nous" translates to "intuitio" in Latin, which was carried over into English. As we commonly find it used in Orthodox circles, the nous is sometimes also translated as "mind," or "mind's eye" (which is where the ancient term originated). It refers to the higher, more spiritual sense of the mind and soul. In particular you would find such expressions as to guard one's nous, meaning to watch over what one is thinking of/giving attention to/etc. The nous is darkened after the fall of Adam, which gives rise to such phenomena as the fact that our minds wander (thinking of worldly things in church, for example, is due to not guarding the nous). It is also why we have a gnomic (dictionary linked) will. Because my intuito is malfunctioning, I am forced to use discursive methods for understanding things and for deciding what to do. The Fathers teach (or so I understand, since I have not studied the matter extensively) that this discursive faculty did not exist prior to the fall and that Jesus Christ did not have it. He lacked this faculty because although it is not sinful per se, it is purely something that we do for lack of intuitive understanding. (Keeping in mind that Christ is fully human with a human will.)

Yes, I really am saying that if my mind were functioning properly, I would not have to think in the sense that we commonly use the term. Instead of talking to myself I would grasp intuitively.

Now keep in mind that society at large may not always use the word intuition the way the Fathers would, but that does not make it the wrong word. If a protestant uses the word "salvation" and speaks of some kind of distorted salvation, that does not mean that we should use a different word because it is the correct English word.

It is a very common mistake which I find with many Hellenists. In person and in writing. For example Constantine Cavarnos has an entire book on Orthodox terminology, which is based on this fallacy and basically claims word-by-word that we need to throw out all religious terms from the English language and use the Greek ones instead because he confuses the fact that the Roman Catholics and the Anglicans use the words with a distorted understanding of the things to which they refer, with the words being wrong.

A rather similar phenomenon to the one which led to modern translation theory being so far out there. (And every Bible translation after about 1950 being horrible.)

There is nothing evil about a priest saying "nous" in English. A Greek priest can certainly not be expected to have a perfect command of English as his second or third language while studying the Fathers in the original Greek and trying to convey the message to us. An Anglophone priest should also be forgiven the term because he hears it from others and may misunderstand the English context. My point is that we who do know English well enough, should use it properly as a simple matter of communicating effectively. Doubly so when speaking to the non-Orthodox who have not heard the Greek terminology before.

[Barbara]

Interesting observations, as always, eish.

Question : then what does one do to guard the intuitio/nous ? I'm sure there must be volumes written about that over the ages. But what simple things are recommended ?
 

[eish]

Interesting observations, as always, eish.

Question : then what does one do to guard the intuitio/nous ? I'm sure there must be volumes written about that over the ages. But what simple things are recommended ?
 

 

It is a difficult task and certainly not one I can claim expertise in. Indeed many volumes are written on it, but the volumes generally have guarding the mind as something mentioned in the text rather than it being the title.

Firstly, hesychasm is this. The hesychast prays continually, hence his mind's eye is always focussed on God even while performing his worldly duties. Now it is very important what I say here and it applies to everything else I say as well, that attention must be given to the prayer. If someone repeats the prayer unthinkingly either on his lips or in his head but without thinking about what he is saying, then his mind is wandering all over worldly things and he is not practising hesychasm at all.

Secondly, even for those Christians who are not practising hesychasm, this is what the Fathers are speaking of when they tell us to pay attention to our prayers and never allow our thoughts to wander while robotically saying the words. Even the Lord Himself says it: "But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking." In every prayer we should pay attention to what the words mean when we say them; many Fathers also say that we should go back and redo the part where we caught ourselves not paying attention. Over time this helps the mind learn to focus on the prayer. If at first this means not having enough time to finish even the morning and evening prayers it is still better than inattentively rambling through them, which rambling the Fathers teach is basically blasphemy and will not be heard. The prayer life of the Christian is really the same whether he is a monk or not, it is just that those pray less perform the same action of paying attention for shorter periods while the advanced hesychast does it continually. When starting to pray it is hence also important (though not always possible today) for the Christian to be under a spiritual father who can give guidance and recommend the appropriate length of prayer given the state of the person, so that it is challenging enough to lead to progress but not so long as to lead to inattentive and unedifying rambling.

Thirdly, the Fathers teach us that it is easier to be attentive to God when one has simple tasks to perform. This is why the Desert Fathers traditionally wove mats, a simple and repetitive task with a cheap product, to earn their living. The more complex our jobs the more money we can make, and we certainly may have to do so to support ourselves and our loved ones, but if we are able to get by on paying attention to simple tasks to do them with due diligence while also paying attention to prayer at the same time, this is edifying.

Fourthly, do not engage the imagination in prayer. The hesychast Fathers teachh to look down at one's belly. Do not try to paint pictures of the Lord or His saints in your head; do not imagine yourself at the "stations of the Cross" like the Latins, anything like that.

Fifthly and related to this, daydreaming is demonic.

Sixthly, and still related, keep your focus on reality. As the Psalmist says, "I have not sat with vain persons, neither will I go in with dissemblers," and "I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes: I hate the work of them that turn aside; it shall not cleave to me." If it is not clear enough in context, it may interest you that the Hebrew word "bilya'al" means not only "wicked" but also "worthless" or "unprofitable." Indeed the wisdom of the Ancients was such that even the word for "idol" in Hebrew literally meant "nothingness." Rather than amusing ourselves with games and vanities, we should be giving our attention to works profitable for the spirit, such as prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, or at least profitable for the body, such as weeding the garden, cleaning the house, finishing a project for our employer, etc.

 Oh, and lastly I left out the basics: Reject sinful thoughts as soon as they pop up rather than entertaining or trying to reason with them.

[Barbara]

Excellent exposition ! Thank you, eish, for telling us all this.
I thought i had read something about the instruction of the hesychasts to look at the stomach. That struck me as so WEIRD ! What do the Fathers mean by that ?
How could one be performing a daily task yet keeping the gaze fixed on the abdomen ?
Even if the person aspiring to develop the intuitio were to spend all day not moving but only praying, how would it benefit one to stare at the stomach ??!
I think many people have protested that this instruction evokes the image of yogis, etc.
How is one to regard this injunction, then ?

Also - not to overburden you, but how is it that people attempt to combat negative thoughts by reasoning with them ? Would you mind to provide an example so we can understand ?
THANKS for all this help !!!

[eish]

Excellent exposition ! Thank you, eish, for telling us all this.
I thought i had read something about the instruction of the hesychasts to look at the stomach. That struck me as so WEIRD ! What do the Fathers mean by that ?
How could one be performing a daily task yet keeping the gaze fixed on the abdomen ?
Even if the person aspiring to develop the intuitio were to spend all day not moving but only praying, how would it benefit one to stare at the stomach ??!
I think many people have protested that this instruction evokes the image of yogis, etc.
How is one to regard this injunction, then ?

Also - not to overburden you, but how is it that people attempt to combat negative thoughts by reasoning with them ? Would you mind to provide an example so we can understand ?
THANKS for all this help !!!

 

St. Gregory Palamas has written on the subject.

The heretic Barlaam of Calabria--opponent of St. Palamas--was the first one to completely miss the point when he was told about Orthodox prayer life, and complain about "navel gazing" specifically. This term is a blasphemous dismissal of Orthodox prayer and I would not advise any Christian to use it, although people today do not generally know its origins.

When the eyes of the body wander about the room, the mind's eye cannot help but also wander about all of these temporal things that they are looking at, and other things as well. Instead the Fathers teach us that it is best to look down on our navel area, where we have our hearts and our stomachs. Our hearts which we should enter into, and which we should give to the Lord. Our stomachs, the lusts of which have enslaved us. And after all, averting our eyes down is precisely the posture appropriate for a sinner begging forgiveness.

This is the normal posture for the Jesus Prayer but I have never heard anyone say that it is absolute while performing other tasks. Of course if one is working overhead and looks up to do the work, saying the prayer at the same time is appropriate for a Christian. Certainly don't try it driving a car. But when walking through the woods or standing before the icon corner, looking down does not present an obstacle all or most of the time. For monks, where possible they will traditionally take simple repetitive jobs, making it more viable.

The purpose of looking down at the navel is to maintain appropriate focus, not to take focus away from where it should be. There is more to it, technique for helping one pray continually by praying to the rhythm of one's breathing, but that is something that a monk will discuss with his spiritual father.

Yogis are doing something completely different. Whereas the Christian is trying to maintain his focus on reality, Eastern religions are trying to reject reality. Christians have a concept of detachment, in that we should not cling to our worldly possessions and comforts. These religions preach a different detachment, one of focussing inward on the self and ignoring the world and the people in it, and being one's own god. They are attempting to release a hidden power from inside the navel area to make themselves into gods, which power in reality is merely just the opening up of their souls and bodies to the indwelling of demonic powers.

But even more than that, the objection is a ridiculous fallacy. Christians pray to our God, the Holy Trinity, while pagans pray to their gods. To say that we are wrong for focussing near the navel because pagans focus near the navel is like saying that we are wrong for praying because pagans pray or that we are wrong for having temples because pagans have temples. The point is who is being worshipped, not that worship is wrong.

---

Demons are anglers or hagglers, both metaphors can explain the technique to an extent. They will offer up some suggestion which they may well expect to be rejected, but they will try to get the target to engage with it. Like anglers, they pull a little to get you to agree to more evil while also giving you a bit more line and letting you appear to move away as you resist. Like hagglers, they are really trying to get you to fall into agreeing to some bad "deal" by making a ridiculous opening offer. Also like hagglers, they get lucky because people can take the opening offer.

Let's say the demons want to get someone into sexual sins. They might open with something horrible and then when the mark responds with an argument (which may even be whispered by themselves) such as for example, "she's married," they can make a counteroffer. The nature of the counteroffer will then be tailored to the mark. For one guy, yes, it would be horrible to mess with a married woman. But if anything horrible happened to Bob--not that you would want that, of course--then it there wouldn't be anything wrong and dare I say it would even be a positive good thing if she got another husband to take care of her. For another guy, to trap him they could counter that he should find a woman like that--why not go talk to Sophie. At this point the poor patsy does not realise that he is already haggling with demons. The goal is to get him by incremental bargaining to agree in principle with something evil, even under irrelevant hypotheticals, or to engage in evil fantasy, or to engage in carnal sins (not necessarily of the same sort or with the same person initially used as bait), etc. And once one is engaging in the lesser forms, they can always angle one in little by little to the more serious ones.

They have both hard sell and soft sell techniques. They may begin with an extreme offer and haggle it down to something less extreme, or they may open with something subtle and once agreed do a follow-up selling one more and more evil things. They're experts at this; they've been selling bad ideas to humans since the Garden of Eden.

And if one realises what they are doing, all the more dangerous. They can use this to feed one's pride and let one think that one is stronger than they are before tricking one into an even greater fall. Even in the life of one of the great Desert Fathers--IIRC St. Anthony--it is said that as his soul was carried to the heavens, the fathers heard the demons crying to him "you have defeated us" and him denying it.

The Fathers teach that we should not engage with this back and forth. Dismiss them immediately, ignore them, and don't argue with their proposals. Answering at all is not the best strategy because they can use it to bring in clever tricks, but answering with a refutation is still not necessarily sinful. "I don't want her; she's married" is not as good an idea as to dismiss the though and carry on with one's work but it is not yet consenting to any sins.
 
 
 

[Lazarún Zalónir]

Oh, I never knew that ! What an arrogant thought - to inject oneself into a painting of that scene - or as any holy figure.

I had no idea this might have happened, but it makes sense, though the Renaissance was of course the opposite of a pious time.
 
 

 

Self-insertions were the same phenomenon that gave birth to the rosary. In a sense it all began with their flawed anthropology which in turn sprang from spiritual blindness.

Because the Latins intentionally departed from the faith, their intuition was darkened. (*Nous to the Hellenists. We need to stop forcing foreign terms where the English already exists because obscurantism and exoticism do not spread the Gospel.) They lost all spiritual sense which caused them to fall into the same trap as pagans in their rituals, of confusing the psyche for the spirit.

Roman Catholic prayer life is all psychological. It is about feelings and sentiments which they call spirituality. When making a decision they pray (in their manner of prayer) and whatever gives them a warm fuzzy feeling they call "discernment."

Part of this prayer life dating back centuries is self-insertion at the stations of the Cross. By imagining themselves piously present at scenes of the Passion, they believe they are elevating themselves whereas in reality they are merely flattering themselves with imaginations of being more pious than the apostles who fled.

They do not understand that the spirit is higher than the psyche. It is not a big step, then, to say that a man who mistakes warm tingly feelings for holiness might flatter the woman who gives him warm tingly feelings with imagined holiness.

Food for thought given how our romanticised culture has put women on a pedestal--in a bad way--precisely since the Renaissance.

What is the rosary, i used to be lutheran i never knew what the rosary was.

[eish]

What is the rosary, i used to be lutheran i never knew what the rosary was.

The rosary is the Roman Catholic distortion of the prayer rope and Jesus Prayer.

Papists use a type of prayer rope with beads, which they call a rosary, to perform a prayer which they also call the rosary. Sometimes Orthodox people of English or at least Roman Catholic background refer to the Orthodox prayer rope as a “rosary” due to that background but not with the same meaning.

The rosary prayer is heretical. The words of the Divine Office may look all fine but the big problem comes in with how they apply it. Papists say sets of “Hail Mary” on the beads with some surrounding prayers but they also do this while engaging in dangerous fantasies. They picture themselves in various places in the Lord's earthly life, which is by itself a sure sign of delusion.