Forest Poetry

The Christian perspective, more than any other places its emphasis on historical events. We must firstly point out that the actuality of these events is not in question, given that they constitute a revelation and are therefore ontologically evident. What is more significant, however, is the fact that these events are only evident insofar as they are a reflection of metaphysical principles within a temporal framework. Metaphysically, the Father is Beyond-Being and Being, the Godhead and the Essence of the world, the Spirit, personified in Mary, is the perfectly pure and receptive substance, which reflects the light of the father, the Son is that reflection who is therefore both the image of God in the world, and the prefiguration of the entire cosmos itself. The Son is always present in God as the Logos and in man as the Intellect, and indeed He is present everywhere insofar as a thing is seen in light of its Divine Cause.

The question then, is not whether Christianity presents legitimate historical facts, but whether or not it presents a legitimate metaphysical perspective, which it undoubtedly does, despite the lack of metaphysical insight in the western Church in recent times. For the true Christian, there can be no reason to question the historical validity of Christian mythology for this kind of academic investigation yields only theoretical knowledge, whereas faith yields spiritual insight. These two modes of knowledge are situated on different planes, and therefore the former can never approach the latter in terms of its value for the man in question. “Ye shall know them by their fruits” Matthew 7:16

Traditionalists frequently criticize the current state of Western intellectual life and culture, arguing that our civilization lacks a genuine spiritual dimension. This fact is painfully obvious to many, including more moderate conservatives. But we can occasionally run into some difficulty when explaining that we believe this decline to have begun during the Renaissance. For many conservatives eras such as the Renaissance and the Enlightenment are the high points of Western civilization when great scientific discoveries and artistic achievements were made. In order to explain our position it is important to emphasize that for us the main goal of intellectual activity (reason) is closeness with the divine, or transcendence. We value many intellectual pursuits, but for us a modern mathematician is not as important as an ancient Pythagorean mathematician. They might both be equally capable of solving a particular mathematical problem, but the modern sees nothing beyond the numbers and the their relations with each other, while the Pythagorean sees the numbers and their relations as a symbolic language for theology.

A good analogy for this idea can be found in the realm of morality and personal behavior. A religious man and an atheist can share a moral belief, for example, that adultery is wrong, and they can both succeed in avoiding adultery because of this belief. But the moral belief and the associated behavior has an extra dimension for the man who acts in this way because God commands it, a dimension that is absent from the man who acts in this way merely because he does not wish to cause any distress to his fellow human beings, or whatever his mundane reason might be.

For the religious man, avoiding adultery is a spiritual exercise, a manifestation of God’s will in his own psyche and activity. Something on a higher metaphysical plain is gaining mastery over something on a lower plain (the human individual). In the case of the moral atheist there is no interaction between metaphysical levels, no transcendence. Rather there are two things on the same level interacting with each other, the desire for adultery and the desire for not causing distress. Both desires are concerned solely with mundane actions. The actions of the atheist are purely horizontal, while the actions of the religious man have a vertical dimension. The latter’s action exist on several different levels, and that which is viewed on this physical level is but a small part of the entire action. They are unified across the different vertically ordered hierarchical levels, and the part of the action on the lower level serves as a symbol for the corresponding parts on higher levels. Thus it turns out that the two actions, that of the religious man and that of the atheist, share a goal, avoiding adultery, but that the action of the religious man has the added goal of following God’s will. In the same way intellectual activity can have two goals, effecting a mundane change and making a connection with a higher level of reality.

It was during the Renaissance and especially the Enlightenment that Western intellectual life began focusing too much on the former goal and neglecting the latter, and in more recent times the latter has been vigorously attacked and deliberately removed. For this reason many see the decline of the West beginning at a much later period, when vociferous and explicit deniers or God became popular, but it is important to keep in mind the true root of the problem, for that is the only way to find an effective remedy.

Knowledge does not come to us in details,

but in flashes of light from heaven.

-Henry David Thoreau.*

Knowledge is generally defined, at last nowadays, as facts integrated by the mental faculty. True knowledge is in fact a total integration of Truth into the whole being, so it is not only the mental faculty but every other human faculty that must participate in the act of knowing. It is for this reason that we say ‘to know is to be’, for in the final analysis what we know is what we are.

Now most men would claim that they do not in fact know all that they are, for example that they do not have perfect knowledge of the physical body. What they mean by this is actually that this knowledge is not grasped by the mental faculty, precisely because it exists on a more contingent plane than reason. If then, extent of the mental faculty is what most men call knowledge, how much greater must be the Knowledge of the Absolute Reality, given that it is all encompassing. This is why we say that God alone possesses pure Knowledge. The knowledge of man is limited and fragile, but the Knowledge of God is unlimited precisely because He is unlimited.

The knowledge of man, insofar as he is limited to reason, is a distant reflection of divine Knowledge. Reason is capable of grasping facts only because it is illuminated by pure Intelligence. Reason is like the moon, the intellect like the sun. Now when a man has harmony within himself, reason is like a pure mirror, light can illuminate and cause it to reflect. On the other hand, when a man is spiritually unstable, the rational faculty is like a crude mirror which distorts those things which it reflects. In this case the rational faculty may still be able to grasp facts, but it will distort them and twist them towards false ends. This is the case with the rationalists of our day. Both of the previous scenarios assume that man does not have direct access to the divine Intellect itself, which is not necessarily the case. When it occurs that a man actively realizes his non-separation from God, his knowledge is no longer his own, but that of God. In this case rational intelligence can contribute nothing to what that man knows, but then serves the function of formulating that knowledge to display it to the world. For man, the realization that he is not other than God shatters the illusion of the ego, which at this point is seen never to have existed, this is why it is said that “an undelivered man is actually a delivered man who does not know it”.

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*The Thoreau Reader. Annotated works of Henry David Thoreau. Life Without Principle: http://thoreau.eserver.org/life2.html

“Kyrie Iesou Christe, Yie tou Theou, eleison me, ton amartalon”

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”

When speaking of the meaning of words that have been given to us by the Holy Spirit, we must remember first of all, that every word that the Spirit has taught is subject to the limitations of human language. On the other hand, the actual content of those words is unlimited, and this is why there is no limit to how many ways the Spirit can formulate a prayer; the finite can never approach the Infinite. We remember then, that when we pray we are first of all placing ourselves in the presence of God by our invocation, and every definite meaning is secondary. Every word the Spirit gives us is firstly a sign which brings us closer to God, and secondly a form which limits Him.

The Jesus Prayer contains two immediately obvious definite meanings, even though, as we have said, it is unlimited in its essence. The meaning which is clearer in English is the human soul crying out for God’s mercy, reflecting our existential situation here on Earth. The meaning which is prevalent in Greek is that God IS merciful, and it is therefore more concerned with the actual nature of things rather than with our personal relationship with God. Both of these meanings are vital to our spiritual life, we must know that God is merciful and that all of his other qualities are absorbed in his mercy for us. If God is wrathful, it is only because we need him to be, if God punishes us, it is because we need to be punished for the sake of our spiritual well-being. God’s mercy is revealed to us in the Son, and it is to him that we give our petition. We must ask for God’s mercy, not because he may not be merciful, but because we must reach out to God for our own sake. God will always give us everything we need and our greatest need is to pray, to actively place ourselves in His presence. We could never give God anything that he does not already have, for God is without any limitation, nor could we possibly take anything away from him. Our need to ask for God’s mercy, even if we know that he is merciful, is due to our own spiritual deficiency. We must place ourselves in the presence of God and ask him to lift the veils which hide Him from us. By doing this we are fulfilling our own spiritual duties, given that we are both affirming both the reality and the nature of God.

These are fundamental truths contained within the Jesus Prayer, and as such it is capable of absorbing every human prayer into this simple phrase. “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”.

“Trinity! Higher than any being,
any divinity, any goodness!
Guide of Christians
in the wisdom of heaven!
Lead us up beyond unknowing and light,
up to the farthest, highest peak
of mystic scripture,
where the mysteries of God’s Word
lie simple, absolute and unchangeable
in the brilliant darkness of a hidden silence.
Amid the deepest shadow
they pour overwhelming light
on what is most manifest.
Amid the wholly unsensed and unseen
they completely fill our sightless minds
with treasures beyond all beauty.”

Pseudo-Dionysius
(translated by Colm Luibheid)

“It is interesting to note that in almost every field or specialty, common sense tells us that we need guidance and such is sought from experts. But when it comes to spiritual matters the greater majority have no hesitation in choosing themselves as both expert and advisor. This despite the Muslim aphorism that he who uses himself as his own director has Satan for his guide.” – Rama Coomaraswamy

How many times have we heard “I believe in a supreme energy, something like God, but I’m against organized religion” or “I’m spiritual, but not religious”?

As we explained before, the socialization of spiritual experiences can give us a compared perspective, and a way to share values. Nonetheless, people opt for building their own spiritualities in a mix of concepts and spiritual-like media. People become lone wolves in their spiritual pursuit, but being realists, lone wolves aren’t precisely the most efficient members of the wolf pack.

The Jesuit priest James Martin says:

“Being spiritual but not religious can lead to complacency and self-centeredness,”…”Religion is hard,” he says. “Sometimes it’s just too much work. People don’t feel like it. I have better things to do with my time. It’s plain old laziness.”

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/personal/06/03/spiritual.but.not.religious/?hpt=C1

The truth is that people choosing their own ways of spirituality, besides lacking compromise, misunderstand the basic tenets of religions they conveniently cherry pick from.  Let’s remember: “For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst.”  Matthew 18:20, or in the words of Buddha: “Well awakened, they’re awake, ever the Buddha’s pupils, who constantly by day, by night, are mindful of the Sangha. [community]” Dhammapada, 298.

Religions, despite the obvious human mistakes, have been protectors of sacred literature, that literature which holds the concepts  “God”, “soul”, “spirit”. Nevertheless, people believe that these concepts are simply there, in the books, DVDs or websites they consume, thinking that they need no further discipline and organization to dwell deeper in the concepts that,  in the best case, are just theoretically correct.