June 10, 2024 • 50 mins
This show topic, How's your heart, will dive into the heart of mankind.
This is the spiritual heart of mankind.
We will investigate the current condition of our heart and detail the steps required to make our heart acceptable to God and thereby be pleasing to our Lord.
O Gladsome Light is broadcast live Mondays at 11AM ET Music on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com O Gladsome Light is viewed on Talk 4 TV (www.talk4tv.com).
O Gladsome Light Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
This is the spiritual heart of mankind.
We will investigate the current condition of our heart and detail the steps required to make our heart acceptable to God and thereby be pleasing to our Lord.
O Gladsome Light is broadcast live Mondays at 11AM ET Music on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com O Gladsome Light is viewed on Talk 4 TV (www.talk4tv.com).
O Gladsome Light Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
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for choosing W FOURCY Radio. Welcometo the O Glansome Light Podcast. This
program contains preaching and teaching from anOrthodox Christian perspective to help you in your
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walk with Jesus Christ and to bevictorious in Him. Well, welcome to
the show. It's all Gladsom liveevery Monday at eleven o'clock in the morning
Easter and Standard time. I'm yourshow host, Doctor al Mans also known
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as Father Petros, and I havea Doctor of Divinity degree, so I
have some education there behind me.Also broadcasting from wffour Cey Internet Radio and
it's around the world twenty four toseven. I also have a podcast on
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two of them. One of themis Alman's and the other one is Archpetros.
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So go you can go visit bothof them YouTube sites. And also
you do't hit the bell and benotified of new shows as they are posted
on YouTube. The show is blessedby Metropolitan Mcchiseldeck of the Orthodox Church of
Orthodox Church of Virus. It's inGreece. Our slogan is preparing Souls for
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Heaven and broadcasting from Saint Peter andPaul Orthodox Chapel here in sunny West Palm
Beach, Florida. Today's show topicis titled How's your Heart? How is
your Heart? So we see commercialson TV about that Cardia mobile using your
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phone and a Cardia Mobile app anda little device you can buy on Amazon
or so forth. And this littleit's like the size of a credit card.
You put your fingers on it andit will give you a medical grade
EKG. As the commercial says,Now that's a great device. I'll let
you know about a fib and allthat tack ofcardia blot all those things,
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But what about your spiritual heart?Have you done an ekg on your spiritual
heart? And I'm thinking, youknow, the physical heart is very important
because it keeps our body moving,But also the spiritual heart of mankind is
very important because that is the partthat is in relationship to God. Not
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just what we see on the physicalbeing of the earth, the light,
the darkness, the animals, allthe senses, our five senses. But
what about our spiritual heart? Now, the prophet Jeremiah tells us the heart
is desperately wicked, and who canknow it? Of course, I know
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one person that knows it, andthat's Jesus Christ. He is the creator
of things seen and unseen in theheaven, on the earth, and beneath
the earth. In the Orthodox Church, he is called the Ponto Crato,
the Father Creator. If you havewalk into an Orthodox church and get into
the centered portion of the church andlook straight up, you'll see a dome.
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And in the dome is a giganticicon of the Lord looking down on
his flock, his sheep. Alsothe Lord Jesus Christ. When the nations
are called to the judgment seed asscripture tells us only Christ will be seated
there because He is the creator.He gave the father a good pleasure for
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his son to create. And thatjudgment seed we call it the sheep goat
judgment. I've done shows on thatbefore. Now, our heart without Christ
is desperately wicked, but it's notour fault. We have been bidden by
sin, the sin of Adam andEve in the garden. But we are
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responsible for the antidote to eradicate thesin in our heart. And the antidote,
antidote is only available from Christ andrequire us for us to surrender and
have humility. He says, ifyou want to follow me, you've got
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to do these things. Deny thyself, take up thy cross, and follow
me. Saith the Lord, andthe Lord promises that you will be a
new creation. All things are passedaway, and behold, all things are
brand new if you are following Christ. So now we're going to get into
a deep study of the heart.It is the way of salvation. And
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we have the mind and we havethe heart. And so this show is
going to attempt to talk about themind and the heart and how it's supposed
to work together. And you've gotto get out of your head and get
in your heart. Right now arethoughts are in our head, and God
seems to be outside of us.Your prayer and all your spiritual exercises also
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remain exterior. As long as youare in your head your mind, you
will never master your thoughts, whichcontinue to whirl around your head like snow
in a winter storm or like mosquitoesin the summer heat. You know,
I was thinking about this that ifyou do not follow the laws of God,
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you lose your moral compass, andevery evil thing can be accomplished.
And just look around you, allthe things that are happening in the world.
And it's because people have forgotten God. Alexander sultanis and wrote a book
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in the Gulag called men have forgottenGod. And if you forget God,
anything is all things. There's nolimitation to what evil you can do.
You can do it all. Justbecause it's a majority doesn't mean it's right.
You and God are the majority.Now, if you descend into your
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heart, which may be a scarything, you will have no more difficulty.
Your mind will empty out and yourthoughts will dissipate. Thoughts are always
in your mind, chasing one anotherabout, and you will never manage to
get them under control. And eventhe church fathers tell us that the mind
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when you pray and your mind wandersaround, it's called mind diffusion, and
we're trying to master that, andthey'll take our life a lifetime to master
that. Now, if you enterinto your heart you can remain there.
Then every time your thoughts invade,you will only have to descend into your
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heart and your thoughts will vanished inthe thin air. Sounds pretty easy,
doesn't it, But it's going totake this show and probably Part two to
get through all of this teaching onthe heart, the mind, and the
way of salvation. This will beyour safe haven. Don't be lazy.
Descend you will find life in yourheart. There. We must live in
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our heart. Sat Theophon the Reclusesays this, I have been told that
I have a soul. Obviously,a soul is not something you can observe
or touch, like hands or feet. But the fact never worried me much,
since it is also true that Ihave a heart and a stomach,
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even though I cannot be absolutely certainwhere they are unless I took them up
in a book. Unfortunately, thereis no book I can look at to
tell me where my soul is.The same is true with regard to the
spirit. If I have a souland the spirit, how are they different
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from each other. I am notobviously aware of either one, and I
am less aware of the difference betweenthe two. What I am aware of
within myself is a mind with itsconstant stream of comments and instructions, and
a body through which emotions are felt. Physically, I can almost feel thought
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taking place in my head, apparentlya faulty notion of one that actually helps
in the long run by sending alimit to the area of the mind's activity.
And I can certainly feel strong emotion, most often in the upper chest,
sometimes lower, and sometimes as aconstriction in the throat. Since I
started the process of becoming an OrthodoxChristian more than forty six years ago,
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I have slowly become aware that myentire view of the human person need some
revision if I am to get themost out of my participation in the life
of the church. One of theless obvious, more important contributions to the
Orthodox Church is that it places infocus a view of the human personality,
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the human spirit, perhaps which isdistinct and quite different from that which is
presented or assumed to exist in almostall Western thought. And we live in
the West, and so by livingin the West, it's kind of easy
to have the Western thought. Butbecoming an Orthodox Christian you start you have
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to think Eastern thought. And thisshow is going to help hopefully with the
definition between the Western thought and theEastern thought. Many years ago, I
remember hearing that from an Orthodox pointof view, a Baptist or a Protestant
is simply an odd sort of aRoman Catholic, can you say, how
so, it's amazing that even thoughthe Protestant Church disagrees or does separated itself
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from the Catholic Church, that stillfollows their calendar. They still celebrate Christmas
on December twenty fifth, and theystill celebrate Easter on that same calendar,
the Gregorian calendar. Now later Idiscover that if you share this information with
a Roman Catholic or a Protestant,they get very uncomfortable rather quickly. From
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the point of view of the ChristianEast see the difference style West versus East.
Christian East. However, the theologyof the One is largely a reaction
against the theology of the other,and both are based on an understanding of
God and of the human person thatdiffers radically from the experience of the Christian
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East. There's going to be alot of words here in this study today.
This is going to be very,very scholastic. I guess you could
say it's like going to college.A part of this difference lies in the
attitude of the word mystery. Ingeneral terms, the Western civilization is dominated
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by the human mind, and knowingseems to take precedence over being b Ei
n G. Being in the Eastexperiences value over thought and the news of
the man. And I'll describe thata minute, described by Saint Maccadios is
the eye of the heart or theeye of the soul, and identified by
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Savocus as the innermost aspect of theheart is considered the most important element by
which a person communicates with God andindeed with the rest of the universe.
Now, in the West, amystery is a problem to be solved,
as can be seen daily on television. In the East, a mystery is
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an area where the human mind cannotgo, and where the heart alone makes
sense, not by knowing but bybeing. The theology of the Christian West,
for both Roman Catholics and Protestants,has a natural tendency to become a
system. Definitions are valued, andin the long term theology tends to be
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a matter for scholars. On theother hand, the theology of the Christian
Eese sometimes lacks system and often lacksclear definition. Theology is preeminently the Church's
experience of God, something to beentered in by the saints rather than understood
by the intelligence, and that remindsme of this scripture in First Cristians,
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Chapter one, verse twenty seven.God has chosen the foolish things of the
world to confound the wise, andGod has chosen the weak things of the
world to confound that things which aremighty. The writings of some of the
fathers of the Church indicate that,far from being the answer to all problems,
the mind of man is the placewhere most of our troubles start.
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For them, the path towards sanctityintels recovering the sense of intellect not in
the head, but in the heart, since they're at the center of the
life of the individual, is thepoint where he or she meets and communes
with God. For Orthodox Christians,receiving the sacraments, or rather participating in
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the mysteries of the Church, isnot a mental exercise, nor are the
emotions of any particular significance. Rather, participation in the mysteries is an encounter
with God in a very intimate anddirect way. It affects not the thinking
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of the individual, nor the feelingof the individual, but the very being
of the individual, the fathomless stateof awareness that exists and yet is dormant
in almost all human beings. Theexperience of the individual indicates that this profound
awareness often lies hidden in the barrageof thoughts and ideas. Thoughts not only
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clutter a person's awareness, but theyencourage that person to identify with those thoughts
the mind, rather than with thebeing which is the heart. According to
the Orthodox theology, the fall ofman is exhibited through the failure of his
noos or the eye of the soul, which in his heart, to function
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suddenly, or even to function atall, together with a general confusion of
the news with the functions of thebrain and of the body. In general.
This confusion goes so far to implythat the mind, together with its
thoughts, is all that really exists. And that the real center of being,
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the news or the heart, isof minimal importance if it exists at
all. Thus, most human livesare completely dominated by the tyranny of the
mind, together with its properties whichare fear and desire, depression and anxiety,
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and the real center of being,with its natural state of serenity and
communion, is ignored. The entirebasis of Western experience, summed up definitely
by discartis as cog cogito ergo sum, which means I think, therefore I
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am. In the Orthodox terms,it is the greatest of all distincts.
Far from being true, it isactually an expression that perpetuates the very factor
that causes the ongoing fragmentation of thehuman person. This important and fundamental difference
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between East and West is perhaps seenmore most clearly in the way that each
approaches the dilemma of the human situation. The fundamental area of interest for most
current Western psychotherapy is that of thoughtsand feelings. It is the arena of
thoughts and feelings that provides the backdropfor most perceived psychological problems and in which
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healing is seen to take place.But in the East, by contrast,
spiritual therapy is the reintegration intergra sorry, reintegration of the mind and the heart.
The fathers of the Orthodox Church donot, as a rule, concern
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themselves with human emotions in the sameway as we do. What the fathers
do talk about is a logos me. Now there's a Greek word. Let
me translate that. It's called logosme in a Greek means thoughts and the
passions that go with the thoughts.These are two concepts. Thoughts and passions
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are closely connected. The classical expressionof the relationship and effect on one another
is as follows. I'm going togive you like five stepping stones into this
logos me, the thoughts. First, a thought comes to exist in the
mind of a person, seeking thatperson's attention and awareness. Now, Saint
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Biasios said this about those thoughts.They're like airplanes. Now, when you
stand outside or in your house orwherever you're at and a jet, a
commercial jet flies over. Do youpay attention to it or you just stick
hey there's another jet going over,or you maybe totally ignore it. Well,
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Saint Fiacio says, don't let thesethoughts like airplanes land in your mind.
Won't be a landing strip for thosethoughts. The second stage is a
period of interaction, during which theperson dabbles in the possibilities which the thought
brings. The third stage is consent, in which the person voluntarily consents to
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the thought, sometimes hoping to stopthe process immediately. Thereafter, only two
discovered that once embarked upon that itis very difficult. The fourth stage is
called captivity, in which the personis dragged further and further from the way
of righteousness towards spiritual destruction as aresult of the thought. And the fifth
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stage, the goal of the thoughtis passion. Here the person's entrapped and
sinful action is inevitable. When Iuse the word passions, it's different than
what we're probably used to. Thepassions are, uh, you know,
the passions that are good. Andthen the thall happened. Adam and Eve
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sinned against God, and then thepassions became corrupted and they're used improperly.
The aesthetic authors often seem to talkabout thoughts as if they were they arrived
at one time. However, whilethere is an awareness that some thoughts are
separate and single minded, there arealso streams of thought which are undifferentiated most
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of the time, and which followthe progression noted above, sometimes quickly,
sometimes slowly, and with many competingor even contradictory thoughts happening at a given
moment. The scheme outlined above,together with its progression, is logical and
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works well in providing a model formuch of the human behavior, whether looking
at other individuals, at the entiregroups of people, or at ourselves.
And I thought about these five stepsI just talked about, and that you
know, when sin presents itself toyou, you have to make a choice.
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If you're a baptized christmated a Christian, okay, and you're in communion
with God and taking the mysteries ofthe Church, and all of a sudden
that you have there some thought inyour mind. They say that maybe the
demons or the devils are whispering inyour ear, that you have to make
a choice. You're supposed to bea child of God and to be able
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to cast that thought away. Aslong as you keep that thought and entreat
it as I say in these fivesteps, you will fall into sin.
Don't yield to it. As asays of scripture, you will fall.
Now. However, it has alittle in common with mesage of modern psychotherapy,
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for which sinful action is rather lessimportant than guilt, lowest self esteem,
or depression, even if those conditionscome into being as a result of
a sinful action. None of usare without sin, all of sin and
falling short of the glory of God. Okay, understand that. But the
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antidote I talked about in the beginningis most important, the antidote of Christ
in your life being your life.Where the two systems overlap, however,
and provide us with a heightened awarenessis as follows. The passions, moods,
and the emotional states which most oftendominate the human personality, have their
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origin in thought, that is tosay, in the mind. Like almost
everyone alive, the great teachers ofOrthodoxy saw that the world is not a
perfect place, and we all knowthat just look around. They attributed this
situation to the narrative in the firstfew pages of Holy Scripture, which tells
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the history of our first parents,the man and woman Adam and Eve.
Through a misuse of the freedom thatGod had given them, Adam and he
fell from grace and were expelled fromparadise. They were created for immortality,
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but because they violated a simple commandment, don't eat of this tree of the
knowledge of good and evil. Andthey went for it, were cast out
and became mortal. And God evensaid, you will return to the dust
of the earth. Now we theirdescendants are exiled with them, until our
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participation in the life of Christ withinthe Apostolic Church, and the healing which
results from this, lead us backto where we belong. The way the
Orthodox teachers look at this story,however, is quite different from the way
in which it is it tended tobe understood in the West. I'm showing
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you a difference between Western thought andEastern thought. In the West, commentaries
on these stories tended to emphasize thethemes of guilt, sin, and remorse.
Indeed, they clearly hinted that thesin of our first parents was somehow
sexual in nature, an attitude thatwould have enormous impact on the development of
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Western psychology several hundreds of years later. For the East. By contrast,
the story of Adam and Eve isat its heart a story of disintegration,
fragmentation, and estrangement. The manand the woman and the world in which
they live are torn apart because ofthe disobedient behavior of our first ancestors.
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Barriers came to exist between God andman, between heaven and earth, between
the one person and the other,between genders, and even within the human
personality itself. All was wrecked.You did it, Everything was wrecked.
At that point, the person alsohas become fragmented. The person has become
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fragmented and isolated, both externally fromthe outside world and internally right down to
the ultimate depths of his or herbeing. And that word I use fragmented
in the computer language. We wantto defrag that our hard drive, right,
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and when we defrag the hard drive, poet works a lot better.
And the same applies to what I'mtalking about today in the mind. Now,
this fragmentation is what is wrong witha human person. The reverse unification
is the path which our path weare offered, which leads to God is
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healing hisself and his salvation. Inthe Holy Apostolic Church, salvation is thus
understood as being something therapeutic, notsome form of legal loophole, nor even
a reward for a good life.Saint John Chrysostom tells us this, the
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church is a hospital and not acourtroom for souls. Okay, she does
not condemn on behalf of sins,but grants remission of sins. Hopefully,
I'll give you some comfort. Buthow the Orthodox Church perceives this. It's
not a courtroom, it's a hospital. I mean, if somebody gets cancered,
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do you send them to the courtroomor do you send him to the
hospital? Get it in the fieldof mental health that the diagnosis of multiple
personality disorder or disassodied disassotive identity disorderis becoming every ever more common. In
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this serious pathological condition, parts ofthe whole person and seem to spark off,
sometimes as a result of identifiable traumaand at other times for no obvious
and clear reason. These personality partsthen lead separate lives in isolation from the
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main identity of the person concerned,sometimes in complete isolation from the other personality
parts to the point where they areunaware of the other's existence. In less
extreme cases, patients suffering from themultiple personality of disorder are usually extremely disturbed.
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Most ordinate people are able to exhibitsigns of separate personality parts, although
within a more normal range, andthese parts do not generally work entirely alone,
nor are they out of touch witheach other. This phenomenon is most
easily demonstrated when one gets very angry, a condition that affects almost all of
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us from time to time. I'mbecoming very angry. One often feels a
change occurring within oneself, and it'snot uncommon for such a person to feel
quite different, other, quite different, quite other than his normal self.
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On being asked, how do youfeel when you lost your temper, many
will admit to feeling much younger,even to like a child, like a
temper tantrum. Have you ever beento the grocery store and seeing a child
laying on the ground, flopping backand forth and yelling and screaming because mom
won't get them that box of cerealor that candy bar. They go into
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a temper tantrum, And it's likewhen we get angry, we kind of
like go back into our childhood.On closer examination, it seems that the
person who loses his temper completely actuallyexperiences the world and events within it from
a point of view which is quitedifferent from that person's normal point of view.
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Things become skewed whenever this occurs,and it can occur quite frequently in
different ways. We see more evidenceof our internal fragmentation. There is one
feature of this process which is aparticular interest to those in the church.
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It is not difficult to demonstrate thatwe are not quite the same people when
standing in church as when we arein the workplace. Difference. In fact,
it is quite likely that we gothrough a number of changes as we
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enter a church building. And I'mtalking about an Orthodox church, and that
is the task of the architecture toallow this to happen. In a traditional
Orthodox church, as we enter thisthis temple, we are introduced, oh,
I gotta fix this. Wait,wind willing fix this and come back
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to this. And in a traditionalOrthodox church, we are introduced into the
sacred spaces and stages. When youfirst come in, it's the narthex and
that's where you would light a candle, kiss icons and so forth. And
then the next entry into the youwould come from the northex into the nave
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of the church was the center ofthe church. And then you'll see a
wooden that costasa has icons all overit, and behind that wall is the
sanctuary. And as we go through, we transform as we come in to
the church at each stage, andthat's by design. We are encouraged to
be more and more present the moresacred the space is. Those entering the
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most sacred space around the Holy altarare expected to be of the most present
of all. I've no bishops andpriests who were able to be totally present
while standing at the Holy Alter,yet they were very scattered and nervous when,
for example, they were conducting andmeeting or having a regular conversation.
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Here too, then is some evidencethat we are fragmented, since we go
from one stage of awareness to anothervery frequently and very easily, depending on
our circumstances. Nevertheless, we needto be aware that a person who changes
his or her personality under any circumstanceswhatever, is simply exhibiting signs of the
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sort of fragmentation which exists among usas a result of our fallen condition.
Going all the way back to Adamand Eve, people suffering from multiple personality
disorder recover, albeit slowly, whenthe different parts of their personality are united.
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There's no question here of parts beingexcised or exercised. These are personality
parts, albeit sometimes very unpleasant ones, which are part of the overall personality
and are required at some level tokeep the people concerned safe. And functioning
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so they need, so that theymight be able to cope with their lives
with the methods available. With themethods available in a clinical situation, it
is not uncommon to find personality partsin normal people which are quite unpleasant and
sometimes at least apparently downright evil.However, there is a great deal of
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difference between a difficult or unpleasant personalitypart which belongs to the person and fulfill
some role or purpose within that personality, and any form of demonic influence,
which is by its very nature aliento the personality. It is important to
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make a distinction between the two.Benevolent personality parts are usually the result of
unresolved inner conflict, and often turnout to be nothing more than the exaggerated
memory of parental control. The teachersof Orthodoxy who write about such matters generally
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indicate that there is a fragmentation ofthe human per personality as a result of
the fall. See it all stemsback to Adam and Eve, doesn't All
that goes back there in the gardenwhen they disobeyed God's commandment the not eat
of that tree, the fast fromthat tree. And they didn't. They
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were seduced by the serpent, andbecause of that they were kicked out.
Now result of the fall that thereis a definite and definable split between the
body and the person, however thatis experienced, and that there is also
a vast abyss placed between the heartand the mind, with the mind appearing
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to be dominant, very often tothe point of identifying itself as the entire
person. There is more psychotherapy aimsat healing the pragmentation of the mind by
encouraging the acquisition of insight and theapplication of method and system and sometimes even
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common sense to chay to achieve achange. The spiritual path of Orthodoxy does
not stop there, since the nextstage the reintegration reintegration. I have trouble
without that word. Reintegration. Reintegrationof the heart and mind is also necessary
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and a deed often seen as thewhole purpose of prayerful effort or ascetic labor.
Now there's a Greek word called aschessasthetic labor, the struggle and training
in the spiritual life of self discipline. Let me go further with that.
The goal of aschesis by prayer andfasting, and aesthetic labor is the goal
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is the purification of the heart toobtain a relationship with God and the Holy
Trinity. That's why we promote andinsist on everybody, not just monks,
but everybody could be have asthetic labor. The Orthodox picture of the person includes
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a part, then news, whichis the eye of the soul, which
is of primary importance in the healingof the individual from the Orthodox point of
view, and is ignored entirely inWestern secular therapy. The process of fragmentation
consists in removing thoughts from the mindin the heart where they belong, and
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placing them in a state of semiindependence in the brain. The reversal of
the situation is possible not by actingof determination of our minds. Indeed,
anything determined by our minds usually endsup in Some sort of healing is available,
but it only can be powered bythe grace of God. Few people
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ever discuss what it feels like tobe inside of their own bodies. We
seldom talk about how we feel thoughtsthinking internally, or how we experience the
various sensations which we call collectively life. Apart from pain, about which we
can talk about a great deal,little if anything, is said about what
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it feels like to be alive withinthe church. We might add another question
to supplement this process. How isit possible to internalize the experience of the
Orthodox Church? What does it meanto participate in the process of salvation?
What is the role of feelings,thoughts, dreams, anxieties and other sensations
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finances of these questions, it isuseful to have a pattern or framework which
is both easily understood and easy towork with. Now, what I propose
is the adoption of the very simpleversion of the teaching of the various Church
fathers, that is a basis readingHoly Scripture and studying the Church Fathers.
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There are three main ideas that I'mgoing to talk about right now. First
of all, the mind, thesource of the logos met the eye of
the soul or the eye of theheart, creates an awareness of a shallow
or sometimes false sense of self.The story or perhaps drama would be a
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better word, with which this shallowself concerns itself throughout life is collected together
with the ego of that particular person. As a result of the fall,
this sense of self is broken,and although it mimics reality, it is
actually an invention of the individual personand not real at all. In this
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scheme, the ego is not partof the personality. It is rather a
story told by the mind. Secondly, there is a deeper self in many
ways, a more real self whishis to be found in which the fathers,
the Church Fathers very verishly called theheart the noos of the soul.
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This key element is often hidden andalmost always ignored in the Western world.
However, it is through this nowsthat we have the ability for direct contact
with God, or, in thewords of Saint John Chrysostom, the possibility
of finding the gate to the Kingdomof Heaven. That reminds me of a
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that Jesus said when he was preachingon this earth. He says, the
Kingdom of God is within you,so what do we have to do.
Let's go find it. It's likemining for gold, digging a hole for
gold or silver. The Kingdom ofGod is within you, and it takes
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labor to find it. The thirdfactor can only be tested against the experience
of each individual. Modern psychotherapy demandsthat we also find a place for emotions.
In the West, we have cometo adopt a rather unexamined notion that
these somehow belong to the heart.But this is not the way the Orthodox
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fathers understood this situation at all.Instead of associating emotion with the heart,
it seems more straightforward if we wereto treat emotions as the reactions of the
physical to the thoughts emanating from themind. Many people experience the mind as
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an almost constant commentary going on inthe head, while others are simply aware
that making the mind quite is avery difficult task. Trying to count from
one to ten without having an interveningthought, including those inevitable ones like gosh,
I'm able to count without having athought is extremely difficult. However,
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it is not until we learn toquiet thoughts that there is even a possibility
of learning to use our hearts.And it seems like the whole system is
against that. When I've gone toa gas station, as soon as I
pick up the nozzle to put fuelin the car, of video starts or
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music starts, and there's this noise. It's always noisy, And I'm talking
about silence, which is the oppositeof all that noise. Turning the TV
off, turning the radio off,stop the noise. But why do we
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have all that noise apart from anythingelse. The mind uses noise constantly to
reassure itself of its own existence.The language of the heart, on the
other hand, is silence. HereI'm not referring to an empty silence where
one is simply waiting for something tohappen. Rather, I refer to the
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overflowing silence, the silence which isparts means of communication, a full and
profound experience of being, and ofdeep awareness of God. So what is
the nature of thought? Some thinkingis necessary and beneficial. For example,
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when we are driving, it isessential to have the ability to think,
since we must constantly be making comparisons, measuring distances, judging how much gasoline
to you, deciding them when weneed to apply the breaks in order to
stop at a certain point, andso forth. Analysis from the most simple
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to the most complex is achieved bythe mind. Thinking, when it is
necessarily and useful, is one ofthe highest capabilities of mankind. However,
what we understand from the teaching ofthe Fathers is that since the Fall,
this thinking has gotten out of hand. Our thinking has been distanced from our
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hearts and has suffered as a result. Unfortunately, as a result of the
fall of Adam and eve, thereis dysfunction of the heart. Also,
one powerful image which describes this isthat of a mirror. If we see
the soul as a mirror, wehave a beautiful example what it means to
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be fully human. When healthy,we mirror the grace of God. The
cleaner the mirror, the more polishedit is, the more clearly it reflex
the glory of God. However,as a result of the fall, this
mirror has been covered in dust.Sometimes the dust is so thick that it's
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not possible see to see that thereis in fact the mirror beneath the dust.
It simply looks like a dusty pile. However, once we start to
clean the mirror, which is essentiallythe work of prayer and fasting, then
the mirror slowly comes into view oncemore, and the dust is gently swept
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away from its surface, and thelight can shine once more. The mind
and the heart have been alienated fromeach other, and the result is that
the mind has started to function onits own, separately from the heart.
The heart, meanwhile, has beenalmost entirely hidden from view or even obscure
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the mind. The mind does morethan this, however, it actually has
the audacity to set up stop onits own, and it starts behaving as
it had the life of its own. This is where the problems starts.
The mind is a very good andvery valuable tool. Well, it does
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not have the strength of character tobe independent. It is as if a
person had a computer, a personalcomputer, which he uses for all of
his work, appointments, contacts,finances, and other matters. The one
day the computer went on the Internetand started to communicate with others as it
were the person who owned it.As if the computer of mine, we're
(47:01):
able to get on the Internet andconverse with other people, calling itself father
mel. You know that's where AIis coming in, isn't it. You
noticed that this artificial intelligence now,and it's it's moving at an exponential rate.
And I don't know if we havethe social skills to deal with this
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AI, this artificial intelligenion, artificialintelligence. We don't know where it's going
to go. All I can dois think about the movie The Terminator,
of the whole series of the Terminatormovies, and where sky net. You
know, that big computer in thesky sky net and it becomes aware and
the next thing you know, isdestroying humankind. Because the machines are taking
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over. I just think that's amarvelous thought that we need to be careful,
you know, we need to becareful. So when I talk about
is taking over, this is almostexactly what the human mind has done.
It's strange from the heart. Seesseparate from the heart, the mind is
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set up an independent operation, andit begins to act with a sense of
independence, which, if on check, brings ruin and destruction to everything it
touches. Why is this process sodestructive? The answer lies mainly in the
way in which the mind was setup to operate. The mind is the
great defense system needed to process allthe information which we received. However,
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in doing so, the mind isvery self centered, judgmental, and fearful
of attack. It expects and assumesthe worst from the world, from other
people, and ultimately from God.It is as if the mind had the
task of writing one's life history.In the title of this history, we're
always yes, but what about me? Every little detail in the universe is
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measured by the mind against its usefulnessto the mind's story of itself, the
ego, and so doing, themind attempts to replace the real center of
being the heart the news with acenter of its own creation. The needs
and desires of the mind are limitless, so are the fears. The mind
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is the guardian of memories and fantasies, the past and the future, respectively.
And at this point I want tobring the show to a close because
there is so much information more coming. I'm going to have to do a
part two on how is your Heart? And I laid out a lot of
information to you this morning, butthere's more to come. And so let's
(49:37):
break this into two parts and pickit up when I come back and do
part two of how is Your Heart? In the name of the Father and
of the Son and of the HolySpirit. Amen, thank you, Thank
(50:00):
you for listening to the O GlassomeLight Podcast. We hope this program has
encouraged you to fight the good fightof faith and walk in the accordance with
the commandments of our Lord. MayGod bless you on your journey to salvation.
The topics and opinions express in thefollowing show are solely those of the hosts
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We make no recommendations or endorsements forradio show, programs, services,
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Any questions or comments should be directedto those show hosts. Thank you
(00:20):
for choosing W FOURCY Radio. Welcometo the O Glansome Light Podcast. This
program contains preaching and teaching from anOrthodox Christian perspective to help you in your
(00:44):
walk with Jesus Christ and to bevictorious in Him. Well, welcome to
the show. It's all Gladsom liveevery Monday at eleven o'clock in the morning
Easter and Standard time. I'm yourshow host, Doctor al Mans also known
(01:04):
as Father Petros, and I havea Doctor of Divinity degree, so I
have some education there behind me.Also broadcasting from wffour Cey Internet Radio and
it's around the world twenty four toseven. I also have a podcast on
(01:26):
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(01:49):
So go you can go visit bothof them YouTube sites. And also
you do't hit the bell and benotified of new shows as they are posted
on YouTube. The show is blessedby Metropolitan Mcchiseldeck of the Orthodox Church of
Orthodox Church of Virus. It's inGreece. Our slogan is preparing Souls for
(02:13):
Heaven and broadcasting from Saint Peter andPaul Orthodox Chapel here in sunny West Palm
Beach, Florida. Today's show topicis titled How's your Heart? How is
your Heart? So we see commercialson TV about that Cardia mobile using your
(02:37):
phone and a Cardia Mobile app anda little device you can buy on Amazon
or so forth. And this littleit's like the size of a credit card.
You put your fingers on it andit will give you a medical grade
EKG. As the commercial says,Now that's a great device. I'll let
you know about a fib and allthat tack ofcardia blot all those things,
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But what about your spiritual heart?Have you done an ekg on your spiritual
heart? And I'm thinking, youknow, the physical heart is very important
because it keeps our body moving,But also the spiritual heart of mankind is
very important because that is the partthat is in relationship to God. Not
(03:23):
just what we see on the physicalbeing of the earth, the light,
the darkness, the animals, allthe senses, our five senses. But
what about our spiritual heart? Now, the prophet Jeremiah tells us the heart
is desperately wicked, and who canknow it? Of course, I know
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one person that knows it, andthat's Jesus Christ. He is the creator
of things seen and unseen in theheaven, on the earth, and beneath
the earth. In the Orthodox Church, he is called the Ponto Crato,
the Father Creator. If you havewalk into an Orthodox church and get into
the centered portion of the church andlook straight up, you'll see a dome.
(04:06):
And in the dome is a giganticicon of the Lord looking down on
his flock, his sheep. Alsothe Lord Jesus Christ. When the nations
are called to the judgment seed asscripture tells us only Christ will be seated
there because He is the creator.He gave the father a good pleasure for
(04:29):
his son to create. And thatjudgment seed we call it the sheep goat
judgment. I've done shows on thatbefore. Now, our heart without Christ
is desperately wicked, but it's notour fault. We have been bidden by
sin, the sin of Adam andEve in the garden. But we are
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responsible for the antidote to eradicate thesin in our heart. And the antidote,
antidote is only available from Christ andrequire us for us to surrender and
have humility. He says, ifyou want to follow me, you've got
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to do these things. Deny thyself, take up thy cross, and follow
me. Saith the Lord, andthe Lord promises that you will be a
new creation. All things are passedaway, and behold, all things are
brand new if you are following Christ. So now we're going to get into
a deep study of the heart.It is the way of salvation. And
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we have the mind and we havethe heart. And so this show is
going to attempt to talk about themind and the heart and how it's supposed
to work together. And you've gotto get out of your head and get
in your heart. Right now arethoughts are in our head, and God
seems to be outside of us.Your prayer and all your spiritual exercises also
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remain exterior. As long as youare in your head your mind, you
will never master your thoughts, whichcontinue to whirl around your head like snow
in a winter storm or like mosquitoesin the summer heat. You know,
I was thinking about this that ifyou do not follow the laws of God,
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you lose your moral compass, andevery evil thing can be accomplished.
And just look around you, allthe things that are happening in the world.
And it's because people have forgotten God. Alexander sultanis and wrote a book
(06:53):
in the Gulag called men have forgottenGod. And if you forget God,
anything is all things. There's nolimitation to what evil you can do.
You can do it all. Justbecause it's a majority doesn't mean it's right.
You and God are the majority.Now, if you descend into your
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heart, which may be a scarything, you will have no more difficulty.
Your mind will empty out and yourthoughts will dissipate. Thoughts are always
in your mind, chasing one anotherabout, and you will never manage to
get them under control. And eventhe church fathers tell us that the mind
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when you pray and your mind wandersaround, it's called mind diffusion, and
we're trying to master that, andthey'll take our life a lifetime to master
that. Now, if you enterinto your heart you can remain there.
Then every time your thoughts invade,you will only have to descend into your
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heart and your thoughts will vanished inthe thin air. Sounds pretty easy,
doesn't it, But it's going totake this show and probably Part two to
get through all of this teaching onthe heart, the mind, and the
way of salvation. This will beyour safe haven. Don't be lazy.
Descend you will find life in yourheart. There. We must live in
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our heart. Sat Theophon the Reclusesays this, I have been told that
I have a soul. Obviously,a soul is not something you can observe
or touch, like hands or feet. But the fact never worried me much,
since it is also true that Ihave a heart and a stomach,
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even though I cannot be absolutely certainwhere they are unless I took them up
in a book. Unfortunately, thereis no book I can look at to
tell me where my soul is.The same is true with regard to the
spirit. If I have a souland the spirit, how are they different
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from each other. I am notobviously aware of either one, and I
am less aware of the difference betweenthe two. What I am aware of
within myself is a mind with itsconstant stream of comments and instructions, and
a body through which emotions are felt. Physically, I can almost feel thought
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taking place in my head, apparentlya faulty notion of one that actually helps
in the long run by sending alimit to the area of the mind's activity.
And I can certainly feel strong emotion, most often in the upper chest,
sometimes lower, and sometimes as aconstriction in the throat. Since I
started the process of becoming an OrthodoxChristian more than forty six years ago,
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I have slowly become aware that myentire view of the human person need some
revision if I am to get themost out of my participation in the life
of the church. One of theless obvious, more important contributions to the
Orthodox Church is that it places infocus a view of the human personality,
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the human spirit, perhaps which isdistinct and quite different from that which is
presented or assumed to exist in almostall Western thought. And we live in
the West, and so by livingin the West, it's kind of easy
to have the Western thought. Butbecoming an Orthodox Christian you start you have
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to think Eastern thought. And thisshow is going to help hopefully with the
definition between the Western thought and theEastern thought. Many years ago, I
remember hearing that from an Orthodox pointof view, a Baptist or a Protestant
is simply an odd sort of aRoman Catholic, can you say, how
so, it's amazing that even thoughthe Protestant Church disagrees or does separated itself
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from the Catholic Church, that stillfollows their calendar. They still celebrate Christmas
on December twenty fifth, and theystill celebrate Easter on that same calendar,
the Gregorian calendar. Now later Idiscover that if you share this information with
a Roman Catholic or a Protestant,they get very uncomfortable rather quickly. From
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the point of view of the ChristianEast see the difference style West versus East.
Christian East. However, the theologyof the One is largely a reaction
against the theology of the other,and both are based on an understanding of
God and of the human person thatdiffers radically from the experience of the Christian
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East. There's going to be alot of words here in this study today.
This is going to be very,very scholastic. I guess you could
say it's like going to college.A part of this difference lies in the
attitude of the word mystery. Ingeneral terms, the Western civilization is dominated
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by the human mind, and knowingseems to take precedence over being b Ei
n G. Being in the Eastexperiences value over thought and the news of
the man. And I'll describe thata minute, described by Saint Maccadios is
the eye of the heart or theeye of the soul, and identified by
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Savocus as the innermost aspect of theheart is considered the most important element by
which a person communicates with God andindeed with the rest of the universe.
Now, in the West, amystery is a problem to be solved,
as can be seen daily on television. In the East, a mystery is
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an area where the human mind cannotgo, and where the heart alone makes
sense, not by knowing but bybeing. The theology of the Christian West,
for both Roman Catholics and Protestants,has a natural tendency to become a
system. Definitions are valued, andin the long term theology tends to be
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a matter for scholars. On theother hand, the theology of the Christian
Eese sometimes lacks system and often lacksclear definition. Theology is preeminently the Church's
experience of God, something to beentered in by the saints rather than understood
by the intelligence, and that remindsme of this scripture in First Cristians,
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Chapter one, verse twenty seven.God has chosen the foolish things of the
world to confound the wise, andGod has chosen the weak things of the
world to confound that things which aremighty. The writings of some of the
fathers of the Church indicate that,far from being the answer to all problems,
the mind of man is the placewhere most of our troubles start.
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For them, the path towards sanctityintels recovering the sense of intellect not in
the head, but in the heart, since they're at the center of the
life of the individual, is thepoint where he or she meets and communes
with God. For Orthodox Christians,receiving the sacraments, or rather participating in
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the mysteries of the Church, isnot a mental exercise, nor are the
emotions of any particular significance. Rather, participation in the mysteries is an encounter
with God in a very intimate anddirect way. It affects not the thinking
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of the individual, nor the feelingof the individual, but the very being
of the individual, the fathomless stateof awareness that exists and yet is dormant
in almost all human beings. Theexperience of the individual indicates that this profound
awareness often lies hidden in the barrageof thoughts and ideas. Thoughts not only
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clutter a person's awareness, but theyencourage that person to identify with those thoughts
the mind, rather than with thebeing which is the heart. According to
the Orthodox theology, the fall ofman is exhibited through the failure of his
noos or the eye of the soul, which in his heart, to function
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suddenly, or even to function atall, together with a general confusion of
the news with the functions of thebrain and of the body. In general.
This confusion goes so far to implythat the mind, together with its
thoughts, is all that really exists. And that the real center of being,
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the news or the heart, isof minimal importance if it exists at
all. Thus, most human livesare completely dominated by the tyranny of the
mind, together with its properties whichare fear and desire, depression and anxiety,
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and the real center of being,with its natural state of serenity and
communion, is ignored. The entirebasis of Western experience, summed up definitely
by discartis as cog cogito ergo sum, which means I think, therefore I
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am. In the Orthodox terms,it is the greatest of all distincts.
Far from being true, it isactually an expression that perpetuates the very factor
that causes the ongoing fragmentation of thehuman person. This important and fundamental difference
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between East and West is perhaps seenmore most clearly in the way that each
approaches the dilemma of the human situation. The fundamental area of interest for most
current Western psychotherapy is that of thoughtsand feelings. It is the arena of
thoughts and feelings that provides the backdropfor most perceived psychological problems and in which
(17:44):
healing is seen to take place.But in the East, by contrast,
spiritual therapy is the reintegration intergra sorry, reintegration of the mind and the heart.
The fathers of the Orthodox Church donot, as a rule, concern
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themselves with human emotions in the sameway as we do. What the fathers
do talk about is a logos me. Now there's a Greek word. Let
me translate that. It's called logosme in a Greek means thoughts and the
passions that go with the thoughts.These are two concepts. Thoughts and passions
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are closely connected. The classical expressionof the relationship and effect on one another
is as follows. I'm going togive you like five stepping stones into this
logos me, the thoughts. First, a thought comes to exist in the
mind of a person, seeking thatperson's attention and awareness. Now, Saint
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Biasios said this about those thoughts.They're like airplanes. Now, when you
stand outside or in your house orwherever you're at and a jet, a
commercial jet flies over. Do youpay attention to it or you just stick
hey there's another jet going over,or you maybe totally ignore it. Well,
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Saint Fiacio says, don't let thesethoughts like airplanes land in your mind.
Won't be a landing strip for thosethoughts. The second stage is a
period of interaction, during which theperson dabbles in the possibilities which the thought
brings. The third stage is consent, in which the person voluntarily consents to
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the thought, sometimes hoping to stopthe process immediately. Thereafter, only two
discovered that once embarked upon that itis very difficult. The fourth stage is
called captivity, in which the personis dragged further and further from the way
of righteousness towards spiritual destruction as aresult of the thought. And the fifth
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stage, the goal of the thoughtis passion. Here the person's entrapped and
sinful action is inevitable. When Iuse the word passions, it's different than
what we're probably used to. Thepassions are, uh, you know,
the passions that are good. Andthen the thall happened. Adam and Eve
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sinned against God, and then thepassions became corrupted and they're used improperly.
The aesthetic authors often seem to talkabout thoughts as if they were they arrived
at one time. However, whilethere is an awareness that some thoughts are
separate and single minded, there arealso streams of thought which are undifferentiated most
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of the time, and which followthe progression noted above, sometimes quickly,
sometimes slowly, and with many competingor even contradictory thoughts happening at a given
moment. The scheme outlined above,together with its progression, is logical and
(21:11):
works well in providing a model formuch of the human behavior, whether looking
at other individuals, at the entiregroups of people, or at ourselves.
And I thought about these five stepsI just talked about, and that you
know, when sin presents itself toyou, you have to make a choice.
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If you're a baptized christmated a Christian, okay, and you're in communion
with God and taking the mysteries ofthe Church, and all of a sudden
that you have there some thought inyour mind. They say that maybe the
demons or the devils are whispering inyour ear, that you have to make
a choice. You're supposed to bea child of God and to be able
(21:52):
to cast that thought away. Aslong as you keep that thought and entreat
it as I say in these fivesteps, you will fall into sin.
Don't yield to it. As asays of scripture, you will fall.
Now. However, it has alittle in common with mesage of modern psychotherapy,
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for which sinful action is rather lessimportant than guilt, lowest self esteem,
or depression, even if those conditionscome into being as a result of
a sinful action. None of usare without sin, all of sin and
falling short of the glory of God. Okay, understand that. But the
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antidote I talked about in the beginningis most important, the antidote of Christ
in your life being your life.Where the two systems overlap, however,
and provide us with a heightened awarenessis as follows. The passions, moods,
and the emotional states which most oftendominate the human personality, have their
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origin in thought, that is tosay, in the mind. Like almost
everyone alive, the great teachers ofOrthodoxy saw that the world is not a
perfect place, and we all knowthat just look around. They attributed this
situation to the narrative in the firstfew pages of Holy Scripture, which tells
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the history of our first parents,the man and woman Adam and Eve.
Through a misuse of the freedom thatGod had given them, Adam and he
fell from grace and were expelled fromparadise. They were created for immortality,
(23:48):
but because they violated a simple commandment, don't eat of this tree of the
knowledge of good and evil. Andthey went for it, were cast out
and became mortal. And God evensaid, you will return to the dust
of the earth. Now we theirdescendants are exiled with them, until our
(24:15):
participation in the life of Christ withinthe Apostolic Church, and the healing which
results from this, lead us backto where we belong. The way the
Orthodox teachers look at this story,however, is quite different from the way
in which it is it tended tobe understood in the West. I'm showing
(24:37):
you a difference between Western thought andEastern thought. In the West, commentaries
on these stories tended to emphasize thethemes of guilt, sin, and remorse.
Indeed, they clearly hinted that thesin of our first parents was somehow
sexual in nature, an attitude thatwould have enormous impact on the development of
(25:03):
Western psychology several hundreds of years later. For the East. By contrast,
the story of Adam and Eve isat its heart a story of disintegration,
fragmentation, and estrangement. The manand the woman and the world in which
they live are torn apart because ofthe disobedient behavior of our first ancestors.
(25:30):
Barriers came to exist between God andman, between heaven and earth, between
the one person and the other,between genders, and even within the human
personality itself. All was wrecked.You did it, Everything was wrecked.
At that point, the person alsohas become fragmented. The person has become
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fragmented and isolated, both externally fromthe outside world and internally right down to
the ultimate depths of his or herbeing. And that word I use fragmented
in the computer language. We wantto defrag that our hard drive, right,
(26:15):
and when we defrag the hard drive, poet works a lot better.
And the same applies to what I'mtalking about today in the mind. Now,
this fragmentation is what is wrong witha human person. The reverse unification
is the path which our path weare offered, which leads to God is
(26:41):
healing hisself and his salvation. Inthe Holy Apostolic Church, salvation is thus
understood as being something therapeutic, notsome form of legal loophole, nor even
a reward for a good life.Saint John Chrysostom tells us this, the
(27:06):
church is a hospital and not acourtroom for souls. Okay, she does
not condemn on behalf of sins,but grants remission of sins. Hopefully,
I'll give you some comfort. Buthow the Orthodox Church perceives this. It's
not a courtroom, it's a hospital. I mean, if somebody gets cancered,
(27:30):
do you send them to the courtroomor do you send him to the
hospital? Get it in the fieldof mental health that the diagnosis of multiple
personality disorder or disassodied disassotive identity disorderis becoming every ever more common. In
(27:53):
this serious pathological condition, parts ofthe whole person and seem to spark off,
sometimes as a result of identifiable traumaand at other times for no obvious
and clear reason. These personality partsthen lead separate lives in isolation from the
(28:15):
main identity of the person concerned,sometimes in complete isolation from the other personality
parts to the point where they areunaware of the other's existence. In less
extreme cases, patients suffering from themultiple personality of disorder are usually extremely disturbed.
(28:40):
Most ordinate people are able to exhibitsigns of separate personality parts, although
within a more normal range, andthese parts do not generally work entirely alone,
nor are they out of touch witheach other. This phenomenon is most
easily demonstrated when one gets very angry, a condition that affects almost all of
(29:06):
us from time to time. I'mbecoming very angry. One often feels a
change occurring within oneself, and it'snot uncommon for such a person to feel
quite different, other, quite different, quite other than his normal self.
(29:26):
On being asked, how do youfeel when you lost your temper, many
will admit to feeling much younger,even to like a child, like a
temper tantrum. Have you ever beento the grocery store and seeing a child
laying on the ground, flopping backand forth and yelling and screaming because mom
won't get them that box of cerealor that candy bar. They go into
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a temper tantrum, And it's likewhen we get angry, we kind of
like go back into our childhood.On closer examination, it seems that the
person who loses his temper completely actuallyexperiences the world and events within it from
a point of view which is quitedifferent from that person's normal point of view.
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Things become skewed whenever this occurs,and it can occur quite frequently in
different ways. We see more evidenceof our internal fragmentation. There is one
feature of this process which is aparticular interest to those in the church.
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It is not difficult to demonstrate thatwe are not quite the same people when
standing in church as when we arein the workplace. Difference. In fact,
it is quite likely that we gothrough a number of changes as we
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enter a church building. And I'mtalking about an Orthodox church, and that
is the task of the architecture toallow this to happen. In a traditional
Orthodox church, as we enter thisthis temple, we are introduced, oh,
I gotta fix this. Wait,wind willing fix this and come back
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to this. And in a traditionalOrthodox church, we are introduced into the
sacred spaces and stages. When youfirst come in, it's the narthex and
that's where you would light a candle, kiss icons and so forth. And
then the next entry into the youwould come from the northex into the nave
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of the church was the center ofthe church. And then you'll see a
wooden that costasa has icons all overit, and behind that wall is the
sanctuary. And as we go through, we transform as we come in to
the church at each stage, andthat's by design. We are encouraged to
be more and more present the moresacred the space is. Those entering the
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most sacred space around the Holy altarare expected to be of the most present
of all. I've no bishops andpriests who were able to be totally present
while standing at the Holy Alter,yet they were very scattered and nervous when,
for example, they were conducting andmeeting or having a regular conversation.
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Here too, then is some evidencethat we are fragmented, since we go
from one stage of awareness to anothervery frequently and very easily, depending on
our circumstances. Nevertheless, we needto be aware that a person who changes
his or her personality under any circumstanceswhatever, is simply exhibiting signs of the
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sort of fragmentation which exists among usas a result of our fallen condition.
Going all the way back to Adamand Eve, people suffering from multiple personality
disorder recover, albeit slowly, whenthe different parts of their personality are united.
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There's no question here of parts beingexcised or exercised. These are personality
parts, albeit sometimes very unpleasant ones, which are part of the overall personality
and are required at some level tokeep the people concerned safe. And functioning
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so they need, so that theymight be able to cope with their lives
with the methods available. With themethods available in a clinical situation, it
is not uncommon to find personality partsin normal people which are quite unpleasant and
sometimes at least apparently downright evil.However, there is a great deal of
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difference between a difficult or unpleasant personalitypart which belongs to the person and fulfill
some role or purpose within that personality, and any form of demonic influence,
which is by its very nature aliento the personality. It is important to
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make a distinction between the two.Benevolent personality parts are usually the result of
unresolved inner conflict, and often turnout to be nothing more than the exaggerated
memory of parental control. The teachersof Orthodoxy who write about such matters generally
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indicate that there is a fragmentation ofthe human per personality as a result of
the fall. See it all stemsback to Adam and Eve, doesn't All
that goes back there in the gardenwhen they disobeyed God's commandment the not eat
of that tree, the fast fromthat tree. And they didn't. They
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were seduced by the serpent, andbecause of that they were kicked out.
Now result of the fall that thereis a definite and definable split between the
body and the person, however thatis experienced, and that there is also
a vast abyss placed between the heartand the mind, with the mind appearing
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to be dominant, very often tothe point of identifying itself as the entire
person. There is more psychotherapy aimsat healing the pragmentation of the mind by
encouraging the acquisition of insight and theapplication of method and system and sometimes even
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common sense to chay to achieve achange. The spiritual path of Orthodoxy does
not stop there, since the nextstage the reintegration reintegration. I have trouble
without that word. Reintegration. Reintegrationof the heart and mind is also necessary
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and a deed often seen as thewhole purpose of prayerful effort or ascetic labor.
Now there's a Greek word called aschessasthetic labor, the struggle and training
in the spiritual life of self discipline. Let me go further with that.
The goal of aschesis by prayer andfasting, and aesthetic labor is the goal
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is the purification of the heart toobtain a relationship with God and the Holy
Trinity. That's why we promote andinsist on everybody, not just monks,
but everybody could be have asthetic labor. The Orthodox picture of the person includes
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a part, then news, whichis the eye of the soul, which
is of primary importance in the healingof the individual from the Orthodox point of
view, and is ignored entirely inWestern secular therapy. The process of fragmentation
consists in removing thoughts from the mindin the heart where they belong, and
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placing them in a state of semiindependence in the brain. The reversal of
the situation is possible not by actingof determination of our minds. Indeed,
anything determined by our minds usually endsup in Some sort of healing is available,
but it only can be powered bythe grace of God. Few people
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ever discuss what it feels like tobe inside of their own bodies. We
seldom talk about how we feel thoughtsthinking internally, or how we experience the
various sensations which we call collectively life. Apart from pain, about which we
can talk about a great deal,little if anything, is said about what
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it feels like to be alive withinthe church. We might add another question
to supplement this process. How isit possible to internalize the experience of the
Orthodox Church? What does it meanto participate in the process of salvation?
What is the role of feelings,thoughts, dreams, anxieties and other sensations
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finances of these questions, it isuseful to have a pattern or framework which
is both easily understood and easy towork with. Now, what I propose
is the adoption of the very simpleversion of the teaching of the various Church
fathers, that is a basis readingHoly Scripture and studying the Church Fathers.
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There are three main ideas that I'mgoing to talk about right now. First
of all, the mind, thesource of the logos met the eye of
the soul or the eye of theheart, creates an awareness of a shallow
or sometimes false sense of self.The story or perhaps drama would be a
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better word, with which this shallowself concerns itself throughout life is collected together
with the ego of that particular person. As a result of the fall,
this sense of self is broken,and although it mimics reality, it is
actually an invention of the individual personand not real at all. In this
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scheme, the ego is not partof the personality. It is rather a
story told by the mind. Secondly, there is a deeper self in many
ways, a more real self whishis to be found in which the fathers,
the Church Fathers very verishly called theheart the noos of the soul.
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This key element is often hidden andalmost always ignored in the Western world.
However, it is through this nowsthat we have the ability for direct contact
with God, or, in thewords of Saint John Chrysostom, the possibility
of finding the gate to the Kingdomof Heaven. That reminds me of a
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that Jesus said when he was preachingon this earth. He says, the
Kingdom of God is within you,so what do we have to do.
Let's go find it. It's likemining for gold, digging a hole for
gold or silver. The Kingdom ofGod is within you, and it takes
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labor to find it. The thirdfactor can only be tested against the experience
of each individual. Modern psychotherapy demandsthat we also find a place for emotions.
In the West, we have cometo adopt a rather unexamined notion that
these somehow belong to the heart.But this is not the way the Orthodox
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fathers understood this situation at all.Instead of associating emotion with the heart,
it seems more straightforward if we wereto treat emotions as the reactions of the
physical to the thoughts emanating from themind. Many people experience the mind as
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an almost constant commentary going on inthe head, while others are simply aware
that making the mind quite is avery difficult task. Trying to count from
one to ten without having an interveningthought, including those inevitable ones like gosh,
I'm able to count without having athought is extremely difficult. However,
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it is not until we learn toquiet thoughts that there is even a possibility
of learning to use our hearts.And it seems like the whole system is
against that. When I've gone toa gas station, as soon as I
pick up the nozzle to put fuelin the car, of video starts or
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music starts, and there's this noise. It's always noisy, And I'm talking
about silence, which is the oppositeof all that noise. Turning the TV
off, turning the radio off,stop the noise. But why do we
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have all that noise apart from anythingelse. The mind uses noise constantly to
reassure itself of its own existence.The language of the heart, on the
other hand, is silence. HereI'm not referring to an empty silence where
one is simply waiting for something tohappen. Rather, I refer to the
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overflowing silence, the silence which isparts means of communication, a full and
profound experience of being, and ofdeep awareness of God. So what is
the nature of thought? Some thinkingis necessary and beneficial. For example,
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when we are driving, it isessential to have the ability to think,
since we must constantly be making comparisons, measuring distances, judging how much gasoline
to you, deciding them when weneed to apply the breaks in order to
stop at a certain point, andso forth. Analysis from the most simple
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to the most complex is achieved bythe mind. Thinking, when it is
necessarily and useful, is one ofthe highest capabilities of mankind. However,
what we understand from the teaching ofthe Fathers is that since the Fall,
this thinking has gotten out of hand. Our thinking has been distanced from our
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hearts and has suffered as a result. Unfortunately, as a result of the
fall of Adam and eve, thereis dysfunction of the heart. Also,
one powerful image which describes this isthat of a mirror. If we see
the soul as a mirror, wehave a beautiful example what it means to
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be fully human. When healthy,we mirror the grace of God. The
cleaner the mirror, the more polishedit is, the more clearly it reflex
the glory of God. However,as a result of the fall, this
mirror has been covered in dust.Sometimes the dust is so thick that it's
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not possible see to see that thereis in fact the mirror beneath the dust.
It simply looks like a dusty pile. However, once we start to
clean the mirror, which is essentiallythe work of prayer and fasting, then
the mirror slowly comes into view oncemore, and the dust is gently swept
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away from its surface, and thelight can shine once more. The mind
and the heart have been alienated fromeach other, and the result is that
the mind has started to function onits own, separately from the heart.
The heart, meanwhile, has beenalmost entirely hidden from view or even obscure
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the mind. The mind does morethan this, however, it actually has
the audacity to set up stop onits own, and it starts behaving as
it had the life of its own. This is where the problems starts.
The mind is a very good andvery valuable tool. Well, it does
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not have the strength of character tobe independent. It is as if a
person had a computer, a personalcomputer, which he uses for all of
his work, appointments, contacts,finances, and other matters. The one
day the computer went on the Internetand started to communicate with others as it
were the person who owned it.As if the computer of mine, we're
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able to get on the Internet andconverse with other people, calling itself father
mel. You know that's where AIis coming in, isn't it. You
noticed that this artificial intelligence now,and it's it's moving at an exponential rate.
And I don't know if we havethe social skills to deal with this
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AI, this artificial intelligenion, artificialintelligence. We don't know where it's going
to go. All I can dois think about the movie The Terminator,
of the whole series of the Terminatormovies, and where sky net. You
know, that big computer in thesky sky net and it becomes aware and
the next thing you know, isdestroying humankind. Because the machines are taking
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over. I just think that's amarvelous thought that we need to be careful,
you know, we need to becareful. So when I talk about
is taking over, this is almostexactly what the human mind has done.
It's strange from the heart. Seesseparate from the heart, the mind is
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set up an independent operation, andit begins to act with a sense of
independence, which, if on check, brings ruin and destruction to everything it
touches. Why is this process sodestructive? The answer lies mainly in the
way in which the mind was setup to operate. The mind is the
great defense system needed to process allthe information which we received. However,
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in doing so, the mind isvery self centered, judgmental, and fearful
of attack. It expects and assumesthe worst from the world, from other
people, and ultimately from God.It is as if the mind had the
task of writing one's life history.In the title of this history, we're
always yes, but what about me? Every little detail in the universe is
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measured by the mind against its usefulnessto the mind's story of itself, the
ego, and so doing, themind attempts to replace the real center of
being the heart the news with acenter of its own creation. The needs
and desires of the mind are limitless, so are the fears. The mind
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is the guardian of memories and fantasies, the past and the future, respectively.
And at this point I want tobring the show to a close because
there is so much information more coming. I'm going to have to do a
part two on how is your Heart? And I laid out a lot of
information to you this morning, butthere's more to come. And so let's
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break this into two parts and pickit up when I come back and do
part two of how is Your Heart? In the name of the Father and
of the Son and of the HolySpirit. Amen, thank you, Thank
(50:00):
you for listening to the O GlassomeLight Podcast. We hope this program has
encouraged you to fight the good fightof faith and walk in the accordance with
the commandments of our Lord. MayGod bless you on your journey to salvation.
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