"It's good to exist biologically, but to LIVE... is something else! And, of course, you LIVE... only in Christ!..."
(Fotis Kontoglou, +1965)
We must admit - and I am the first! - humbly and honestly, that… we 'live' conventionally, frivolously and aimlessly… in this ephemeral-worldly life, as if there were no post-biological continuity in a supra-worldly and endless life… that will 'judge' our 'investment choices' (conscious and unconscious), as managers of the time of our earthly sojourn! And we may, of course, promise ourselves (theoretically…) to aim for unconventional 'qualities' of a higher life… even beyond the limits of this world! However, we contradict ourselves (behaviorally…) with the… 'glaring absence' [ 1 ] from our scene, of obvious indications [ 2 ] of a transformed life… which, if they existed, would be 'felt' tangibly…!
We 'live' (by... habit and obligation!) a conventional everyday life... empty of meaning: an essential (qualitative) deficit... that drives us to nostalgically 'imagine' the 'taste' of quality...! At the same time, we see our 'life' being overwhelmed by overwhelming 'information' (from brain stimuli... and sensory challenges): a meaningless (quantitative) surplus... that makes us vomit with disgust at the 'excessive volume' of quantity...! And we wonder... if what we are forced -or maybe not?!- [ 3 ] to live in compromise corresponds to that 'something else'... that the blessed Kontoglou alludes to above, and that our innermost and deepest self longs (unconfessedly) to experience?!
"Every word is old. But life, if words are old...?!" (Saint Gregory Palamas).
INTERPRETATION: Every argument is opposed by a counterargument. But in the empirical 'feeling' of Truth... what argument can be opposed?!
The hopelessly shallow (and deeply desperate…!) 'answer' of logic: "No one has returned from the other life… to prove its existence!" reproduced by those who have never empirically 'felt' the living God within them, upon them, around them… is crushed by the 'counter-answer' of the 'madness' [ 4 ] of the Christ-worshippers: "But… we 'felt' the living God-Christ on fully living people… who have not yet departed for the other life, and therefore do not need to 'return' to earthly life to 'prove' the -superior to logical and sensory 'proofs'- mystery of eternal life… which is experienced only empirically, with the 'unspoken palpation' of the very innate Christ-named Truth..."! [ 5 ]
Fallen man has suffered incalculable damage… a) by his disconnection from God and his separation from the divine life… and b) by his submission to the addictions of sin and passions…! The godlike nature of man “made in the image and likeness of God” became seriously ill… his godly essence was completely deconstructed… and the former harmonious unity of the powers of his soul (logical-desirable-emotional) was broken into opposing ‘fronts’, which are in constant conflictual interaction. This sad-tragic ‘fate’ awaits every man who is separated from God, the Source of life… and ‘suicidally’ distances himself from the Society of His Life-Creating Spirit!
If we 'listen' carefully to the... disorderly 'pulsation' of our spiritual functioning (suspicious 'arrhythmias' to which we unnecessarily subject our mental harmony...), among our other latent pathologies, we will also detect a 'criminal' indifference to frivolous 'compromises' (conscious or unconscious) in matters that dangerously jeopardize our psycho/physical health! A compromising tolerance... that foolishly exposes our existence to the dangers of our passive 'familiarization' with unhealthy situations... that can very seriously threaten our spiritual life, upsetting all our existential balances...!
The points in question… where we all demonstrate, more or less, 'criminal indifference' to our soul, are two key spiritual pending issues… which we allow to dangerously linger within us: a) the (as immediate as possible) removal of our spiritual 'waste'… and b) the (as rapid as possible) discharge of our psycho/mental tensions and over-tensions…! A possible chronic prolongation of these threatening spiritual 'pending issues', which is 'tolerable' beyond the 'endurance limits' of our soul, can consolidate this toxic situation… with a direct detrimental impact on our mental health.
Of these two soul-destroying spiritual tasks (removing waste... and relieving the burdens of the soul), the individual 'passive tolerance' of each... and even more so the unfortunate combination of the two, seriously undermine primarily our psycho/mental... and subsequently our physical health, since all our psycho/emotional tensions... are pathologically somatized. Long before our spiritual collapse occurs, however, we have already 'traveled' enormous distances of life... without life, survival... without mental joy, existence... without spiritual joy, enthusiasm... without heart joy, experiencing as 'life' something sadly inferior to that (...) for which God created and predestined us!
However, it is not only that, by living thus unhealthily… we are deprived of the prospect of an eternal flowering and fruitfulness of our existence! Although this (which constitutes, of course, the greatest harm!) reduces our immortal existence to a lifelong perspective of biological duration, practically, along with our supramundane 'travel' destination, we also lose the very worldly 'journey' towards eternal life. That is, we are deprived, together with (and) the exciting experience of our earthly space/time 'journey' towards eternity! Because, living constantly under constant stress, turmoil and haste… we cannot enjoy, with godly pleasure and serene joy, any of the wonderful gifts of divine Love!
By subjecting our mental and physical powers to an incessant and pointless harsh test of their 'endurance limits' and continuous meaningless internal conflicts... we unknowingly prepare our mental and physical collapse! Because, by constantly violating the limits of our endurance, we tyrannically oppress both the 'queen-soul' itself and its 'throne' (body) with... disrespectful 'management' and exhausting suffering that torture it... and on the other hand, 'embodimentizing' all our mental 'pending matters' - our anxieties and depressions - that systematically sicken and poison it... making it vulnerable, weak, dysfunctional and ultimately subject to all kinds of pathologies...!
The Holy Fathers and Mothers of the Orthodox East, likened our ephemeral life in the present world… to the 9-month period of gestation of the human embryo, inside its mother’s womb! A critical period for the formation of the embryo, [ 6 ] during which the pregnant woman enlists all the attention of the mind… all the love of the heart… and all the attention of her sensory system, in the tireless care and safe custody of her fetus, so that it may develop smoothly and protected within its amniotic sac… until it is developmentally complete and emerges into the light of this world…!
Although the 'genome' of each person has unknown content [ 7 ] and may hold unforeseen surprises in adulthood…, maternal lactation during the crucial nine months of pregnancy is decisive for the formation of the personality of the fetus… without this meaning that it will not undergo drastic shaping influences after its birth. By the same token, the period of ephemeral life, in the present world… is decisive for the psychic -according to God- perfection of man, under the educational influences of Divine Grace… which will influence man only to the extent that the subject himself will 'allow' it!
Will we be able (will we… catch up?!), before our biological termination… (which will also determine our post-biological continuation) to correct the injustice we have committed so far…?! To take care of our psycho/physical entity… as it truly 'should' be as a value of divine majesty…?! To take care of it with royal care, like a 'blue-blooded' existence, which must be properly nourished… because it has been called to participate in the eternal Supper of the Kingdom of God…!
REFERENCES-FOOTNOTES
[ 1 ] Here, the speech is allegorical and rather biting… it speaks of a 'shining' ABSENCE (non-existence) of confirmed indications, as opposed to the literal speech about a 'shining' PRESENCE (existence) of certified evidence. That is, in certain circumstances, some things may 'shine' as present (make their presence felt…), while others may 'shine' as absent (make their absence felt…)!
From a language of astonishing expressive flexibility, such as Greek, where 'allegory' often competes with 'literality' to alternatively serve the needs of formulation, a phenomenon like this could not be missing: diametrically (subversively) changing the meaning of a phrase, with an 'inverse' conceptual use of the same verb!
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[ 2 ] In the renewed 'in repentance' life of a person, the 'obvious indications' that certify that he truly enjoys the supramundane 'quality of life' that God grants, are the nine gifts (fruit) of the Holy Spirit: "The fruit of the Spirit is Love, Joy, Peace, Longsuffering, Gentleness, Goodness, Faith, Meekness, Self-control..." (Gal. 5:22)!
INTERPRETATION: The spiritual 'fruits' that are accumulated/harvested by the cultivation of the God-like Virtues in the soul of man, and by the life-giving 'rain' of the Holy Spirit... are: LOVE [: a 'motherly' affectionate and very compassionate disposition of heart, for every rational or irrational soul...], JOY [: an endless spiritual joy and gladness...], PEACE [: an unwavering mental serenity...], LONG-SUFFERING [: an inexhaustible forgiveness...], CHRISTIANITY [: a spiritual nobility, like a garden of blooming goodness...], GOODNESS [: a perfect undefiledness and 'inability' for evil thoughts... feelings... and actions...], FAITH [: a completely confidential 'investment of the soul' in God…], PROFESSIONALISM [: a gentle behavioral sweetness…], TEMPERANCE [: a self-disciplined 'ascetic' frugality, towards all goods…]!
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[ 3 ] The compromised acceptance of the 'way of life' that we received from our ancestors, and were taught by our parents and teachers… may, at the beginning of our lives, seem 'forced' and without a choice of individualized differentiation. Operating within a framework of generalized social compromise…, it is captured in the bonds of a pan-human spiritual degeneration… However, it is literally 'in our hands' not to follow the all-powerful 'train' of loss… but to make our personal 'peaceful revolution' in the unfree and corrupt 'regime' of demonic captivity! A relentless spiritual slavery... that promotes the tender life of passion as the 'only' selectable way of life, that supposedly 'liberates' people from any moral commitment... according to the 'melancholy concluding' words of the great Dostoevsky: "Without God... everything is permitted!..."
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[ 4 ] The Faith of the Orthodox East… does not have logic as its 'background', but madness!… A super-logical 'holy madness' that sealed & seals all our Holy Fathers and Mothers, who "felt the Untouchable..."! With this in her mind and heart, the Russian writer and former Communist, Tatiana Goricheva - explosive personality! - professor of Philosophy (she taught "Aesthetics of Marxism" at the Leningrad Medical School), gave one of her wonderful books the title "The Madness of Being a Christian...", giving her personal 'stigma' to the agonizing existential search and finding of the living God-Father...!
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[ 5 ] The contemporary Saint Sophrony of Essex-England (+1993), in one of his writings (“Saint Silouan the Athonite”), states: When Pontius Pilate ‘judged’ the God-Man in the Roman praetorium, he heard Christ say to him: “I came into the world… to bear witness to the truth…” And then Pilate asked “And WHAT is the truth…?” But Christ did not answer this… because the question had been asked incorrectly! If the question had been posed correctly: “And WHO is the truth…?”, Pilate would have received the same answer that the Disciples of Christ received, a few hours before His arrest (during the Last Supper) from the same unfalsifying Self-Truth: “I am the Truth…” (John 14:6)!
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[ 6 ] The decisive 'criticality' of a woman's 9-month pregnancy, in the formation of the psycho/emotional 'personality' of the fetus she is carrying, has many times - both in earlier times and in our time - been the subject of study and research, both Scientific... and Holy Father's, with convergence... sometimes even identification of both views on many points. The certain points of 'divergence' of both views concern the 'range' of points... where the fetus is subject to the (negative or positive) influence of the environment, through its pregnant mother. And the scientific approach limits the influences of the fetus (always through its mother) to the psycho/emotional -only- field... while Orthodox Holy Father anthropology expands the possible (negative or positive) influences to other fields of the human, fetal soul...!
History preserves a characteristic incident from the life of the great Franco-Swiss Philosopher and Educator, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), when a wealthy noblewoman of the French Court had asked him - in exchange for a huge fee - to take charge of the education of her granddaughter. "In what month of pregnancy is your daughter?" Rousseau asked the noblewoman. "But... my granddaughter is already three years old!" replied the wealthy grandmother. "Ah! My respected Madam, you are late... I never take charge of the education of a child who has already been born!... It is impossible to correct mistakes and omissions... that your daughter made, out of ignorance, during the nine-month gestation of her fetus...!" replied Rousseau, meaningfully.
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[ 7 ] Although the managers of the 'capital' of our existence are ourselves (each in his own life), the 'package' that we initially receive for management... has not been chosen by us! More precisely, it is a completely unknown 'genetic load'... the qualitative/quantitative content of which consists of a 'dowry' of psycho/physical moments (virtues or passions) of undefined identity! This 'load' reaches us, the descendants, 'inherited' from our ancestral past. The genome has incorporated on it all the psycho/physical characteristics of our ancestors, up to seven generations deep (Basilios the Great)! Subsequently, we ourselves, personally, proceed to additive and subtractive 'adjustments' of said 'capital', depending on our voluntary/conscious choices...!
The moral formation of every soul that comes from non-existence to existence, goes through four 'phases' of evolutionary formation: a) The phase before conception [ancestral genetic load…] with the responsibility falling exclusively on the ancestors…, b) The phase after conception, during pregnancy, before birth [nine months of maternal pregnancy…] with the responsibility falling mainly on the mother…, c) The phase after birth, during infancy-childhood [breastfeeding-pedagogy…] with the responsibility falling mainly on the parents, the family environment and the teachers…, d) The phase after childhood, in adulthood [personal choices…] with the responsibility falling exclusively on the soul!
