As I
progressed in the method of the Prayer of the Heart, I became aware that
this therapeutic energy was the uncreated energy of the Triune God.
The energy is holistic and adaptogenic. It would target the disordered
areas of my life - in body, mind, soul, and spirit - and bring them into
greater harmony and effectiveness.
As I
continued to shift the focus of my spiritual practice from head based to
heart based, I realized that the Eastern Orthodox liturgy was a delivery
system for the uncreated energy. Participating in the liturgy from the
heart opened up for me a deeper level of spiritual awareness. What I
had tried to understand with my head based reason became completely clear
when I began to use the intuitive faculties of the mind centered in the heart.
I began to
realize that all the many faculties we ascribe to being human - memory,
emotions, reason, passions, will imagination, attention and
concentration - where all really powers or faculties of the
soul. We are divinely created souls in synergy with bodies.
This goes against the materialistic view that the mind is what the brain
does. Rather, the mind (nous in Greek) is what the soul does. And the soul is
centered in the heart.
The practice of the Prayer of the
heart has
holistic health benefits that more and more research is confirming,
including that done at the Institute HeartMath and the Stanford Institute for
Transpersonal Psychology. This includes important research using the
Philokalia (Love of Beauty) an anthology of spiritual texts - really a
manual of spiritual practices of the Eastern Orthodox Church
spanning centuries They were compiled in the 18th century by Nikodimos
of the Holy Mountain and Makarios of Corinth. These texts have been translated
into English from he Greek by G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and
Kallistos Ware.
Many of the authors of the Philokalia
"show us the way to awakening and develop attention and consciousness..."St.
Isaac the solitary
says "In the fear of God let us keep our attention within ourselves
until our conscience achieves it's freedom. Then there will be a
union between it and us and thereafter it will be our guardian, showing us
each thing that we must uproot.
My practice of the Jesus Prayer of the Heart
taught in the Philokalia is an
excellent way of centering your mental, emotional, and spiritual faculties in your heart. But whatever techniques you use,
learn to first center them in the heart. And remember, it's
good for your health! And remember, these faculties are already in the
heart. But hey need to be healed! it is the centering of the mind
(nous) and attention in the heart which corrects the dysfunctions of the
faculties and brings them into a greater holistic harmony.
As
Metropolitan Vlachos writes in Orthodox Psychotherapy (p.165) "when the nous or mind returns from it's dispersion it first
finds the physical heart. and then it enters the spiritual heart, the deep
heart. This is the common experience of all who practice the Jesus Prayer
(of the Heart) and the holy work of the return of the nous to the heart".
Vlachos continues
"Consequently the athlete of this
hesychastic method can clearly distinguish the spiritual from the bodily
heart. He perceives the existence and the energy of both these hearts. In
the beginning the nous finds the bodily heart and then it also discovers
the spiritual heart, and it is able to perceive the movements of both
hearts at the same time. So there is no confusion in this situation. (Page
165)"
What we have been discussing are the holistic health benefits of this
return of the mind to the heart.
The following selections for the Preface of Metropolitan
Vlachos' Orthodox Psychotherapy (3rd ed. published by Birth
of the Theotokos Monastery, Levadia, Greece. Translated by Esther
Williams, 1994) introduces the therapeutic practices of the Eastern
Orthodox Church.
The term "Orthodox Psychotherapy" does not
refer to specific cases of people suffering from psychological problems of
neurosis. Rather it refers to all people. According to Orthodox Tradition,
after Adam's fall man became ill; his "onus" was darkened and
lost communion with God. Death entered into the person's being and caused
many anthropological, social, even ecological problems. In the tragedy of
his fall man maintained the image of God within him but lost completely
the likeness of Him, since his communion with God was disrupted.
However the incarnation of Christ and the work of the
Church aim at enabling the person to attain to the likeness of God, that
is to reestablish communion with God. This passage way from a fallen state
to divinization is called the healing of the person, because it is
connected with his return from a state of being contrary to nature, to
that of a state according to nature and above nature.
By adhering to Orthodox therapeutic treatment as
conceived by the Holy Fathers of the Church man can cope successfully with
the thoughts (logismoi) and thus solve his problems completely and
comprehensively.
I would like to reemphasize that the diagnoses of all
neurotic and pathological states are not the subject of this book; for
they belong to the domain of psychiatry and neurology. On the other hand
many psychological illnesses are caused by the anxiety of death, the lack
of meaning in life, a guilty conscience and the loss of communion with God
on man's part. Surely the theology of the Church can help by either
preventing or by healing people suffering from such existential dilemmas.
Thus psychiatry and neurology are called to cure
pathological anomalies, whereas Orthodox theology cures the deeper causes
that engender them.
The reader of this book will find in it the pathway by
which a person arrives at communion with God, thus fulfilling the destiny
of human existence as well as
the method by which a person can even find protection from
various physical illnesses.
Orthodox psychotherapy will therefore be more helpful
to those who want to solve their existential problems; those who have
realized that their nous has been darkened and for this reason they must
be delivered from the tyranny of their passions and thoughts (logismoi) in
order to attain to the illumination of their nous and communion with God.
All this therapeutic treatment or psychotherapy is
closely connected with the neptic (i.e. attentive watchfulness) tradition of the Church and its
hesychastic life as it is preserved in their texts of the Philokalia, in
the works of the Fathers of the Church and notably in the teaching of St.
Gregory Palamas. Certainly one should not disregard the fact that the
neptic and hesychastic life is the same life which one sees in the life of
the Prophets and the Apostles as is described precisely in the texts of
Holy Scripture. It will be made clear in the analysis of the chapters in
this book that the neptic life is in fact the life of the Gospels.
I am pleased that this book will be read by an English
speaking audience because I feel that the neptic and ascetic life had also
existed in the western world before it was substituted by Scholastic
theology.
Scholasticism, indeed, connected knowledge with reason
and has created serious problems when one confiders that knowledge refers
to the whole of human existence and is not simply exhausted by reason. I
believe that the greatest problem of western philosophy is that it
identifies the nous with reason and intellectual knowledge with existential
knowledge. Even contemporary scholars in the West point to
this fact.
In truth the neptic tradition is the common tradition
of both the East and the West, before the intrusion of scholasticism and
the identification of theology with metaphysics. And it is this tradition
which fully calms man's spirit which seeks fulfillment, inner peace and
stillness.
Within the turmoil and pain of today's world which
distresses us and torments us; and which forsakes us to real hunger and
thirst it is necessary that we find and live this therapeutically way, as
recommended to us by the Holy Fathers of the Church it creates spiritual
... and solves the existential, social and ecological problems. Surely the
holy Fathers of the Church preceded contemporary psychologists and
psychiatrists.
Persons who have been healed are the evidence that the
Church intervenes in society in a salvivic way. It is precisely this great
purpose which the Orthodox Church serves through her theology and life. (Metropolitan Vlachos)
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