Entering into ourselves

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Progressive entry into ourselves 

We need to create a separation between the deepest part of our nature and our everyday psychology. To do this, we need to turn our attention deep into our own organism by an effort to take our awareness into the point of decision in our nervous system, and to begin this process by taking note of our own posture. This leads our attention into ourselves in the correct way to perceive and control the movements of our body and from this point, which is the point where body and psyche are connected, it is possible to penetrate into the psyche. And as Saint Symeon said: "He who does not have attention in himself and does not guard his nous, cannot become pure in heart, and so cannot see God. "He who does not have attention in himself cannot be poor in spirit, cannot weep and be contrite, nor be gentle and meek, nor hunger and thirst after righteousness, nor be merciful, nor a peacemaker, nor suffer persecution for righteousness sake." (St. Symeon the New Theologian.)

The teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, tell us what we should become. They do not tell us how we should attain this. The answer lies within ourselves. In the centuries immediately after Christ’s coming, and beginning with Saint Paul, with the men (and women) who followed after him - and who were known as the early fathers of the church - added to the Gospel teaching a second layer: a system of practical teachings that was developed for more than a thousand years, but was to all intents discarded at the time of the Reformation.
It is this second layer of Christian teaching which Praxis seeks to reinstate. The problem is that this teaching need not only be understood in its original form, it needs to be understood in practice, and not simply in an intellectual way.

Rather tautologically, before it can be made to work in practice, it must be understood in practice.

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Almost exactly 1000 years later, one of the last of the saints who taught that system, Symeon the New Theologian,(d1022 AD - only fourteen years short of a thousand years ago.) gave a different view of the beatitudes, with a precision that serves as a practical definition of the main aim and the general difficulty of Christian psychology.
 

In Greek, more often than in English, the same word describes a thing in itself, and its activity, so the higher organising capacity called the nous gives attention, and one word for attention is therefore nous. In the Philokalia, the passage we just read is translated: “... if you do not guard your nous, you cannot attain the purity of heart necessary if you are to see God. Without such watchfulness you cannot become poor in spirit, or grieve, or hunger and thirst after righteousness, or be truly merciful, or pure in heart, or a peacemaker, or be persecuted for the sake of justice."
Later Symeon says: “To speak generally, it is impossible to acquire all the other virtues except through watchfulness.” (The Philokalia, the Complete text, Faber, London, 1995 Vol.4 p72.)
 

As Boris Mouravieff puts it in his Gnosis: The labourer is worthy of his hire. In Greek, more often than in English, the same word describes a thing in itself, and its activity, so the higher organising capacity called the nous gives attention, and one word for attention is therefore nous. In the Philokalia, the passage we just read is translated: “... if you do not guard your nous, you cannot attain the purity of heart necessary if you are to see God. Without such watchfulness you cannot become poor in spirit, or grieve, or hunger and thirst after righteousness, or be truly merciful, or pure in heart, or a peacemaker, or be persecuted for the sake of justice."

Later Symeon says: “To speak generally, it is impossible to acquire all the other virtues except through watchfulness.”  (The Philokalia, the Complete text, Faber, London, 1995 Vol.4 p72.)
*The whole stream of these special teachings of the early fathers was set-aside during the Reformation. Since then they have tended to be translated in an outward way, with no sense of the inner meaning.
As a result, that very exact inner meaning is only beginning to become known again today. The cure for the weakness of the human mind is found in the joy that God gives to those who do what he asks of them.

As Boris Mouravieff puts it in his book Gnosis: "The labourer is worthy of his hire."