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WEB 4 - ARCHIVE
Commentary 16 - Page 3 |
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Darkness of
the psyche The Hermit's Message
Way of Theosis Psychological method Prayer of the heart
praxis studies
Introductory studies
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The education of the psyche It is only after we have accepted an awareness of our limitations, implies Palamas, that we can begin our real education, the education of the psyche. But first, something else is necessary. Before we can be drawn to God, we not only have to discover our own limitations and develop discernment, we also have to begin to overcome the pull of the world. "Reconciliation to God leads to illumination," he tells us, but for this to happen we have to go deep into our own soul, and we cannot do this as long as we are all the while entangled in all these external things. The psyche has to be re-educated before it can experience and participate in the spiritual. Without this re-education even the most intelligent mind remains limited by the beliefs formed in it during childhood, and in our times those beliefs include the apparent certainty that the spiritual does not exist. This is why, as Palamas puts it, ‘the perfume of the mysteries’ continually evades the exterior philosopher. "It evades him," says Palamas ,"until he is finally rescued by a developing fear of God. This is a process that begins when we realise our own limitations and this awareness becomes more than purely intellectual; it must become emotional, and it must apply not only to our studies, but to the whole of our lives. Saint Anthony the Great in his ‘first letter’ (REF) refers to this when he speaks of three ‘levels’ of people seeking God, of which the first (and lowest) seek God to escape the troubles of their life. It is to people like this that the message of this section applies. Their problems are caused by the complications they have made for themselves in their outside lives. But as Palamas points out, to overcome the attraction of exterior things we have to free our inner lives from what he calls the ‘snares of the devil.’ ( 2 Timothy 2:26.) And today we all have difficulty with this idea of the Devil. Who or what is he, this Devil that everyone believed in all those hundreds of years ago? We do not really know. I do not know. But we can experience the things that this being or force was said to do to us. We will have little difficulty observing the snares, the ‘charms’ of this Devil, all the various things that lead to us spending all our waking time entangled in outside life. Palamas’ gives a list -reproduced below - that includes ‘wealth, fame and carnal pleasures’. But this is only part of the picture.
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