WEB 4 -  ARCHIVE

Commentary 19 - Page  1

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God’s drill

The beauty of some Christian services is a support for those who lack a sufficiently strong memory of the reality of the divine light of consciousness itself. In esoteric Christianity, this memory is achieved in two ways.

1. One method is essentially under our control, and depends on complex methods of taking the search deeper until it totally transcends our ordinary everyday state of consciousness.

2. The other is outside our control and involves the great crises in our lives; crises that may wake up individuals or, as in the time now coming on us, whole civilizations. 

Starets Leonid in Russia, conscious guide of one of Russia’s great esoteric monasteries, sadly closed down by the communist regime, clearly recognized the existence of these two possible paths of growth I referred to earlier.  He spoke of two forms of practice that can be described as the path of effort and the path of suffering. "Whoever the Lord visits with a grievous trial, sorrow, or the deprivation of a beloved person or people close to him such a person will involuntarily pray with his whole heart and all his thoughts and with all his mind. Consequently the wellspring of prayer is in everyone, but it is tapped either by gradually delving deeper and deeper into oneself in accordance with the teachings of the Holy Fathers, or instantaneously, by God's drill." (Father Clement Sederholm - Elder Leonid of Optina -  p40 )

 One of these paths is to work against our buffers helped by some school.  The other, God’s drill, is to be given help to work against them.  The first of the two is easier.  The second is quicker.   When the first fails us, we may by grace be given the second.  Many of those who knew G knew these two presences intimately. The two combined make up the process of esoteric Christianity, and accord totally with the spirit of G’s teaching that we should face up to difficulties instead of avoiding them. In esoteric Christianity, what does one do? There is no fixed formula.  But the best answer to this question was given by another Russian elder, Saint Seraphim of Sarov, who wrote a little pamphlet called 'A Marvellous Revelation to the World'.  A man asked Saint Seraphim about the Christian life - "What are we supposed to be doing?" and Seraphim said: "You have a question for which nobody has given you a proper answer. Everyone has been giving you evasive answers."   And St Seraphim said about this that: "But nobody has told you the right answer.  They tell you to follow the rules.  They tell you to go to church.  They tell you to do so many prayers a day.  They tell you to take confession.   They give you all the usual instructions but they haven't actually answered your question at-all.   The answer is this: that the aim of all our work is to acquire the Holy Spirit.  And all these methods are good which are recommended, but they are no use unless they are used for that purpose." 

 But do we even know what this might mean: to acquire the Holy Spirit?

GOD'S DRILL

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Spiritual crisis of the West  

Notices to Readers