At the beginning of the way home
Essentially, our life is a way to God and eternal life with Him. But where does the path that should lead us to the Father and our true Home begin?
Today, we are looking aghast at what is happening to the world and humanity. We place our hopes on the "big men" who have the authority and power to sort out this situation and stop the madness. But I believe these hopes are in vain. To understand how we can get out of this situation, wise from life's experience and ready to become citizens of heaven, we need to understand our own nature. This is the beginning of the path that should lead us to the Father and our true Home.
In its current state, humanity resembles a broken vase. The soul has fallen and shattered into pieces. The mind has flown out of the heart (the spiritual center of our personality) into reason. The reason left the mind and flew into the world, which lies in evil. Therefore, the first task is to glue the vase back together, i.e., return to the primordial, natural state of Adam. The second task is sanctification, i.e., transforming all the properties of human personality by the fire of grace so that it can no longer break.
Initially, the mind was given to Adam for prayer and contemplation, while the reason was granted for creativity and arranging the world in accordance with God's will. Unfortunately, we have stopped noticing how our mind, like a lustful dog, runs all over the world. It continuously mates with all sorts of thoughts, from which passions are born, producing sins. Will and desires – the two irrational forces of the soul – give birth to various kinds of passions from this coupling.
Even living with utmost care, a person will never be able to control their mind solely by an effort of will. We cannot make the mind free from thoughts, which are generally of a passionate nature.
So, when we stand for morning or evening prayers, forcing the mind to follow the spoken words, it can stay with us for a while. But as soon as we stop doing this, the mind runs away, and catching it becomes impossible.
The only solution is a constant, uninterrupted short prayer, recited with attention and heartfelt feeling, which can become a chain keeping our mind from wandering into thoughts. The Jesus Prayer is best suited for this purpose.
As the experience of prayerful people shows, "reason" can engage in everyday affairs without any harm to itself. Achieving such an arrangement immediately is impossible, it requires practice and effort. But there is no doubt that it is possible. Over time, the Jesus Prayer itself attaches to the heart of the ascetic and becomes "self-moving" but this is not the result of the efforts of the one praying, rather it is a gift from God for their labor. It is impossible to achieve this by one’s own will alone.
But even this is not the end, only the beginning. It is easier to receive this gift than to retain it. If one succeeds in this, the prayer merges with breathing, and the mind enters the heart, marking the beginning of a person's spiritual life. Everything up to this point is merely a prelude, attempts to reach the starting line.
Spiritual life can only take place in the Holy Spirit; if He is not acting within us, then there is no spiritual life to speak of. When our mind is in fornication with the world, overwhelmed by impure thoughts, feelings are mired in passions, and the will is possessed by demonic energy. In this case, the "delusion" is the belief of a Christian that if they regularly read the Word of God, perform morning and evening prayers, and occasionally take communion, they are living a spiritual life.
That is why experienced prayerful people recommend that in order to sanctify the mind, purify the feelings and will, we should be attentive to ourselves and consistent in prayer.
It is obvious that if the mind is not praying, it is occupied with various thoughts. Of course, it is very difficult to maintain constant prayer, so periodically it needs to be alternated with divine contemplation (reflection on the read spiritual text) and walking before God (a constant sense of God's presence in one's life). The main task at this stage is to learn to keep the mind as close to the heart as possible, not allowing it to escape again into the mire of sinful thoughts and break free into the wilds of passions.
Baptism opens the path to the renewal of nature. It breaks the metaphysical union with the devil. From now on, the devil is expelled from within the person, continuing to influence from outside, but no longer as a master but as a tempter. However, as long as we are subject to the influence of passions, we are unable to perceive grace directly. The place of spiritual battle is the human heart. In asceticism, this is the place where the man’s essence or his spirit is concentrated. The mind is the energy of the soul, which manifests in the act of thinking. In the anthropology of hesychasm, reason and mind are two different independent principles.
The original mission of the mind is continuous prayerful communication with God. Its initial dwelling place is the heart. Reason is the tool for understanding the world, connected with intellect and the area of the brain. All lower cognitive abilities of a person, such as imagination and memory, are involved in its work. Sensory perception of the world is one of the functions of reason. But this is not the process of thinking, but only the delivery of raw materials for it. Reason, and its bodily organ—the brain—are tools of knowledge rather than organs of comprehension.
The mental power of the soul is defined as the combined activity of the mind and reason. One of the catastrophic consequences of the fall is that the human mind separated from the heart and united with reason.
In this state, it has learnt activities associated with earthly concerns and, consequently, lost its natural ability for prayerful contemplation of God. The human soul can return to its normal, healthy state only after the original order of man is restored, in which the mind dwells in the heart, and the heart – in God.
Sin is the rupture, the isolation of the mind from the heart, and the squandering of its energy on the things of the mortal world. The restoration of the soul and its wholeness is possible only through supernatural means—by grace. The main means of acquiring grace is bringing the mind into the heart, for which the Jesus Prayer is used. Without the mind, the heart is blind, deprived of guidance. And the mind, in its current state, is scattered outside the heart across the world in various thoughts. Here lies the beginning of the disharmony of human life. Misunderstanding these fundamentals nullifies the prayer practice of many Christians. Prayer is valuable not by itself but because it should lead the soul into the right, harmonious order.
The main effort in the inner struggle is the feat of sobriety (being attentive to all processes occurring within our mind, will and feelings). This is the focus of our efforts. It is necessary to reject not only obvious sinful thoughts but also all natural thoughts and feelings, no matter how subtly they disguise themselves as seeming righteousness, because it is they that destroy the connection of the mind with the heart.
If there is no constant vigilance over thought and feeling, then all our good deeds and even our faith will be in vain.
Prayerful sobriety, persistent efforts of the will—this is a time of struggle for beginners. To win, constant turning of the mind and heart to God is needed. If zeal decreases, intentions weaken, then grace also ceases to act. As much as the heart is purified, so much it is also enlightened. The purification of the heart means healing the soul's thinking, irritable and desirous powers. The thinking power of the soul is its rational, verbal cognitive power. The irritable power is its sensory-emotional ability. The desirous power is the volitional ability. The thinking power is the rational part of the soul, and the last two are the passionate parts.
The spirit of man rules over all three powers. The spirit, being the personal and essential center of the soul, forms the very core of our spiritual heart. These three powers of the soul are meant to exist in harmonious order. But we have fallen—they were disrupted. The mind has forgotten God, united with reason, and "grounded itself". Feelings and will have become confined to the narrow bounds of lust and self-love and are under the tyranny of passions. Until these principles are purified, union with God and the perception of eternal life are impossible. Healing must be comprehensive: all three parts are sanctified by prayer.
There is also a specific specialization: the will is healed by asceticism, feelings – by love, and the mind – primarily by sobriety and prayer. Asceticism includes not only obedience and abstinence but also mental fasting, specifically, abstaining from excessive information, limiting external impressions, experiences and communication. Comprehensive abstinence, from bodily needs to the need for information, is an important condition for the purification of the inner person. In the monastic ideal, this is complete withdrawal from the world; for laypeople, it is following this rule as much as possible.
The fruit of such asceticism and its logical result should be what the Hesychast fathers call "initial dispassion". Then grace or the uncreated energy of God begins to enter the purified and passion-free emptiness.
