The following memorial discusses complex subjects. For example, we'll walk through my current conceptions of creation's telos (chapter 1), prayer (chapter 2), epistemology (chapter 3), death (chapter 4), metaphysics and ontology (chapter 5)—to name a few. Should any topic contribute to unease, please pause your reading and resume whenever you feel ready. If you don't want to read a section, please don't read it!

Although this is my longest reflection to date, i truncated my commentary on certain topics wherever possible. Reading this memorial in pieces may be just as fruitful as reading it all together at once. Unlike what i said in dream grass, no longer do i wish "to write out my entire, unabbreviated philosophy". For, i have no worthy ideas of my own to share. You can find everything that leads to Life in The Holy Gospels, The Epistles, The Psalms and the rest of The Holy Bible. If you have no interest in searching through that Inexhaustible Treasure-House, then i'll save you some time: close this memorial because you will find no pearls here! 🙂

Finally, since the vast majority of this memorial consists of reading notes, most of what you'll read consists of nothing more than representations of jewels others mined that i paraphrased in my own words. Here's an easy rule to guide your reading: if it is wrong or indecipherable, assume that i wrote it. Otherwise, if it sounds profound, assume that the idea originated in a mind far surpassing mine.

Now, let's remember Alice Thomas ("Keezhvaipur Ammachi" or "Ammachi") and all she left for us to learn.

She bought herself more time here

though it cost her pain.

Surely, her soul shines brightly;

her intercessions, we gain.

Ammachi was born on February 16, 1950 and had the sharpest mind among her siblings according to her father (my great-grandfather), K.P. Thomas. Unsurprisingly, she was the naughtiest kid and, even, hurt some of her classmates in kindergarten. As her intellect grew, she graduated with high honors with a Bachelor's and Master's in Chemistry from CMS College in Kottayam. In fact, at that time, she had been the only person in her family who earned a Master's degree. After completing her studies, she received an offer to work at Mumbai's Bhabha Atomic Research Center. However, my great-grandfather prevented her from going and, instead, encouraged her to marry. After getting married, she taught Chemistry at BCM College in Kottayam.

When my mother was four, her family moved to the United Arab Emirates ("UAE") to find better opportunities. Ammachi got a job with the British Bank of The Middle East (go figure 🫠), where she worked until they moved back to Kerala in 1994. Despite living in Ajman, UAE during that time, Ammachi loved driving. Moreover, she was one of a small handful of women who owned a car. She thoroughly enjoyed driving kids to "Sunday" School on Fridays in the UAE.

My mother shared with me many fond memories of her mother. My mother recalled cooking with Ammachi—especially, making cutlets and cakes with her. Ammachi made yummy fish cutlets and chicken curry 😋

She remembers them driving her father (my grandfather) to work because he didn't drive. They returned home after dropping him off at ~4am, and Ammachi prepared their lunches. Then, Ammachi would drop my mother and her sisters at the bus stop before heading to work. On some days, she would drive my mother to school, which was ~1 hour away, for her morning classes.

In June 2013, my mother visited Ammachi and Appacha in Keezhvaipur. As she planned to see other nearby relatives, Ammachi leaped at the chance to drive them around. Despite its seeming insignificance, this story mainly sticks in my mother's mind because it happened two days after she completed her 2nd bout of chemotherapy.

Ammachi passionately undertook everything. Whether advising others or praying for them, she never hesitated to offer a helping hand.

In the two-thousandth and twenty-fourth year of Our Lord, on the twenty-sixth day of the third month, Ammachi fell asleep in The Lord. Her physical departure guided the following reflections :)

In May 2021, my family met in Detroit, Michigan, to attend the wedding of a close family friend. I flew in from San Francisco, California, while Papa, Mama and Dojay came from Herndon, Virginia. At the end of the weekend, my mother presented me with a gold chain that Ammachi had gotten.

The sheer volume of gold owned by Indian women is remarkable. In fact, the total gold owned by Indian women exceeds the gold reserves of the top five countries combined...According to a report from the Oxford Gold Group, Indian households hold a total of 11% of the world’s gold—more than the combined reserves of the United States, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Switzerland, and Germany.
~ The Times of India (Dec. 18, 2024)

Uniquely textured, the chain itself dazzled my eyes. However, the pendant carried far greater import, for it bore the form of The Cross. Until that point in my life, i had recklessly worn necklaces of various gods and demigods from Ancient Greek mythology. Moreover, at the time, i had wandered so far away from The Church that i had excommunicated myself from My Home.

For over a year, that Cross was the closest physical object to the heart beating in my chest—the closest reminder of My Lord and God's Salvific Work. Then, during the summer of 2022, i lost it. My mental calculations deemed that i had misplaced it during the season's hectic travel schedule, so i was thoroughly devastated. For more than 20 months, i lived without it.

Finally, during Great Lent this year, my parents called me with great news: they found the chain tucked away in our living room couch! Much to my delight, i hoped to get it back the next time i saw Ammachi. Yet, the day i recollected the chain—March 17, 2024—was also the last day i met Ammachi in this life.

how could something as "simple" as an ordinary arrangement of atoms impact my life so profoundly?

We can see so far away into space and time that we can observe photons that took billions of years to reach us, even, at the speed of light. Observing galaxies further back in space and time bears witness to changing chemistry—you can watch different atoms getting built up.

so, from where do all of the atoms comprising our body originate?

Only star cores can make large atoms (e.g., oxygen, carbon, calcium, any atom of which our bodies consist, etc.) because their nuclear fusion reactions combine smaller atoms. Hydrogen formed during the Big Bang, and star cores smash them together to create large atoms. However, star cores neither reach the temperatures nor produce the energy required to make larger atoms like gold.

Therefore, understanding how our planet has gold necessitates gazing up at the stars, for this precious metal is extra-terrestrial. Rather than emerging from our planet's geological evolution, its presence on Earth results from cataclysmic stellar explosions. Gold's alien origins trace back to the entire process of stellar formation.

All stars begin as immense balls of compressed gas. Most of the gas consists of hydrogen, the simplest and lightest element. As clouds of hydrogen condense to form a swirling mass, the compressed gas's outward pressure holds the inward pressure in check. The enormous pressure and friction due to gravity generate incredible heat, triggering a complex series of nuclear reactions (i.e., nuclear fusion) that ignites the hydrogen and births the star. Thus, the star shines!

Over billions of years, the star uses up its hydrogen. As the outward pressure falls, gravity to the star's sheer mass squeezes the central core tighter to produce tremendous pressure and temperature. The stars start forging helium at ~1 billion degrees, and the core continues contracting and increasing internal temperatures until it starts fusing helium nuclei to form carbon atoms. Subsequent fusion reactions materialize carbon, oxygen and neon, and each burns faster until the star produces iron and nickel. Now, with a density of ~50 tons per cubic centimeter and a temperature of ~2 billion degrees, neon starts fusing to form silicon. The energy return steadily declines as the star consumes each new element, and it starts changing rapidly—from every month, then every day and, finally, every hour. Finally, the star produces iron, a stable element that does not burn. Supposedly, one teaspoon of the core—now, ~200 km across—may weigh as much as 1 trillion tones, so 30 L would weigh as much as the entire earth.

Thereafter, nuclear fusion no longer releases enough energy to stave off the star mass's inward pressure on the core, so the outer layers collapse into the center and explosively bounce back in a supernova. The unfathomable amount of matter surrounding the core rushes inwards and collides with the now-solid core, creating a shockwave traveling outwards. A burst of neutrinos, formed in the star's dying moments, accompany this shockwave, and their combined energy transforms the star's outer layer into an intense stellar furnace that forges elements heavier than iron.

Moreover, the collapsing star's extreme pressure forces together subatomic protons and electrons to form neutrons. Neutrons lack repelling electric charges, so the iron group elements easily capture them. Multiple, sequential neutron captures enable the star to form elements it usually cannot: silver, gold, lead and uranium. While stars transform hydrogen into helium over millions of years, supernovas create the heaviest elements in seconds.

Ultimately, the star disintegrates in a supernova that blasts all these elements into space. For at least a few days, the star will shine with the intensity of 10 billion Suns. The expanding supernova shockwave propels its elemental debris through the interstellar medium, triggering a cosmic dance of gas and dust. Within weeks, only a nebula remains. The nebula will subsequently condense into other stars ("2nd generation stars") and recycle all the elements that its stellar ancestor bequeathed.

However, no trace of gold exists among the nebula's heavy elements. Curiously, forming elements even heavier than gold requires far more energy than what ordinary supernovas produce. Stellar evolution transforms simple hydrogen into complex elements, and the death of massive stars initiates even more extraordinary transformations. These stellar remnants—neutron stars—represent nature's ultimate laboratory for creating our universe's heaviest elements.

Neutron stars represent matter's final form before becoming a black home. Their insane power played an instrumental role in lacing our galaxy with the ingredients of life. Stars with at least 10x more mass than our sun eventually run out of fuel and collapse under their tremendous weight. Neutron stars follow from larger and less stable stars than sun-like celestial bodies, which expand into red giants before transforming into white dwarves at the end of their lifecycle. Their outer layers compress into the iron core and bounce back, exploding in a blinding supernova.

If the mass of the remnant stellar core weighs more than 3x that of our sun, runaway gravitational collapse will continue compressing matter beyond its Schwarzschild Radius to form an event horizon and, ultimately, a black hole. If the bygone stellar core's mass does not cross this critical threshold, the collapsing core lacks the weight to overcome matter's last line of defense.

The process squashes molecules together, and temperatures climb so high that they start breaking apart atomic structures. Soon, the core's iron mass becomes a dense soup of sub-atomic particles. The collapse crushes free-roaming, negatively-charged electrons into exposed atomic nuclei, where they merge with positively-charged protons and yield an abundance of neutral particles ("neutrons").

Eventually, bursting with excess neutrons, the core begins fighting against gravitational collapse despite being a mere fraction of its original size. Closely confined neutrons cannot occupy the same quantum state. Therefore, they constantly fluctuate and switch between states in the presence of other neutrons, producing a degeneracy pressure that resists their compression. Moreover, the same nuclear forces upholding atomic structures help the neutrons exert sufficient outward pressure to halt the collapse, packing the contents of the stellar body—now, no more than ~25km wide—as tightly as an atomic nucleus. Subsequently, the star's outer layers ricochet and explode in a supernova, leaving only the leftover neutron star.

Such extraordinary compression couples the neutron-rich environment with intense gravitational and magnetic fields, so nuclear processes can start forging new elements. However, although individual neutron stars maintain these unique conditions, their mergers spectacularly unleash their destructively creative potential. The extreme density, neutron abundance and unthinkable temperatures enable rapid neutron-capture nucleosynthesis ("r-process"), which the collision of stellar cores fully realizes.

This incomparable compression (i.e., neutron stars pack the matter of up to 2 Solar Systems into a sphere no larger than a city) drives some of the most extreme physical phenomena ever observed. A rigid, tortured shell of superheated iron on the outside of the neutron star encloses the hellish processes unfolding beneath. Its gravitational influence is so strong that the escape velocity exceeds slightly above half of the speed of light—so powerful that it, even, dilates time like a black hole. These torrid iron shells sizzle at blistering temperatures for hundreds of millions of years. Earth's nearest-known neutron star radiates at ~500k Kelvin.

However, beneath its crust, a crystalline mantle of nuclear pasta—long strings of squashed, neutron degenerate material—permeates in various intermediary states before manifesting as neutronium: the true form of matter theorized to exist in a superfluid state in the core. Along with the neutron star's rotational velocity, this superfluid's swirling immensely compresses the progenitor star and amplifies the stellar monster's magnetic field to hundreds of billions of times that of Earth.

The universe's most powerful magnets, neutron stars exhibit a broad range of electromagnetic phenomena that distinguish them from other observable stars and galaxies. However, their effects prominently appear in the radio, x-ray and gamma-ray frequencies rather than the visible light spectrum. Their spectra offer further insight into their nature and the objects surrounding them.

As neutron stars rotate, particles in their magnetosphere ride along flux lines toward the polar caps. Yet, when they arrive, they are radically repelled and blasted into space at relativistic velocities. Their acceleration causes them to emit synchrotron radiation, which is most prominent in radio wavelengths. These polar caps do not align with the neutron star's rotation, so their movement swings the funnel-like beams of radio energy around the body's circumference like a lighthouse. These signals often reach our planet as a series of strikingly periodic pulses.

Thus, we detected the first genuine empirical evidence of neutron stars. Some galactic pulses occur 1.3 seconds apart with pinpoint precisions. Given the number of supernovas that could've happened in our galaxy's ~13 billion-year lifespan, the Milky Way may have as many as ~1bn of these extreme, irradiating stellar cores lurking within its fields.

Typically, radio pulsars burn at their hottest and spin at their fastest within the first million years after their supernova births them. The pulsar will spin down if it exists in isolation without a significant stellar companion. It will lose its rotational momentum over time as it radiates gravitational and electromagnetic energy. The pulsar's magnetic field lines drag on their surrounding space and decay as it spins, transferring its kinetic energy into electromagnetic radiation. This process affects most neutron star emissions like longer-wavelength radio pulsars.

Otherwise, energetic short-wavelength X-ray and gamma-ray emitters require the neutron star to have a companion star, a donor object from which it can gain energy. If the pulsar hosts a stellar companion, it will eject swathes of material from the partner. It will cast some into space and sweep the rest into the surrounding accretion disk. Then, this disk's inside feeds the pulsar's surface. It grows the star's mass and tightly packs it while transferring angular momentum to increase its rotational rate. Thus, the neutron star spins up. These accretion-powered pulsars ("x-ray pulsars") prominently emit x-ray spectra. The magnetosphere captures swirling, invigorated electrons from the accretion disk, and their deceleration emits high-energy x-rays from auroral-like hotspots around the pulsar's polar caps.

Although radio pulsars can only spin down, x-ray pulsars can speed up, slow down or remain relatively constant in their rotational rates. Low-mass X-ray binaries occur when a small red or white dwarf star comprises the donor star. Alternatively, high-mass X-ray binaries occur when massive and unstable red or yellow giants constitute the donor. These pulsars strip abundant energy from their companion, spinning them up to some astounding velocities of hundreds of revolutions per second.

Pulsars rotating less than once every 10 milliseconds spin more than 100 times per second. Accretion spins millisecond pulsars ("recycled pulsars") to a substantial portion of the speed of light with an incredibly regular and periodic signal. Hence, they are the fastest species of neutron star. The first millisecond pulsar we discovered (B1937+21) spins at a rate of 641 revolutions per second, and it remains the 2nd fastest millisecond pulsar ever discovered.

Globular star clusters contain many bunched-up stars that are generally less than a light year apart. The high stellar density of these environments is fertile ground for binary systems, which can generate incredibly energetic pulsars. The clusters Terzan 5 and 47 Tucanae particularly boast the highest number of discovered millisecond pulsars, with 37 and 22, respectively. Terzan 5 also includes the current fastest-known pulsar, PSR J1748-2446ad, which rotates at 716 Hz—spinning at ~43k/minute; its equator barrels through space at ~1/4 of the speed of light.

However, even, at this obscene rate, the monster's magnetic field does not radiate at its maximum potential because magnetic field strength does not primarily depend on the rate of rotation. Instead, a neutron star's magnetic field strength depends more on its age and the species of star that came before.

HD 45166, a recently discovered massive magnetic helium star, boasts a field ~100,000x stronger than Earth's. Its inevitable pulsar transition after reaching the end of its life will amplify its already supercharged magnetic field by orders of magnitude to birth a magnetar: the universe's most potent species of neutron star. Maximally efficient spinning and radiating neutrons stars may generate field strengths ranging from 100 trillion to 1 quadrillion gauss, ~2 quadrillion times stronger than Earth's magnetic field.

Recently, astronomers have uncovered a second species of anomalous, repeating high-energy signals with an x-ray signature. That these recurring outbursts are close to those soft gamma ray repeaters on the electromagnetic spectrum strongly implies a shared origin. Bursts of photons, flares within the magnetosphere and strong thermal emissions from the crust primarily cause these anomalous x-ray pulsar emissions.

Rarer than conventional pulsars, magnetars represent a brief phase of the most magnetized neutron star's early lifecycle. We've only observed about 25 of them around the galaxy. Yet, during this short window, magnetic reconnection, megaflares and field decay catalyze some of the most energetic electromagnetic activity every detected from neutron stars. Ostensibly, magnetars—the universe's strongest and most magnetic objects—produce these explosions, eruptions and quakes.

A magnetar's supercharged lines of flux untangling cause starquakes on its surface and produce soft gamma ray repeaters. As these dead stars rotate, their metallic crusts experience torment on both sides: from the extraordinary electrical currents that the swirling, superfluid neutronium generates underneath; and, from strain of dragging, twisting magnetic field lines on the surface above. Eventually, the tremendous stress cracks the crystalline shell, shifting it ever so slightly toward a more spherical configuration. Even, if the adjustments only occur over micrometers, they unleash great torrents of electromagnetic energy (e.g., high energy x-rays, soft gamma rays, etc.) due to the magnetar's nature.

On December 27, 2004, the magnetar SGR 1806-20 released more than 150,000 years' worth of The Sun's energy in gamma rays, constituting the most extreme star quake ever recorded. Although the magnetar sits more than 40k light years away from The Solar System, this starquake's trailing shockwave noticeably increased the ionization of Earth's upper atmosphere. Almost all life on Earth would have ended had such an event happened within 10 light-years of our planet, for the gamma radiation would completely degrade Earth's magnetosphere. Ultimately, now-unimpeded solar radiation would boil away our oceans, reducing Earth to a desolate wasteland subject to inhospitable radiation.

More than just gamma rays, fast radio bursts also potentially stream from the crevasses of starquakes. These anomalous, short-lived signals brim with radio noise, but no concrete theory sufficiently explains those observed.

Such fundamental properties (e.g., magnetic field strength, rotational velocity, mass, etc.) define individual neutron stars and govern their interactions. Understanding these properties in isolation facilitates understanding how their cosmic encounters contribute to element formation. When neutron stars meet neutron stars, their respective magnetic fields interweave and compete; rotational energies, combine and transfer. When these already extraordinary objects interact, they unlock some of nature's most powerful processes. Their collisions orchestrate the alchemical choreography, establishing the foundations of coming worlds. Some of life's most essential elements emerge from these cosmic crucibles, suggesting neutron star mergers influenced the observable universe's material complexity.

The fastest-spinning pulsars are precise indicators of their surrounding environment. Humanity captured the first observational evidence for general relativity when Joseph Taylor and Russell Hulse studied binary pulsars. Their doppler shift measurements revealed a rapidly spinning pulsar and slower companion sinking towards each other. As their orbits tightened, the system radiated energy away as ripples in the fabric of spacetime—one of Einstein's key predictions.

Then, in 2015, humanity captured its first direct detection with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory. When two massive, inwardly-spiraling compact bodies (i.e., black holes, neutron stars or both) draw close, their gargantuan masses and influences accelerate to velocities approaching ~2/3 of the speed of light. The rapid orbital movement of such pervasive gravitational influences razes the spacetime around the merger, sending gravitational ripples for billions of light years omnidirectional across space. Often, detecting these signals foretells the precise location of the cataclysmic event that soon follows.

After becoming sufficiently close, a pair of merging neutron stars accelerate to speeds exceeding their escape velocities. Their iron shells rupture, exposing their inner contents to space's cold vacuum. Colliding neutron stars also produce their class of gamma-ray bursts: huge explosions in the shortest wavelength of radiation. Conversely, kilonovae occur when the interiors of shattered neutron stars get briefly exposed to space, leaving only a short time for short gamma-ray bursts. Suddenly, under a fraction of the pressure it endured within its progenitor neutron star, the tiny fraction of escaped superdense material ignites and explodes in tremendous kilonovae as powerful as the strongest supernovae. Longer gamma-ray bursts, lasting anywhere from a few seconds to a couple of minutes, supposedly result from supernovae.

The merger environment uniquely combines the extreme properties of both progenitor stars. Thus, nature's crucible for manufacturing heavy elements depends on the characteristics that make neutron stars such remarkable objects in isolation. Such astronomical temperatures, crushing densities and powerful magnetic fields create the optimal conditions for nuclear alchemy. These nuclear processes directly depend on the properties of the individual neutron stars. The intense magnetic fields that once powered lighthouse-like beams now channel nuclear material into optimal reaction zones. The rotational energy that once generated periodic pulses now helps distribute newly formed elements across space. The extreme densities that once produced nuclear paste now provide the perfect conditions for nuclear fusion.

Through the r- and p-processes, free neutrons and protons combine with the heavy atomic nuclei lacing the ejecta of these explosions to yield the universe's heaviest elements (e.g., iron, gold, silver, platinum, uranium, thorium, etc.) Kilonovae, not supernovae, primarily seed the galactic medium with its heavy and complex elements. Moreover, they blend many of the ingredients necessary for life.

The debris from both bygone neutron stars returns to form a new composite object, which experiences a gravitational collapse under the same conditions. The bodies will create a new black hole if their combined mass exceeds 2.5x-3.0x that of The Sun. However, their evolutionary cycle restarts below this threshold, and they reconvene into a new, heavier recycled pulsar or a magnetar. Finally, if the combined mass sits between these two eventualities (i.e., the compression is sufficient for overcoming the force that the neutrons exert but insufficient for compressing the bodies beyond the Schwarzschild Radius), they create a boundary object. Under such extreme conditions resembling that of the early universe, this collapsed star is so dense that, even, neutrons get reduced to their smaller fundamental particles.

Previous generations of stars left dust rich in heavy elements as an inheritance for The Solar System. Our planet formed ~4.5 billion years ago via a process known as accretion. Over millions of years, our proto-planet attracted dust and planetesimals that it met in its orbit around The Sun. This incessant supply of matter released energy that produced enough heat to reduce the young Earth to a homogeneous and undifferentiated agglomeration of molten rock. Moreover, the natural radioactivity of the present elements fed these high temperatures, which exceed 1,500 degrees C. Such fluidity separated elements according to their weights because heavier elements (e.g., iron, nickel, gold, etc.) slowly sank towards the core.

What explains gold's abundance if it left Earth's crust to form our planet's metallic core ~4.5 billion years ago?

During the "Late Heavy Bombardment" between 4.2 to 3.8 billion years ago, meteorites intensely bombarded the Earth's solid and cooled crust. Supposedly, during this period, a disproportionately large quantity of asteroids collided with early terrestrial planets in the inner Solar System (i.e., Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars). Thus, most of the minerals our planet lost earlier returned. All of the gold we know comes from the stars and asteroids that devastated the Earth ~4 billion years ago.

However, forming such heavy elements requires events more violent than stellar nuclear fusion. As previously discussed, two dead star cores can spiral together and collide to produce hypernovae—large explosions with high-energy radiation. These hypernovae—aka gamma-ray bursts—pump out very large and difficult-to-form atoms (e.g., gold, platinum, bismuth, etc.). Due to their frequency and the quantity of gold atoms each produce, hypernovae may alone account for the universe's entire supply of gold.

Revered for its aesthetic and metallurgic properties, gold has uniquely shaped man's destiny. Gold's consistent and unmistakable allure has enraptured civilizations, one after the other. Ancient Egyptians called the precious metal "the breath of god." Generations of human beings have used it as jewelry, and we use ~80% of available gold (i.e., non-stored or unmined gold) for jewelry.

Mankind realized gold's most significant utility when we discovered its electrical conductivity properties last century. Solid-state electronic devices use very low voltages and currents, which cause contact point corrosion or tarnish to interrupt easily. Gold, a highly efficient conductor, carries these tiny currents without corroding. Almost every sophisticated electronic device (e.g., cell phones, computers, GPS units, etc.) depends on a small amount of gold.

The 75th most abundant element in the earth's crust, gold formed in the atomic furnace inside stars like other heavy elements existing in nature. Humanity has cumulatively mined ~142k tons of gold, and ~90% of that since the California Gold Rush. Interestingly, we discovered ~1.5 tons of gold in King Tut's tomb, and the average human body contains 0.2 mg of gold.

Gold's rarity primarily drives its economic value. We have used it as a medium of exchange because of its limited supply. Financial transactions settled in gold date back many millennia, and King Croesus of Lydia ordered the first-known minting of gold coin in 560 BC. Not too long ago, the United States maintained a stockpile of gold to back every dollar in circulation. Under this "gold standard," you could present paper currency to the government and demand equal value of gold in exchange.

Supposedly, the ocean contains ~20mm tons of dissolved gold, but it currently costs too much to recover because it exists at extremely minuscule concentrations. Particle accelerators can mimic the complex nuclear reactions that create stellar gold. However, because these machines can only construct gold atom-by-atom, creating one gram would almost require the universe's age. Moreover, the cost of such an effort vastly exceeds gold's current value.

Complex patterns in the universe (e.g., gold, etc.) only emerge under extraordinary stellar conditions. Just as the cosmos selects for stability and functionality, humanity values gold because of its reliably enduring properties. Humanity—at all times and seasons, in all places and regions—chose gold to carry value because it staves off entropy slightly longer as it avoided annihilation at its cataclysmic birth.

Perhaps—just perhaps—we were taught to desire it to have a frame of reference for desiring Him Who Endowed Us With Desire.

The Fear Of The Lord is pure, remaining for eternity of eternity. The Judgements Of The Lord are true, having been vindicated together. They are desirable beyond gold and much costly stone, and sweeter honey and honeycomb.
~ Psalms 18:10-11, LES

Such a simple object bridges vast scales of space, time and meaning, so understanding how cosmology influences conventional value enhances the relationship between universal laws and human experience. Gold's journey—from stellar forges to the hands of man through cosmic time—emphasizes the universe's profound tendency towards meaningful organization. It persisted through billions of years and resisted corruption, exemplifying nature's preference for stability. The gold Cross ammachi gifted me—forged in the burning heart of an ancient celestial collision—reminds me of this dual inheritance. Its atomic structure narrates the story of cosmogony, while its surface tells that of my family's faith. As it rests on my chest, i feel the weight of both histories: the eons of stellar alchemy that manufactured its atoms and the millennia of devotion that sanctified its form.

The increase in universal order implies an increase in information. The 2nd arrow of time depends on the increase of information, order and patterning that parallels the arrow of increasing disorder and chaos—entropy. Natural order seemingly manifests as the various discernible objects you perceive (e.g., flowers blooming, birds singing, etc.), for they all oppose chaotic disorder.

The 2nd law depends on evolution, which—in this case—specifically refers to the functional selection that increases diversity, patterning and complexity of systems over time. In biology, organisms that survive long enough can reproduce, passing their characteristics to offspring. In geology, organizations, assemblies and structures of atoms that persist can last billions of years, even, in new environments.

The expressions of natural laws must be measurable, so they must have quantifiable metrics. In evolving systems with uncountable configurations, only a tiny handful of configurations—even, if more than 1—can work. Only an infinitesimally small few can sustain stability. You can express this possibility with 'fractional' form—e.g., one in a hundred trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion. This fraction represents functional information because it tells you about the conditions required for the system to function stably. Thus, evolution refers to increased functional information because selecting for stability results from selecting for better outcomes.

The law of increasing functional information is the missing law, establishing the parallel arrow of time. Additionally, it introduces some noteworthy corollaries. For example, some of the natural world is not absolute; instead, it's contextual. The natural world depends on function, which necessitates purpose (telos). Moreover, something in the universe, in a non-random manner, is increasing order and complexity. It's selecting for function, which—again!—effectively presupposes a purpose. Ostensibly, all experienced things (e.g., Creation, atmospheres, insects, family, life, etc.) have a purpose.

Manifesting in everything from the formation of gold to the emergence of life, the universe's inherent drive towards order and purpose indicates the existence of a deeper spiritual reality. This cosmic ordering principle ultimately expresses itself in man's religious impulse to seek transcendent meaning.

Within The Orthodox Church, The Holy Sacraments naturally transform simple actions to reveal God's already immanent Presence within them. According to St. Macarius, we receive The Church's visible arrangement and administration of how Grace works in the soul for a few reasons. St. Dionysius the Areopagite describes such order as hierarchy. Mainly, hierarchy manifests during The Divine Liturgy, for order circumscribes space, words and ministries. All reveal God's Body and Blood on The Altar while patterning and typifying The Heart's Mystical Altar. Although the absence of either signals issues, The Church's instinct deems that you cannot enter the latter without practicing the former.

Visible things typify and shadow hidden things, and The Visible Temple typifies The Temple Of The Heart. The priest typifies The True Priesthood of Christ's Grace. Finally, the sequence of the visible arrangement typifies the inner man's rational and hidden aspects. Thus, an ineffable affinity for The Church's Liturgy often possesses us. Even, if belief ceases within our minds, our hearts deeply pine for It.

Experiencing awe and wonder, which follow healthy shame, often initiates the perception of God and all Divine Things. Attentive veneration, worship and noetic perception (i.e., The Holy Spirit's Gift) teach you to see what is. The Church's visible icons guide our attention to the center of all creation, and each typifies The Invisible Icon residing in Heaven and within the human heart. Thus, space, time and matter's transcendent nature manifests in us feeble men.

Christ came to enlighten mankind. Various faiths outside of His Revelation consist of sincere souls genuinely seeking to encounter God, and many will go far in these other religions before hearing of Christ. However, they will not reach The Goal: Eternal Life in The Kingdom Of Heaven. Despite their profundity, various comparative elements of truth in other faiths do not open up Heaven because God incarnated in The Person Of Jesus Christ to pave The Way for us. Heaven opened up to man only when Christ—before saying: it is finished and giving up His Spirit (John 19:30, RSV)—told the thief:

Truly, I say to you: today, you will be with Me in Paradise.
~ Luke 23:43, RSV

The movement from cosmic creation to individual recreation follows a primordial pattern. As stars traverse through increasingly complex stages, the soul progresses through levels of spiritual transformation. As the formation of new elements necessitates the death of a star, the birth of new spiritual life requires the soul to experience the death of its old ways. The same Divine Wisdom that orchestrates stellar evolution guides personal recreation: hydrogen becomes helium becomes carbon in the cosmic forge; but, in the spiritual forge, the old man can enter into a new creation and, by Grace, participate in deified nature.

Ammachi's faith—especially, during her most difficult days—inspired many around her. When we visited Kerala as kids, i remember her leading the prayers of every gathering. Comically, i distinctly remember opening my eyes while she seemingly prayed for everyone on earth to make eye contact with Dojay. Struggling to conceal our laughter, we looked at each other like this 🌚🤭🌝 naturally, my minimal Malayalam proficiency certainly didn't help me. However, pure chance alone didn't appoint her to that role in our family. For as long as i can remember, Ammachi embodied an unmistakably unshakable deep faith. Those who knew her saw The Light she reflected, so they sought shelter in her prayers.

https://youtube.com/shorts/10Zcgia7CHk

This is Alice Thomas. Her life illustrates our only everlasting heritage: preserving and transmitting The Truth Of God's Greatness.

Great is The Lord and very praiseworthy; and, of His Majesty, there is no end. Generation after generation will praise Your Works, and they will announce Your Power. They will speak about the magnificence of the glory of Your Holiness, and they will describe Your Wondrous Things. And, they will speak of the power of Your Awesomeness; and, Your Majesty, I will describe It; and, I will speak about Your Dominion.
~ Psalms 144:3-6

how and why does prayer connect us who, despite desiring community, eagerly search for individuality?

Praying for the whole world—for all Adam!—typically distracts monks from serving individuals. However, more than a mere abstraction, the whole Adam represents the most concrete fulness of the human being. A single ontological thread unites all of humanity. Therefore, one individual overcoming evil within himself defeats cosmic evil, creating beneficial causal effects on the destinies of those in the world. Moreover, if certain human hypostases vanquish cosmic evil, the latter naturally suffers a disproportional defeat—in significance and extent—according to the number of individuals concerned.

Two commands perfectly express The Law Of Eternal Life: love God and love your neighbor, your fellow man. The ascetic withdraws from the world to concentrate his attention on the first command. Subsequently, after realizing personal repentance to a certain degree and Grace touching his being, he starts feeling Christ-Like Love in his soul that spills out on all humanity. Then, although he lives in the desert where he doesn't physically see the world, he spiritually sees it and deeply lives its sufferings. He embodies them with a Christian consciousness of every human being's unique character and great eternal worth.

A single saint is such an extraordinarily precious phenomenon for all mankind that the mere fact of their existence—even, if only known to God—draws down a great (benediction) from God down on the world. The Lord's Saints are precious in His Sight, so He preserves the world because of them. God always listens to His Humble Servants, and their prayers uplift us—all of us!

A cosmic phenomena, every saint significantly transcends earthly history to enter eternity. Saints are the earth's salt, its preserving fruit, its raison d'être. However, when the earth ceases to produce saints, the strength safeguarding it from catastrophe will fail. Every saint constitutes the world's most precious eternal inheritance; yet, the world, desiring to remain ignorant of this fact, often slays its prophets.

The greatness of religious deeds necessarily depends on (Unoriginate Divine Being). Spiritual states carry tremendous eternal and ontological significance, so St. Silouan attributed the utmost importance to them. He experienced his praying for enemies and the whole world as Eternal Life, as Divine Activity in man's soul and as The Holy Spirit's Gift—Uncreated Grace. Furthermore, This Gift will continue to exist in the world insofar as it apprehends It. Therefore, as soon as no one on earth—even, one single hermit—bears This Grace, the world's history shall abruptly end: a tragic catastrophe that neither science nor culture can avert.

The saint's protection of the world and their journey into spiritual darkness flow from sacrificial love. Paradoxically, entering the spiritual darkness deeper strengthens the saint's global stewardship. They protect others precisely because they willingly face the void; for, in embracing their nothingness, they become channels of Divine Protection. Experiencing such profound emptiness tunes them to how others suffer acutely. Thus, they discern needs that casual observers miss, perceive the spiritual maladies hiding beneath physical symptoms and see Divine Potential in human brokenness. Their guardianship proportionally increases to their experienced emptiness because Divine Protection freely flows through those who have abandoned all hope in protecting themselves. Deeply entering into Divine Unknowing expands their capacity to bear the burdens of others. Thus, the external office of guardian and the internal journey of unknowing represent one single movement of love, for the saint's descent into darkness culminates in their ascent into universal compassion. Individual souls entering Divine Darkness become conduits of Grace for their immediate community, which slowly becomes a hopeful reservoir for the broader world.

Moreover, the community that such souls anchor steadfastly weathers collective trials. When it faces its emptiness, the lives of these hidden guardians testify that such darkness yields the dawn. The community's hidden heartbeat still pulses during individual dark nights, so communal support concretely manifests through shared liturgical rhythms, silent presence and the witness of those who traversed similar terrains. Their unwavering faith holds space for doubt; collective prayer reinforces individual prayer; and, their proven wisdom offers stable ground for those experiencing the dissolution of their personal reference points. Inevitably, the guardian's path leads to silence, where protection further deepens into communion. Active watchfulness for others transforms into a deeper vigil wherein Divine Stillness holds both the guardian and guarded, mirroring the soul's journey from doing to being and protecting to participating in Divine Life.

Wherever man may take himself, if he walks The Path Of True Life In God, he will live the world's tragedy more intensely and profoundly than those actually in the world because the latter know not what they miss. Many privations afflict men, but they—save a few rare exceptions—are unaware of their central lack. When deprived of worldly goods, they suffer with great lamentations. Yet, how much would they weep and wail if they recognized their chief deprivation? With what ardor would their souls seek the one thing they truly need?

St. Silouan, with genuine apostolic knowledge, would affirm love for one's enemies as the only authentic criterion for Truth, soteriologically and dogmatically speaking. Soteriological because it contextualizes the spiritual ethic needed for man to find salvation. Dogmatic because it flows from the plane of abstract ideal conceptions about Divine Being.

The dogmas of the true Church always bear an ontological and soteriological aspect. As The Living God's House, The Church chiefly concerns itself with life. For man's salvation comprises Her Aim and Mission, she affords primary importance to man's salvation not (abstract ontology). Man can only attain salvation through keeping Christ's command to love God and one's neighbor. The Savior's Precept to 'love your enemies' falls under His Second Commandment. Thus, knowing Christ Who Appeared To Him, St. Silouan insisted that opening your heart so that Christ comes into and abides in your soul represents the only true and sure way to Eternal Life, manifesting as knowing God.

St. Silouan's precious criterion helps us perfectly detect wills alien to That Of God, Who Desires All Men's Salvation. The Cornerstone Of The Church's Teaching, His Command to love our enemies reflects The Triune God's All-perfect Love in our world. Ultimately synthesizing our theology, it embodies The Power From On High (Luke 24:49, RSV) and Abundant Life (John 10:10, RSV) that Christ gave us. It is The Holy Spirit's Fiery Baptism (Matthew 3:11, RSV), The Fire On Earth That The Lord Brought With His Coming (Luke 12:49, RSV). It is The Uncreated Divine Light that shined on The Apostles on Mt. Tabor and The Tongues Of Fire (Acts 2:3, RSV) in which The Holy Spirit descended on The Apostles in the upper room. It is The Kingdom Of God coming to power (Mark 9:1, RSV) in us, perfecting The Likeness Of God to fulfill the human being.

Unless i treat someone else's ammachi as my ammachi—someone else's father, mother, brother and sister as my own—then how could i dare hope to love them as myself?! Loving my neighbor necessitates loving my enemy, which requires loving myself insofar as i am an Imago Dei. Therefore, loving God with all of my heart, soul and mind defines True Love.

Without love for myself as The Image Of The Uncreated, Self-existent and Eternal God, for my family and my enemy, i cannot love my love my neighbor. Thus, i would fail to keep The Command Christ conveys in The Gospel. Without loving God, i can never love my neighbor; and, i shall never inherit The Kingdom Of God.

Hierarchy—a division into upper and lower—describes the world's order as a pyramid of being because liberty represents a fundamental principle of existence. Yet, the ideal of equality profoundly roots itself in our consciousness, and we should not deny it. Christ resolves the dilemma between equality and liberty when He turns the pyramid upside down—thus, achieving the ultimate perfection.

The Son Of Man—Himself, The Unique, True, Eternal Savior—represents this pyramid's incontestable apex; yet, of the purpose of His Incarnation, He says: The Son Of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give His Life as a ransom for many. Our Savior instructed His Disciples to follow the ideal He embodied when He washed their feet. Thus, He designated ecclesial/ecclesiastical hierarchy's raison d'être: raising the spiritual lowly to higher degrees of perfection.

You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you; but, whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave; even, as the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
~ Matthew 20:25-28, RSV

Christ, as Creator and First Cause Of The Universe, took upon Himself the whole world's burden: its sin. Thus, He represents The Inverted Pyramid Of Being's Summit on which all of its weight falls. From The Overturned Pyramid's Unfathomable Base—really, Its Summit—where The Christ crucified in love takes the world's heaviest burdens on Himself, from there emanates a Special Life, Light and Fragrance. Here, Love attracts Christ's athletes. Love For Him martyrizes them and weighs heavily on them, making their lives unbearably hard until arriving at Its Ultimate Desire. The soul traverses peculiar ways to attain That Ultimate End. Inexplicably, becoming like Him, His Followers take the burdens of others' infirmities on themselves.

The Cross of Christ raised the whole world, ended error and transformed earth into Heaven. It silenced the demons, severed death's sinews, rendered hades impotent and destroyed the devil's citadel. It demolished the altars and overthrew the temples of false gods. It planted this new and wondrous way of life on earth and made angels of men. It produced countless awe-inspiring, tremendous and lofty benefits. Although we praise Our Master for everything, we especially praise and glorify Him because the accursed death He willingly suffered on The Cross amazes us. The Cross evidences God's Great Providential Care, His Goodness, and His Love.

Great love moves a man to pray for the world, and he reaches a state in which he makes no provision for himself. Utterly unsparing of self, his soul accedes to a profound peace that comprehends all things after consummating this interior sacrifice. However, after concluding his prayer, he sees the world plunged into suffering and darkness, moving his soul to pray again. Thus, his life iteratively continues until its termination.

Praying for mankind necessarily sheds blood for all Adam because offering global intercessions means prayerfully laying down your life. Such represents repentance for men's sins, so it bears the world's burdens to an extent. However, before embarking on such an audacious prayer, you must first achieve a certain degree of personal repentance because your continuing to dwell in sin and passion lays your burdens on your fellow men instead of bearing their burdens. You must cease from sin to indeed partake of Christ's Sufferings with Him.

The Holy Spirit taught St. Silouan to love with The Love Of Christ—drinking The Cup Of Christ, which He prayed that His Father would pass from Him. None of this world's things can induce bliss that compares with Christ-Like Love, which simultaneously involves experiencing the greatest suffering: suffering to the point of death. Death, the last threshold, represents the final trial of our love and our freedom. Those following Christ's journey to Jerusalem—even, if only from afar—will experience the fear His Disciples felt when they walked behind Him.

Each of your actions must go through the mill according to Christ's Commandments, so it cannot be otherwise. Thus, only The Fiery Test can—and will—reveal The Eternal Value of the works of your days. Accordingly, profound trepidation may afflict the ascetic who, aware of this spiritual law, sets out on The Path Of Love. However, after enduring the test and recognizing the greatness of The Divine Gift (i.e., God-Like Freedom and Life), he finds no word or cry to express his grateful love for God. There may be times when the ascetic fully resolves himself to die; but, generally, he suppresses This Fire in him. Yet, although restrained and not outwardly manifest, Its Action vitally invigorates him to keep The Commandments insofar as his strength fails him. Thereafter, his vigilance in the dark desert slowly transforms into him passively receiving wisdom.

The monk embeds his prayer in a life of psalmody, liturgical celebration and meditatively reading The Scriptures—each with personal and communal dimensions. The saintly pattern of the monastic prayer life necessitates solitary contemplation, which patterns itself on Christ's prayer alone on the mountain at night. Notably, in his Conferences On Prayer, John Cassian emphasizes how early monks stressed praying simply with short phrases drawn from The Scriptures—especially, The Psalms.

Oh, God ~ pay attention to my help!
~ Psalms 69:2, LES

St. Macarius offers one of the earliest descriptions of prayer of the heart when he interprets the Psalmist's the meditation of my heart will be for good pleasure before You through everything (Psalms 18:14, LES). Such consists of invoking Christ's Name with profound attention in the very ground of your being. Therefore, the heart represents the root and source of all of man's inner truth. Invoking His Name in your heart shares an identity with calling upon Him with the most profound and most earnestly intense faith that manifests when you concentrate your entire being on prayer, stripped of all non-essentials and reduced only to invoking His Name with a simple plea for help. Moreover, according to St. Macarius, perfect meditation manifests as Our Lord Jesus Christ's Saving and Blessed Name uninterruptedly dwelling in you. Thus, the devout man who perseveres in invoking His Name calls like the swallow and meditates like a dove. (Isaiah 38:14, LES)

Faith, hope, love, peace and humility—branches of The Life-Giving Tree that God alone plants—enrich the man who calls upon Our Lord Jesus Christ's Most Sweet Name. If you touch it and eat of This Tree in due time, you will gather Eternal Life, unlike Adam. The Holy Spirit lives in our glorious teachers who wisely instructed all—especially, those wishing to renounce the world, consecrate themselves to God and embrace the field of divine silence (i.e., monasticism)—to practice hesychia with wisdom and prefer His Mercy with undeterred hope. Such men invoke His Holy and Most Sweet Name as their constant practice and occupation, always bearing it on their lips, minds and hearts.

According to The Philokalia, the doctrine of pure-heartedness and imageless contemplation posits that always presenting a formless and imageless memory to God, pure hearts readily receive only The Impressions Coming From Him with which He habitually desires to manifest Himself to them.

Insofar as you cultivate awareness of yourself as a being known through Him, you can know about Him. However, reaching Him requires transcending knowledge that analogously points to Him. Moreover, you must transcend yourself, forgetting the subject-object relationship familiarly, characterizing the ordinary exercise of knowing. You can "possess" Him to the extent that you realize He possesses you in the innermost depths of your being. Thus, prayer of the heart ("ascetic meditation ") represents the active effort to keep your heart open so that He may enlighten you with complete realization of your true relation to Him. Naturally, The Jesus Prayer—ascetic meditation's classic form—consists of repetitively invoking The Name Of Jesus in the heart, empty of any images and cares.

Who am i; or, rather, what am i? Perhaps, the most modest statement i can confidently make according to my experience and faith is: i, myself, am a word that God speaks. Although i know not what my life means, can God speak meaningless words? How can i know that 'the meaning of my life as i live it' aligns with what God intends for it? Does He impose meaning on my life via extrinsic factors (e.g., events, customs, routines, laws, systems, other people, etc.); or, does He call me to, with His Grace, intrinsically create meaning reflecting His Truth, volitively transforming me into His Word freely spoken in my unique circumstance?

My true identity hides in my free response to God's Call. Therefore, i must use my freedom to love authentically, and i bear the full responsibility for my doing so—or not! However, genuine love represents neither receiving forms that external forces impose on me nor forming my own life according to socially approved patterns. Instead, it consists of directing my undivided attention to my brother's reality so that i may embrace God's Will in Its Naked—but often impenetrable!—Mystery. Truly, evading the dread of first experiencing my meaninglessness will not help me discover my meaning.

Insofar as i adjust my behaviors to accommodate certain exterior norms of conduct so that i can play an approved role in my society, my life and aims will tend towards artificial inauthenticity. Therefore, i penetrate my life's innermost ground with monastic meditation, seeking to understand fully God's Will For Me, The Mercy He Showed Me and my absolute dependence on Him. I must genuinely live this penetration rather than merely speaking it, so i must authentically but wholly conceptualize my life and purposes.

Finding your heart and recovering the awareness of the ground of your innermost identity before God and in God implies recognizing the shocking extent to which your external, everyday self is no more than a mask and a fabrication. It is not your true self, which you cannot easily find. It hides at the center where you, in the obscure nothingness, wholly but directly depend on God. Thus, the reality of all Christian meditation depends on this recognition, so meditating without it must necessarily be self-contradictory. Rather than generating scientifically objective knowledge of God, ascetic meditation aims at knowing Him through realizing that His Knowledge and Love For Us penetrate our very being. Thus, ascetic meditation deepens your consciousness of these fundamental relationships: of creature to His Creator and sinner to His Redeemer. Paradoxically, we know Him not as we know scrutable objects but as we recognize ourselves as utterly dependent on His Mercifully Saving Knowledge Of Us. We discover our real being and identity in Christ insofar as we realize that He knows us to the extent that His Truth and Merciful Love become the source of our life and, indeed, the very heart of our existence. Besides Him, My Creator and Redeemer, loving me and me loving Him in return, i have no other reason for being. Truly knowing God implies grasping and intimately accepting this profoundly personal relationship.

for all of my life, i will never amount to anything more than a beginner

The monk accomplishes his creative and healing work in silence, spiritual nakedness, emptiness and humility. Thus, he participates in Christ's Saving Death and Resurrection. Therefore, if he desires, every Christian may commune with the silence of the praying and meditating Church, The Church Of The Desert.

Meditation intimately relates to asceticism, so genuinely loving God requires love in the heart—i.e., affectus mentis—and productive virtue—i.e., effectus operis. Thus, in the sweetness of spiritual experience, you must habituate virtue and love. Specifically, cultivating virtuous discipline indeed consists of living ascetically—e.g., fasting, keeping vigils, manual work, reading, prayer, poverty, etc. Moreover, salutary meditation—i.e., beneficially healthy meditation that promotes well-being—nourishes love. To grow This Sweet Love Of Jesus in your heart, programmatically meditate on your memories of the past, awareness of the present and concern for the future. Thus, acquiring interior freedom from inordinate cares necessitates managing your thoughts and desires. Such detachment emerges as the capacity to do without life's good things for the sake of higher ends, to use or sacrifice my relationships to all created things for love.

The life of Christian asceticism directly leads you into the realm of apparent contradiction. Suspending you between earth and Heaven, this paradoxical condition nourishes the contemplative life although you can never fulfill your desire for renunciation. Thus, asceticism delivers you over the paradox with which meditation contemplatively struggles in Spiritual Love's Divine Peace. However, without Special Help From Grace and continuously renewed self-discipline, you cannot survive this paradoxical state. Unless your motive for living ascetically springs from personal meditation, such exercises cannot properly effectuate love and virtue. Christian Love's transforming power must enliven why i'm doing what i'm doing, that the reasons for my actions spring from the depths of my freedom.

Monastic meditation brings you into direct contact with The Source Of All Joy and All Life so that it can evoke deep tranquility and joy. However, without seriously returning to the center of my own nothingness before God, my true meditation never begins. Consequently, i never into the most profound reality of my relationship with Him, for i only consider religious truths from a detached and objective viewpoint, meditating merely in the mind, the imagination or, at best, the desires.

The capacity to recognize your condition before God itself is a Grace, for you cannot always realize it at will. Therefore, learning meditation does not necessitate learning infallible but artificial techniques for facetiously producing "compunction" and sensing "your nothingness" whenever you please. Instead, learning meditation means cultivating the capability to receive This Grace whenever God wishes to grant It to you, which permanently dispose you to attention to reality, receptivity, pliability and humility. Thus, learning to meditate also means gradually freeing yourself from habituated torpor, gross-mindedness and hard-heartedness, which themselves necessitate either arrogantly rejecting simple reality or resisting The Concrete Demands Of God's Will.

True men of prayer seriously confront the challenge of their monastic vocation in all of its depth, which exposes them to existential dread. He internally experiences the emptiness, dearth of authenticity, search for fidelity and "lostness" of modern man. However, he experiences all of this more deeply than the contemporary man, who experiences this disconcerting awareness of himself and the world as boredom and spiritual disorientation. The monk faces his humanity and that of the world at the deepest and most central point, where the void seems to meet black despair. Yet, he rejects absolute despair and, with the pure and humble supplication of monastic prayer, transforms it into perfect hope. He discovers the best upon facing the worst. From darkness, he finds light; from death, life; from the abyss, the unaccountable yet mysterious Gift Of The Spirit that God sends to renew, transform the redeemed created world and reestablish all things in Christ.

The meditative movement expresses the basic Paschal rhythm of Christian life: Christ's passage from death to life. Prayer, meditation and contemplation share an identity with death when, descending into your nothingness, you recognize your helplessness, frustration, infidelity, confusion and ignorance.

Most men need instruction to learn how to meditate. Although there are many ways of meditation, do not expect to find systems that magically dissolve all of your difficulties and obstacles. Moreover, although meditation sometimes represents a substantial challenge, you will discover the joy of meditation if you patiently bear hardship in prayer. Nevertheless, do not judge your meditations based on how you feel because seemingly fruitless meditations may offer you more value than otherwise "happy" and "enlightening" ones.

Regarding prayer of the heart, monastic prayer (i.e., psalmody, oratio, meditatio and lectio) prepares the way so that God's Action may develop the faculty for the supernatural. Faith and the light of wisdom illuminate this capacity in the loving contemplation of God. Thus, meditation only seeking to develop your reason, strengthen your imagination and tone your inner climate of devotional feeling has little—if any!—value for realizing the true purpose of meditation. While those other methods may profit you in a worldly sense, learn when to leave them and go beyond to a more straightforward, more primitive, more obscure yet more receptive form of prayer. Then, if this obscure prayer becomes painfully dry and fruitless, seek refuge in a few simple words of The Scriptures—especially, The Psalms!—instead of resorting to conventional discursive "mental prayer".

Contemplative experience gradually illuminates theological understanding through lived encounters. As prayer deepens, theological truths transform from intellectual propositions into experiential realities wrought from suffering His Presence in darkness and light alike. Moreover, the rhythms of prescribed prayer slowly dissolve the veil between structure and void until formal practices become indistinguishable from vast silence. Thus, the desert can show you what books can only tell: how Divine Transcendence paradoxically manifests as radical immanence, how emptiness opens to fulness and how darkness contains the seed of light.

Truly, hazards and difficult options litter the time of darkness. Drawn out from behind your habituated conscious defenses, you start to go out of yourself. Growth necessitates abandoning such limiting defenses, which protect you from unconscious forces too great to nakedly face. Such inexorable forces greet all who set into this darkness so that you will face doubtful fears, calling the whole structure of your spiritual life into question. You will newly evaluate your motives for believing, loving and committing yourself to The Invisible God.

Night symbolizes theoria, the contemplation of invisible things. The mystical night surrounds the soul seeking Him Who Hides In Darkness. Indeed, she loves Him Whom She Seeks, but Her Beloved escapes her thoughts. Therefore, abandoning the search, she recognizes Him Who She Desires solely because His Knowledge surpasses all understanding. Her Beloved can only dwell in her heart only after, with God's Grace, she restores its primitive state.

God is invisibly present on the ground of your being—your belief and love to attain Him. However, He hides from your investigating mind's arrogant eyes that, through securely possessing knowledge of Him, seek power over Him. In fact, it is categorically absurd and impossible to grasp God as an object that your mind can seize and comprehend.

Although It's Ineffable Darkness, The Unitive and Mystical Knowledge Of God is Essential Light. On your own, you cannot navigate This Incomprehensibly Solitary Desert, for It bears no recognizable landmarks. The Light that eludes natural comprehension can never illuminate created intelligence, so It is Dark. No road leads to It, so It is Desolate. The soul can only drink from The Stream's Very Source, Those Sweet, Fresh, Pure, True And Essential Waters, if it willingly yields to receive guidance from Divine Grace beyond all of its comprehension and understanding. More than a subject merely knowing an object, The Transcendent And Unitive Knowledge Of God in love manifests when the created "self" seemingly disappears in God to know Him and Him Alone. Subsequently, through passive purification, the self apparently experiences an annihilation until it, reduced to emptiness, no longer knows itself apart from God. Thus, as you proceed down the sacrificial way, you will increasingly submit to purifying actions you cannot understand. Often, the value of sacrifices you don't choose exceeds that of those you select for yourself.

Preferring the desert, emptiness and poverty manifests as contemplative prayer, for the very meaning of contemplation becomes more apparent when you intuitively and spontaneously seek the dark, unknown path of aridity. The contemplative man would rather not know than know, not enjoy than enjoy. Rather than proving God loves Him, he faithfully accepts God's Love despite any apparent evidence to the contrary. In fact, such transrational belief represents the paradoxical but, still, necessary condition for the mystically experiencing the reality of God's Presence and Love For Us.

In fact, the contemplative way is not a way, for Christ alone is The Way. Specifically, the desert of contemplation metaphorically describes the state of emptiness experienced when you leave all ways, forgetting yourself and assuming The Invisible Christ as Your Way.

The soul may cling to understandings, feelings, imaginations, wills and modes on its own. However, according to St. John of The Cross, such attachment significantly impedes the soul from realizing The Highest Estate Of Union With God: Theosis. Paradoxically, entering the road is leaving the road, for it involves laying aside your wares to carry your cross, as He did, with His Special Grace. The soul who attains this state no longer has any ways or methods, yet it remains detached from them more so. It possesses nothing yet possesses all things.

In the contemplative life, only empty desire—neither pure desire nor its refusal—matters, for empty desire acquiesces to the unknown and peacefully advances when it cannot perceive any further.

The true paradox of contemplative living, being without desire involves allowing an incomprehensibly great desire to lead you. Too large to entirely feel, it is a blind desire that seemingly desires nothing because nothing can satisfy it. It can rest in no-thing; but, then, it rests in emptiness. True emptiness transcends all things yet, as undefined space, readily receives all, and emptiness is pure being, philosophically speaking. However, to the contemplative, emptiness is other than whatever you say it is. Christianity's very essence steeps in Love's Purity, Freedom and Indeterminateness—all to which monastic prayer aspires. Pure love and pure freedom—an indeterminate love free of all things, especially the weight of special relationships—characterize the Christian contemplative's experience of emptiness. Love, for Love's sake, participates in The Holy Spirit to share in God's Infinite Charity. Thus, Jesus commands us to love universally.

I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of Your Father Who Is In Heaven; for, He makes His Sun rise on the evil and on the good; and, sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
~ Matthew 5:44-45, RSV

Rather than attending to a unique audible wavelength or receiving a specific message, the highest species of listening consists of a general emptiness that, within its apparent void, patiently waits to realize The Fulness Of God's Message. Thus, instead of preparing his mind for messages he particularly desires, the true contemplative remains empty because he knows that he can never anticipate the word that will transform his darkness into light. He neither expects extraordinary transformations nor demands light instead of darkness. He silently waits for God's Word. When God "answers" him, He doesn't do so with a word bursting into his silence. Conversely, His Silence Itself suddenly but inexplicably reveals Itself to him as a Powerful Word, Full Of God's Voice. Yet, you can be content because, despite its seeming incredulity, it makes more sense than anything else. In the genuine climate of profound meditation, you commit yourself to entirely surrendering to God without light, apparently without strength and, even, seemingly without hope. Drop your arrogance and submit to your situation's incomprehensible reality.

Authentic identity emerges in the void's apparent emptiness. After darkness dissolves all carefully constructed self-conceptions, only our fundamental nature as contingent beings wholly dependent on and oriented toward God remains. Almost counterintuitively, discovering essential identity necessitates relinquishing every self-conception. We can find our true selves precisely where we lose our false selves because the void reveals the ground of being itself.

Only after letting go of everything within you—every desire to see, know, taste and experience God's Presence—can you experience That Presence with such an overwhelmingly genuine conviction that it entirely revolutionizes your inner life, your really real reality.

The Spirit Of Contemplation nourishes these inner truths that The Christian World especially needs: praising and loving God; longing for Christ's coming; and, thirsting for the manifestation of God's Glory, His Truth, His Justice and His Kingdom in the world. The Christian Heart characteristically contemplates these eschatological aspirations, which comprise the very essence of monastic prayer. Without them, you labor more for your glory than God's. Moreover, The Church needs contemplation and interior prayer to fulfill Her Mission to transform the world and save mankind. Truly, religion becoming more than an opiate necessitates deeply genuine contemplative aspirations, total love for God and an uncompromising thirst for His Truth.

Men—perhaps, especially, the best among us—confront themselves as naked, insufficient, disgruntled and malicious beings when they return to a frank and undisguised self-awareness. They perceive their stubborn attachment to the lie within themselves, their disposition to infidelity and their fear of truth along with the risks it demands. Especially, when your sincerely good life removes and rejects those actually sinful habits you identified, you will notice within yourself an inclination to rebellious sin and evasive falsity.

Voluntarily emptying yourself of desire (i.e., habitually surrendering to incomprehensible reality) transforms the mere suffering of involuntary trials into purifying fire. Thus, chosen emptiness and imposed suffering represent a single movement in the soul's transformation.

Furthermore, at the precise moment all spiritual light darkens, all values lose their shape and reality—rendering you suspended in a formless void. The crux of this experience rests in the genuinely risky temptation to doubt God Himself because this point initiates the portion of the journey beyond where, in primitively simple images, God makes Himself accessible to your mind. For, He invisibly and inscrutably permeates this night without any image, beyond any satisfactory mental representation. Here, without a genuinely robust foundation in The Orthodox Faith, you may lose everything. In this fire of purgation, you will either face the truth of your emptiness or retreat into the realm of analogical images that no longer serve the mature ascetic life. Liberating the deep spiritual power in the center of your being, this testing burns out your faith's human and accidental elements. God, according to His Inscrutable Mercy, incomprehensibly affords us This Gift, which you cannot attain on your own. He understands that, of his own accord, no virtue, good intention, ideal, philosophy or mystical elevation can rescue him from the futility: his apparent despair of his emptiness without God. The faithful Christian experiences the worst species of emptiness when he acutely recognizes, more intensely than before, his status as an unprofitable servant despite doing what he had to do: seriously seeking God and conscientiously responding to life's graces and tasks. He, more than the deluded sinner and insincere man, faces radical dread in his being. Such naked dread appears without definition, for it seemingly permeates his whole being and life.

If I should sin, what will I be able to do ~ oh, You Who Establishes The Mind Of Humans? On what account have You set me as an accuser of You, only to be a burden to You?
~ Job 7:20, LES

Simultaneously, he seemingly loses conviction in the fact that he can find refuge in God, who seems hostile or implacable. Worse yet, God Himself seems to become emptiness, and all becomes nothing empty, nothing, dread and night.

After Divine Light assails the soul, the latter experiences immense pain to expel its impurity. It feels its impurity and misery, thinking God to be against it and it to be against God. Now, believing that God has cast it away, the soul experiences much grief and pain. The Pure Light helps the soul darkly but clearly perceive its impurity, so it recognizes its unworthiness and that of every creature. Moreover, thinking that it will never be worthy and that all good things are over for it, the soul inflicts the most pain on itself because it profoundly immerses itself in the knowledge and realization of its miserable evils.

With reproofs, because of lawlessness, You discipline a person. You melt his life as a spider.
~ Psalms 38:12, LES

Those who judge wisely not only receive no scandal from trials but also derive profit from them, even if they are pagans. Your earthly insecurity expresses itself as dread when you realize that you are always uncertain about possessing a definitive and established spiritual status. Everything that is yours reduces to nothing, and it can completely fail you. You can no longer hope in yourself, wisdom, virtues and fidelity. No longer can you rely on what you have, what your past gave you and what was required of you. Thus, you to open to God and His Mercy in the inscrutable future. You entirely trust in His Grace, which will support your liberty in the emptiness where you will confront unforeseen decisions. If you progressively exercise yourself in virtue, this world's abuses will not only leave you unharmed but also generate much spiritual profit for you because these very hindrances cause virtue to bloom abundantly and reach Heaven. Suffering truly binds honor, good reputation and crowns. Only after dreadfully descending to the center of your nothingness with His Grace and Guidance do you allow Him to lead you to lose yourself and find Him in His Own Time. The righteous person's passing represents neither death nor an end but a crown and prelude to a greater life.

An unbroken current flows between the monk's cell and The Church's sanctuary. Personal prayer draws power from communal worship to transform itself. It feeds that back into the latter—revealing how structure serves spontaneity, how tradition nurtures individual inspiration and how solitary darkness ultimately illuminates the collective path. The things that are taking place are a great sign of the good repute of the church, and many have profited from them.

The Gospel's Kerygma—Orthodox Christianity's first principle (i.e., the Christian message's true import and challenge)—becomes worthless if a few external gestures and pious intentions quickly answer everything. Instead, Christian engages those aware of their deep wound, the sinful fissure at the very heart of man's being. Guilt, suspicion and covert hatred estrange them from God, so they taste the sickness that emanates through our innermost heart. We would need neither The Cross, The Sacraments nor The Church had that sickness merely been an illusion. St. John of The Cross demonstrates that the dark night primarily liberates, purifies and enlightens man's heart in perfect love instead of simply punishing it. Neither despair nor hell, the way through dread ends in perfect joy and Heaven.

Therefore, do not feel afflicted when you perceive your desire obscuring, your affections aridly constraining and your faculties bereft of their capacity for any interior exercise. Instead, reckon it as a great happiness because, freeing you from yourself, God takes the work from your hands. Regardless of how well they may serve you, your clumsy and unclean hands will never labor more effectively, perfectly and securely than when God guides you through the darkness. Like a blind man, you cannot fathom the end to which He leads you with His Hand.

Paradoxically, in drawing us beyond ourselves, prayer reveals our most authentic nature. The further you venture into your apparent absence, the more intimately you can encounter your essential practice. Therefore, the transcendent journey to authentic selfhood embodies the paschal pattern, for we can only find who we indeed are through losing ourselves.

Fulfilling your vocation within God's Church requires achieving balance. Realizing the true monastic vocation restores the ancient, harmonious and organic balance between contemplation and action. After all, Martha and Mary are sisters, and neither approaches God's Throne without the other.

The solution manifests as a complete and multifaceted prayer life that correctly emphasizes all things (e.g., Liturgy, meditation, etc.). Yet, individuals will chiefly emphasize different aspects according to their unique callings. Therefore, the father abbot/hieromonk bears the responsibility for discerning among various spirits and encouraging each to traverse the path that The Spirit Of God wills for him. Thus, making discreet adjustments and removing obstacles where necessary, the monastic community flowers every spirit and type of prayer. Furthermore, with some qualifications, what applies to monks also applies to all of the faithful.

External regulations do not entirely govern the monk's actions. Instead, monastic tradition spares some room for the monk to implement his own prayer rule in response to Grace's Inspiration. Yielding to interior inspirations of Grace and the external blessing of obedience, he may pray more, fast more and discipline himself more than The Rule actually prescribes. He understands Grace and obedience together represent God's Will for his own interior and contemplative life.

According to The Monastic Fathers, the core monastic activities (i.e., monastic prayer, reading and meditation) directly aim at acquiring a pure heart that unconditionally accepts itself totally surrendering to God's Will in every situation. To obey God's Will—In Its Exacting Truth—as it appears amidst life's complex demands, pure-hearted individuals necessarily renounce all deluded self-conceptions and exaggerated estimates of their capabilities. Consequently, acquiring a pure heart correlates with obtaining a new spiritual identity, for The Reality That God Wills fundamentally contextualizes any recognition of the self. Specifically, contrasted with the old man's complex and potentially disreputable fantasies, the new man's enlightened awareness manifests as a pure heart. Therefore, monastic meditation precisely focuses on generating this new insight that completely upends our perceptual paradigm: directly knowing the self in its higher aspect.

The Church, through all of its tribulations, exhorts the world to steadfastly practice self-restraint, endure trials and endure patiently; to despise worldly things, regard riches as nothing and laugh at honor; to contemptuously view death and despise life; to disregard homeland, relatives, friends and kinsfolk; to prepare for all persecutions and joyfully leap on swords; and, to consider all of this life's "magnificent" things (e.g., honor, glory, power, luxury, etc.) as less significant than spring flowers.

Therefore, understanding the grand processes undergirding creation deepens the mystery of prayer, for physical processes mirror the spiritual transformations we seek: how tremendous heat and pressure destroy the old to generate purer new forms. Contemplatives who understand—even, partially—the processes upholding Creation find themselves in a natural liturgy. Specifically, the monk's cell represents a microcosm of cosmic forces. As neutron stars compress matter into its purest form, the cell's sacred silence compresses the soul toward its essence. These parallel processes of compression and purification demarcate new dimensions of prayer because the forces forging elements in stellar cores find their counterparts in those forging faith in human hearts.

Furthermore, the movement between darkness and light, as well as between emptiness and fulness, mirrors the journey between earth and heaven. The contemplative traverses the void to find essential reality, and humanity itself stands on a bridge between two worlds. Like stellar furnaces purifying gold, prayer's crucible refines the soul so that it becomes a conductor between heaven and earth, light and darkness, fulness and emptiness. Thus, as earthly and Heavenly realities interpenetrate without confusion, the individual soul's journey through the dark night participates in creation's larger movement toward transfiguration. Such a nexus finds its perfect expression in The God-Man Jesus Christ, Who unites what had been separated and reconciles what had been divorced: Divine Nature and human nature.

He will try the world like gold in a – crucible /
And the fi're will burn any im-purity /
Be fearful ~ my brethren ~ when The Son – Of God comes /
Let us hasten to take refuge in repentance.
~ Vespers of Tuesday, Bo'utho of Mor Jacob

The evangelical virtues differ from those of other religious and philosophical ethics in content and method. The God-Man Jesus Christ demonstrates and proves this method (i.e., The Divine-Human way of life) as the only naturally normal way of living and knowing with His Incomparably Perfect Divine-Human Person, The Theanthropos. He who follows this way of faith also discovers the way of knowledge in it. The other godly virtues (e.g., love, hope, prayer, fasting, meekness, humility, etc.) also validate the things that faith validates because each of these virtues becomes a living creative force of living and knowing in The Man Living In Christ.

Nothing is unreal, abstract or hypothetical in The Theanthropic way of living and knowing, for all is irresistibly real because all experientially grounds itself here. The Person Of Christ, The God-Man, utterly and empirically demonstrates and defines Transcendent Divine Reality. Christ's Incarnation gives human flesh the most subtle, transcendent and perfect reality that lacks any boundaries, for The Person Of Christ is limitless. Therefore, nothing bounds man's personality and his knowledge.

The Person Of Christ, The God-Man, presents in itself the perfect, ideal reality of theanthropic monism: the natural passage from God to man, the supernatural to the natural, immortal life to human life. Such a passage is also natural for knowledge when, on the bridge of faith, hope and love, it from man to God, the natural to the supernatural, the mortal to the immortal, the temporal to the eternal—thereby, revealing the organic unity of this life and the coming life, this world and the other, the natural and the supernatural.

The love of God is a power that brings the intellect to itself. Reading hymns and psalms, pondering on death and hoping for future life, all collect the intellect and protect it from fragmentation. The intellect can reign over the passions, rule over the senses and control them.

The character of your knowledge depends on the disposition, nature and condition of your organs of understanding, for your means of understanding influence the quality of your knowledge at all levels. You do not make truth; rather, the act of understanding involves making a truth—already given objectively or subjectively—your own. Effectively, understanding a truth means subjectively affirming it. Accordingly, the human person yields fruits of understanding. As the tree is its fruit, so the organs of understanding are to the knowledge they generate.

Contrarily, faith follows a pure and simple way of thinking, far removed from all guile and methodical examination. Faith abides in innocent thoughts and simple hearts.

Often, faith perceives ex nihilo, but knowledge impotently idles without a priori matter. Faith, not knowledge, can exercise power over nature. Without burning, faithful men entered the fire and quenched their flames. Others walked on water like dry land. Each trans-natural, they reveal the vanity inherent to the modes of naturally knowing. However, faith moves above nature. Natural knowledge ruled for more than 5,000 years, yet man couldn't lift his gaze from the world to understand His Creator's Might until his faith rose to deliver him from this world's dark works and his fragmented mind. The faithful man will lack nothing; but, in faith, he possesses all things when he has nothing.

Our nature originally enjoyed the charism of pure souls. Only the soul purified of the passions, finally healed of sin's sickness, can attain the glory its transgressions squandered. Truly, if a man becomes worthy of purity (i.e., a healthy soul), his intellect receives joy through spiritual awareness; for, he becomes a Son Of God and a Brother Of Christ. You achieve a pure soul if you overcome the passions.

The material universe can teach you prayer if you learn to spiritually interpret it. Thus, scientific knowledge can represent a rung on the ladder of divine ascent—albeit, the most lowly one—because natural laws signal corresponding spiritual principles. Stars teach us about creative destruction; gold, value that transcends utility; and, light, illumination that exceeds physical brightness. Every natural phenomenon contains kernels of contemplative insight—each waiting to blossom in the fertile soil of the burning heart that prayerfully attends to it. As the cosmos proceeds from simple elements to complex life, the soul progresses from basic awareness to Divine Consciousness—in fact, because God made our soul in His Image, such actually represents a return journey. Whether in the heart of stars or man, all things tend toward ultimate perfection after enduring cycles of pressure, transformation and recreation.

Everyone who's spoken to me about Ammachi overtly testified to her brilliance—dare, i say, her genius! Ammachi tutored my mom and sisters in Math and Chemistry, and she demonstrated a deep understanding of Organic Chemistry. I remember her joyfully telling me how, during her days as a banker, she could calculate the bank balances of individual clients down to the cent. Mind you, at the time, computers were nowhere near as prevalent as they are these days. She grinned as she told me that they called her The Human Computer.

uber courageous and fiercely intelligent, Ammachi never hesitated to speak her mind and do what's right

However, more than her raw intellectual horsepower, she also possessed a remarkable quantity of social intelligence of which Simren and Dojay—more so, the former obviously—definitely inherited the commanding lion's share (sorry ~ Milen 😭). She used WhatsApp more than anyone else i knew—even, those not bedridden! To this very day, there are entire friend groups of college classmates who studied together more than half a century ago whose friendships Ammachi rekindled.

Her rare intellect and knowledge inspired me to continue my epistemological inquiry and ask: what—or, rather, Whom—is worth knowing?

some words from The Ecclesiast

The worth of a good name exceeds that of olive oil; and, the day of death, that of the day of birth.

Ultimately, in the grand scheme of existence, most human endeavors lack any lasting significance despite our toils and struggles because our efforts are naturally transient. Life's cyclicality and ephemerality underscores time's inevitability and the limitations of human ambition.

Those who consume worldly goodness never experience satisfaction, for such pursuits produce pain and distraction rather than fulfillment. Instead, true satisfaction necessitates recognizing The Divine Hand in life's blessings and the natural limits of human striving.

Genuine sickness and misfortune manifest as guarding wealth, which will perish under the distracted stewardship of profligate progeny. Such men live their sick days in darkness, grief, bitterness and great wrath. As we leave our mother's womb naked, we shall return without taking anything from our life's labor. You will not benefit from any profit generated to pursue worldly goods in this life.

God gifts you with the authority to consume your wealth and receive your portion. You will not unless you enjoy this recognition, and God will distract you with your heart's merriment.

Do any work your hands find according to your power, for there is no work, calculation, knowledge or wisdom in hades—where you are going!

Our knowledge—the things of which we're confident—makes the world go wrong, preventing us from seeing and learning.
~ Lincoln Steffens

In The Black Swan, Nassim Taleb leverages Umberto Eco's embodied philosophy to describe our relationship between books and knowledge. Eco belongs to that small class of encyclopedic, insightful and non-dull scholars. Owning an enormous personal library comprising ~30k books, he separated visitors into two categories. The first reacted with awe and admiration before asking him how many books he read. The second—a tiny minority—understood that private libraries operate as precise research tools instead of ego-boosting appendages. According to your means, fill your library with what you don't know. As you grow older, you will accumulate more knowledge and more books. Moreover, the growing number of books should menacingly look at you. Indeed, as you know more, your collection of unread books—your anti-library—should grow more.

my library visually reminds me of what i don't know

Therefore, correcting this overconfidence necessarily depends on fixing our relationship with knowledge. Skeptical empiricists, anti-scholars focus on unread books without perceiving their knowledge as their treasure, possession or, even, devices for enhancing their self-esteem.

some more words from The Ecclesiast

My heart set out to learn knowledge and wisdom, and it understood many things. However, knowledge abounds where wisdom abounds, but more knowledge begets more pain.

Would that i'd rather be a poor and wise child than an old and foolish king who no longer knows how to pay attention.

Wise words beneficially stimulate thought and understanding, encouraging you to reflect on your life and the nature of existence. However, excessively pursuing knowledge engenders weariness, so you must approach such wisdom with balance. Nevertheless, all wise teachings originate from One Shepherd. Although human wisdom may abound, true understanding follows from Him, who imparts wisdom to mankind.

He gives to the good person wisdom, knowledge and merriment before His Face, but He gives to the sinner distraction to increase and gather that which He gives to the good.

Guard against writing too much; for, it has no end, and much meditation makes the flesh weary. Guard yourself against excessive righteousness and wisdom, which will overwhelm you. Avoid ungodliness and stubbornness, lest you die outside of your time. Do not defile your hand because all things shall come forth for those who fear God. Fear God!

Apart from Christ, there are no sinlessly righteous men who only do good. If you guard His Commandments, you will not know wicked words. The wise man's heart knows the time of judgment, for there's a time and judgment for all matters. Man's knowledge is great on him, yet no one knows how it will be.

You will fall into the pits you dig, and serpents will bite you if you take down fences. Lifting stones will wear you out, and splitting trees incurs risk. If the axe head falls off, you must exasperatedly work harder. Your futile defense systems will not save you from the serpents that strike without warning. Thus, unforeseen circumstances can diminish your potential, and wisdom alone neither guarantees success nor protects against life's inherent uncertainty.

Woe to the cities with young rulers who eat in the morning, for their careless indulgence triumphs over their diligence. Instead, wise leaders approach their responsibilities with balance, so they eat at appropriate times.

However, the maze of wisdom inevitably leads to wonder, for True Knowledge—a being not doing—transcends pragmatic guidance. In pushing human understanding to its limits, you discover that our most excellent knowledge necessitates recognizing how little we actually know. Thus, you properly prepare for wisdom's deeper dimension: the wonder of being itself.

True knowledge changes us, rendering "if only i had known" as semantically equivalent to "if only i had been a different person." According to Biblical exegesis, knowledge transcends merely collecting and managing facts. Instead, knowing necessitates participation or communion.

Deeply problematic if misunderstood, knowledge manifests in many forms. Christ's True Knowledge is Saving Knowledge, for It delivers him who knows It. It directionally transforms the knower to True Existence: conforming with The Image Of God.

Had the crux of life depended on propositional facts, Christ would have engaged in argumentative debate. Yet, He led His Disciples—those seeking True Knowledge from Him—towards The True Knowledge that transforms and saves.

Neither yourself nor nature taught you everything you know. Instead, The Spirit revealed to you knowledge of things that your weak intelligence cannot independently apprehend.

Only metaphysics and ontology (i.e., existence and being) survive the axiological crucible. Neither right or wrong nor the legally correct matters. Instead, the world reduces to what indeed does and doesn't exist. God is The Only Truly Self-existing One, and realizing our salvation in Christ manifests as continuously moving toward True Existence. Such constitutes Eternal Life.

According to St. John Chrysostom, St. Paul dictated some of his epistle to the Romans as he beheld an open sea. Perhaps, a certain dizziness before God's Ineffable Economy possessed The Lord's Apostle, who desired to plumb the depths of God's Providence. God's Wisdom—Its unspeakableness, limitlessness, ineffability and incomprehensibility—simply astonished him. Thus, turning away from the unfathomable body of water, St. Paul cried with great amazement:

Oh, the depth of The Riches and Wisdom and Knowledge Of God! How unsearchable are His Judgments and how inscrutable His Ways!
~ Romans 11:33, RSV

You cannot discover the limit of God's Riches, Wisdom and Knowledge. You cannot find His Ways. You cannot speak of His Gift. You cannot understand His Peace. Therefore, you have no excuse for demanding a reckoning regarding all of His Providence. It is precarious and full of madness to investigate and be inquisitive about The Ineffable Wisdom Of God.

In his 1st epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul emphasizes that you have the most minuscule measure of knowledge, even, if you have learned much. Underscoring our knowledge's significant deficiency, he affirms that God stores the greater part for The Coming Age. Finally, metaphorically leaning on development and sight, he clearly demonstrates the disparity between our knowledge here and That Knowledge There.

Follow the example of clay, which naturally submits to the potter without resistance and inquisitiveness despite its consubstantiality. Yet, a boundless ontological and epistemological disparity between us and God exists here. Then, what forgiveness can you expect to obtain for shamelessly prying into The Providence of Him Who Created You? The Divinity is inapprehensible not only to us but to the powers above.

Do not seek what is too difficult for you, and do not question that which is too strong for you. Ponder these things that have been assigned to you, for the secret things are not a concern for you. Do not meddle with things beyond your works, for things greater than the understanding of humans have been revealed to you.
~ Sirach 3:21-23, LES

Creation proves The Providence Of God. God crafted this wondrously harmonious creation for no one else but you. Its beauty, diversity and utility sufficiently sustain your body. It generates profitable wisdom for your soul, paving a suitable path to The Knowledge Of God—all of this, He prepared for you.

The Golden-Mouthed Saint prepared a litany of different created objects from which you can discern God's Providence. The clouds, seasons and passage of time teach you about Him. So do The uninhabited winds, seas, earth and the various creatures inhabiting them; the plants, amphibians and animals of all species; the events of nights and days, the rains and the duration of years; death, life and the toil that falls to our lot; despondency, relaxation and the food and drink we receive; the customs, arts and traditions; the mineable mountains, navigable seas and stones; the islands, harbors and coasts; the sea's surface and its depths; the natural elements framing our world, the season's dispositions and the varying lengths of days and nights; health, limbs and the soul's constitution; the arts and the skill with which men may acquire them; the most minor and most insignificant living things; the boundless quantity of fishes, birds, and animals; the plants, herbs and ore-bearing mountains. All clearly demonstrate His Providence.

All that ~ oh, man ~ is for your sake: arts for your sake, and ways of living and cities and villages and sleep for your sake, and death for your sake, and life for your sake, and growth, and so many works of nature, and such a good world for your sake now—and for your sake it will be better still!
~ St. John Chrysostom, on The Providence Of God (Ch. 7)

Providence demonstrates that we were given both the natural law and the written law and that noble men were provided who, sojourning in a foreign land, became teachers of the peoples who welcomed them, and then—the crown of good things that we were favored with The Coming Of The Only Begotten Son.

He unceasingly undertook everything for our race from the beginning to the end. He gave The Law, sent The Prophets, struck people down and raised them, delivered them up to captivity and deemed them worthy of freedom. Yet, that only creation brings us to Knowledge Of God did not satisfy Him because man's senselessness impeded him from deriving any benefit from it. Therefore, He contrived other means to teach us.

For the sake of us ungrateful servants, He gave up His Only-Begotten Son to an accursed and shameful death that society reserved for the condemned. The world spat on Him, slapped Him, struck Him on His Head, ridiculed Him and crucified Him high upon The Cross. His Followers charitably buried Him and sealed His Tomb.

He carefully submitted to all these things for your sake. Thus, He discarded the curse, annulled your former condemnation, abolished sin's tyranny, razed the devil's citadel to the ground, rent asunder death's sinews and opened Heaven's Gates for you. To teach you how to persevere patiently, He shared your experience of worldly grievances. He endured evil suspicions, false accusations, the enemy's plots, ill-treatments, attacks, lashings, mockery, abuse, assault and death. Yet, He exceedingly prevailed over all of them to teach you how to face them courageously.

He ascended into Heaven, freely bestowed The Holy Spirit's Ineffable Grace upon The Church and initiated The Apostles in His Service. Thereafter, He carefully permitted His Heralds Of Life to experience countless evils for your sake. Moreover, for you, He prepared a Kingdom and indescribable good things: the unique dwelling places appointed in The Heavens, the blessedness that words cannot describe.

Do not be inquisitive anymore, for Your Master's Love is more than tender than your father's, more caring than your mother's and more amorous than a bridegroom and bride. He regards your salvation as His Repose, so He rejoices over it more than you rejoice when you escape dangers and death.

Asking The Artisan for the reasons that He brings everything about without knowledge and experience on your part represents the peak of ridiculousness. Refrain from inquiring into His Wisdom, which is naturally infallible, unspeakable, unutterable, inexpressible and incomprehensible. His Goodness is great, and His Providence is indescribable. Insofar as your actions don't interfere, everything you receive from Him will benefit you because He prefers your salvation over your death.

The soul becomes a new being the moment The Lord lays His Hand upon her. However, you can only know this experientially because, on earth, you cannot know Heavenly Things without The Holy Spirit Whom The Lord gives.

Such natural knowledge manifests as three species of natural philosophy: sensual realism, epistemological criticism and monism. Each approach bounds knowledge's power, reality, force, worth, criteria and extension within perception; necessarily circumscribing them with the organs of understanding's sensual limits. They consider venturing beyond natural limits into the supernatural realm as not only irrational but also impossible, so they forbid their adherents from aspiring unnaturally: you dare not pass your senses, which directly and indirectly limit you. Fleshy desires lead knowledge at its lowest level, concerning it with wealth, vainglory, habiliment, comfort and searching for rational wisdom. Such mere knowledge invents the arts, sciences and everything else that perceivably adorns the body. However, it remains contrary to faith. Such knowledge thinks no Divine Thoughts, and its fleshly character erodes the mind with irrational weakness; for, the body overcomes the mind with it and its entire concern for worldly things. Pride fills it, puffing it up so that it refers to every good work to itself but not God.

Human knowledge vitally concerns itself with truth. Knowledge irresistibly pulls towards The Infinite Mystery, for only The Eternal and Absolute Truth substantiating Itself as knowledge satisfies this instinctive hunger. Knowledge must perceive itself as perceiving God so that it knows God in knowing itself. Only Christ, The God-Man—The Only Incarnation and Embodiment Of Eternal Truth in the realm of human realities—can give This to you. The Knowledge Of Eternal Truth constantly fills him who receives The God-Man into himself as The Soul Of His Soul and The Life Of His Life.

However, the fault lies not with natural knowledge, so you should not categorically reject it. Instead, faith supersedes it. Only knowledge that resists faith in any capacity deserves condemnation. However, natural knowledge unnaturally rises from the world into Its Creator's Supernatural Realm when it acquires dispassionate wings and joins with faith, harmonically unifying with her and clothing itself with her burning thoughts. Faith fulfills natural knowledge, endowing it with the power to rise to The Heights to perceive Him, Beyond All Perception, and see The Brightness that created minds and intellects can never comprehend. Man reaches the heights of faith from the level of knowledge, so he no longer needs the latter after summiting the former.

Faith immediately and clearly reveals the truth of perfection. Neither inquiry nor knowledge's power but faith teaches you The Ungraspable. Subsequently, faith assumes knowledge and absorbs it into itself, returning to the beginning and rebirthing it as spirit. Then, flying to insurmountable heights and plumbing the unfathomable depths, knowledge can ponder The Divine Principles wondrously governing corporeal and incorporeal natures. The work of the spirit in the immortal and incorruptible things belonging to that other realm awakens the inner senses, for only a supply simple mind can penetrate and grasp The Spiritual Mysteries. Such knowledge has already received spiritual resurrection—albeit, hidden in this world—so that it genuinely witnesses the renewal of all things.

The Holy Power Abiding Within The Man Of Christ, The Holy Spirit preserves his soul and defends his body from evil. Those with enlightened and sanctified minds perceive This Invisible Power with their faithful eyes, and the saints intuitively know It experientially. The saints who attain such a life above nature faithfully abide in its delights. According to the mind's testimony, The Light Of Grace that sustains the heart's confident hope, free of any presumption, begets such faith in the soul. Perfect spiritual knowledge requires receiving The Spirit like The Apostles did. The spiritual eyes of such faith perceive The Mysteries hidden in the soul: hidden riches that The Holy Spirit conceals from the sons of the flesh but reveals to The Disciples Of Christ Who Receive Him. Dependent on humility, actual spiritual knowledge perfects the souls of its acquirors (e.g., Moses, David, Isaiah, Peter, Paul, etc.). Those reckoned worthy of perfect knowledge within natural human limits constantly immerse themselves in pondering things strange to this world, in Divine Revelations and lofty contemplations of spiritual things and Ineffable Mysteries. However, their humble eyes see nothing more of their souls than dust and ashes. After you pass through the gate of faith, God will initiate you into The Spiritual Mysteries and open the sea of faith to your understanding. Thus, faith engenders The Fear Of God from which follow repentance and practicing all the virtues, which itself begets spiritual knowledge.

We, Christians, are indescribably blessed, for our joy consists of knowing The Lord and unceasingly reaching out to Him. Axiologically, nothing surpasses knowing Him, and nothing falls short of not knowing Him. Nevertheless, blessed is he who believes in God despite not knowing Him.

Our Merciful Lord doesn't want the enemy to trouble our souls, so He teaches us to discern between what to do and not to do. Therefore, when perplexed, you should seek The Lord's Counsel accordingly:

Oh, Merciful Lord ~ i am a sinful man who lacks right understanding, so show me what to do.

St. Silouan kept his mind in hell and burned in the somber fire. These thoughts greatly profited him, cleansing his mind and offering repose to his soul. Thus, tearfully yearning for The Lord, he said: "I shall die soon and abide in hell's dark prison where I shall burn alone. There, longing for My Lord, I will lament: 'Where is My Lord Whom My Soul Knows?'"

If you know much, thank The Lord for the knowledge He gave you. However, your salvation doesn't necessarily depend on knowledge alone. Your soul needs The Fruits Of The Holy Spirit—even, simply one tiny seed that bears an abundant yield in good time.

some more words from The Ecclesiast

Remember Your Creator in the days of youth, for unpleasurable years will arrive during the days of evil. Then, the sun, moon, stars and light will darken, and the clouds shall return after the rain. Then, mourners will encircle the marketplace, for dust returns to the land that it was when you return to Your Eternal House. Then, the wind returns to God, Who gave it.

Fr. Seraphim posits one good reason for earnestly studying religion: coming into contact with a deeper reality than the everyday reality that so quickly changes, corrodes and offers no lasting happiness to the human soul. Each sincere religion tries to open up this reality to spiritual seekers. However, the dangers of searching for reality manifest as many young people burn themselves out trying to find reality. Some die young, while the survivors drag out their dreary existence at a fraction of their mind and soul's potential.

Avoiding the traps and deceptions confronting religious seekers necessitates searching for Truth instead of spiritual experiences, which can deceive. Every serious religious student faces the question of life and death. Contrasted with the Western confessions, our Orthodox Christian Faith bears mystical the title because it facilitates contact with a spiritual reality, producing supernatural experiences that transcend earthly logic.

Once an idealistic young American searching for the truth, Fr. Seraphim zealously studied East Asian wisdom after rejecting the Protestantism of his formative years. He, even, learned Ancient Chinese to translate its religious texts. However, he later realized that the soul naturally seeks a personal God, leading back to The All-Compelling Truth Of Christ Almost In Spite Of Himself.

Nevertheless, his conversion may not have taken place had he not discovered The Orthodox Church, which was all but unknown in The West at the time. Moreover, he understood that Christ and His Apostles founded The Orthodox Church, so It alone retains the pure continuity of ancient Christian teaching. Yet, he embraced The Orthodox Faith not only because of its authentic historical testimony but also because only Orthodox Christianity satisfied his thirst for truth.

Through Divine Grace, Orthodoxy brought him into living communion with God and gave him a profound spiritual discipline with which he could grow into God's Likeness. Simultaneously, It provided him with the theological and metaphysical principles that his penetrating mind could use to perceive the universe as a coherent whole along with man's noble place within that whole.

Fr. Seraphim wholly devoted himself to searching for The Truth; and, after finding it, he equally dedicated himself to serving It. With another like-minded Orthodox Christian in San Francisco, he began a missionary brotherhood, a bookstore and a periodical—The Orthodox Word. Some years later, his brotherhood desired to retreat from the tumultuous world and seek God in quiet seclusion. Therefore, they moved to the mountains of northern California and continued their missionary activity through the printed word.

Fr. Seraphim spent the remainder of his short life—precisely 13 years—as a monk in this wilderness. He immersed himself in The Church's Prayer Life and The Holy Fathers' timeless writings, fundamentally transforming his inner man. He diligently studied Patristic wisdom to practically use it for spiritual growth until he could think, feel and believe like The Fathers, until he became one of Them. Fr. Seraphim is a modern Holy Father, one of the rare transmitters of Christianity's Unchanging Wisdom to the contemporary world.

Pleasing and carrying great power, spiritual knowledge requires a healthy soul and a healthy organ of knowledge. Patiently practicing the evangelical virtues yields a healthy soul, which produces knowledge. Only the perfect, healthy soul receives knowledge.

After the grace of ascetic endeavor heals the organs of knowledge, they bring forth pure and healthy knowledge: the sound doctrine of the apostles. Grace fills healthy knowledge as it develops, for man's volitive ascesis and God's Power, full of Grace, synergistically produce it. All of man shares in it with all of God. Practicing the evangelical virtues recollects the soul, gathering in the mind and thoughts.

Truths for the virtues are truths for knowledge. Each knowledge begets the another, as each virtue begets other virtues and knowledge. One virtue produces another and sustains it, and knowledge operates similarly.

Knowing The Unique Veracity Of Christ's Truth involves living It—indeed, an empirically and experimentally pragmatic path. Only those following the ascetic way, not the curious, can know The Truth. The Tree Of The Virtues (i.e., The Tree Of Life), through asceticism, yields knowledge as its fruit. Orthodox philosophy, for the faithful Christian, consists of the theanthropic ascesis of the intellect and the whole person, as Our Savior's arresting words attest.

As he intensely suffered from his final illness in the hospital, The Heavenly Realm for which he had long prepared himself became more near and tangible. He received unseen consolation from God, Who fulfilled his tormenting and all-consuming desire for Transcendent Truth. Tears streamed from his eyes as he, unable to speak, only gazed up into Heaven. Supposedly, he received a revelation from St. John Maximovitch—his reposed spiritual father—during his hour of trial. Nevertheless, his dying body prevented him from conveying the contents of this message to his brothers.

On September 2, 1982, death finally freed his soul from his suffering body. His face became radiant and peaceful, and his mouth naturally formed into a gentle smile. Those who saw him in his coffin witnessed the quiet joy awaiting those whose hearts received God's Revelation. His death planted a seed that continues bearing fruit in the lives of those seeking God. The world has come to know him as a bridge between uprooted modern man and The Fulness Of Truth because of his many books and biography. Fr. Seraphim's vital transmission of ancient Christian wisdom inspired more loving hearts to burn for The Truth that they may find in The Living Person Of Jesus Christ.

The problem of the nature of knowledge becomes an ontological and ethical problem, which evolves into the problem of human personality. The nature and character of knowledge ontologically, morally and epistemologically depends on the constitution of the human person and the state of his organs of knowledge.

Philosophical idealism depends on transcendental realities and criteria but cannot prove their existence. Despite its transcendental foundation, it cannot know The Truth so necessary to human nature or, even, partially quench the thirst for Eternal Truth and Enduring Realities.

We receive Objective Truth in The Person Of Christ, The God-Man. The Fathers—those experienced, holy and evangelical philosophers—fully developed how The Objective Truth becomes subjective (i.e., the pragmatic aspect of Orthodox Christian epistemology).

Leveraging his rare experiential understanding of the progressive path for apprehending Eternal Truth, St. Isaac The Syrian traces the process of healing and purifying man's organs of knowledge. Based on the experience of grace, St. Isaac's philosophy perfectly expresses the principles and methodology of the Orthodox theory of knowledge.

Despite modern man's spiritual denseness, the basic process of his conversion remains the same as it had been. The spiritual life spreads out in two directions. One will lead you higher than this corrupt everyday life. The other will lead you lower, literally causing spiritual and physical death. However, before the conversion takes place, man must feel the absence of This Truth and experience the suffering that follows, deeply desiring It. Thus, conversion precisely begins when God-Revealed Truth touches the heart and ignites it.

The heart's ignition paves the way for memory to greet Grace, building the soul's capacity to receive Divine Understanding. The waters of baptismal Grace flow into the depths of human memory, washing away false distortions and awakening accurate recollection of our Divine Origin. In the heart, man can receive The Divine Gift; therefore, authentic spiritual knowledge lays its foundation here.

Knowing God is not the same as believing He exists, for many philosophers and scholars have rationally affirmed His Existence without coming to know Him. Even, monks study The Lord's Commands day and night, but not all of them know Him despite believing in Him. You can study as much as you can, but you will not know The Lord unless you live according to His Commandments because only The Holy Spirit, not learning, engenders Knowledge Of God. Enigmatically, some souls know The Lord; some do not know but believe in Him; still, others neither know nor believe in Him. Many educated men fall into the third and final category, for unbelief necessitates pride. Proud men prefer studiously applying their minds to acquire knowledge. However, the Lord only reveals Himself to humble hearts, so proud men cannot learn to know Him. The Holy Spirit unfolds The Lord's Works, beyond our mind's understanding, to low and humble hearts. Thus, we can partially know earthly things through merely applying our minds, but only The Holy Spirit can teach us to know God and all Heavenly Things.

Only through The Holy Spirit can one come to know The Lord's Love. However, the peaceful soul preserving a pure conscience comes to know Him through His Works, that He created Heaven and Earth. Though in small measure, this also represents Grace's Activity. We cannot know God without Grace, for earthly things (e.g., riches, honor, glory, etc.) will continually attract our minds.

As Jesus Christ's Love escapes our comprehension so can we not conceive of The Depth Of His Suffering because so infinitesimally small is our love for Him. However, greater love begets more understanding, even, of The Lord's Sufferings. There is small love, modest love and perfect love, and your perfection in knowledge correlates with your perfection in love.

We can only systematically discuss and examine God insofar as we know The Holy Spirit's Grace. The Saints declare that they've seen God, and They only speak of That Which They Know. Had there actually been no God, the earth would lack a mere, subtle hint of Him. But, desiring to pursue their wants, people declare that He is not. Yet, their doing so establishes that He is. Even, the heathens sensed God's Existence, but they didn't know how to properly worship The True God. However, The Holy Spirit instructed The Prophets, The Apostles, The Holy Fathers and Our Bishops. Thus, we received The True Faith. We knew The Lord through The Holy Spirit, confirming our souls in Him thereafter.

If you endure the pain of exploring your feeble human heart, you shall see The Kingdom Of Heaven abiding in the saint's soul but darkness and torment in the sinner's soul. Your salvation crucially depends on this recognition, for you shall eternally dwell in The Kingdom or torment.

Glory be to The Lord and His Deep Compassion, for He endows sinful men with The Holy Spirit's Grace. Poor monks and shepherds know Him through The Holy Spirit, yet rich and powerful men may ignore Him. Therefore, knowing The Lord necessitates obedience, sobriety, a humble spirit and a love for fellow men instead of wealth and learning. The Lord loves such souls and will manifest Himself to them of His Own Accord to teach them love and humility.

Humble yourself under God's Mighty Hand, and The Grace Of The Holy Spirit, Whom We Know In The Church, will teach you to desire suffering for the sake of The Lord's Love. Hate sin and evil thoughts if you want to know The Lord's Love for us, and fervently pray every day and night. Then, The Lord will give you His Grace, and you will know Him through The Holy Spirit. After death, you will enter into Paradise where, like on earth, you will know Him through The Holy Spirit.

The soul that doesn't know The Holy Spirit cannot understand the possibility—let alone the necessity—of loving her enemies, so she will reject This Commandment. Yet, The Lord pities all, so he who desires genuine communion with The Lord must love his enemies. The man who, through The Holy Spirit, knows The Lord becomes like Him. Beholding His Glory, we shall be like Him and see Him as He Is. He who cries out against evil men without praying for them will never know God's Grace.

In Heaven and on Earth, you can only know The Lord through The Holy Spirit not through ordinary learning. Even, children lacking any formal learning come to know The Lord through The Holy Spirit. While in his mother's womb, St. John The Baptist felt His Presence. St. Simeon The Stylite was 7 years old when The Lord appeared to him, and St. Seraphim was 27 years old when The Lord appeared to him during Divine Liturgy. Age had stricken Simeon when He knew The Lord after receiving Him in his arms in The Temple. Thus, The Lord bends His Ways to bring more comfort to each of our souls.

Oh, Lord ~ grant me a lowly spirit, that i may unceasingly thank You for giving The Holy Spirit to the earth and for giving Him to my memory. He, Himself, helps me keep Him in my thoughts. Oh, Holy Spirit, Sovereign King ~ what shall i, steeped in iniquity, render unto You? You revealed to me Incomprehensible Mysteries. You gave me Knowledge Of The Lord, My Creator. You taught me to know His Immeasurable Love for us.

Oh, wonder of wonders! The Lord despised not me—wretched sinner that i am!—but taught me to know Him through His Holy Spirit. Oh, how frail and infirm am i! Once, i knew God's Love in Its Perfect Fulness, yet i cannot possess It for myself. My soul weeps every day, for i haven't received that for which my soul seeks! The Lord's Dear Love For Us surpasses all description, and only through The Holy Spirit can the soul become inexpressibly aware of His Love. The Lord is Mercy, Meek and Gentle, yet our words fail to speak of His Goodness. However, without words, the soul senses This Love and would remain wrapped in Its Soft Tranquility forever. He gave us The Holy Spirit, so He truly did not forsake His Promise that: I will not leave you desolate. (John 14:18, RSV) The Holy Spirit invisibly teaches the soul to acquire peace. He gladdens the soul, bringing her joy on earth. The Holy Spirit teaches us to know God's Love, which shall be fulfilled in Heaven.

The Merciful Lord gave The Holy Spirit to establish The Holy Church on the earth. The Holy Spirit revealed to us not only earthly things but also Heavenly Things. We came to know The Consuming Love Of The Lord through The Holy Spirit. Filled with Love and their spirits desiring that all men might know The Lord, The Holy Apostles went throughout the whole world. The Prophets, The Lord's Beloved, rejoiced in The Holy Spirit, so they spoke The Lord's Mighty and Pleasant Words for every soul to hear.

When The Holy Spirit descended on The Apostles in tongues of fire, they experientially knew The Lord's command to love God and love man. The Apostle wrote:

My little children with whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you!
~ Galatians 4:19, RSV

The soul who knows The Lord instinctively senses Her Creator's Presence and joyfully dwells in His Great Peace as if a son, who returns home after many years afar, can speak with his dear ones to his heart's content.

After Christ drew near them, The Apostles recognized their burning hearts. Thus, the soul recognizes and loves Her Lord, for The Delight Of His Love fervently burns. The hearts of all share the same Love in Heaven. However, on earth, some immensely love Him; others, barely; and, yet, others, not at all. The soul, wholly filled with Love For God, is oblivious to Heaven and earth. Invisibly beholding The Desired One, his spirit burns. God's Grace strengthens the soul to shed many sweet tears, and she cannot forget Her Lord for a single moment.

That all nations know The Lord would incomparably delight me! Oh, Lord ~ with Your Holy Spirit, grant them to know You. As The Apostles knew You through The Holy Spirit Whom You Gave Them, grant all people to know You through Your Holy Spirit. Oh, people of the earth whom God fashioned ~ know Your Creator and His Love For Us! Know Christ's Love and live peacefully, that The Lord who mercifully waits for men to come to Him may rejoice. Turn to God, and lift your prayers to Him. Like a soft cloud that the sun lovingly illuminates, the whole earth's prayers shall rise to Heaven. All of The Heavens will rejoice and sing praises to The Lord for His Sufferings through which He delivered us. We are created for God's Glory in The Heavens. Do not cleave to the earth, for God is Our Father who loves us like dear children.

Out of God's Grace, i write. Yes, this is true. The Lord Himself bears witness to me.~ St. Silouan | St. Silouan the Athonite, "On the Knowledge of God" (p. 353)

The Father loves us so much that He gave us His Only-Begotten Son. Moreover, The Son's Will accorded with His Father, so He incarnated. He lived among us on Earth; and, The Holy Apostles, along with many others, witnessed Him in the flesh. Humbly, according to St. Silouan's assertion, i affirm that The Holy Spirit taught me to know that Jesus Christ is God.

The Lord loves us like we're His Children, and He never forgets us. His Love, even, exceeds that of a mother, for she may forget her child at times. We only know how The Lord truly loves us because He gave The Holy Spirit to His Orthodox People and our great shepherds.

Knowledge moves, changes, rises and falls according to three modalities: body, soul and spirit. Although naturally unified, knowledge changes how it acts in relation to each of these modalities. God gifts knowledge to the nature of rational beings at their creation, their beginning. Body, soul and spirit functionally distinguish naturally simple and undivided knowledge into three degrees that characterize all of man's life. The soul's knowledge consists of at least one of these degrees: from the moment man begins discerning between good and evil to the moment he leaves this world. Natural knowledge concerns itself with the visible and sensible. Spiritual knowledge concerns itself with the incorporeal, for it perceives through the spirit not the senses. Divine power grants supernatural knowledge, unknowable and higher than knowledge. Unlike the first two species of knowledge that result from external matter, supernatural knowledge unexpectedly arrives as a self-contained immaterial gift.

Continually studying and desiring to learn produces the first knowledge. Properly living and firmly holding faith, the second. Faith—and faith alone—makes the third, for knowledge vanishes, activity ceases and the senses become superfluous in it. God gives us the faith only through which we can confirm the existence of The Mysteries Of The Spirit: supernatural knowledge that neither rational intellectual powers nor physical body senses can apprehend.

Man progresses from knowledge's first to its second degree once he, in body and soul, practices the virtues (e.g., fasting, prayer, almsgiving, reading The Holy Scriptures, struggling with the passions, etc.). Applying this particular knowledge, The Holy Spirit disposes your soul towards goodness and begins performing every good work. To the heart, It shows the paths leading to faith—even though, this natural knowledge remains bodily and composite. Knowledge's first degree cools the soul's ardor (i.e., passionate enthusiasm and fervor) to endeavor on God's Path. The second rekindle the soul, preparing it for the swift path leading to faith. The third rests the soul from toil when the mind feasts on The Mysteries Of The Coming Life.

Perfection demarcates knowledge's third degree. After transcending care for worldly things, knowledge starts examining its hidden thoughts. Internally scorning the passion's evil source, it exclusively concerns itself with The Coming Life. Thus, it rises to follow the way of faith and seek The Hidden Mysteries.

However, the third naturally cannot fully rise to deathlessness, overcome flesh's weight and perfect its spiritual knowledge; for, the man in body, although progressing through knowledge's degrees, cannot live in the world of death yet altogether leave behind its fleshy nature. Grace helps him; however, he lacks perfect freedom in this imperfect world, for the demons hinder him. Every work of knowledge requires actively habituated practice, but the works of faith consist of spiritual thoughts and pure souls—both of which transcend mere sensual acts. As knowledge is subtler than the senses, faith is subtler than knowledge.

Our Lord loves man and reveals Himself to us as it pleases Him. The soul humbly rejoices in Her Master's Compassion when she beholds Her Lord. Thereafter, though she may perceive all things and love all men, her love for Her Lord burns brighter than any other love. Despite her inability to verbally express such, the soul knows this love in its fulness. Only those on whom The Lord bestows The Holy Spirit can know this joy, this gladness. Through The Holy Spirit, the soul suddenly perceives The Lord and knows that it is Him. Thus, Heaven and Earth know The Lord via The Holy Spirit, who permeates the entire man in soul, mind and body.

The Prophets tasted Him and spoke to God's People who heard them. The Apostles saw The Spirit descending in tongues of fire; and, within us, His Presence feels sweeter than all earthly things. The Holy Ghost filled The Holy Apostles, who fearlessly preached salvation to mankind, for The Spirit Of God strengthened them.

Threatened with death on The Cross if he didn't stop preaching, St. Andrew replied: "Had I feared The Cross, I shouldn't preach The Cross!" Thus, all of The Apostles, The Martyrs and The Holy Fathers who struggled against evil—all joyfully advanced to meet pain and suffering. The Gracious Holy Spirit draws the soul to love Her Lord, and The Holy Spirit's Sweetness effaces her fear of suffering. In fact, many Holy Martyrs came to know The Lord and realized the unfathomable depths of His Help during their most arduous sufferings.

With much striving, many monks valiantly endure for The Lord's Sake. Likewise, they come to know The Lord, struggle against their passions and pray for the entire universe. God's Grace teaches them to love their enemies because he who doesn't love his enemies cannot know The Lord Whose Life Exemplified His Command when He died on The Cross for every man—even, His Enemies! The Lord is Love, and He commands us to love each other and our enemies. The Holy Spirit teaches us This Love.

Every human thought has force, so every human word carries energy. Then, what of The Divine Word? In The Holy Gospels, we encounter Christ's Words—so tender, gentle, fragrant and sweet. Yet, we cannot, even, begin to conceive Their Infinite Energy, for They summoned the incalculable diversity of all existing things out of the darkness of non-being into to the light of being.

Christ humbly speaks in easily acceptable terms of human language that we, His Creatures, can express in writing. The Essence Of His Words bears The Energy Of The All-Powerful God, He Who Created All Things. Moreover, we must approach His Words, a consuming fire that has been thoroughly tried, with fear and trembling, as The Scriptures warn.

Addressed to freemen, His Words are gentle and non-violent. However, They simultaneously carry The Absolute Authority Of The Undivided Master Of All That Exists, so They know no boundaries. Though Heaven and Earth shall pass away, His Words shall not.

If profound faith contextualizes how you receive Them, Christ's Word will lead you to Eternal Life along The Path where you will encounter many things that those who do not follow Christ may deem strange and unknown. On This Lofty Path, He will reveal to your being everything that you will experientially meet during your existence.

The Light Of His Word probes the depths of the dark abyss, revealing to true nature of myriad false doctrines attracting man. His Word is a fire that tests everything in man and cosmic existence, for His Sight perceives every creature. His Word is Spirit, Eternal Life, Love's Fulness and Heavenly Joy. His Word is Uncreated Divine Light. His Words address not our superficial discursive reason but our deep hearts, so you can become like unto God if you righteously open your heart to worthily receive This Divine Light. Thus, realized in life, Christ's Words make man a god.

The True Christian, in his devout ascesis, faces the whole range of human potential. Every problem of human existence (e.g., life and death, freedom and creativity, the meaning of life and suffering, etc.) confronts with extraordinary insistence. The dogmatic premises supporting these problems pass before the great ascetics in conditions radically dissimilar to how scientific activity operates; for, they manifest in the nexus of faith, revelation and knowledge, law and Grace, Eternity and time, God and His Affinity for man and the world, Creation's Destiny and Divine Judgement. The Spirit Of Christ leads the human spirit to the existential Knowledge Of God, that the very word knowledge refers to neither abstract intellectual assimilation nor rational understanding but communion with Divine Being.

Within yourself, the evolution of truth from something known to something lived signifies the transition from knowing about God to knowing God Himself. Prayer's deepest mystery—Grace transforming memory into living communion—emerges from this understanding of love. The soul's journey through remembrance culminates in prayer's pure fire that dissolves all conceptual knowledge into the immediate experience of Divine Presence. Moreover, the principles guiding the spiritual life now become guides through death itself, as the soul's habituated surrender to Divine Presence becomes its pathway through final transformation. Thus, the contemplative practice culminates in the soul's ultimate contemplation: passing through death into Eternal Light.

With a lively, attractive and unusually adventurous intelligence, St. Silouan maintained a healthy sense of this world's reality. However, his spirit, ever preoccupied with God and man, refrained from inquisitively attaching himself to worldly matters towards the end of his life.

St. Silouan understood that our minds alone cannot know how anything—simple or complex—came into being. Instead, if you beg God to teach us how He created The Sun, the answer will ring in your soul. Most importantly, if you humble yourself, you shall know not only The Sun but also The Creator Of The Sun. Yet, when The Holy Spirit teaches the soul to know The Lord, she joyfully forgets the whole world. She ceases her vain pursuit to acquire earthly knowledge.

St. Silouan differentiated two species of acquiring knowledge of being according to the direction of our attention. The usual way we all know consists of directing our cognitive faculty outward to meet innumerable varieties of phenomena. This form fragments all existing things ad infinitum, so any knowledge acquired thus lacks completeness and genuine unity, which the mind insistently seeks. Therefore, the mind recourses to artificial synthesis: a natural form of abstract thinking. Unfortunately, any unity in this manner lacks objective existence.

The 2nd species, that to which St. Silouan's soul aspired, of acquiring knowledge of being consists of directing the spirit in toward itself and, subsequently, to God through prayer. Turning away from the endless plurality and fragmentation of earthly phenomena, the mind addresses itself to God. Then, dwelling in God, it starts seeing itself and the whole world as it actually is without sacrificing its ontological unity.

Time marches on through centuries and millennia, and The Light Of Knowledge Of God diffusively reveals itself to us—weak and feeble though, we are—in an infinite multiplicity of words and images. If you move further from God, your thinking becomes increasingly fragmented, and your spiritual experiences are vaguer and disturbed. Conversely, as you move closer to God, the range of your thoughts increasingly narrows until you finally concentrate on one single impassible idea. However, no longer an idea, it's an inexpressible vision or spiritual intuition.

To understand St. Silouan, you must recognize the single principle that occupied his whole being. The Savior mystically appeared to St. Silouan without him searching, bearing the fruit of his understanding that God is Infinite Love. Moreover, only through The Holy Spirit did he know that God invariably pours out This Love on enemies also. The Holy Spirit revealed Christ to him and taught him humility, that he could love his enemies and every living creature. At the time of the apparition, he grasped the condition indicating true communion with God along with its immediate consequences: the criterion distinguishing The Authentic Way, the measure of every phenomenon of the spiritual life and the objective of our lifelong quest.

The potential of infinitely rich cosmic being fully opens up to the Christian ascetic entirely embraces human potential. The existence of every reasonable creature oscillates between two poles: loving God to hatred of self and loving self to hatred of God. Regardless of your conscious awareness of this existential principle, your personal life precisely accords with your spiritual self-determination on this plane. Conversely, the second refers to the sinful love of self and hatred of God. Any self-consideration diminishes and potentially quashes your ability to abide in Divine Light. Thus, those who love themselves to the point of hating God are those who love darkness rather than light.

Although the same terms define the two poles, simply modifying their order within their propositions radically transforms their meaning. The first refers to the holy species of total love and hatred, self-hatred springing from the fulness of one's Love For God. At this pole, one altogether forgets himself insofar as he totally concentrates the entire force of his being on God. Therefore, we can define such absolute reluctance to consider oneself as wrath or self-hatred. Those who know the delight of God's Love and the bitterness of losing It angrily turn away from everything that may incur such loss. For man, authentic and genuine freedom manifests as being in God.

After The Holy Spirit repeatedly visited him during long years of desperate spiritual struggle, his (dogmatic consciousness) formed. Then, when he actually rose into the pure spheres of (hallowed impassibility), in the most profound humility, he realized his duty to others: make known what had been given to him from On High.

St. Silouan's whole life cardinally attests: knowing The Divine Mysteries absolutely necessitates loving one's enemies. He categorically asserts that he who does not love his enemies does not know God, for his willful rejection of The Lord's Command separates him from God. Moreover, he whom the (wiles) of intellectual culture don't, he who sheds his heart's blood to pray for his enemies along with the whole world—his witness acquires exceptional force and significance. Contemporary civilization fails to corrupt him, making his testimony irresistibly convincing. Consequently, no human science can augment either the depth or the quality of The Truth to which his life bears witness.

Repentance represents the door of True Knowledge. The Greek word for repentance is metanoia—literally, a change of mind (nous). Such an action only manifests when a being genuinely moves from false knowledge to True Knowledge. Moreover, the journey to True Knowledge must pass through humility, which necessitates healthy shame. In fact, St. Sophrony describes shame as The Way Of The Lord. Whereas guilt pertains to what i have done, shame follows who i am. Thus, shame sits at the very heart of repentance.

Shame supplants guilt when conceptualizations of what i have done spills over into those of who i am. The mere awareness of shame can devastate a man. Shame's painful nature causes us to flee from it, but we must directly confront it to reap the fruits of true repentance. According to St. John of The Ladder, you can only escape shame through shame. Moreover, demons habitually persuade us to either avoid confession altogether or, if we do confess, blame others for our sins like we're confessing another's sins. Instead, without shame, lay bare your wound to The Physician, saying:

Father ~ it is my wound and my plague. Nothing other than my negligence caused it. Nothing but my carelessness—no man, body or spirit—bears the blame for it.

To avoid shame's pain, the mind and heart may subtly confess another person's sins. Subconscious thoughts and desires reflecting the complexities of human experience emerge during trials. Often, illusory pursuits distract humans from living meaningfully. Yet, avoiding shame wholly prevents metanoia. Successfully struggling to confess involves journeying to the heart where, upon confronting sin's truth, we strangely find shame. When you confront your truth—your ontological who i am—in The Light Of Christ, it appears broken, dark and paradoxically empty.

After confronting that place, we may intuitively feel our deep nothingness. This nothingness may impel us to instinctively retreat to the fearful place of loathing, which correlates with pride. Demanding to be something, we confront nothing. However, at the precipice of the ontological abyss, we simultaneously stand in Christ's Presence when we perceive our inherent nothingness. He entered into man's nothingness, into death and hades, to meet us there, where we receive the precious gift of our true self formed in The Image Of Christ Himself. Thus, experiencing the shameful kenosis (i.e., the complete emptying of self) necessarily precedes your Life In Christ.

St. Paul prayerfully asks to be found in Christ. The false self forensically imagines the righteousness of the law. My accomplishments amount to nothing more than legal "noises." They constitute neither my true self nor Eternal Life, and they do not help me know The True and Living God.

Properly reflecting on your actions produces the ability honestly stand before who you are and what you are not, which subsequently enables you to stand face-to-face before Christ Himself. Our God is Good, and He loves mankind. He does not desire to crush us with our shame into nothingness. Instead, He meets us there, and His Compassionate Company comforts us with the truth of ourselves.

Furthermore, try to integrate this penitential ideal into your prayers. Specifically, when you pray, practice pressing your shame to That Unbearable Place in which you stand before Him without hiding.

Regarding the discipline of confession: Fr. Serafim Aldea advises always presenting deeds to your confessor father, which you believe might make him think less of you. Thus, you can mildly practice being a "holy fool." Fear not, for good confessor fathers expect to hear such things. In fact, he participates in a much worse sin if even judges you for the sins you confess. Moreover, good confessor fathers rejoice when they accompany their genuinely repentant children into God's Bright Presence, which transforms shame into True Being.

In his vision of The New Heaven and Earth, The Beloved Apostle says: [They] shall see His Face, and His Name shall be on their foreheads. (Revelation 22:4, RSV) God revealed His Name—ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν—to Moses after he removed his shoes (i.e., his false self). At the world's end, God will inscribe His Name on us: The Icons Of Christ.

The whole man fears God and guards His Commands. In Judgment, God will remember every action and each overlooked thing—whether good or wicked. The whole man fears God and guards His Commands. However, such demarcates not an end but a threshold after which the soul's earthly pilgrimage transforms into its eternal journey. The same Divine Guidance that enlightened the prayerful path now illuminates the way through death's shadow. The habits that shaped the soul's spiritual life (e.g., surrender, humility, love, etc.) become its companions through its final passage, revealing death's office as the ultimate school of prayer.

Thankful that I'm blessed with pain /
At least, I get to feel somethin' /
99.5% of the time, [bleep], I won't feel nothin'.
~ EST Gee, I Can't Feel A Thing

The news of Ammachi's passing absolutely shattered me. Though i'm ashamed to admit it, i've historically reacted to such experiences with shattering things—an unhealthy, unhelpful and literally destructive response!

On March 26, 2024, on that frigid Tuesday morning of Holy Week, my mother called me in the midst of my prayer during which i—from my knees—begged God to God relieve Ammachi from her suffering. During the last time we visited Ammachi (the day i got my chain back), Shirley Kochamma told me that she spent most of her days whimpering in pain 🥺 After concluding my petition, i opened my door and walked into the living room before calling my mother back. She told me that Ammachi passed away during the night. I told Mama that i would drive home that afternoon and that i would immediately drive to the office to make arrangements for my absence.

Inexplicably, God answered my prayer before i even asked. Yet, after ending the call, i immediately threw my phone as hard as i could without aiming. By God's Grace, i only hit the armrest of my couch. However, the phone's screen cracked in many places, and the device's internal electronics suffered from irreparable damage.

Worse yet, i threw the phone with such force that i broke the prayer bracelet on my right wrist that Roshen—one of my best friends in the whole wide world—gifted me only 10 days earlier. A few weeks ago, i privately confided to him how the loss of a prayer bracelet i used to own left me deeply stricken, so he got me this bracelet out of his goodness and love for me. Oh, how distress afflicted me when i realized that, for a moment of anger, i squandered a reflection of Eternal Love!

clearly, i lacked a good understanding according to my faith, so i asked: what does The Orthodox Church teach us about the nature of death and its purpose?

Oh, my soul ~ trust neither bodily health nor fleeting beauty, for you see how death afflicts all—even, the strong, the fair and the young. Rather, let your whole heart and full mind cry out with one voice:

Lord, Jesus Christ—The Only-Begotten Son Of The One, True Living God ~ have mercy on me—a fool, a wretch and a sinner—and save me!

Modern exegesis tends to use an overly rationalistic lens to interpret the events described in The Holy Scriptures and The Lives Of Saints, emphasizing a literal meaning grounded in a realistic or "this-worldly" understanding. Such tend to obscure the Orthodox teaching about the soul's fate after death—especially, the soul's consciousness outside of the body and its mental acuity.

We look for the resurrection of the dead and the new life in the world to come.
~ Nicene Creed

More than just the matter and dust comprising the body, man consists of both body and soul. However, unlike the body, the soul does not die. It sees and knows everything. Therefore, we would have been inconsolable had The Lord not given us Eternal Life, and our sorrow for dying loved ones would know no limits. If they ended with death, our lives would be pointless. God created man for immortality, and Christ's Resurrection opened the gates of The Heavenly Kingdom and Eternal Blessedness for the righteous ones who believe in Him.

In a letter to a dying woman, St. Theophan the Recluse writes:

You will not die. Your body will die, but you—being alive, remembering yourself and recognizing the whole world that surrounds you—will go over into a different world.

That life does not or does exist after death manifests as a belief, and affirming either belief necessitates faith. Yet, to assert with empirical certainty, one must go there. Insofar as we haven't gone, some rejoicingly do good deeds because of their faith. Others, like demons, believe and tremble. Even, every unbeliever trembles when death confronts them.

Nevertheless, despite the increasingly endless varieties of therapies for prolonging earthly life, you will still not escape death. Indeed, only through faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ—The Way!—can you escape death. Upon remembering that death will dissolve our bodies, most people wail and bitterly lament. However, He ordained death and commanded that we meet such an end, for it shares the same source in God's Goodness as everything else.

Journeying through contemplative darkness prepares the soul for death's final darkness, where spiritual vision wholly subsumes physical sight. Death fulfills this transformed perception that prayer practices. After the veil between worlds completely parts, the soul sees with undimmed spiritual eyes what it previously glimpsed through faith's shadow.

Heaven exists in space, and It is up from any spatial point on Earth. Conversely, hell is certainly down in the bowels of the world. However, until their spiritual eyes open, men can see neither these places nor their inhabitants. Moreover, you cannot designate precise coordinates to these places on our plane of space-time. Instead, they exist in a different kind of space that, although it begins right here, extends in a different direction. Nevertheless, everyday experience testifies to—or, at the very least, hints at—this other kind of reality.

Three aspects mainly characterize the authentic Christian experience of Heaven. First, the soul ascends to It. Second, angels conduct the soul on its journey there. Third, Heavenly Inhabitants greet the soul there, and she joins Their Company.

St. Salvius Of Albi—a 6th-century hierarch of Gaul—returned to life after being dead for most of the day and gave the following account to his friend, St. Gregory Of Tours:

After you saw me lying dead when my cell shook four days ago, two angels raised me and carried me up to Heaven's Highest Peak until I seemingly had the earth, clouds, sun, moon and stars beneath my feet. Then, they conducted me through a gate that shined more brightly the sun's light, and I entered a building. The whole floor shined with gold and silver, and I cannot possibly describe this light. Many people—neither male nor female—filled the place, and they stretched so far in all directions that I couldn't see where they ended. The angels made way for me through the crowd of people in front of me, and we reached the place towards which we directed our gaze when we were further away.

A cloud more brilliant than any light hung over this place, but I could see a sun, moon or star. A cloud more brilliant than any light hung over this place, but I could not see a sun, moon or star. From the cloud came a voice like that of many waters. Many beings greeted me—sinner that I am!—with great respect. Priestly vestments adorned some of them, and others wore ordinary clothes. My angels told me that consisted of martyrs and other holy men we honor on earth with devotional prayers. As I stood there, such a sweetly nourishing fragrance wafted over me that I felt no need for food or drink until this very moment.

Then, I heard a Voice say: Let this man go back into the world, for our churches need him. Despite hearing The Voice, I couldn't see Who spoke. Then, I prostrated on the ground and wept, saying:

Alas, alas ~ Oh, Lord! Why have You shown me These Things only to take Them from me again?

The Voice that spoke to me said: Go in peace. I will watch over you until I bring you back to This Place once more. Then, my guides left me. Weepingly, I exited via the gate through which I had entered.

Such visions of Heavenly Reality—albeit rare—illuminate the path all souls must travel. Although some receive extraordinary glimpses of the spiritual realm before death, every soul must navigate the transition between worlds. Orthodox tradition preserves this journey's pattern, revealing the awaiting challenges and corresponding consolations.

Our earthly life prepares us for the future life, and death concludes this preparation. Then, man leaves behind all of his worldly cares, and the body disintegrates to rise anew at The General Resurrection. However, without cessation, his soul continues living. The soul's spiritual vision begins when it leaves the body and its physical vision ceases. According to St. Dorotheus of Gaza, departed souls remember everything that happened here—thoughts, words, desires—without forgetting anything. Yet, The Psalmist asserts that all worldly thoughts shall perish immediately when the soul passes out of the body. Therefore, you will remember how you acted according to virtue and vice. In fact, the soul becomes more alive and aware after death than before it because the body no longer burdens the soul's activity. Once freed from the body's earthliness, the soul remembers all of its deeds more clearly and distinctly than before.

The parable of the rich man and Lazarus proves that, after separating from the body, souls remain neither idle nor without consciousness...Moreover, they maintain their dispositions (i.e., hopes, fears, joys and griefs) along with some expectation for The Universal Judgment, which they've already begun to foretaste...Yet more alive, they cling to glorifying God with increasing zeal. The soul (i.e., man's most precious part) naturally contains not only the whole reasoning faculty but also The Image and Likeness Of God. Its presence alone invigorates dumb and unconscious matter, making the body sensitive. Consequently, after putting this present life's fleshly coarseness, it remains conscious. Therefore, physical death restores the purer and more refined condition of the spirit's mental powers.
~ St. John Cassian, First Conference (Ch. 14)

We only have certainty that beings from the other world came when Grace affords saints and angels to visit the righteous. Nevertheless, when dying people begin to see departed relatives and friends during ordinary circumstances, such represents a natural introduction to the unseen world that they will soon enter. Often, the dying experience this spiritual vision before the moment of death. During this vision, they may simultaneously converse with their loved ones. However, those surrounding them don't see what they see. Ostensibly, only God alone knows the true nature of the visions that manifest to the dying, so you have no good reason to pry into it.

Apparently, God grants this experience to share at least two insights with the dying person. First, it informs the individual that the other world is familiar, not totally strange. Second, it evidences that mutual love shared between close ones characterizes the other world. (c.f. dream grass) For example, further in his letter to the dying woman, St. Theophan The Recluse touchingly expresses:

There, your father, mother, brothers and sisters will meet you. Bow down to them; give them our greetings; and, ask them to pray for us. Your children will surround you with their joyous greetings. There will be better for you than here.

For two days after passing from the body, the soul enjoys relative freedom. It finds itself among other spirits—some good and some evil. Typically, it inclines towards those who are spiritually similar to it. It will depend on the same spirits—however unpleasant they may be—that influenced it while it was in the body. It can visit earthly places that it fondly remembers, but it moves into other spheres on the third day. Accordingly, in a letter to the aforementioned dying woman's brother, St. Theophan the Recluse writes:

Your sister will not die: the body dies, but the dying one's personality remains. It only passes over to another order of life...They do not put her in the grave. Just alive as she is now, she will be in another place. She will be around you during the first hours and days, but she won't say anything. You can't see her, but she will be right there. Be mindful: the loved ones left behind weep for the departed, but her condition is immediately an easier and happier one...She is better off there, but we agonize like some tragedy struck her! She will surely see this with astonishment.

In its gradual self-emptying, prayer foreshadows death's complete surrender in which the soul must release all earthly attachments. Specifically, prayerfully practicing such relinquishment becomes the soul's final offering and transforms death from a mere ending into ultimate communion. Therefore, prayer and death merge into a single movement of the soul toward God.

According to Fr. Seraphim Rose, The Life Of St. Basil The New (March 26) presents the most detailed account of the toll houses. In it, Blessed Theodora relates her passage through 20 specific toll houses, each testing particular sins, to Gregory, her fellow disciple of the Saint.

You cannot doubt The Judgment in the next life (i.e., The Particular Judgment immediately after death and The Last Judgment at the end of the world). However, God's Outward Sentence will answer to the inward disposition toward God and the spiritual beings that the soul cultivated.

Although seeming familiar to us, the other world will not only manifest as pleasant meetings with loved ones. Instead, the spiritual encounter will primarily test the soul's disposition in this life. Either it inclines toward the angels and saints because it virtuously obeyed God's Commandments, or it inclines toward fallen spirits because of its negligent unbelief. Even, temptations instead of accusations may primarily contextualize the aerial toll-houses.

This period concludes by the 3rd day or sooner. On the 3rd day, the soul passes through legions of evil spirits that obstruct its path. They accuse her of committing various sins with which they had tempted her. Traditionally, the soul traverses through 20 toll houses, and the evil spirits test her for a particular sin at each one. After surmounting one obstacle, it moves on to the next one. Terrifyingly, if the soul fails to pass just one of the toll houses, she will immediately be cast into Gehenna.

In fact, so terrible are these demons and their toll-houses that, for instance, The Theotokos begged Her Son to deliver her soul from them after The Archangel Gabriel informed her of her imminent death. Naturally, The Lord Jesus Christ Himself appeared to receive His Most Pure Mother's Soul and conduct her to Heaven. Indeed, the soul experiences great terror on the 3rd day after departing from the body, so she especially needs our prayers on that day itself.

We, Orthodox Christians, ought to count it as one of our greatest blessings that numerous Patristic writings and Lives Of Saints clearly teach about the aerial toll-houses and The Particular Judgement. However, according to Fr. Seraphim Rose, anyone who reflects on The Holy Scriptures alone will generate the same understanding.

Individual experiences of the "toll-house" model may vary considerably. Nevertheless, minor details (e.g., the exact number of toll houses, etc.) subordinate to the primary fact of the soul's experience after death: soon after death, the soul certainly experiences The Particular Judgment that summarizes its successful—or unsuccessful 😭—"unseen warfare" against the fallen spirit during its time on earth. Therefore, in a letter to the dying woman's brother, St. Theophan The Recluse writes:

After departing from the body, the soul soon begins its arduous passage through the toll houses. Here, she needs your help! Bearing this in mind, you will hear her crying to you! Here, you should direct all your attention and all your love for her. Love's truest testimony manifests as secluding yourself when and where possible from the moment of the soul's departure, leaving concern for the body to others, to immersing yourself in prayer for your beloved's unexpected needs in her new condition. Remain thus, unceasingly crying out to God to help for six weeks and, indeed, longer than that. Notably, for Theodora, her elder's prayers comprised the bag from which the angels took to separate from the tax collectors. Do not forget to do this, for your prayers will serve the same purpose. This is love!

After successfully passing through the toll houses and bowing down before God, the soul spends the next 37 days visiting The Heavenly Habitations and the abysses of hell without knowing where it will remain. Only on the 40th day does it learn of the place that has been appointed for it until the resurrection of the dead. After finally finishing with earthly things, the soul gets truly but partially introduced to the other world where it will spend Eternity.

An angel revealed to St. Macarius of Alexandria why The Church especially commemorates the departed on the 9th day after death apart from generally symbolizing the nine angelic ranks. Up until this day, the soul has toured the beauties of Paradise. Thereafter, it sees the horrific torments of hell until the 40th day, when it learns where it shall wait until the resurrection of the dead and The Last Judgment.

Again, these numbers constitute a general rule. Undoubtedly, all of the departed do not precisely complete their course according to this model of after-death reality. Moreover, the forms that such visions take are not necessarily "photographic" representations of how the soul appears in the other world. Instead, they are images conveying the spiritual truth of how the prayers of those remaining on earth benefit the departed soul.

After 40 days, some souls find themselves foretasting Eternal Joy and Blessedness; others, fearing eternal tortures that the consequences of The Last Judgment will fulfill. However, until The Last Judgment, the soul's condition can change if loved ones commemorate during Divine Liturgy (i.e., offer The Bloodless Sacrifice for them) and remember them during other prayers.

In passing through death, each soul participates in man's larger march towards transfiguration. Individual deaths represent steps in creation's ascent towards its ultimate renewal in which personal transformation enables cosmic transformation. Each soul's path illuminates the way for those following it, underscoring death's Divine Purpose. This whole corruptible world will meet its end one day, and The Everlasting Kingdom Of Heaven will dawn. There, the souls of the redeemed will join their resurrected bodies; and, immortal and incorruptible, they will dwell forever with Christ. Then, The New Creation's full joy for which God made man will replace the partial joy and glory that departed souls know, even, now in Heaven. However, those who did not accept the salvation that Christ came to Earth to offer mankind—their souls along with their resurrected bodies—will experience eternal torment in hell.

In the final chapter of his Exact Exposition Of The Orthodox Faith, St. John Damascene clearly describes the soul's final state after death:

We truly believe in the resurrection of the dead. Resurrection precisely refers to the resurrection of the body, for only that which fell can resurrect. However, the soul is immortal, so it cannot rise again. Moreover, death precisely refers to the soul's separation from the body, so resurrection represents the soul and body's perfect rejoining. Thus, the corrupted and dissolved living being that fell incorruptibly rises up again because He Who Formed Man in the beginning from dust can raise him up again after he returns to the earth from where His Creator decided to take him.

Had the soul alone contested for virtue, then it alone would receive crowns. Had it alone indulged in pleasures, the soul alone would justly receive punishment. However, the soul acquires either virtue or vice with the body, so Justice will recompense them together. Thus, with our souls reunited with our incorrupt bodies, we shall rise again and stand before Christ's Terrible Judgment Seat. He will give the devil, his demons, the antichrist and the impious sinners over to everlasting fire—a fire unlike any material fire we know whose essence only God knows. However, together with the angels, His Good Servants will shine like the sun unto Eternal Life with Our Lord, Jesus Christ. He shall see them forever; and, enjoying The Unending Bliss that He causes, they shall see Him forever. They shall praise Him together with The Father and The Holy Spirit now and always, forever and ever, unto The Endless Ages of ages. amin

In his Dialogues, St. Gregory the Great answers, "What can benefit souls after death?" when he teaches:

The Holy Sacrifice of Christ—Our Saving Victim—greatly benefits souls, even, after death insofar as they can be pardoned in the life to come. Therefore, the departed sometimes beg to have Liturgies offered for them...Naturally, the safest course consists of doing, during your life, what you hope others will do for you after your death, for exiting a free man is better than seeking liberty after finding yourself in chains. Therefore, despise this world with all of your heart like it spent its glory. Offer your sacrifice of tears to God every day as we immolate His Sacred Flesh and Blood. It mystically presents The Only-Begotten Son's Death to us, so This Sacrifice alone has the power to save the soul from eternal death.

You can do precisely nothing more excellent for your beloved departed, nothing better manifests your loving desire to truly help them than praying for them and commemorating them during The Divine Liturgy. Specifically, during The Liturgy, The Priest fractions Particles for the living and the departed. Then, as They fall into The Blood Of The Lord, he says:

Oh, Lord ~ through the prayers of Your Saints, wash away the sins of those commemorated here with Your Precious Blood.

Absolutely, immediately arrange for the 40-day memorial, which consists of daily commemoration at The Divine Liturgy for the next 40 days. If the church that served your departed's funeral celebrates The Divine Liturgy every day, The Priest may commemorate your departed for 40 days or longer potentially. However, if that's not the case, carefully order the 40-day memorial at whichever Church serves daily services. Likewise, send contributions to Holy Places (e.g., monasteries, Jerusalem, etc.) that constantly offer prayers. Therefore, immediately begin the 40-day memorial—if possible, in the nearest place with daily services—after death when the soul especially needs the help of prayer.

Starets Alexis, the renowned priest-monk of the Kiev-Caves Lavra's Goloseyevsky Hermitage, conducted the service of re-vesting the relics of St. Theodosius of Chernigov in 1896. Before uncovering The Saint's relics, he grew weary as he sat next to the relics and fell asleep. He saw The Saint in his slumber, and they had the following conversation:

St. Theodosius: I thank you for laboring for me. I also beg you to commemorate my parents—Priest Nikita and Maria—when you serve The Divine Liturgy.

Starets Alexis: How can you ~ oh, Saint ~ ask for my prayers when you stand at The Heavenly Throne and intercede for God's Mercy on behalf of others?

St. Theodosius: Yes, that is true, but The Offering at The Divine Liturgy is more powerful than my prayer.

Our departed always need our prayers and our commemoration during The Divine Liturgy. Still, they particularly need them during the 40 days when their soul proceeds on its path to her eternal habitations. The body feels nothing then. It neither sees its close ones who've assembled, smells the fragrant flowers, nor hears the funeral orations. However, the soul senses the prayers offered for her. Grateful for her earthly intercessors, she remains spiritually close to them.

Inform your priest as soon as your beloved falls asleep in The Lord so he can read the Prayers For The Departing Soul that The Church reads over all Orthodox Christians after their death. If possible, have the funeral in The Temple and read The Psalter over the deceased until the funeral. Rather than elaborately, ensure that The Church completely performs the funeral without abbreviation. At this time, instead of yourself and your convenience, think about the deceased with whom you are forever parting.

Moreover, if The Church has many deceased individuals at the same time, propose to serve the funeral for all together. When The Church simultaneously serves the funeral for many individuals, the close ones who gather together will pray more fervently than several funerals served successively. For the reposed, each prayerful word seems like a drop of water for the thirsty man.

The Church's prayer cannot save those who neither wish for their salvation nor struggle for it themselves during their lifetime. Perhaps, The Church or particular Christians wouldn't pray for the departed souls had they not done anything during their lifetimes to inspire such prayer after their death. Memorial services, prayers at home and good deeds (e.g., almsgiving, contributions to The Church, etc.) done in their memory benefit our beloved departed. However, commemorating them during The Divine Liturgy especially benefits them.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
~ Matthew 5:7, RSV

Mercifully care for those who departed into The Other World before you. As a relative or beloved of the departed, do what the departed needs within your ability. Do not use your money to adorn the coffin or the grave. Instead, to remember the departed, help the churches offering prayers for them and help the needy. Show mercy to the dead and care for their souls, for—whether peacefully or violently—the same path shall confront us all. Therefore, mercifully commemorate the dead according to how you hope others prayerfully remember you.

The Church's prayers powerfully assist the depart, but they also hint at more profound mysteries about life, death and spiritual transformation. These mysteries themselves point beyond the horizon of mere ritual to fundamental truths about human nature and Divine Purpose, so death's mystical dimension contextualizes the very essence of Christian life.

Man cannot live as a Christian, but he can only die a daily death. Therefore, insofar as he's in this world, a veil always wraps him. This veil prevents him from perfectly abiding and dwelling in God to Whom his soul aspires. On this side of life, the conventions of earthly being condition everything he does. The great mystery of death either denounces his earthly path as false or stamps his earthly path with everlasting truth. Only through the latter can he achieve perfection. Thus, although all men similarly experience the destruction of the organic body, death assumes its special purpose for the spirit.

Christ is perfect God and perfect man—in the sense of ultimate perfection, of really real man. Only He, The All-Perfect Man, fully plumbed the full depth of human nature. Consequently, His Commandment and His Spirit lead those following after Him to approach this fulness without totally realizing it during the confines of this earthly life.

Death doesn't harm the man who departs from this life, but he can receive an unfading and incorruptible body. Yet, those who survive him in the arena can reap the most significant benefit from his passing. Seeing the inevitable dissolution of those with whom you walked yesterday sobers you. Thus, you learn how to exercise restraint and cultivate virtue, that you establish in your mind humility: the mother of all good things. An exceptional tutor of virtue, death teaches us to moderate our thinking. Bridling the passions affecting our soul calms the waves and produces stillness.

Fully unveiling the mystery of Christian spiritual life is impossible. However, Christ's Commandments inevitably guide the Christian ascetic to the confrontational injunction: If anyone comes to Me and does not hate...even his own life, he cannot be My Disciple. Indeed, if you ardently desire the perfection commanded of you, you must accept, even, This Bidding Of The Lord deep in your heart. Only thereafter can you experience the last stage that man can access.

If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My Disciple.
~ Luke 14:26, RSV

The virtue of understanding humbles the soul and purifies it from clouded thoughts so that it may progress to contemplation instead of loitering among the passions. Such contemplation ("immaterial contemplation") returns the mind to its primordial nature. A spiritual virtue, it introduces the mind to God and contemplates His Ineffable Glory, bringing the soul close enough to primally contemplate The Spirit. Immaterial contemplation separates the mind from this world and, even, from perceiving this world. The senses share no part of the spirit's active life.

In the faithful man, spiritual contemplation—and, simultaneously, all revelation to the mind—begins with him occasionally experiencing himself outside of his body and, even, the world. Contemplation helps the mind grow, and it rises to Revelations Beyond Human Nature. In this world, contemplation brings to the faithful man all The Divine Contemplations and spiritual revelations that the saints will receive along with all the gifts and revelation he can naturally know. After the saintly intellect makes this life its own, spiritual contemplation replaces material contemplation and fleshy opacity.

Monasticism isn't necessary for realizing the fulness of universal human experience, which you can obtain in all circumstances. God gives each of us the same Commandment. He regards us with equal measure and belittles none of us in His Sight. He sufficiently provides us with what we need to acquire the ultimate perfection that man can attain. For every man, the price is identical: be utterly unsparing of self.

God's Providence shines more plainly than this world's light, so avoid wasting your attention on superfluously scrutinizing the causes of everything. Sure, God made me; He endowed me with an incorporeal and rational soul; and, He entrusted me with dominion over visible creation, conferring the scepter of superiority over all other creatures upon me. However, i must honor and worship Him precisely because He does not need us. God does not need my service, so He marvelously granted me existence out of His Goodness. God truly existed and possessed His Blessed Glory before bringing us, the angels and the powers above into being. He brought us into being and does everything for us only because He loves mankind.

At the intersection of abstract truth and concrete reality, we can discover how Divine Providence works, even, through the darkest circumstances. The path through death not only leads to life but also leads to participation in God's Triune Nature, so suffering becomes the doorway of Divine Wisdom. The path from death into Divine Life begins with the transition from suffering into Trinitarian Insight, which reveals how The Holy Trinity shapes all of reality—from the structure of human knowing to the nature of love itself. Such understanding realizes its fulfillment in Trinitarian Contemplation, where the pattern of Divine Love illuminates the entire gamut of human suffering.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn exemplified how God reveals Himself to suffering Christians. A firmly faithful man, his monumental book, "The Gulag Archipelago," details how atheism affects the human soul. Emerging as a victor because he obtained Christian faith within the prison, his experiences taught him that the atheist system pertains to a universal category of the human soul. Even, Dostoyevsky asserts that affirming atheism as true (i.e., there is no God) permits everything. Now, you can experiment with any new inspiration, perspective and kinds of societies.

Solzhenitsyn demonstrates that, once atheism becomes the dominant philosophy, there must be prison camps to exterminate religion. Man naturally desires religion, so forbidding it necessitates removing him from society—the communist ideology stems from this principle. The atheist philosophy naturally expressed itself as the gulag prison system in Russia because atheism roots itself in the evil in man's nature.

However, as the gulag reveals the evil in man's nature, it also represents the starting point for his spiritual rebirth. From his suffering in prison, Solzhenitsyn learned how human beings become evil and good. He was cruel as an army sergeant because his youthful successes intoxicated him with a sense of infallibility. He was a murderer and oppressor because he possessed excess power. Yet, he had many systematic arguments to convince himself that, during his most evil moments, he was doing good.

Only when he lay on rotting straw did he initially sense the striving for good within himself. Thus, his heart became soft and receptive to revelation. He realized that the line distinguishing good from evil passes through every human heart instead of states, classes and political parties. The heart that evil overwhelms retains a small portion of good, and an un-uprooted yet small corner of evil remains in, even, the best of all hearts.

Suffering represents the reality of the human condition and the beginning of genuine spiritual life, so Solzhenitsyn's experience plumbs depths that the Western man cannot fathom. Christ Himself incarnated to suffer on The Cross and die for us.

Suffering colors genuinely real experiences, for the indulgent life quickly produces fakery. St. Gregory the Theologian describes our religion as "suffering Orthodoxy" to which The Church's entire history attests. Many of our faithful brethren suffered persecution and torture. All of the apostles except for The Lord's Beloved died as martyrs. During the first three centuries of Christianity, believers worked out The Church's Divine Services—celebrated in similar formal today—while constantly expecting death. After the age of the catacombs, The Church fought to retain its Pure Faith when many teachers tried to substitute personal opinions for The Divine Teachings Our Lord revealed to us. Our Faith is actually a suffering Faith, for suffering helps the heart receive God's Revelation.

Death gloated over the dust of our fa-ther Adam /
And over his fair beauty consumed by - corruption /
Our Lord saw him – and was grieved and descen*ded /
To restore – Adam by – The Cross*

The Voice from the top of The Tree, Which shook – Creation /
Shall call and wake up from the dust those who – sleep in Christ /
They shall be clothed – in a garment of glo*ry /
On That Day – of The Lord's – Coming
~ Vespers of Tuesday, 2nd Qolo, "On the Departed"*

None can bear witness to Ammachi's courageous resilience, which Appacha supported, like Mama, Sheeba Aunty and Shirley Kochamma. Yet, her burning heart thoroughly touched mine, starting a chain reaction of events that no man can stop.

Beyond simply passing the torch, we're responsible for modeling how to know God intimately and personally. We, whether fair with youth or steeped with experience, must be living testimonies that God continually molds us. Of this stewardship, only noteworthy beings can truly bear the weight. Even, if it means being forgotten, they labor for their descendants to remember God.

Alice Thomas—the ammachi of Dojay, Milen, Simren and i—is noteworthy not because of her bold intelligence, her cheerful character or her remarkable resilience. She is worth noting because of the burning heart in which she staked her faith.

i learned that realizing My Purpose (i.e., Theosis, the reason for which God created me) necessitates reconciling my wretched heart according to The Holy Sacraments, which The Holy Orthodox faithfully administers through asking: what does The Orthodox Church teach us about the nature of the heart and its role in the salvation of man?

eyes, oh, eyes ~ why do you lie?
what i see opposes what i believe;

ears, oh, ears ~ how come you fear?
for me, the lack of breath deceives;

mind, oh, mind ~ what do you find?
without faith, do not perceive!

heart, oh, heart ~ what's your part?

According to Church Tradition and The Holy Scriptures, genuine Knowledge Of God requires revelation. Likewise, true knowledge of the self hides, so it must be made known. However, that which hides God abides within us, not outside us; for, only the pure in heart...shall see God. (Matthew 5:8, RSV) Not necessarily sinless or perfect, pure-heartedness manifests as stillness that can see what truly is without turning away.

God and the self share a deep nexus in Christian theology, for we cannot know one without the other. We only know God insofar as we know ourselves, and we only know ourselves insofar as we know God. Your being, from your heart to your body, is The Temple Of The Holy Spirit. Grace opens your eyes to discern between good and evil. Grace strengthens The Sense Of God within you, opening you to the future and filling you with Mystical Light.

Truth perceives The Things God Gives; truth perceives God. He who perceives thus both has and knows The Truth. Truth does not exist with those lacking this perception. Though always seeking truth, he will never find it until he perceives God so that he may perceive and know truth.

God abides within your heart—itself a vast, limitless universe. Here, you submit to madness, or you acquire the courage to enter and discover the Indestructible Life within. According to St. Macarius, you can find all kinds of evil (e.g., dragons, lions, poisonous beasts, etc.) in your heart. Yet, despite its small size, you can also find the entire Treasury Of Grace. God, The Angels, The Life, The Kingdom, The Apostles, The Heavenly Cities—each abides in your heart.

Although the intellect is a species of the soul's senses, the heart contains and governs the interior senses. They root themselves in the heart. All of God's Laws and Commandments exist to purify your heart. God took on flesh to cleanse your heart and soul from evil, welcoming you back to your original state. Only from Holy Roots stem Holy Branches. Therefore, having a pure intellect necessitates having a pure heart. Instead of an exalted state of consciousness, acquiring Truth only requires a loving, broken and contrite heart that suffering, repentance and faithful longing open to God's Revelation.

God reveals Himself to burning hearts, hearts wholly ready to receive Him. He reveals Himself to individuals when His Presence moves and changes their hearts, when His Spirit fills them or when they hear His Truth preached. Thus, He endowed His Apostles with the power to traverse all of the inhabited world to preach The Gospel to all people within the first decades after His Resurrection.

God reveals Himself to loving hearts although we usually do not let ours open up. The Scriptures reveal to us that God is Love, and Christianity is The Religion Of Love. Despite the mysticism permeating The Orthodox Faith, the genuine Orthodox person always faces every situation confronting him with both of his feet firmly on the ground. You can only encounter God if you accept what manifests itself in you, and acceptance requires a loving heart.

Knowing The Truth necessitates a loving heart, even, though God must sometimes humble and break down the heart to make it receptive. The human heart's past, present and future are all present to God, so He clearly perceives where He can break through to communicate. Cold calculation stands in direct opposition to the loving heart that receives revelation from God. To find Truth, you must search deeper.

Christ Himself joined two of His Disciples who walked on the road to Emmaus on the very day of His Resurrection, and He inquired about their excitement. Consequently, they incredulously ask if He's the only person Who did not know what happened in Jerusalem. They heard that Their Master had risen from the dead, but they knew not what to believe. Christ started opening their hearts and explaining how The Old Testament prophesied The Messiah's Sojourn. Yet, His Disciples did not recognize Him because He did not dazzle them with signs and wonders.

Later, when they reached Emmaus, Christ feigned as if He would've proceeded further. Seemingly, He would have departed from them unrecognized had they, out of simple love for a needy stranger, not asked Him to spend the night with them. When He sat down with them and "broke the bread" as He did at The Last Supper, their eyes opened. They saw Him as Christ Himself, and He vanished right before their eyes.

Questioning themselves, they remembered how their hearts burned while He walked with them on them, even, though they had not recognized Him. They recognized Christ because of their burning hearts not because He vanished from their sight.

In his gospel account, St. Luke describes the experience of two disciples—Cleopas and Simon according to tradition—who, on the road to Emmaus, encountered The Risen Lord. However, they didn't recognize Him until He broke the bread at table with them. Nevertheless, upon reflection, they realized that their hearts burned within them when The Risen Lord interpreted The Scriptures for them during their walk.

The Risen Lord doesn't change, so He doesn't disguise Himself. Thus, the change must occur on the side of those experiencing Him; their mind grasps new knowledge—a recognition! Mary comes to herself when Christ speaks her name—i.e., she recovers herself, who she really is. Whereas, the eyes of the disciples on the road to Emmaus opened when Christ broke the bread, a clear Eucharistic reference. Therefore, encountering The Risen Lord consists of personal and eucharistic aspects. When we behold Christ face-to-face, we will learn who we really are and have always been. On The Last Day, we will know the meaning of personal and Eucharist and recognize our identity that currently hides with Christ in God.

However, contemplating his blessedly vivid experiences achieved through enduring his arduous ascesis, St. Isaac presents a dialogue to describe them. According to him, knowledge means perceiving Eternal Life. Moreover, Eternal Life means perceiving all things in and through God; for, understanding produces love, and The Knowledge Of God rules over all desires. Every earthly delight seems superfluous to the heart that receives This Knowledge, for nothing compares with The Delight Of The Knowledge Of God.

Therefore, knowledge represents victory over death, linking this life with immortality and uniting man with God. The very act of knowing approaches the immortal, for man passes from the limited subjective to the unlimited trans-subjective through knowing. Moreover, when God becomes your trans-subjective object, knowledge's mystery becomes The Mystery Of Mysteries and The Enigma Of Enigmas. The man united with God mystically weaves such knowledge on the soul's loom.

After a man moves from the temporal to the eternal through an evangelical asceticism, after he lives and thinks in God, after he speaks as of God, after he sees the world as sub specie Christi—he perceives the world in its primordial beauty. His pure heart's gaze penetrates the crust of sin to see Creation's Divine Core. The faithful ascetic contemplates The Holy Trinity, essentially Mysterious and Unknowable, manifesting in this world through love, mercy, meekness, humility, prayer and toiling for all, rejoicing with the rejoicing, weeping with the weeping, suffering with the suffering and repenting with the penitent. His life in this world reflects his life in That Other World Of Mysterious And Invisible Values. His thoughts and acts in this world root themselves in The Other World from which they draw their wondrously life-giving strength and power. Tracing his thoughts, feelings, acts or ascetic practices brings him to The Holy Trinity, The Primary Source Of Them All. From The Father, through The Son, in The Holy Spirit, all things come to him.

The Realm Of The Spirit manifests within the man with a pure mind; The Light Of The Holy Trinity shines within him like the sun, and This Realm's inhabitants breathe The Holy Spirit—The Comforter—as if air. Their life, joy and gladness totally subsist in Christ, The Radiance Of The Father's Light. The contemplations of such a man's soul always gladden him. This Realm is Jerusalem, The Kingdom Of God, which The Lord says hides within us. Only the pure of heart may enter This Realm, The Cloud Of God's Glory, to behold Their Master's Face and fill their intellects with His Light's Radiance. You can only see the beauty within you after you completely discount and despise all the beauty outside you. As soon as the humbly meek man with a healthy soul prays, he sees The Holy Spirit's Light within his soul. He rejoices in beholding The Rays Of His Light, delighting in contemplating Its Glory.

Unspeakable contemplative wealth enriches the faithful ascetic, so love and compassion fill his whole being when he turns toward creation. He loves the sinner but loathes his works, for humility, mercy, repentance and love weave him together. Love for every creature fills his heart. The merciful heart burns with love towards all of creation—men, birds, animals, demons, every creature. Even, at the mere thought of them, tears overflow his eyes. His heart patiently contracts from the mighty sorrow constraining it, and he cannot bear to perceive creation suffering any harm or misfortune. Therefore, with incessant tears, he prays for irrational beasts, the opponents of truth and those harming him, that they may receive mercy to preserve them. Moreover, he also prays for the reptiles with an immeasurable sorrow in his heart, likening him to God.

Signs of purity include: rejoicing with those who rejoice, weeping with those who mourn, hurting with the sick, anguishing with the sinners; rejoicing with the repentant and agonizing with the suffering; criticizing none, while seeing all men as good and Holy in one's mind.

You must live God because God is Life.
~ Fr. Roman Braga

Orthodox philosophy and its ascetic epistemology, filled with Grace, give man all that various metaphysical systems cannot. In theanthropic realism, Eternal Truth Himself stands before your knowledge in The Fulness Of His Infinite Perfection—giving Himself to enlightened men endowed with Grace. Transcendental Divine Truth manifests before man in The Person Of Christ, The God-Man. In Him, Truth objectively becomes immanent and presents an immediate and eternally vital historical reality. To make it subjectively immanent (i.e., making it your own), practice the virtues to make The Lord, Jesus Christ, The Soul Of Your Soul, The Heart Of Your Heart and The Life Of Your Life.

Prayer and other ascetic practices transform the mind, purifying it and teaching it how to contemplate God with Divine Eyes instead of human ones. The faithful ascetic ascends to contemplation with the help of gracefully living a good life. Initially, his confidence in God's Providence towards men increases. Love towards His Creator illumines him, as he marvels at How He Cares For The Rational Beings He Made. Consequently, two experiences arise within him: The Sweetness Of God and a Heart-Felt Burning Love For God—The Love That Burns Away The Passions Of The Soul And Body. Thus, he becomes drunk with The Wine Of Divine Love. God draws his thoughts beyond themselves and captivates his heart.

At every instant, contemplating God necessitates guarding your heart from the passions and maintaining constant vigilance over your soul. If you watch over your soul at every hour, your heart will rejoice in revelations. If you draw your contemplations within yourself, your intellect will contemplate The Dawn Of The Spirit. If you recoil from mental diffusion, your mind will contemplate The Lord in your heart's inner recesses. You will see radiant angels and Their Lord Himself with them and within them if you are pure, for Heaven is within you. The righteous man's soul shines brighter than the sun, contemplatively rejoicing in revelations at every hour.

Sometimes, contemplation springs from prayer and silences the prayer of the lips. Subsequently, the prayerful man experiences the state of contemplative prayer in which he, contemplatively standing outside himself, becomes a body without breath. With varying degrees and diversities, myriad gifts exist in contemplative prayer because the mind has yet to pass into that realm where prayer no longer exists—that realm in which something greater than prayer exists.

Though manifold, prayer's modalities have one aim: pure prayer. In pure prayer's depths lies a non-prayer rapture, for everything known as prayer ceases; though contemplating, the mind cannot utter prayers. Contemplative prayer reaps what prayer sows, and the wondrously abundant yield from the meager inputs amazes the harvester. In such prayerful contemplation, the intellect passes its own limits and enters That Other World.

The heart is a very complex thing. Suffering helps the human heart's transformation, but there exists no infallible means of achieving it. Yet, when conversion ultimately takes place, the revelation process occurs: the needy person suffers then, somehow, the other world opens up to him. The more suffering inspires your desperation for God, the more He will come to your aid. He will reveal to you Who He Is and show you the way out.

The passage from suffering to Transcendent Reality reflects Christ's Life, for He endured the most horrible and shameful death on The Cross before rising from the and ascending into Heaven. Then, He sent His Holy Spirit to instantiate His Holy Church in human history.

Don't seek spectacular things like miracles because they can invite deception. Rather, the correct approach consists of the heart humbling itself to recognize its suffering. Moreover, it intimately knows the existence of a Higher Truth that not only assuages this suffering but also brings it into a fundamentally different dimension.

All spiritually alive things inevitably return to God. However, the successful return journey requires understanding the sacred architecture undergirding epistemology: how, through properly ordered faculties, Truth manifests in human experience. Our Almighty God performs saving miracles, and He doesn't let His People defenselessly wallow in suffering before many enemies.

All levels of knowledge depend on man's religious and moral state. Fundamentally a religious and ethical problem, knowledge depends on the religious and ethical content and quality of man—especially, the religious and ethical culture of his organs of knowledge. Perfect knowledge positively correlates with spiritual and moral perfection because God made man such that, within him, his morality balances his knowledge.

Knowledge, at every developmental stage, depends on the ontological structure and ethical state of its organs. The organs of knowledge become holy only after man's patience in the evangelical virtues purifies and heals them. Pure knowledge can only flow from a pure heart and mind. Turned towards God, the pure and healthy organs of knowledge gather pure and healthy Knowledge Of God; turned towards creation, knowledge of creation.

Knowing reflects the active ascesis of the whole human person, not one part of his being (i.e., the intellect, the understanding, the body, the senses). Every act of knowledge involves the whole man with his entire being—in every thought, feeling and desire.

Two species constitute Faith's genus. The first comprises perceiving information (e.g., hearing, seeing, etc.), and the second confirms and proves it. Specifically, contemplative faith—the second—depends on that which you've perceived.

Two species constitute knowledge's genus. Natural knowledge—the first species—precedes faith and involves discerning between good and evil. Spiritual knowledge—the second—follows faith and contemplatively perceives The Mysteries, hidden and invisible.

Faith frees you from natural knowledge so that you can acquire spiritual knowledge. That Unknown Power making man capable of spiritual knowledge descends to man via the ascesis of faith. Prevent natural knowledge's web from trapping you, for acting according to it means living against the edge of a sword.

In man, knowledge progresses through the virtues and regresses through the passions. The virtues weave knowledge on the human soul's loom, which extends through all of the visible and invisible worlds. The virtues are not only the powers creating knowledge but also the source principles from which knowledge springs. Ascetically endeavoring transforms the virtues into the elements constituting your being so that you can advance from knowledge to knowledge.

The virtues are the sense organs of knowledge. The religious and moral power of The Virtues heal the man and make him whole. Man advances from one virtue to another to progress from one comprehension to another. Asceticism necessarily characterizes the single, unbroken path from faith—the first virtue—to love for all—the last virtue. Through the grace of his ascetic endeavors, man forms, transforms and transfigures himself on this long path. His pure and integrated knowing expresses his personal purity and integrity. Thus, he heals his being from the illnesses of sin and ignorance, restores his personal integrity and unifies his spirit, making himself whole.

In the faithful ascetic, knowledge naturally evolves into contemplation. Contemplation senses divine mysteries hidden within things and events. The mind's finest workings continually pondering on God finds contemplation, which abides in unceasing prayer. Thus, it illumines the intellect: the soul's spiritual aspect.

According to The Holy Fathers, contemplation carries an ontological, ethical and epistemological significance. Contemplation means, through Grace's Action, prayerfully concentrating on The Mysteries that surpass our understanding. Such Mysteries abundantly manifest in not only The Holy Trinity but also man's person himself and All Of God's Creation.

Vividly aware of the links binding him to the higher world, the faithful ascetic contemplatively lives above the senses and the categories of time and space. Revelations containing those things which no eyes have seen, no ears have heard and on which no hearts have meditated nourish him. Yet, such an ascent necessitates actively confronting the dragons inhabiting our inner selves.

Knowing the self requires journeying into and through the shame surrounding it. However, the true self is not the shame-self. How i feel about myself defines the self-conception of the shame self, which the true self sits deeper beneath. Yet, God resides beneath, even, the true self.

You must encounter all of the evil treasures within to behold that beauty. Without undertaking this singular pilgrimage, you will waste your whole life without genuine knowledge of God or the true self. Tragically, the shame-self will dictate such a superficial life, itself amounting to nothing more than puppetry. Over time, its treasure of evil will beget more dragons and lions, feeding your desire to devour your neighbor instead of loving him.

Patiently striving in asceticism, filled with Grace, yields a pure heart and intellect, healing the intellect and other organs of understanding. The Fountain Of Light, which pours sweetness on The Mystery Of Life and Of The World, bubbles up in the faithful ascetic's pure intellect.

God and man's common action, the synergy between God's Grace and man's will heals and purifies the organs of human knowledge. On purification and healing's long journey, knowledge itself becomes purer and healthier.

Additionally, the body must suffer with and for Christ to cleanse the intellect, sufficiently preparing it for glory with Christ. The body glories in temperately submitting to God, and the intellect glories in truly contemplating God. Fasting, prayer and tears—those paramount tools of purification—achieve the beauty of temperance, paving the way for faith's power to transform your heart.

We initially experience disappointments and hardships as shame, and these experiences subsequently transform into anger and depression when the shame becomes unbearable. The heaviness stems from the shame of seemingly declaring our unworthiness, incompetence and inadequacy. Sin similarly operates in our lives because shame (i.e., how sins make us feel about ourselves), not guilt, is hard to bear.

The passions are specific hardnesses or ontological insensitivities, and the things of life cause them. Whether the hunger for wealth and comfort, the thirst for honor and power or the desire for glory or bodily preservation, all passions share one common name: the world. Here, 'the world' roughly refers to 'the carnal mind carnally conducting itself.' Therefore, 'the passions' refers to 'how the world uses its things to attack man,' who can only repulse them with help from Divine Grace. Passions uproot your soul while settling in you. They confuse your mind, disturb your thoughts and fill them with fantastic forms, images and desires. The prostitute world beguiles the soul with its soul-destroying desires to undermine its virtues and destroy its God-Given Purity. Naturally, yet tragically, the prostitute soul begets impure knowledge.

The passions make the soul drunk, but pursuing the virtues represents the rehabilitating path to sobriety. The virtues flow from sorrow and afflictions, which weave them together. Every virtue is a Cross, according to St. Isaac the Syrian. Loving your oppressions and sorrows frees you from worldly things, detaching your mind from the world's confusion. God generously extends to you the offer of adoptive sonship, whose acceptance necessitates actively exercising your volitive will. Therefore, being born of God requires first freeing yourself from the material world. The economy of knowledge flows as that of God's Grace.

Only purifying the soul from the passions and evil can heal it. The soul's sickness manifests as the passions, but its health manifests as the virtues. The virtues remedy the soul and the organs of understanding through progressively eliminating their sicknesses. However, the virtuous remediation process is slow, so it demands significant effort and patience.

Unbelief accompanies the love of the body. Faith frees the intellect from the sense categories, and fasting, vigils and pondering on God sobers it. Intemperance and a full stomach cloud the mind and distract it, dispersing it among fantasies and passions. However, bodies that love pleasure cannot behold The Knowledge Of God. Fasting yields healthy understanding, but debauchery follows from satiety; and, impurity, excess. Faith confirms the intellect in pondering on God. Constantly remembering God represents the way of salvation.

The ascesis of faith starts treating and curing the soul afflicted with the passions. After settling in you, faith begins uprooting the passions from your soul. However, to heal your soul of the passions and overcome the material world, your soul must feel faith's power; faith in God must intoxicate your soul. The ascesis of faith comes with a negative side—freedom from sinful matter—and a positive side—oneness with God. The senses disperse the soul among worldly things. Still, the ascesis of faith—i.e., the soul fasting from material things and devoting itself to constantly remembering God—brings the soul back to itself. The ascesis of faith is the foundation of all good things. Spiritual growth depends on progressively freeing yourself from your enslavement to sinful matter. Concentrating your thoughts on God, incessantly pondering on God's Words and poverty marks the beginning of this new way of life.

Faith concentrates the mind, previously dispersed among the passions, frees it from sensuality and endows it with peacefully humble thoughts. The sick mind lives sensually (i.e., by the senses) in a sensual world. Faith transports the mind from the prison of this world where sin stifles it to the new age where it may freely breathe wondrous new air. The asleep mind is as dangerous as death, so faithfully rouse your mind to perform spiritual works because performing spiritual works helps you overcome yourself and drives out the passions.

Persecuting yourself will drive your enemy from your proximity.
~ St. Isaac the Syrian, Homily 2 (p. 121, Holy Transfiguration Monastery)

True freedom consists of a soul resurrecting with Christ and enjoying freedom from the passions. Only practicing the virtues overcomes the passions, and you must fight every passion to the death. Faith is the first and chief weapon for struggling with the passions. The mind's light and intellect's strength, faith drives the mind away from the darkness of the passions and banishes sickness from the soul. Faith internally bears the principle and substance of not only itself but also all the other virtues, for they develop as concentric circles around their predecessors.

Faith linguistically expresses itself as prayer. Faith begins the healing of the organs of understanding, and prayer continues it. Prayer guards and guides the intellect, transforming all thoughts into good ponderings on God. However, prayer is a hard struggle, calling the whole person into action. You crucify yourself in prayer, crucifying the passions and sinful thoughts clinging to your soul. Prayer slays the carnal thoughts of man's worldly life. Fundamental to your salvific labors, patiently persevering in prayer is a very hard ascesis, for it requires denying yourself. Prayer is salvation's fount, for it acquires all other virtues and good things.

Monstrous temptations assail the prayerful man, but only prayers save and protect him. The intellect's surest guardian, prayer drives away the clouds of the passions, illuminates the intellect and brings wisdom to the mind. True perfection requires unceasingly abiding in prayer. The process stretches the boundaries of human personality, progressively replacing self-centeredness with God-centeredness.

Prayer begets love, as faith begets prayer. The virtues have one substance, so they beget each other. Love for God indicates that the new reality that faith and prayer lead exceeds that which had gone before. The work of prayer and faith is love for God and man: without faith and prayer, you cannot feel true love for man. Prayer yields Love for God, for love is prayer's fruit. Without struggling with prayer, you cannot acquire love from God. Knowledge begets love, for prayer and faith deliver man to the knowledge of God.

The faithful man renounces egotism's law along with his sinful soul. Although he loves his soul, he loathes the sin within. Focusing on healing your soul of its sin, prayerfully strives to replace egotism's law with That Of God, passions with virtues and human life with Divine Life. Impurity and sickness of souls accrete unnaturally; they constitute none of the soul's created nature, for purity and health are its kingdom.

The modern heart has become the warehouse manufacturing the meanest human experiences. Our outer-directed culture—our age that distracts us from true knowledge of the self—particularly impedes the inner activity of knowing yourself. We objectify the self (e.g., selfies, etc.) when we consider how others perceive us, reducing us to mere commodities. Despite its sensually phenomenological clutter, it lacks the order necessary to reveal the greater depths, enabling proper sensemaking of who we are. Surrounding the self (i.e., everybody's self) hovers an unavoidable experience of shame associated with the inner sense of "something is wrong with who i am", which life experiences instill in us. Shame strangely bounds our culture, which ceaselessly shatters every proper boundary.

A soul that the passions have weakened is fertile soil for cultivating hatred, but only through healing your soul can you acquire love. Love is of God, for God is love. He who acquires love puts God Himself on with it. God lacks boundaries, so love must also be boundless and unlimited; he who loves through and in God loves all things equally and without distinction—such a man has achieved perfection.

Conceptual antinomies disappear in the kingdom of love. Strive in love to enjoy a foretaste of Paradise's Harmony in yourself and God's Creation around you, signaling your deliverance from the hell of self-centeredness and entrance into The Paradise Of Divine Values and Perfections. Paradise is The Love Of God in which the sweetness of all blessings lies. Hell is the absence of The Love Of God, and love's whiplash tortures those tormented in hell. Perfectly acquiring The Love Of God—man's original form of contemplating The Holy Trinity—means acquiring perfection: true wisdom that The Cross shapes.

Faith, knowledge and all their counterparts appear as one indivisible and organic whole to him who practices the virtues to perceive and know the truth so that he may restore and transform his organs of knowledge. They fulfill one another, and each confirms and supports the other. The mind's light begets faith, which begets hope's consolation; and, hope fortifies the heart. Faith enlightens the understanding. Faith hides from the darkened understanding, which fear sways and cuts off from hope. Faith bathes understanding in light, freeing man from pride and doubt. Faith knows Truth, which manifests as faith.

A Holy Life produces Holy Knowledge, but pride darkens It. The light of truth will increase and decrease according to how you live. Terrible temptations torment those seeking to live a spiritual, so the faithful ascetic must suffer great misfortunes to know the truth.

Faith, as its own way of life, has its own forms of thought, so Christians live and think faithfully. Faith presents humility, a new mode of thinking that affects the entire exercise of knowing in the believer. Within faith's infinite reality, the intellect itself before the ineffable mysteries of new life in the Holy Spirit. Intellectual humility overcomes intellectual pride, and modesty replaces presumption. The faithful ascetic humbly protects all his thoughts—thereby, internally cultivating The Knowledge Of Eternal Truth. Prayer restores humility, which unendingly grows.

Crucifying the intellect and the flesh frees you from the passions, enabling you to contemplate God. Driving out unclean thoughts from the intellect and uprooting the passions from the body crucifies them. The Knowledge Of God cannot abide in the body that pleasure controls.

From humility flows temperate senses manifesting as meekness and righteous recollection. Humility adorns the soul with temperance, and they prepare the soul to pledge itself to The Holy Trinity. Humility heals the intellect and makes it whole.

Prayer and humility equally balance each other, so progressing in one means progressing in the other. Humility is the power that collects the heart within itself, preventing it from scattering among proud thoughts and lustful desires. The Holy Spirit upholds and protects humility, which draws God and man to each other. Humility impelled The Son Of God's Incarnation, God's Closest Union with man. Humility adorns Divinity, for The Incarnate Word speaks to us through The Human Body With Which He Clothes Himself.

Grace only gives humility, the mysterious and Divine power, to the saints, those perfected in the virtues. Within itself, humility contains all things. The Holy Spirit's Grace reveals The Mysteries to the humble; therefore, in wisdom, these humble are perfect. The mysteries of the new age spring from the humble man.

The virtues attain True Knowledge, The Revelation Of The Mysteries: the knowledge that saves. Humility chiefly characterizes and proves This Knowledge. All questioning ceases after the intellect abides in the realm of Knowledge Of The Truth; and, upon it, a great calm and peace descends. Perfect health necessitates such mental peace. The soul learns through The Spirit after Its Power enters it.

First, open your heart to Grace to acquire the capacity to see into your own soul, for you can see neither yourself nor others insofar as impurity and darkness reign over your soul. If you desire to see God within yourself, purify your heart through constantly recollecting Him. Thus, you will see God at every hour with your mind's eye.

He who commits sin is of the devil; for, the devil has sinned from the beginning. The reason The Son Of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God commits sin; for, God’s Nature abides in him; and, he cannot sin because he is born of God. By this, it may be seen who are The Children Of God and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not do right is not of God, nor he who does not love his brother.
~ 1 John 3:8-10, RSV

The humble man reveals his whole personality when his humility imitates God's Incarnation. However, he remains unknown among men, as the body cannot perceive the soul. Rejecting men's recognition, he seeks to fully recollect himself within himself and become a non-existent non-being, utterly unknown to his soul. He belittles himself before all men, so God glorifies him; for, God's Glory abundantly sprouts where humility blossoms, and the soul produces an imperishable flower.

After The Gospel's Strict Ascesis, man finds within himself His Ontological Divine Center along with This Visible World's Locus of Transcendent Divinity. Subsequently, he rises above time and space to behold himself from eternity, seeing himself as deathless and eternal. True self-knowledge fundamentally knows God truly; for, man walks the shortest path to God, as God created his soul in His Image. Each of your paths toward God reaches a dead-end, but only true self-knowledge—which St. Isaac greatly emphasizes—indeed leads to God in Christ. God must count you worthy to see yourself, and proving such value affords you more incredible honor than, even, if He counts you worthy to see angels.

The true nature of kenosis shares a deep nexus with shame and The Crucified Christ. It describes how we should think and live. Christ emptied Himself of Divine Prerogatives to humbly accept death on The Cross. A profound act of love, Christ's Own Offering not only emptied Himself but also filled Himself in union with our brokenness.

While bearing a little shame represents one species of self-emptying, giving thanks always and for all things—a positive albeit equally difficult path—constitutes another. Everyone gives thanks for pleasurable things they enjoy; but, giving thanks always and for all things brings us face-to-face with Christ, particularly when we want to turn away from Him.

Yet, in our weakness, Christ saves us. Conversely, our strength offers us the opposite of shame, so it shares no identity with Christ's Self-Emptying. Not only from our sins, we are saved through our sins because we behold Christ face-to-face when we give thanks always and for all things. We primarily bear our shame when we give thanks in its midst, for it embraces and unites us with The Fulness Of Christ's Offering on our behalf. Moreover, we discover the fulness of self-emptying in giving thanks always and for all things. The Cross Of Shame subsequently becomes the joy that elevates the soul toward The Trinitarian Vision.

The soul experiences three states: natural, unnatural and supernatural. The soul's natural state knows God's creation—both visible and spiritual. Its supernatural state contemplates The Super-Essential Divinity. The soul's unnatural state mixes with the passions, for the passions naturally don't belong to it. Therefore, passion describes the soul's unnatural state; and, virtue, its natural state. That Holy Beauty of genuinely being in God's Likeness adorns the soul when the virtues—especially compassion—feed the mind. The holy beauty of man's being reveals itself to a pure heart. As you cultivate this holy beauty within yourself, you will increasingly see the beauty of god's creation.

Only The Holy Spirit's Light can help you understand your soul's nature. The Holy Scriptures refer to the causes of the passions when discussing their nexuses with the soul and the flesh, for the soul is naturally passionless. God created the soul in His Image, so it is naturally free of the passions.

True knowledge of nature and, generally, the material world requires self-knowledge. Submitting all things to yourself necessitates submitting yourself to God. Self-knowledge fulfills the knowledge of all things, so he who knows himself can know all things. All creation humbles itself to he who humbles himself before God. Overcoming temptation begets true knowledge, which begets true humility; therefore, struggling against the temptations yields true humility.

The uplifted, active and engaged mind experiences three modes of natural contemplation: two of the created world (i.e., the rational and non-rational, the spiritual and physical) and the third of The Holy Trinity.

The intellect perceives revealed mystical contemplations after the soul has been made whole. Practicing the virtues to cleanse your soul makes you worthy of spiritual contemplation. Purity sees God. You will behold God if you cleanse yourself from sin and unceasingly ponder on God.

St. Isaac identifies The Kingdom Of Heaven with spiritual contemplation. Only with Grace, not intellectual activity, can you taste It and with a pure heart, neither learning nor teaching, can you acquire It, so cleanse yourself. God blesses those living purely with pure thoughts. Guarding the heart and striving beget pure thoughts, which begets the understanding's enlightenment. Subsequently, Grace leads the intellect to the realm where the now-powerless senses cannot perceive any information or exformation.

Struggling to harmonize your own will with God's Grace grows your faith to perfect stature. Such synergy progresses through degrees; for, Grace, given to the humble before all else, enters the soul very slowly.

The more grace God gives to the faithful man, the more He reveals to him the evil abysses in the world and man. Simultaneously, He allows frighteningly greater temptations to assail him; thus, the faithful man may test The God-Given Power Of Grace to understand that overcoming evermore scandalously fearsome temptations necessitates The Help Of Grace. Accordingly, once Grace perceives you, making yourself great in your own sight, becoming self-sufficient, It leaves you; letting temptations assail you until, becoming aware of your sickness, you humbly take refuge in God.

Christian life squarely aims at contemplating The Holy Trinity. Love, per St. Isaac, primarily contemplates The Holy Trinity. Performing the commandments attains purity, the first of The Mysteries. Contemplation—the intellect's vision and spiritual contemplation—occurs when understanding of that which was and will be enraptures the mind. It chastens, renews and cleanses the heart of evil.

Human nature can experience true contemplation when exercises the virtues to cleanse itself from the passions. Christ's Gift consists of truly contemplating the material and immaterial world and The Holy Spirit Itself. Fully renewing human nature in His Own Divine Person, He reveals this contemplation to men and instructs them in it. He clears a path to The Truth with His Life-Giving Commandments. Human nature can experience true contemplation after the man suffers misfortune, fulfills the commandments and endures the passions to put off the old Adam. The intellect, thus capable of spiritual birth, can contemplate the spiritual world, its true fatherland. The Spirit, in which the intellect spiritually delights, reveals the new world's contemplation occurring under The Action Of Grace. This contemplation nourishes the intellect, preparing it to receive a yet more perfect contemplation. One contemplation evolves into the next until the intellect reaches the realm of perfect love. The spiritual man abides in love, which dwells in pure souls. Grace works in the intellect that reaches love's realm, sharing spiritual contemplations so that it may behold hidden things.

In vigilant prayer, the mind takes wing and ascends to The Delights Of God. It swims in the knowledge surpassing human thought. The soul striving to persevere in this vigilant pursuit receives the cherubim's eyes that will constantly dwell with it in Heavenly Contemplation. The soul sees God's Truth through the power of his way of life (i.e., the life of faith). He will find The Light if he truly contemplates in The Realm Of Truth. The vision of God comes from knowing Him, so it cannot precede This Knowledge.

Familiarizing itself with The Mysteries Of The Spirit and the revelations of knowledge, the heart rises from knowledge to knowledge, contemplation to contemplation and understanding to understanding. It secretly learns and grows. Eventually, love catches it, and it incorporates hope. Joy resides in its innermost parts, lifting it up to God and crowning it with its own created being's natural glory. Thus, the mind becomes purified, endowed with mercy and counted worthy to contemplate The Holy Trinity.

Wisdom, Filled With Grace, gradually reveals The Mysteries to the humble; one after the other, culminating in The Mystery Of Suffering. Grace reveals the meaning of suffering to them, so they know why man suffers. Grasping the meaning and purpose of suffering and temptation depends on the quantity of Grace with a man—however immeasurable, let alone inconceivable, such a value may be. Spiritual prayer begets ecstasy in which The Mysteries Of The Holy Trinity reveal Themselves. Thereafter, the intellect enters that Sphere Of Holy Unknowing that, exceeding all knowledge, culminates in the harmonious dance of Divine and human natures.

In Itself, The Person Of Christ—The God-Man—presents the ideal image of human personality and knowledge. From Itself, The Person Of Christ traces and defines every path of The Christian Life. He most perfectly realizes God's Mystical Union With Man, simultaneously revealing God's Human Work and Man's Godly Work.

The simplest proof of Christian activity in the world is God and man working together. God works with man, and man works with God. Although the Christian, working within and around himself, entirely gives himself to ascesis, he can only do so with Grace (i.e., Divine Power's Ceaseless Activity): The Gospel depends on the help of God's Grace to inspire thoughts, feelings and actions within Christians. Man freely brings desire, and God gives Grace; this synergy (i.e., mutual activity) begets Christian personality.

You need Grace's help and support to acquire every evangelical virtue, to ascend each rung of the ladder of perfection. Grace and free will uphold everything in Christianity, the common work of God and man.

Perseverant prayer cleanses the intellect, illuminating it and filling it with The Light Of Truth. Compassion leads the virtues, as they give peace and light to the intellect. An act of Grace ethically and experientially cleanses the intellect: an activity neither theoretical, dialectic nor discursive. Ascetic practices (e.g., fasting, vigils, silence, prayer, etc.) purify the intellect.

Divine illumination virtuously striving achieves the pure intellect, the fruit of ascetic effort in the virtues. Practicing the virtues increases Grace in you, and bringing Grace to the intellect cleanses it from impure thoughts. The saint's intellect ascetically gains purity, clarity and discernment.

Asceticism, filled with Grace, gradually drives sin and the passions from your organs of understanding. Purifying the body cultivates experiential intuitions that instinctually reject the flesh's impure stains. Cleansing the soul frees it from the passions that discretely accrete in the mind. The Revelation Of The Mysteries signifies the intellect's cleansing. Such ascetic effort heals you of these death-dealing illnesses and unceasingly renews yourself, your whole being; thus, Grace purifies your organs of understanding.

Particularly, the intellect—the chief organ of understanding—influences man's personality, so you must especially care for it. Vigilance, nowhere else as vital, powerfully purifies the intellect. Managing this task requires battling with all of your forces to synergistically renew and transform your intellect with the evangelical virtues that Grace fills.

Only the mind that Grace cleansed can offer pure, spiritual knowledge. The mind receives spiritual knowledge after—and only after—becoming pure, completely free from its manifold thoughts. If you have great knowledge and accept wickedness, you cannot cleanse your mind. Few are those who can return to man's primordially pure mind; and, without question, i—in my current state—cannot number myself among the elect.

Who am i that i may, even, dare to inquire into my very own ontogeny? Who am i that, because He loves me, He pulled me from non-being into being with His Own Hand? Who am i that He saw it good and fitting to create me?

Unquestionably, nothing happens against His Will except the consequences of decisions that agents of free will make—especially, the conception of a human being. Even, St. Joachim and St. Anna couldn't bear their child—The Holy Theotokos, Supremely Super-Blessed—until they fervently entreated The Lord, Our God. Although my own mother carries St. Anna's name, justice would reckon my lineage as the most sinful among men if it just impartially records the deeds of my wretched self.

Lord, Jesus Christ—Son Of God ~ have mercy on each and every one of us!

As my soul is to me, so God is to my soul. From The Highest Place—His Indescribable Seat Above All Else—He looks down upon His Servant's Lowly Soul. Thus, so, too, may i look down from the seat of my soul to thoroughly search my faint heart to search for decency, some semblance of good. Yet, after collected, careful and close scrutiny, i've concluded that, within me, there exists not a single good thing for which i'm the first cause.

Every good idea that enters the human mind is from above, from God. The only thing that is ours is the mucus that runs from our noses when we have a cold.
~ St. Paisios the Athonite, Athonite Fathers and Athonite Matters (p. 231)

Instead, any good quality i happen to embody—though this be categorically infrequent—reflects Divine Characteristics of our All-Good, All-Love and All-Merciful. Likewise, any trace of goodness of mine must participate in Divine Goodness, which naturally inheres to God's Essence. Consequently, any false goodness—or, more precisely, true not-goodness (i.e., sinfulness)—does not participate in God because it naturally cannot. Thus, my sins are mine and mine alone, yet my worthy deeds are God's.

I am afraid of my sins /
That they may be – a wall, which keeps me /
From The - Garden Of Delight /
Which is – kept for all the saints /
Rescue me ~ Oh, Lord ~ from hell /
And where You will – there ~ Lord ~ let me dwell
~ Service Book of The Holy Qurbono, Compline – Option 1, Qolo 1 (p. 32)

Truly, i search myself for evil and, initially, notice nothing; using your face as a mirror, i look slightly closer but notice all of your sins. Then, i focus on Christ as my mirror and, with His Grace, gaze inwards; everywhere, my nous sees evil abounding without constraint. I am terrified that, despite my perceptual disposition, i see no horizon of my evil. Likewise, i search myself for righteousness, and a vacuous vacuity stares back at me—the cold void, barren and empty of any delight. As, within me, exists nothing good and everything evil; surely, i—my soul, my mind and my heart—must be in hell. I, in my very actions, betray my God—how can i, even, hope to enjoy The Last Principle if i disobey The First?

However, my God curated my components not to die but to live! Despair shall i not, for My Savior—My Lord and God, Jesus Christ—Incarnated for me; He willingly subjected Himself to shameful death on The Cross for me; He Rose the dead, of His Own Will, to reconcile human nature with Divine Nature—thereby, paving The Way to reconcile myself with Him. He, even, established His Holy Orthodox Orthodox Church as His Own Body—forever intertwining me with Him when He, out of His Superabundant Goodness, placed me in an Orthodox Christian family. Beyond your wildest imaginations, God so loves you that He sent His Only-Begotten Son to redeem you.

May i, at the moment of my repose and every moment before, offer You a heart thoroughly purified through participating in The Holy Sacraments You give us!

Outside of my office in San Francisco at 555 California St rests a large sculpture. When Masayuki Nagare crafted it from 200 tons of black Swedish granite in the late '60s, he called it "Transcendence." However, as Bank of America initially located its corporate headquarters in that building, the San Francisco Chronicle pithily referred to the cold, black and unfeeling piece of art as "Banker's Heart."

Day after day, i ascended 43 floors to work as an investment banker. And, night after night, my heart grew colder, darker and more unfeeling as i distanced myself from The Church until God intervened in my life through My Church, my family and the very fabric of my being.

Lord, Jesus ~ teach me your way, and guide my steps along Your Path. Instill Your Meekness in me. Plant The True Faith in my heart, and teach me how to cultivate True Prayer. Bless me with Your Humility, that i may enjoy Your Grace in Its Fulness. Guide my heart to submit to Your Will, that i may love all—brothers, neighbors, strangers, enemies and all of Creation—as You love me. Teach me to trust Your Consoling Wisdom and participate in The Church's Sacramental Life, which represents the essential mode of purification. Give me the strength i need to cheerfully endure the suffering i shall experience over the course of purifying my heart, for i desire one thing and only one thing: to be as i am in You as You are! That Thou hast made such available to me—man, most unworthy—i thank Thee.

My heart is the centermost part of the being—my centerview, per se. As the root is to the tree, so my heart is to me. It is my ultimate necessary condition—that without which i, as you know me, cannot be—so it must permeate every aspect of my being. Regardless of what i say, my heart genuinely expresses its truth with my tongue, pursues its desires with my hands and offers its worship with my attention. Therefore, above all else, i prefer silence and stillness; for, they represent good uses of my tongue, hands and attention, so my heart can acquire righteousness in them.

From my inquiry, i believe that The End consists of The Heart of Adam—all Adam without exception—loving God. However, i cannot become a conduit of This Uncreated Fire to other men until i, making no provision for the flesh, purify my heart with God's Grace. Moreover, my heart cannot hope for purity until sorrow, contrition and compunction—those precursors of repentance—completely inundate it. Insofar as my finite self drives my being, my reserves of energy and time are also finite. However, if i wholly submit my drive—my volitive will—to The Will of The Uncreated, Self-Existent and Eternal Holy Trinity, then what reason justifies believing that i shall perish? I shall live if and only if i diligently attend to His Command with faith, hope and love.

So that Uncreated Fire can effectively burn away all of my impurities, i must offer God my broken, contrite and—dare, i say—shattered heart. Thus, my cold, dark, unfeeling banker's heart can soften, and His Love can wound it. Through this wound, His Heavenly Light can pour into my heart and illuminate my entire being. From this wound, i can live with His Heart and mine, His Breath as mine and, truly, His Very Life as mine.

For He formed my heart in His Image, i am who i was before the world colored my eyes in certain ways; yet, that person hides under layers of experiences acquired over my life's successes and failures—barely glimpsing myself, i sit at the edge of recognition in this age. My heart burns within—it must, that it may become pure, that i may see God! Truly, the greatest love story ever told—that of God and man, that of God and you!—has yet to reach its end :)

Moses said to God:

Look: I will go forth to the sons of Israel, and I will say to them: "The God Of Our Fathers has sent me to you." They will ask me: "What is his name?" What will I say to them?

And, God said to Moses:

I am THE ONE WHO EXISTS...Thus, you shall say to the sons of Israel:

THE ONE WHO EXISTS has sent me to you.

And, God said again to Moses:

Thus, you shall say to the sons of Israel:

The Lord, The God Of Your Fathers—The God Of Abraham, The God Of Isaac and The God Of Jacob—has sent me to you.

This is My Name forever and a memorial from generations to generations. Therefore, when you go forth, gather the council of elders of the sons of Israel and say to them:

The Lord, The God Of Your Fathers—The God Of Abraham, The God Of Isaac and The God Of Jacob—appeared to me, saying:

With observation, I have observed you and the things that have befallen you...I will bring you up out of [your] affliction...into [the] land flowing with milk and honey.

That very day [that the women saw the empty tomb], two of them were going to a village named Emma′us, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus Himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing Him. And He said to them: What is this conversation which you are holding with each other as you walk? And they stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, named Cle′opas, answered him: “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” And He said to them: What things? And they said to Him:

Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, Who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered Him up to be condemned to death, and crucified Him. But we had hoped that He was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since this happened. Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at The Tomb early in the morning and did not find His Body; and they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that He was alive. Some of those who were with us went to The Tomb, and found it just as the women had said; but Him they did not see.

And He said to them:

Oh, foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that The Christ should suffer these things and enter into His Glory?

And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, He interpreted to them in all the scriptures The Things Concerning Himself. So they drew near to the village to which they were going. He appeared to be going further, but they constrained Him, saying: “Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent.” So he went in to stay with them.

When He was at table with them, He took the bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized Him; and He vanished out of their sight. They said to each other:

Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?

And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven gathered together and those who were with them, who said, “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” Then they told what had happened on the road, and how He was known to them in the breaking of the bread.

As they were saying this, Jesus himself stood among them. But they were startled and frightened, and supposed that they saw a spirit. And he said to them:

Why are you troubled, and why do questionings rise in your hearts? See My Hands and My Feet, that it is I Myself; handle Me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have.

And while they still disbelieved for joy, and wondered, He said to them: Have you anything here to eat? They gave Him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate before them. Then he said to them:

These are My Words which I spoke to you, while I was still with you, that Everything Written About Me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled.

Then He opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and said to them:

Thus it is written, that The Christ should suffer and on The Third Day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in His Name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of These Things. And behold: I send The Promise Of My Father upon you; but stay in the city, until you are clothed with Power From On High.

Then, He led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up His Hands he blessed them. While He blessed them, He parted from them, and was carried up into Heaven. And they returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple blessing God.

• Saint Silouan the Athonite ~ St. Sophrony

• The Soul After Death ~ Fr. Seraphim Rose

• The Climate of Monastic Prayer ~ Thomas Merton

• On The Providence of God ~ St. John Chrysostom

• Man and the God-man ~ St. Justin Popović

  • Chapter: 'The Theory of Knowledge of St. Isaac the Syrian'

• The Book of Ecclesiastes from The Lexham English Septuagint (LES)

• God's Revelation to the Human Heart ~ Fr. Seraphim Rose

• The Insane Science of Neutron Stars ~ SEA (channel)

• What is The Origin Of Gold? ~ Insane Curiosity (channel)

• The missing law of nature, and how we found it ~ Robert Hazen

• The Way of Shame and the Way of Thanksgiving ~ Fr. Stephen Freeman

• Knowing the Knowledge that Transforms ~ Fr. Stephen Freeman

• Identity and the Resurrection of Christ ~ Fr. Stephen Freeman

• The Liturgy of Life ~ Fr. Stephen Freeman

• Where does gold come from? ~ David Lunney

• How astronomy makes neuroscience even cooler: brains, gold and neutron stars

If you've reached this point of Ammachi's memorial, i thank you from the depth of my heart. For your sake, i need not belabor the personal significance of sharing good ideas. Therefore, i will close with the final words of St. Maximus the Confessor's 7th Ambiguum on 'The Beginning and End Of Rational Creatures':

If my discussion hasn't strayed from the truth, my entire gratitude goes to God because He led me, whom your prayers uplift, to rightly think about these matters. However, if the truth escaped me in any way, shape or form, you can instruct me because God inspired you to know these things.

May all glory and honor be to The Blessed Trinity—The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit—now and always, forever and ever. amin. ☦️

The following memorial discusses complex subjects. For example, we'll walk through my current conceptions of creation's telos (chapter 1), prayer (chapter 2), epistemology (chapter 3), death (chapter 4), metaphysics and ontology (chapter 5)—to name a few. Should any topic contribute to unease, please pause your reading and resume whenever you feel ready. If you don't want to read a section, please don't read it!

Although this is my longest reflection to date, i truncated my commentary on certain topics wherever possible. Reading this memorial in pieces may be just as fruitful as reading it all together at once. Unlike what i said in dream grass, no longer do i wish "to write out my entire, unabbreviated philosophy". For, i have no worthy ideas of my own to share. You can find everything that leads to Life in The Holy Gospels, The Epistles, The Psalms and the rest of The Holy Bible. If you have no interest in searching through that Inexhaustible Treasure-House, then i'll save you some time: close this memorial because you will find no pearls here! 🙂

Finally, since the vast majority of this memorial consists of reading notes, most of what you'll read consists of nothing more than representations of jewels others mined that i paraphrased in my own words. Here's an easy rule to guide your reading: if it is wrong or indecipherable, assume that i wrote it. Otherwise, if it sounds profound, assume that the idea originated in a mind far surpassing mine.

Now, let's remember Alice Thomas ("Keezhvaipur Ammachi" or "Ammachi") and all she left for us to learn.

She bought herself more time here

though it cost her pain.

Surely, her soul shines brightly;

her intercessions, we gain.

Ammachi was born on February 16, 1950 and had the sharpest mind among her siblings according to her father (my great-grandfather), K.P. Thomas. Unsurprisingly, she was the naughtiest kid and, even, hurt some of her classmates in kindergarten. As her intellect grew, she graduated with high honors with a Bachelor's and Master's in Chemistry from CMS College in Kottayam. In fact, at that time, she had been the only person in her family who earned a Master's degree. After completing her studies, she received an offer to work at Mumbai's Bhabha Atomic Research Center. However, my great-grandfather prevented her from going and, instead, encouraged her to marry. After getting married, she taught Chemistry at BCM College in Kottayam.

When my mother was four, her family moved to the United Arab Emirates ("UAE") to find better opportunities. Ammachi got a job with the British Bank of The Middle East (go figure 🫠), where she worked until they moved back to Kerala in 1994. Despite living in Ajman, UAE during that time, Ammachi loved driving. Moreover, she was one of a small handful of women who owned a car. She thoroughly enjoyed driving kids to "Sunday" School on Fridays in the UAE.

My mother shared with me many fond memories of her mother. My mother recalled cooking with Ammachi—especially, making cutlets and cakes with her. Ammachi made yummy fish cutlets and chicken curry 😋

She remembers them driving her father (my grandfather) to work because he didn't drive. They returned home after dropping him off at ~4am, and Ammachi prepared their lunches. Then, Ammachi would drop my mother and her sisters at the bus stop before heading to work. On some days, she would drive my mother to school, which was ~1 hour away, for her morning classes.

In June 2013, my mother visited Ammachi and Appacha in Keezhvaipur. As she planned to see other nearby relatives, Ammachi leaped at the chance to drive them around. Despite its seeming insignificance, this story mainly sticks in my mother's mind because it happened two days after she completed her 2nd bout of chemotherapy.

Ammachi passionately undertook everything. Whether advising others or praying for them, she never hesitated to offer a helping hand.

In the two-thousandth and twenty-fourth year of Our Lord, on the twenty-sixth day of the third month, Ammachi fell asleep in The Lord. Her physical departure guided the following reflections :)

In May 2021, my family met in Detroit, Michigan, to attend the wedding of a close family friend. I flew in from San Francisco, California, while Papa, Mama and Dojay came from Herndon, Virginia. At the end of the weekend, my mother presented me with a gold chain that Ammachi had gotten.

The sheer volume of gold owned by Indian women is remarkable. In fact, the total gold owned by Indian women exceeds the gold reserves of the top five countries combined...According to a report from the Oxford Gold Group, Indian households hold a total of 11% of the world’s gold—more than the combined reserves of the United States, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Switzerland, and Germany.
~ The Times of India (Dec. 18, 2024)

Uniquely textured, the chain itself dazzled my eyes. However, the pendant carried far greater import, for it bore the form of The Cross. Until that point in my life, i had recklessly worn necklaces of various gods and demigods from Ancient Greek mythology. Moreover, at the time, i had wandered so far away from The Church that i had excommunicated myself from My Home.

For over a year, that Cross was the closest physical object to the heart beating in my chest—the closest reminder of My Lord and God's Salvific Work. Then, during the summer of 2022, i lost it. My mental calculations deemed that i had misplaced it during the season's hectic travel schedule, so i was thoroughly devastated. For more than 20 months, i lived without it.

Finally, during Great Lent this year, my parents called me with great news: they found the chain tucked away in our living room couch! Much to my delight, i hoped to get it back the next time i saw Ammachi. Yet, the day i recollected the chain—March 17, 2024—was also the last day i met Ammachi in this life.

how could something as "simple" as an ordinary arrangement of atoms impact my life so profoundly?

We can see so far away into space and time that we can observe photons that took billions of years to reach us, even, at the speed of light. Observing galaxies further back in space and time bears witness to changing chemistry—you can watch different atoms getting built up.

so, from where do all of the atoms comprising our body originate?

Only star cores can make large atoms (e.g., oxygen, carbon, calcium, any atom of which our bodies consist, etc.) because their nuclear fusion reactions combine smaller atoms. Hydrogen formed during the Big Bang, and star cores smash them together to create large atoms. However, star cores neither reach the temperatures nor produce the energy required to make larger atoms like gold.

Therefore, understanding how our planet has gold necessitates gazing up at the stars, for this precious metal is extra-terrestrial. Rather than emerging from our planet's geological evolution, its presence on Earth results from cataclysmic stellar explosions. Gold's alien origins trace back to the entire process of stellar formation.

All stars begin as immense balls of compressed gas. Most of the gas consists of hydrogen, the simplest and lightest element. As clouds of hydrogen condense to form a swirling mass, the compressed gas's outward pressure holds the inward pressure in check. The enormous pressure and friction due to gravity generate incredible heat, triggering a complex series of nuclear reactions (i.e., nuclear fusion) that ignites the hydrogen and births the star. Thus, the star shines!

Over billions of years, the star uses up its hydrogen. As the outward pressure falls, gravity to the star's sheer mass squeezes the central core tighter to produce tremendous pressure and temperature. The stars start forging helium at ~1 billion degrees, and the core continues contracting and increasing internal temperatures until it starts fusing helium nuclei to form carbon atoms. Subsequent fusion reactions materialize carbon, oxygen and neon, and each burns faster until the star produces iron and nickel. Now, with a density of ~50 tons per cubic centimeter and a temperature of ~2 billion degrees, neon starts fusing to form silicon. The energy return steadily declines as the star consumes each new element, and it starts changing rapidly—from every month, then every day and, finally, every hour. Finally, the star produces iron, a stable element that does not burn. Supposedly, one teaspoon of the core—now, ~200 km across—may weigh as much as 1 trillion tones, so 30 L would weigh as much as the entire earth.

Thereafter, nuclear fusion no longer releases enough energy to stave off the star mass's inward pressure on the core, so the outer layers collapse into the center and explosively bounce back in a supernova. The unfathomable amount of matter surrounding the core rushes inwards and collides with the now-solid core, creating a shockwave traveling outwards. A burst of neutrinos, formed in the star's dying moments, accompany this shockwave, and their combined energy transforms the star's outer layer into an intense stellar furnace that forges elements heavier than iron.

Moreover, the collapsing star's extreme pressure forces together subatomic protons and electrons to form neutrons. Neutrons lack repelling electric charges, so the iron group elements easily capture them. Multiple, sequential neutron captures enable the star to form elements it usually cannot: silver, gold, lead and uranium. While stars transform hydrogen into helium over millions of years, supernovas create the heaviest elements in seconds.

Ultimately, the star disintegrates in a supernova that blasts all these elements into space. For at least a few days, the star will shine with the intensity of 10 billion Suns. The expanding supernova shockwave propels its elemental debris through the interstellar medium, triggering a cosmic dance of gas and dust. Within weeks, only a nebula remains. The nebula will subsequently condense into other stars ("2nd generation stars") and recycle all the elements that its stellar ancestor bequeathed.

However, no trace of gold exists among the nebula's heavy elements. Curiously, forming elements even heavier than gold requires far more energy than what ordinary supernovas produce. Stellar evolution transforms simple hydrogen into complex elements, and the death of massive stars initiates even more extraordinary transformations. These stellar remnants—neutron stars—represent nature's ultimate laboratory for creating our universe's heaviest elements.

Neutron stars represent matter's final form before becoming a black home. Their insane power played an instrumental role in lacing our galaxy with the ingredients of life. Stars with at least 10x more mass than our sun eventually run out of fuel and collapse under their tremendous weight. Neutron stars follow from larger and less stable stars than sun-like celestial bodies, which expand into red giants before transforming into white dwarves at the end of their lifecycle. Their outer layers compress into the iron core and bounce back, exploding in a blinding supernova.

If the mass of the remnant stellar core weighs more than 3x that of our sun, runaway gravitational collapse will continue compressing matter beyond its Schwarzschild Radius to form an event horizon and, ultimately, a black hole. If the bygone stellar core's mass does not cross this critical threshold, the collapsing core lacks the weight to overcome matter's last line of defense.

The process squashes molecules together, and temperatures climb so high that they start breaking apart atomic structures. Soon, the core's iron mass becomes a dense soup of sub-atomic particles. The collapse crushes free-roaming, negatively-charged electrons into exposed atomic nuclei, where they merge with positively-charged protons and yield an abundance of neutral particles ("neutrons").

Eventually, bursting with excess neutrons, the core begins fighting against gravitational collapse despite being a mere fraction of its original size. Closely confined neutrons cannot occupy the same quantum state. Therefore, they constantly fluctuate and switch between states in the presence of other neutrons, producing a degeneracy pressure that resists their compression. Moreover, the same nuclear forces upholding atomic structures help the neutrons exert sufficient outward pressure to halt the collapse, packing the contents of the stellar body—now, no more than ~25km wide—as tightly as an atomic nucleus. Subsequently, the star's outer layers ricochet and explode in a supernova, leaving only the leftover neutron star.

Such extraordinary compression couples the neutron-rich environment with intense gravitational and magnetic fields, so nuclear processes can start forging new elements. However, although individual neutron stars maintain these unique conditions, their mergers spectacularly unleash their destructively creative potential. The extreme density, neutron abundance and unthinkable temperatures enable rapid neutron-capture nucleosynthesis ("r-process"), which the collision of stellar cores fully realizes.

This incomparable compression (i.e., neutron stars pack the matter of up to 2 Solar Systems into a sphere no larger than a city) drives some of the most extreme physical phenomena ever observed. A rigid, tortured shell of superheated iron on the outside of the neutron star encloses the hellish processes unfolding beneath. Its gravitational influence is so strong that the escape velocity exceeds slightly above half of the speed of light—so powerful that it, even, dilates time like a black hole. These torrid iron shells sizzle at blistering temperatures for hundreds of millions of years. Earth's nearest-known neutron star radiates at ~500k Kelvin.

However, beneath its crust, a crystalline mantle of nuclear pasta—long strings of squashed, neutron degenerate material—permeates in various intermediary states before manifesting as neutronium: the true form of matter theorized to exist in a superfluid state in the core. Along with the neutron star's rotational velocity, this superfluid's swirling immensely compresses the progenitor star and amplifies the stellar monster's magnetic field to hundreds of billions of times that of Earth.

The universe's most powerful magnets, neutron stars exhibit a broad range of electromagnetic phenomena that distinguish them from other observable stars and galaxies. However, their effects prominently appear in the radio, x-ray and gamma-ray frequencies rather than the visible light spectrum. Their spectra offer further insight into their nature and the objects surrounding them.

As neutron stars rotate, particles in their magnetosphere ride along flux lines toward the polar caps. Yet, when they arrive, they are radically repelled and blasted into space at relativistic velocities. Their acceleration causes them to emit synchrotron radiation, which is most prominent in radio wavelengths. These polar caps do not align with the neutron star's rotation, so their movement swings the funnel-like beams of radio energy around the body's circumference like a lighthouse. These signals often reach our planet as a series of strikingly periodic pulses.

Thus, we detected the first genuine empirical evidence of neutron stars. Some galactic pulses occur 1.3 seconds apart with pinpoint precisions. Given the number of supernovas that could've happened in our galaxy's ~13 billion-year lifespan, the Milky Way may have as many as ~1bn of these extreme, irradiating stellar cores lurking within its fields.

Typically, radio pulsars burn at their hottest and spin at their fastest within the first million years after their supernova births them. The pulsar will spin down if it exists in isolation without a significant stellar companion. It will lose its rotational momentum over time as it radiates gravitational and electromagnetic energy. The pulsar's magnetic field lines drag on their surrounding space and decay as it spins, transferring its kinetic energy into electromagnetic radiation. This process affects most neutron star emissions like longer-wavelength radio pulsars.

Otherwise, energetic short-wavelength X-ray and gamma-ray emitters require the neutron star to have a companion star, a donor object from which it can gain energy. If the pulsar hosts a stellar companion, it will eject swathes of material from the partner. It will cast some into space and sweep the rest into the surrounding accretion disk. Then, this disk's inside feeds the pulsar's surface. It grows the star's mass and tightly packs it while transferring angular momentum to increase its rotational rate. Thus, the neutron star spins up. These accretion-powered pulsars ("x-ray pulsars") prominently emit x-ray spectra. The magnetosphere captures swirling, invigorated electrons from the accretion disk, and their deceleration emits high-energy x-rays from auroral-like hotspots around the pulsar's polar caps.

Although radio pulsars can only spin down, x-ray pulsars can speed up, slow down or remain relatively constant in their rotational rates. Low-mass X-ray binaries occur when a small red or white dwarf star comprises the donor star. Alternatively, high-mass X-ray binaries occur when massive and unstable red or yellow giants constitute the donor. These pulsars strip abundant energy from their companion, spinning them up to some astounding velocities of hundreds of revolutions per second.

Pulsars rotating less than once every 10 milliseconds spin more than 100 times per second. Accretion spins millisecond pulsars ("recycled pulsars") to a substantial portion of the speed of light with an incredibly regular and periodic signal. Hence, they are the fastest species of neutron star. The first millisecond pulsar we discovered (B1937+21) spins at a rate of 641 revolutions per second, and it remains the 2nd fastest millisecond pulsar ever discovered.

Globular star clusters contain many bunched-up stars that are generally less than a light year apart. The high stellar density of these environments is fertile ground for binary systems, which can generate incredibly energetic pulsars. The clusters Terzan 5 and 47 Tucanae particularly boast the highest number of discovered millisecond pulsars, with 37 and 22, respectively. Terzan 5 also includes the current fastest-known pulsar, PSR J1748-2446ad, which rotates at 716 Hz—spinning at ~43k/minute; its equator barrels through space at ~1/4 of the speed of light.

However, even, at this obscene rate, the monster's magnetic field does not radiate at its maximum potential because magnetic field strength does not primarily depend on the rate of rotation. Instead, a neutron star's magnetic field strength depends more on its age and the species of star that came before.

HD 45166, a recently discovered massive magnetic helium star, boasts a field ~100,000x stronger than Earth's. Its inevitable pulsar transition after reaching the end of its life will amplify its already supercharged magnetic field by orders of magnitude to birth a magnetar: the universe's most potent species of neutron star. Maximally efficient spinning and radiating neutrons stars may generate field strengths ranging from 100 trillion to 1 quadrillion gauss, ~2 quadrillion times stronger than Earth's magnetic field.

Recently, astronomers have uncovered a second species of anomalous, repeating high-energy signals with an x-ray signature. That these recurring outbursts are close to those soft gamma ray repeaters on the electromagnetic spectrum strongly implies a shared origin. Bursts of photons, flares within the magnetosphere and strong thermal emissions from the crust primarily cause these anomalous x-ray pulsar emissions.

Rarer than conventional pulsars, magnetars represent a brief phase of the most magnetized neutron star's early lifecycle. We've only observed about 25 of them around the galaxy. Yet, during this short window, magnetic reconnection, megaflares and field decay catalyze some of the most energetic electromagnetic activity every detected from neutron stars. Ostensibly, magnetars—the universe's strongest and most magnetic objects—produce these explosions, eruptions and quakes.

A magnetar's supercharged lines of flux untangling cause starquakes on its surface and produce soft gamma ray repeaters. As these dead stars rotate, their metallic crusts experience torment on both sides: from the extraordinary electrical currents that the swirling, superfluid neutronium generates underneath; and, from strain of dragging, twisting magnetic field lines on the surface above. Eventually, the tremendous stress cracks the crystalline shell, shifting it ever so slightly toward a more spherical configuration. Even, if the adjustments only occur over micrometers, they unleash great torrents of electromagnetic energy (e.g., high energy x-rays, soft gamma rays, etc.) due to the magnetar's nature.

On December 27, 2004, the magnetar SGR 1806-20 released more than 150,000 years' worth of The Sun's energy in gamma rays, constituting the most extreme star quake ever recorded. Although the magnetar sits more than 40k light years away from The Solar System, this starquake's trailing shockwave noticeably increased the ionization of Earth's upper atmosphere. Almost all life on Earth would have ended had such an event happened within 10 light-years of our planet, for the gamma radiation would completely degrade Earth's magnetosphere. Ultimately, now-unimpeded solar radiation would boil away our oceans, reducing Earth to a desolate wasteland subject to inhospitable radiation.

More than just gamma rays, fast radio bursts also potentially stream from the crevasses of starquakes. These anomalous, short-lived signals brim with radio noise, but no concrete theory sufficiently explains those observed.

Such fundamental properties (e.g., magnetic field strength, rotational velocity, mass, etc.) define individual neutron stars and govern their interactions. Understanding these properties in isolation facilitates understanding how their cosmic encounters contribute to element formation. When neutron stars meet neutron stars, their respective magnetic fields interweave and compete; rotational energies, combine and transfer. When these already extraordinary objects interact, they unlock some of nature's most powerful processes. Their collisions orchestrate the alchemical choreography, establishing the foundations of coming worlds. Some of life's most essential elements emerge from these cosmic crucibles, suggesting neutron star mergers influenced the observable universe's material complexity.

The fastest-spinning pulsars are precise indicators of their surrounding environment. Humanity captured the first observational evidence for general relativity when Joseph Taylor and Russell Hulse studied binary pulsars. Their doppler shift measurements revealed a rapidly spinning pulsar and slower companion sinking towards each other. As their orbits tightened, the system radiated energy away as ripples in the fabric of spacetime—one of Einstein's key predictions.

Then, in 2015, humanity captured its first direct detection with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory. When two massive, inwardly-spiraling compact bodies (i.e., black holes, neutron stars or both) draw close, their gargantuan masses and influences accelerate to velocities approaching ~2/3 of the speed of light. The rapid orbital movement of such pervasive gravitational influences razes the spacetime around the merger, sending gravitational ripples for billions of light years omnidirectional across space. Often, detecting these signals foretells the precise location of the cataclysmic event that soon follows.

After becoming sufficiently close, a pair of merging neutron stars accelerate to speeds exceeding their escape velocities. Their iron shells rupture, exposing their inner contents to space's cold vacuum. Colliding neutron stars also produce their class of gamma-ray bursts: huge explosions in the shortest wavelength of radiation. Conversely, kilonovae occur when the interiors of shattered neutron stars get briefly exposed to space, leaving only a short time for short gamma-ray bursts. Suddenly, under a fraction of the pressure it endured within its progenitor neutron star, the tiny fraction of escaped superdense material ignites and explodes in tremendous kilonovae as powerful as the strongest supernovae. Longer gamma-ray bursts, lasting anywhere from a few seconds to a couple of minutes, supposedly result from supernovae.

The merger environment uniquely combines the extreme properties of both progenitor stars. Thus, nature's crucible for manufacturing heavy elements depends on the characteristics that make neutron stars such remarkable objects in isolation. Such astronomical temperatures, crushing densities and powerful magnetic fields create the optimal conditions for nuclear alchemy. These nuclear processes directly depend on the properties of the individual neutron stars. The intense magnetic fields that once powered lighthouse-like beams now channel nuclear material into optimal reaction zones. The rotational energy that once generated periodic pulses now helps distribute newly formed elements across space. The extreme densities that once produced nuclear paste now provide the perfect conditions for nuclear fusion.

Through the r- and p-processes, free neutrons and protons combine with the heavy atomic nuclei lacing the ejecta of these explosions to yield the universe's heaviest elements (e.g., iron, gold, silver, platinum, uranium, thorium, etc.) Kilonovae, not supernovae, primarily seed the galactic medium with its heavy and complex elements. Moreover, they blend many of the ingredients necessary for life.

The debris from both bygone neutron stars returns to form a new composite object, which experiences a gravitational collapse under the same conditions. The bodies will create a new black hole if their combined mass exceeds 2.5x-3.0x that of The Sun. However, their evolutionary cycle restarts below this threshold, and they reconvene into a new, heavier recycled pulsar or a magnetar. Finally, if the combined mass sits between these two eventualities (i.e., the compression is sufficient for overcoming the force that the neutrons exert but insufficient for compressing the bodies beyond the Schwarzschild Radius), they create a boundary object. Under such extreme conditions resembling that of the early universe, this collapsed star is so dense that, even, neutrons get reduced to their smaller fundamental particles.

Previous generations of stars left dust rich in heavy elements as an inheritance for The Solar System. Our planet formed ~4.5 billion years ago via a process known as accretion. Over millions of years, our proto-planet attracted dust and planetesimals that it met in its orbit around The Sun. This incessant supply of matter released energy that produced enough heat to reduce the young Earth to a homogeneous and undifferentiated agglomeration of molten rock. Moreover, the natural radioactivity of the present elements fed these high temperatures, which exceed 1,500 degrees C. Such fluidity separated elements according to their weights because heavier elements (e.g., iron, nickel, gold, etc.) slowly sank towards the core.

What explains gold's abundance if it left Earth's crust to form our planet's metallic core ~4.5 billion years ago?

During the "Late Heavy Bombardment" between 4.2 to 3.8 billion years ago, meteorites intensely bombarded the Earth's solid and cooled crust. Supposedly, during this period, a disproportionately large quantity of asteroids collided with early terrestrial planets in the inner Solar System (i.e., Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars). Thus, most of the minerals our planet lost earlier returned. All of the gold we know comes from the stars and asteroids that devastated the Earth ~4 billion years ago.

However, forming such heavy elements requires events more violent than stellar nuclear fusion. As previously discussed, two dead star cores can spiral together and collide to produce hypernovae—large explosions with high-energy radiation. These hypernovae—aka gamma-ray bursts—pump out very large and difficult-to-form atoms (e.g., gold, platinum, bismuth, etc.). Due to their frequency and the quantity of gold atoms each produce, hypernovae may alone account for the universe's entire supply of gold.

Revered for its aesthetic and metallurgic properties, gold has uniquely shaped man's destiny. Gold's consistent and unmistakable allure has enraptured civilizations, one after the other. Ancient Egyptians called the precious metal "the breath of god." Generations of human beings have used it as jewelry, and we use ~80% of available gold (i.e., non-stored or unmined gold) for jewelry.

Mankind realized gold's most significant utility when we discovered its electrical conductivity properties last century. Solid-state electronic devices use very low voltages and currents, which cause contact point corrosion or tarnish to interrupt easily. Gold, a highly efficient conductor, carries these tiny currents without corroding. Almost every sophisticated electronic device (e.g., cell phones, computers, GPS units, etc.) depends on a small amount of gold.

The 75th most abundant element in the earth's crust, gold formed in the atomic furnace inside stars like other heavy elements existing in nature. Humanity has cumulatively mined ~142k tons of gold, and ~90% of that since the California Gold Rush. Interestingly, we discovered ~1.5 tons of gold in King Tut's tomb, and the average human body contains 0.2 mg of gold.

Gold's rarity primarily drives its economic value. We have used it as a medium of exchange because of its limited supply. Financial transactions settled in gold date back many millennia, and King Croesus of Lydia ordered the first-known minting of gold coin in 560 BC. Not too long ago, the United States maintained a stockpile of gold to back every dollar in circulation. Under this "gold standard," you could present paper currency to the government and demand equal value of gold in exchange.

Supposedly, the ocean contains ~20mm tons of dissolved gold, but it currently costs too much to recover because it exists at extremely minuscule concentrations. Particle accelerators can mimic the complex nuclear reactions that create stellar gold. However, because these machines can only construct gold atom-by-atom, creating one gram would almost require the universe's age. Moreover, the cost of such an effort vastly exceeds gold's current value.

Complex patterns in the universe (e.g., gold, etc.) only emerge under extraordinary stellar conditions. Just as the cosmos selects for stability and functionality, humanity values gold because of its reliably enduring properties. Humanity—at all times and seasons, in all places and regions—chose gold to carry value because it staves off entropy slightly longer as it avoided annihilation at its cataclysmic birth.

Perhaps—just perhaps—we were taught to desire it to have a frame of reference for desiring Him Who Endowed Us With Desire.

The Fear Of The Lord is pure, remaining for eternity of eternity. The Judgements Of The Lord are true, having been vindicated together. They are desirable beyond gold and much costly stone, and sweeter honey and honeycomb.
~ Psalms 18:10-11, LES

Such a simple object bridges vast scales of space, time and meaning, so understanding how cosmology influences conventional value enhances the relationship between universal laws and human experience. Gold's journey—from stellar forges to the hands of man through cosmic time—emphasizes the universe's profound tendency towards meaningful organization. It persisted through billions of years and resisted corruption, exemplifying nature's preference for stability. The gold Cross ammachi gifted me—forged in the burning heart of an ancient celestial collision—reminds me of this dual inheritance. Its atomic structure narrates the story of cosmogony, while its surface tells that of my family's faith. As it rests on my chest, i feel the weight of both histories: the eons of stellar alchemy that manufactured its atoms and the millennia of devotion that sanctified its form.

The increase in universal order implies an increase in information. The 2nd arrow of time depends on the increase of information, order and patterning that parallels the arrow of increasing disorder and chaos—entropy. Natural order seemingly manifests as the various discernible objects you perceive (e.g., flowers blooming, birds singing, etc.), for they all oppose chaotic disorder.

The 2nd law depends on evolution, which—in this case—specifically refers to the functional selection that increases diversity, patterning and complexity of systems over time. In biology, organisms that survive long enough can reproduce, passing their characteristics to offspring. In geology, organizations, assemblies and structures of atoms that persist can last billions of years, even, in new environments.

The expressions of natural laws must be measurable, so they must have quantifiable metrics. In evolving systems with uncountable configurations, only a tiny handful of configurations—even, if more than 1—can work. Only an infinitesimally small few can sustain stability. You can express this possibility with 'fractional' form—e.g., one in a hundred trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion. This fraction represents functional information because it tells you about the conditions required for the system to function stably. Thus, evolution refers to increased functional information because selecting for stability results from selecting for better outcomes.

The law of increasing functional information is the missing law, establishing the parallel arrow of time. Additionally, it introduces some noteworthy corollaries. For example, some of the natural world is not absolute; instead, it's contextual. The natural world depends on function, which necessitates purpose (telos). Moreover, something in the universe, in a non-random manner, is increasing order and complexity. It's selecting for function, which—again!—effectively presupposes a purpose. Ostensibly, all experienced things (e.g., Creation, atmospheres, insects, family, life, etc.) have a purpose.

Manifesting in everything from the formation of gold to the emergence of life, the universe's inherent drive towards order and purpose indicates the existence of a deeper spiritual reality. This cosmic ordering principle ultimately expresses itself in man's religious impulse to seek transcendent meaning.

Within The Orthodox Church, The Holy Sacraments naturally transform simple actions to reveal God's already immanent Presence within them. According to St. Macarius, we receive The Church's visible arrangement and administration of how Grace works in the soul for a few reasons. St. Dionysius the Areopagite describes such order as hierarchy. Mainly, hierarchy manifests during The Divine Liturgy, for order circumscribes space, words and ministries. All reveal God's Body and Blood on The Altar while patterning and typifying The Heart's Mystical Altar. Although the absence of either signals issues, The Church's instinct deems that you cannot enter the latter without practicing the former.

Visible things typify and shadow hidden things, and The Visible Temple typifies The Temple Of The Heart. The priest typifies The True Priesthood of Christ's Grace. Finally, the sequence of the visible arrangement typifies the inner man's rational and hidden aspects. Thus, an ineffable affinity for The Church's Liturgy often possesses us. Even, if belief ceases within our minds, our hearts deeply pine for It.

Experiencing awe and wonder, which follow healthy shame, often initiates the perception of God and all Divine Things. Attentive veneration, worship and noetic perception (i.e., The Holy Spirit's Gift) teach you to see what is. The Church's visible icons guide our attention to the center of all creation, and each typifies The Invisible Icon residing in Heaven and within the human heart. Thus, space, time and matter's transcendent nature manifests in us feeble men.

Christ came to enlighten mankind. Various faiths outside of His Revelation consist of sincere souls genuinely seeking to encounter God, and many will go far in these other religions before hearing of Christ. However, they will not reach The Goal: Eternal Life in The Kingdom Of Heaven. Despite their profundity, various comparative elements of truth in other faiths do not open up Heaven because God incarnated in The Person Of Jesus Christ to pave The Way for us. Heaven opened up to man only when Christ—before saying: it is finished and giving up His Spirit (John 19:30, RSV)—told the thief:

Truly, I say to you: today, you will be with Me in Paradise.
~ Luke 23:43, RSV

The movement from cosmic creation to individual recreation follows a primordial pattern. As stars traverse through increasingly complex stages, the soul progresses through levels of spiritual transformation. As the formation of new elements necessitates the death of a star, the birth of new spiritual life requires the soul to experience the death of its old ways. The same Divine Wisdom that orchestrates stellar evolution guides personal recreation: hydrogen becomes helium becomes carbon in the cosmic forge; but, in the spiritual forge, the old man can enter into a new creation and, by Grace, participate in deified nature.

Ammachi's faith—especially, during her most difficult days—inspired many around her. When we visited Kerala as kids, i remember her leading the prayers of every gathering. Comically, i distinctly remember opening my eyes while she seemingly prayed for everyone on earth to make eye contact with Dojay. Struggling to conceal our laughter, we looked at each other like this 🌚🤭🌝 naturally, my minimal Malayalam proficiency certainly didn't help me. However, pure chance alone didn't appoint her to that role in our family. For as long as i can remember, Ammachi embodied an unmistakably unshakable deep faith. Those who knew her saw The Light she reflected, so they sought shelter in her prayers.

https://youtube.com/shorts/10Zcgia7CHk

This is Alice Thomas. Her life illustrates our only everlasting heritage: preserving and transmitting The Truth Of God's Greatness.

Great is The Lord and very praiseworthy; and, of His Majesty, there is no end. Generation after generation will praise Your Works, and they will announce Your Power. They will speak about the magnificence of the glory of Your Holiness, and they will describe Your Wondrous Things. And, they will speak of the power of Your Awesomeness; and, Your Majesty, I will describe It; and, I will speak about Your Dominion.
~ Psalms 144:3-6

how and why does prayer connect us who, despite desiring community, eagerly search for individuality?

Praying for the whole world—for all Adam!—typically distracts monks from serving individuals. However, more than a mere abstraction, the whole Adam represents the most concrete fulness of the human being. A single ontological thread unites all of humanity. Therefore, one individual overcoming evil within himself defeats cosmic evil, creating beneficial causal effects on the destinies of those in the world. Moreover, if certain human hypostases vanquish cosmic evil, the latter naturally suffers a disproportional defeat—in significance and extent—according to the number of individuals concerned.

Two commands perfectly express The Law Of Eternal Life: love God and love your neighbor, your fellow man. The ascetic withdraws from the world to concentrate his attention on the first command. Subsequently, after realizing personal repentance to a certain degree and Grace touching his being, he starts feeling Christ-Like Love in his soul that spills out on all humanity. Then, although he lives in the desert where he doesn't physically see the world, he spiritually sees it and deeply lives its sufferings. He embodies them with a Christian consciousness of every human being's unique character and great eternal worth.

A single saint is such an extraordinarily precious phenomenon for all mankind that the mere fact of their existence—even, if only known to God—draws down a great (benediction) from God down on the world. The Lord's Saints are precious in His Sight, so He preserves the world because of them. God always listens to His Humble Servants, and their prayers uplift us—all of us!

A cosmic phenomena, every saint significantly transcends earthly history to enter eternity. Saints are the earth's salt, its preserving fruit, its raison d'être. However, when the earth ceases to produce saints, the strength safeguarding it from catastrophe will fail. Every saint constitutes the world's most precious eternal inheritance; yet, the world, desiring to remain ignorant of this fact, often slays its prophets.

The greatness of religious deeds necessarily depends on (Unoriginate Divine Being). Spiritual states carry tremendous eternal and ontological significance, so St. Silouan attributed the utmost importance to them. He experienced his praying for enemies and the whole world as Eternal Life, as Divine Activity in man's soul and as The Holy Spirit's Gift—Uncreated Grace. Furthermore, This Gift will continue to exist in the world insofar as it apprehends It. Therefore, as soon as no one on earth—even, one single hermit—bears This Grace, the world's history shall abruptly end: a tragic catastrophe that neither science nor culture can avert.

The saint's protection of the world and their journey into spiritual darkness flow from sacrificial love. Paradoxically, entering the spiritual darkness deeper strengthens the saint's global stewardship. They protect others precisely because they willingly face the void; for, in embracing their nothingness, they become channels of Divine Protection. Experiencing such profound emptiness tunes them to how others suffer acutely. Thus, they discern needs that casual observers miss, perceive the spiritual maladies hiding beneath physical symptoms and see Divine Potential in human brokenness. Their guardianship proportionally increases to their experienced emptiness because Divine Protection freely flows through those who have abandoned all hope in protecting themselves. Deeply entering into Divine Unknowing expands their capacity to bear the burdens of others. Thus, the external office of guardian and the internal journey of unknowing represent one single movement of love, for the saint's descent into darkness culminates in their ascent into universal compassion. Individual souls entering Divine Darkness become conduits of Grace for their immediate community, which slowly becomes a hopeful reservoir for the broader world.

Moreover, the community that such souls anchor steadfastly weathers collective trials. When it faces its emptiness, the lives of these hidden guardians testify that such darkness yields the dawn. The community's hidden heartbeat still pulses during individual dark nights, so communal support concretely manifests through shared liturgical rhythms, silent presence and the witness of those who traversed similar terrains. Their unwavering faith holds space for doubt; collective prayer reinforces individual prayer; and, their proven wisdom offers stable ground for those experiencing the dissolution of their personal reference points. Inevitably, the guardian's path leads to silence, where protection further deepens into communion. Active watchfulness for others transforms into a deeper vigil wherein Divine Stillness holds both the guardian and guarded, mirroring the soul's journey from doing to being and protecting to participating in Divine Life.

Wherever man may take himself, if he walks The Path Of True Life In God, he will live the world's tragedy more intensely and profoundly than those actually in the world because the latter know not what they miss. Many privations afflict men, but they—save a few rare exceptions—are unaware of their central lack. When deprived of worldly goods, they suffer with great lamentations. Yet, how much would they weep and wail if they recognized their chief deprivation? With what ardor would their souls seek the one thing they truly need?

St. Silouan, with genuine apostolic knowledge, would affirm love for one's enemies as the only authentic criterion for Truth, soteriologically and dogmatically speaking. Soteriological because it contextualizes the spiritual ethic needed for man to find salvation. Dogmatic because it flows from the plane of abstract ideal conceptions about Divine Being.

The dogmas of the true Church always bear an ontological and soteriological aspect. As The Living God's House, The Church chiefly concerns itself with life. For man's salvation comprises Her Aim and Mission, she affords primary importance to man's salvation not (abstract ontology). Man can only attain salvation through keeping Christ's command to love God and one's neighbor. The Savior's Precept to 'love your enemies' falls under His Second Commandment. Thus, knowing Christ Who Appeared To Him, St. Silouan insisted that opening your heart so that Christ comes into and abides in your soul represents the only true and sure way to Eternal Life, manifesting as knowing God.

St. Silouan's precious criterion helps us perfectly detect wills alien to That Of God, Who Desires All Men's Salvation. The Cornerstone Of The Church's Teaching, His Command to love our enemies reflects The Triune God's All-perfect Love in our world. Ultimately synthesizing our theology, it embodies The Power From On High (Luke 24:49, RSV) and Abundant Life (John 10:10, RSV) that Christ gave us. It is The Holy Spirit's Fiery Baptism (Matthew 3:11, RSV), The Fire On Earth That The Lord Brought With His Coming (Luke 12:49, RSV). It is The Uncreated Divine Light that shined on The Apostles on Mt. Tabor and The Tongues Of Fire (Acts 2:3, RSV) in which The Holy Spirit descended on The Apostles in the upper room. It is The Kingdom Of God coming to power (Mark 9:1, RSV) in us, perfecting The Likeness Of God to fulfill the human being.

Unless i treat someone else's ammachi as my ammachi—someone else's father, mother, brother and sister as my own—then how could i dare hope to love them as myself?! Loving my neighbor necessitates loving my enemy, which requires loving myself insofar as i am an Imago Dei. Therefore, loving God with all of my heart, soul and mind defines True Love.

Without love for myself as The Image Of The Uncreated, Self-existent and Eternal God, for my family and my enemy, i cannot love my love my neighbor. Thus, i would fail to keep The Command Christ conveys in The Gospel. Without loving God, i can never love my neighbor; and, i shall never inherit The Kingdom Of God.

Hierarchy—a division into upper and lower—describes the world's order as a pyramid of being because liberty represents a fundamental principle of existence. Yet, the ideal of equality profoundly roots itself in our consciousness, and we should not deny it. Christ resolves the dilemma between equality and liberty when He turns the pyramid upside down—thus, achieving the ultimate perfection.

The Son Of Man—Himself, The Unique, True, Eternal Savior—represents this pyramid's incontestable apex; yet, of the purpose of His Incarnation, He says: The Son Of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give His Life as a ransom for many. Our Savior instructed His Disciples to follow the ideal He embodied when He washed their feet. Thus, He designated ecclesial/ecclesiastical hierarchy's raison d'être: raising the spiritual lowly to higher degrees of perfection.

You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you; but, whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave; even, as the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
~ Matthew 20:25-28, RSV

Christ, as Creator and First Cause Of The Universe, took upon Himself the whole world's burden: its sin. Thus, He represents The Inverted Pyramid Of Being's Summit on which all of its weight falls. From The Overturned Pyramid's Unfathomable Base—really, Its Summit—where The Christ crucified in love takes the world's heaviest burdens on Himself, from there emanates a Special Life, Light and Fragrance. Here, Love attracts Christ's athletes. Love For Him martyrizes them and weighs heavily on them, making their lives unbearably hard until arriving at Its Ultimate Desire. The soul traverses peculiar ways to attain That Ultimate End. Inexplicably, becoming like Him, His Followers take the burdens of others' infirmities on themselves.

The Cross of Christ raised the whole world, ended error and transformed earth into Heaven. It silenced the demons, severed death's sinews, rendered hades impotent and destroyed the devil's citadel. It demolished the altars and overthrew the temples of false gods. It planted this new and wondrous way of life on earth and made angels of men. It produced countless awe-inspiring, tremendous and lofty benefits. Although we praise Our Master for everything, we especially praise and glorify Him because the accursed death He willingly suffered on The Cross amazes us. The Cross evidences God's Great Providential Care, His Goodness, and His Love.

Great love moves a man to pray for the world, and he reaches a state in which he makes no provision for himself. Utterly unsparing of self, his soul accedes to a profound peace that comprehends all things after consummating this interior sacrifice. However, after concluding his prayer, he sees the world plunged into suffering and darkness, moving his soul to pray again. Thus, his life iteratively continues until its termination.

Praying for mankind necessarily sheds blood for all Adam because offering global intercessions means prayerfully laying down your life. Such represents repentance for men's sins, so it bears the world's burdens to an extent. However, before embarking on such an audacious prayer, you must first achieve a certain degree of personal repentance because your continuing to dwell in sin and passion lays your burdens on your fellow men instead of bearing their burdens. You must cease from sin to indeed partake of Christ's Sufferings with Him.

The Holy Spirit taught St. Silouan to love with The Love Of Christ—drinking The Cup Of Christ, which He prayed that His Father would pass from Him. None of this world's things can induce bliss that compares with Christ-Like Love, which simultaneously involves experiencing the greatest suffering: suffering to the point of death. Death, the last threshold, represents the final trial of our love and our freedom. Those following Christ's journey to Jerusalem—even, if only from afar—will experience the fear His Disciples felt when they walked behind Him.

Each of your actions must go through the mill according to Christ's Commandments, so it cannot be otherwise. Thus, only The Fiery Test can—and will—reveal The Eternal Value of the works of your days. Accordingly, profound trepidation may afflict the ascetic who, aware of this spiritual law, sets out on The Path Of Love. However, after enduring the test and recognizing the greatness of The Divine Gift (i.e., God-Like Freedom and Life), he finds no word or cry to express his grateful love for God. There may be times when the ascetic fully resolves himself to die; but, generally, he suppresses This Fire in him. Yet, although restrained and not outwardly manifest, Its Action vitally invigorates him to keep The Commandments insofar as his strength fails him. Thereafter, his vigilance in the dark desert slowly transforms into him passively receiving wisdom.

The monk embeds his prayer in a life of psalmody, liturgical celebration and meditatively reading The Scriptures—each with personal and communal dimensions. The saintly pattern of the monastic prayer life necessitates solitary contemplation, which patterns itself on Christ's prayer alone on the mountain at night. Notably, in his Conferences On Prayer, John Cassian emphasizes how early monks stressed praying simply with short phrases drawn from The Scriptures—especially, The Psalms.

Oh, God ~ pay attention to my help!
~ Psalms 69:2, LES

St. Macarius offers one of the earliest descriptions of prayer of the heart when he interprets the Psalmist's the meditation of my heart will be for good pleasure before You through everything (Psalms 18:14, LES). Such consists of invoking Christ's Name with profound attention in the very ground of your being. Therefore, the heart represents the root and source of all of man's inner truth. Invoking His Name in your heart shares an identity with calling upon Him with the most profound and most earnestly intense faith that manifests when you concentrate your entire being on prayer, stripped of all non-essentials and reduced only to invoking His Name with a simple plea for help. Moreover, according to St. Macarius, perfect meditation manifests as Our Lord Jesus Christ's Saving and Blessed Name uninterruptedly dwelling in you. Thus, the devout man who perseveres in invoking His Name calls like the swallow and meditates like a dove. (Isaiah 38:14, LES)

Faith, hope, love, peace and humility—branches of The Life-Giving Tree that God alone plants—enrich the man who calls upon Our Lord Jesus Christ's Most Sweet Name. If you touch it and eat of This Tree in due time, you will gather Eternal Life, unlike Adam. The Holy Spirit lives in our glorious teachers who wisely instructed all—especially, those wishing to renounce the world, consecrate themselves to God and embrace the field of divine silence (i.e., monasticism)—to practice hesychia with wisdom and prefer His Mercy with undeterred hope. Such men invoke His Holy and Most Sweet Name as their constant practice and occupation, always bearing it on their lips, minds and hearts.

According to The Philokalia, the doctrine of pure-heartedness and imageless contemplation posits that always presenting a formless and imageless memory to God, pure hearts readily receive only The Impressions Coming From Him with which He habitually desires to manifest Himself to them.

Insofar as you cultivate awareness of yourself as a being known through Him, you can know about Him. However, reaching Him requires transcending knowledge that analogously points to Him. Moreover, you must transcend yourself, forgetting the subject-object relationship familiarly, characterizing the ordinary exercise of knowing. You can "possess" Him to the extent that you realize He possesses you in the innermost depths of your being. Thus, prayer of the heart ("ascetic meditation ") represents the active effort to keep your heart open so that He may enlighten you with complete realization of your true relation to Him. Naturally, The Jesus Prayer—ascetic meditation's classic form—consists of repetitively invoking The Name Of Jesus in the heart, empty of any images and cares.

Who am i; or, rather, what am i? Perhaps, the most modest statement i can confidently make according to my experience and faith is: i, myself, am a word that God speaks. Although i know not what my life means, can God speak meaningless words? How can i know that 'the meaning of my life as i live it' aligns with what God intends for it? Does He impose meaning on my life via extrinsic factors (e.g., events, customs, routines, laws, systems, other people, etc.); or, does He call me to, with His Grace, intrinsically create meaning reflecting His Truth, volitively transforming me into His Word freely spoken in my unique circumstance?

My true identity hides in my free response to God's Call. Therefore, i must use my freedom to love authentically, and i bear the full responsibility for my doing so—or not! However, genuine love represents neither receiving forms that external forces impose on me nor forming my own life according to socially approved patterns. Instead, it consists of directing my undivided attention to my brother's reality so that i may embrace God's Will in Its Naked—but often impenetrable!—Mystery. Truly, evading the dread of first experiencing my meaninglessness will not help me discover my meaning.

Insofar as i adjust my behaviors to accommodate certain exterior norms of conduct so that i can play an approved role in my society, my life and aims will tend towards artificial inauthenticity. Therefore, i penetrate my life's innermost ground with monastic meditation, seeking to understand fully God's Will For Me, The Mercy He Showed Me and my absolute dependence on Him. I must genuinely live this penetration rather than merely speaking it, so i must authentically but wholly conceptualize my life and purposes.

Finding your heart and recovering the awareness of the ground of your innermost identity before God and in God implies recognizing the shocking extent to which your external, everyday self is no more than a mask and a fabrication. It is not your true self, which you cannot easily find. It hides at the center where you, in the obscure nothingness, wholly but directly depend on God. Thus, the reality of all Christian meditation depends on this recognition, so meditating without it must necessarily be self-contradictory. Rather than generating scientifically objective knowledge of God, ascetic meditation aims at knowing Him through realizing that His Knowledge and Love For Us penetrate our very being. Thus, ascetic meditation deepens your consciousness of these fundamental relationships: of creature to His Creator and sinner to His Redeemer. Paradoxically, we know Him not as we know scrutable objects but as we recognize ourselves as utterly dependent on His Mercifully Saving Knowledge Of Us. We discover our real being and identity in Christ insofar as we realize that He knows us to the extent that His Truth and Merciful Love become the source of our life and, indeed, the very heart of our existence. Besides Him, My Creator and Redeemer, loving me and me loving Him in return, i have no other reason for being. Truly knowing God implies grasping and intimately accepting this profoundly personal relationship.

for all of my life, i will never amount to anything more than a beginner

The monk accomplishes his creative and healing work in silence, spiritual nakedness, emptiness and humility. Thus, he participates in Christ's Saving Death and Resurrection. Therefore, if he desires, every Christian may commune with the silence of the praying and meditating Church, The Church Of The Desert.

Meditation intimately relates to asceticism, so genuinely loving God requires love in the heart—i.e., affectus mentis—and productive virtue—i.e., effectus operis. Thus, in the sweetness of spiritual experience, you must habituate virtue and love. Specifically, cultivating virtuous discipline indeed consists of living ascetically—e.g., fasting, keeping vigils, manual work, reading, prayer, poverty, etc. Moreover, salutary meditation—i.e., beneficially healthy meditation that promotes well-being—nourishes love. To grow This Sweet Love Of Jesus in your heart, programmatically meditate on your memories of the past, awareness of the present and concern for the future. Thus, acquiring interior freedom from inordinate cares necessitates managing your thoughts and desires. Such detachment emerges as the capacity to do without life's good things for the sake of higher ends, to use or sacrifice my relationships to all created things for love.

The life of Christian asceticism directly leads you into the realm of apparent contradiction. Suspending you between earth and Heaven, this paradoxical condition nourishes the contemplative life although you can never fulfill your desire for renunciation. Thus, asceticism delivers you over the paradox with which meditation contemplatively struggles in Spiritual Love's Divine Peace. However, without Special Help From Grace and continuously renewed self-discipline, you cannot survive this paradoxical state. Unless your motive for living ascetically springs from personal meditation, such exercises cannot properly effectuate love and virtue. Christian Love's transforming power must enliven why i'm doing what i'm doing, that the reasons for my actions spring from the depths of my freedom.

Monastic meditation brings you into direct contact with The Source Of All Joy and All Life so that it can evoke deep tranquility and joy. However, without seriously returning to the center of my own nothingness before God, my true meditation never begins. Consequently, i never into the most profound reality of my relationship with Him, for i only consider religious truths from a detached and objective viewpoint, meditating merely in the mind, the imagination or, at best, the desires.

The capacity to recognize your condition before God itself is a Grace, for you cannot always realize it at will. Therefore, learning meditation does not necessitate learning infallible but artificial techniques for facetiously producing "compunction" and sensing "your nothingness" whenever you please. Instead, learning meditation means cultivating the capability to receive This Grace whenever God wishes to grant It to you, which permanently dispose you to attention to reality, receptivity, pliability and humility. Thus, learning to meditate also means gradually freeing yourself from habituated torpor, gross-mindedness and hard-heartedness, which themselves necessitate either arrogantly rejecting simple reality or resisting The Concrete Demands Of God's Will.

True men of prayer seriously confront the challenge of their monastic vocation in all of its depth, which exposes them to existential dread. He internally experiences the emptiness, dearth of authenticity, search for fidelity and "lostness" of modern man. However, he experiences all of this more deeply than the contemporary man, who experiences this disconcerting awareness of himself and the world as boredom and spiritual disorientation. The monk faces his humanity and that of the world at the deepest and most central point, where the void seems to meet black despair. Yet, he rejects absolute despair and, with the pure and humble supplication of monastic prayer, transforms it into perfect hope. He discovers the best upon facing the worst. From darkness, he finds light; from death, life; from the abyss, the unaccountable yet mysterious Gift Of The Spirit that God sends to renew, transform the redeemed created world and reestablish all things in Christ.

The meditative movement expresses the basic Paschal rhythm of Christian life: Christ's passage from death to life. Prayer, meditation and contemplation share an identity with death when, descending into your nothingness, you recognize your helplessness, frustration, infidelity, confusion and ignorance.

Most men need instruction to learn how to meditate. Although there are many ways of meditation, do not expect to find systems that magically dissolve all of your difficulties and obstacles. Moreover, although meditation sometimes represents a substantial challenge, you will discover the joy of meditation if you patiently bear hardship in prayer. Nevertheless, do not judge your meditations based on how you feel because seemingly fruitless meditations may offer you more value than otherwise "happy" and "enlightening" ones.

Regarding prayer of the heart, monastic prayer (i.e., psalmody, oratio, meditatio and lectio) prepares the way so that God's Action may develop the faculty for the supernatural. Faith and the light of wisdom illuminate this capacity in the loving contemplation of God. Thus, meditation only seeking to develop your reason, strengthen your imagination and tone your inner climate of devotional feeling has little—if any!—value for realizing the true purpose of meditation. While those other methods may profit you in a worldly sense, learn when to leave them and go beyond to a more straightforward, more primitive, more obscure yet more receptive form of prayer. Then, if this obscure prayer becomes painfully dry and fruitless, seek refuge in a few simple words of The Scriptures—especially, The Psalms!—instead of resorting to conventional discursive "mental prayer".

Contemplative experience gradually illuminates theological understanding through lived encounters. As prayer deepens, theological truths transform from intellectual propositions into experiential realities wrought from suffering His Presence in darkness and light alike. Moreover, the rhythms of prescribed prayer slowly dissolve the veil between structure and void until formal practices become indistinguishable from vast silence. Thus, the desert can show you what books can only tell: how Divine Transcendence paradoxically manifests as radical immanence, how emptiness opens to fulness and how darkness contains the seed of light.

Truly, hazards and difficult options litter the time of darkness. Drawn out from behind your habituated conscious defenses, you start to go out of yourself. Growth necessitates abandoning such limiting defenses, which protect you from unconscious forces too great to nakedly face. Such inexorable forces greet all who set into this darkness so that you will face doubtful fears, calling the whole structure of your spiritual life into question. You will newly evaluate your motives for believing, loving and committing yourself to The Invisible God.

Night symbolizes theoria, the contemplation of invisible things. The mystical night surrounds the soul seeking Him Who Hides In Darkness. Indeed, she loves Him Whom She Seeks, but Her Beloved escapes her thoughts. Therefore, abandoning the search, she recognizes Him Who She Desires solely because His Knowledge surpasses all understanding. Her Beloved can only dwell in her heart only after, with God's Grace, she restores its primitive state.

God is invisibly present on the ground of your being—your belief and love to attain Him. However, He hides from your investigating mind's arrogant eyes that, through securely possessing knowledge of Him, seek power over Him. In fact, it is categorically absurd and impossible to grasp God as an object that your mind can seize and comprehend.

Although It's Ineffable Darkness, The Unitive and Mystical Knowledge Of God is Essential Light. On your own, you cannot navigate This Incomprehensibly Solitary Desert, for It bears no recognizable landmarks. The Light that eludes natural comprehension can never illuminate created intelligence, so It is Dark. No road leads to It, so It is Desolate. The soul can only drink from The Stream's Very Source, Those Sweet, Fresh, Pure, True And Essential Waters, if it willingly yields to receive guidance from Divine Grace beyond all of its comprehension and understanding. More than a subject merely knowing an object, The Transcendent And Unitive Knowledge Of God in love manifests when the created "self" seemingly disappears in God to know Him and Him Alone. Subsequently, through passive purification, the self apparently experiences an annihilation until it, reduced to emptiness, no longer knows itself apart from God. Thus, as you proceed down the sacrificial way, you will increasingly submit to purifying actions you cannot understand. Often, the value of sacrifices you don't choose exceeds that of those you select for yourself.

Preferring the desert, emptiness and poverty manifests as contemplative prayer, for the very meaning of contemplation becomes more apparent when you intuitively and spontaneously seek the dark, unknown path of aridity. The contemplative man would rather not know than know, not enjoy than enjoy. Rather than proving God loves Him, he faithfully accepts God's Love despite any apparent evidence to the contrary. In fact, such transrational belief represents the paradoxical but, still, necessary condition for the mystically experiencing the reality of God's Presence and Love For Us.

In fact, the contemplative way is not a way, for Christ alone is The Way. Specifically, the desert of contemplation metaphorically describes the state of emptiness experienced when you leave all ways, forgetting yourself and assuming The Invisible Christ as Your Way.

The soul may cling to understandings, feelings, imaginations, wills and modes on its own. However, according to St. John of The Cross, such attachment significantly impedes the soul from realizing The Highest Estate Of Union With God: Theosis. Paradoxically, entering the road is leaving the road, for it involves laying aside your wares to carry your cross, as He did, with His Special Grace. The soul who attains this state no longer has any ways or methods, yet it remains detached from them more so. It possesses nothing yet possesses all things.

In the contemplative life, only empty desire—neither pure desire nor its refusal—matters, for empty desire acquiesces to the unknown and peacefully advances when it cannot perceive any further.

The true paradox of contemplative living, being without desire involves allowing an incomprehensibly great desire to lead you. Too large to entirely feel, it is a blind desire that seemingly desires nothing because nothing can satisfy it. It can rest in no-thing; but, then, it rests in emptiness. True emptiness transcends all things yet, as undefined space, readily receives all, and emptiness is pure being, philosophically speaking. However, to the contemplative, emptiness is other than whatever you say it is. Christianity's very essence steeps in Love's Purity, Freedom and Indeterminateness—all to which monastic prayer aspires. Pure love and pure freedom—an indeterminate love free of all things, especially the weight of special relationships—characterize the Christian contemplative's experience of emptiness. Love, for Love's sake, participates in The Holy Spirit to share in God's Infinite Charity. Thus, Jesus commands us to love universally.

I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of Your Father Who Is In Heaven; for, He makes His Sun rise on the evil and on the good; and, sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
~ Matthew 5:44-45, RSV

Rather than attending to a unique audible wavelength or receiving a specific message, the highest species of listening consists of a general emptiness that, within its apparent void, patiently waits to realize The Fulness Of God's Message. Thus, instead of preparing his mind for messages he particularly desires, the true contemplative remains empty because he knows that he can never anticipate the word that will transform his darkness into light. He neither expects extraordinary transformations nor demands light instead of darkness. He silently waits for God's Word. When God "answers" him, He doesn't do so with a word bursting into his silence. Conversely, His Silence Itself suddenly but inexplicably reveals Itself to him as a Powerful Word, Full Of God's Voice. Yet, you can be content because, despite its seeming incredulity, it makes more sense than anything else. In the genuine climate of profound meditation, you commit yourself to entirely surrendering to God without light, apparently without strength and, even, seemingly without hope. Drop your arrogance and submit to your situation's incomprehensible reality.

Authentic identity emerges in the void's apparent emptiness. After darkness dissolves all carefully constructed self-conceptions, only our fundamental nature as contingent beings wholly dependent on and oriented toward God remains. Almost counterintuitively, discovering essential identity necessitates relinquishing every self-conception. We can find our true selves precisely where we lose our false selves because the void reveals the ground of being itself.

Only after letting go of everything within you—every desire to see, know, taste and experience God's Presence—can you experience That Presence with such an overwhelmingly genuine conviction that it entirely revolutionizes your inner life, your really real reality.

The Spirit Of Contemplation nourishes these inner truths that The Christian World especially needs: praising and loving God; longing for Christ's coming; and, thirsting for the manifestation of God's Glory, His Truth, His Justice and His Kingdom in the world. The Christian Heart characteristically contemplates these eschatological aspirations, which comprise the very essence of monastic prayer. Without them, you labor more for your glory than God's. Moreover, The Church needs contemplation and interior prayer to fulfill Her Mission to transform the world and save mankind. Truly, religion becoming more than an opiate necessitates deeply genuine contemplative aspirations, total love for God and an uncompromising thirst for His Truth.

Men—perhaps, especially, the best among us—confront themselves as naked, insufficient, disgruntled and malicious beings when they return to a frank and undisguised self-awareness. They perceive their stubborn attachment to the lie within themselves, their disposition to infidelity and their fear of truth along with the risks it demands. Especially, when your sincerely good life removes and rejects those actually sinful habits you identified, you will notice within yourself an inclination to rebellious sin and evasive falsity.

Voluntarily emptying yourself of desire (i.e., habitually surrendering to incomprehensible reality) transforms the mere suffering of involuntary trials into purifying fire. Thus, chosen emptiness and imposed suffering represent a single movement in the soul's transformation.

Furthermore, at the precise moment all spiritual light darkens, all values lose their shape and reality—rendering you suspended in a formless void. The crux of this experience rests in the genuinely risky temptation to doubt God Himself because this point initiates the portion of the journey beyond where, in primitively simple images, God makes Himself accessible to your mind. For, He invisibly and inscrutably permeates this night without any image, beyond any satisfactory mental representation. Here, without a genuinely robust foundation in The Orthodox Faith, you may lose everything. In this fire of purgation, you will either face the truth of your emptiness or retreat into the realm of analogical images that no longer serve the mature ascetic life. Liberating the deep spiritual power in the center of your being, this testing burns out your faith's human and accidental elements. God, according to His Inscrutable Mercy, incomprehensibly affords us This Gift, which you cannot attain on your own. He understands that, of his own accord, no virtue, good intention, ideal, philosophy or mystical elevation can rescue him from the futility: his apparent despair of his emptiness without God. The faithful Christian experiences the worst species of emptiness when he acutely recognizes, more intensely than before, his status as an unprofitable servant despite doing what he had to do: seriously seeking God and conscientiously responding to life's graces and tasks. He, more than the deluded sinner and insincere man, faces radical dread in his being. Such naked dread appears without definition, for it seemingly permeates his whole being and life.

If I should sin, what will I be able to do ~ oh, You Who Establishes The Mind Of Humans? On what account have You set me as an accuser of You, only to be a burden to You?
~ Job 7:20, LES

Simultaneously, he seemingly loses conviction in the fact that he can find refuge in God, who seems hostile or implacable. Worse yet, God Himself seems to become emptiness, and all becomes nothing empty, nothing, dread and night.

After Divine Light assails the soul, the latter experiences immense pain to expel its impurity. It feels its impurity and misery, thinking God to be against it and it to be against God. Now, believing that God has cast it away, the soul experiences much grief and pain. The Pure Light helps the soul darkly but clearly perceive its impurity, so it recognizes its unworthiness and that of every creature. Moreover, thinking that it will never be worthy and that all good things are over for it, the soul inflicts the most pain on itself because it profoundly immerses itself in the knowledge and realization of its miserable evils.

With reproofs, because of lawlessness, You discipline a person. You melt his life as a spider.
~ Psalms 38:12, LES

Those who judge wisely not only receive no scandal from trials but also derive profit from them, even if they are pagans. Your earthly insecurity expresses itself as dread when you realize that you are always uncertain about possessing a definitive and established spiritual status. Everything that is yours reduces to nothing, and it can completely fail you. You can no longer hope in yourself, wisdom, virtues and fidelity. No longer can you rely on what you have, what your past gave you and what was required of you. Thus, you to open to God and His Mercy in the inscrutable future. You entirely trust in His Grace, which will support your liberty in the emptiness where you will confront unforeseen decisions. If you progressively exercise yourself in virtue, this world's abuses will not only leave you unharmed but also generate much spiritual profit for you because these very hindrances cause virtue to bloom abundantly and reach Heaven. Suffering truly binds honor, good reputation and crowns. Only after dreadfully descending to the center of your nothingness with His Grace and Guidance do you allow Him to lead you to lose yourself and find Him in His Own Time. The righteous person's passing represents neither death nor an end but a crown and prelude to a greater life.

An unbroken current flows between the monk's cell and The Church's sanctuary. Personal prayer draws power from communal worship to transform itself. It feeds that back into the latter—revealing how structure serves spontaneity, how tradition nurtures individual inspiration and how solitary darkness ultimately illuminates the collective path. The things that are taking place are a great sign of the good repute of the church, and many have profited from them.

The Gospel's Kerygma—Orthodox Christianity's first principle (i.e., the Christian message's true import and challenge)—becomes worthless if a few external gestures and pious intentions quickly answer everything. Instead, Christian engages those aware of their deep wound, the sinful fissure at the very heart of man's being. Guilt, suspicion and covert hatred estrange them from God, so they taste the sickness that emanates through our innermost heart. We would need neither The Cross, The Sacraments nor The Church had that sickness merely been an illusion. St. John of The Cross demonstrates that the dark night primarily liberates, purifies and enlightens man's heart in perfect love instead of simply punishing it. Neither despair nor hell, the way through dread ends in perfect joy and Heaven.

Therefore, do not feel afflicted when you perceive your desire obscuring, your affections aridly constraining and your faculties bereft of their capacity for any interior exercise. Instead, reckon it as a great happiness because, freeing you from yourself, God takes the work from your hands. Regardless of how well they may serve you, your clumsy and unclean hands will never labor more effectively, perfectly and securely than when God guides you through the darkness. Like a blind man, you cannot fathom the end to which He leads you with His Hand.

Paradoxically, in drawing us beyond ourselves, prayer reveals our most authentic nature. The further you venture into your apparent absence, the more intimately you can encounter your essential practice. Therefore, the transcendent journey to authentic selfhood embodies the paschal pattern, for we can only find who we indeed are through losing ourselves.

Fulfilling your vocation within God's Church requires achieving balance. Realizing the true monastic vocation restores the ancient, harmonious and organic balance between contemplation and action. After all, Martha and Mary are sisters, and neither approaches God's Throne without the other.

The solution manifests as a complete and multifaceted prayer life that correctly emphasizes all things (e.g., Liturgy, meditation, etc.). Yet, individuals will chiefly emphasize different aspects according to their unique callings. Therefore, the father abbot/hieromonk bears the responsibility for discerning among various spirits and encouraging each to traverse the path that The Spirit Of God wills for him. Thus, making discreet adjustments and removing obstacles where necessary, the monastic community flowers every spirit and type of prayer. Furthermore, with some qualifications, what applies to monks also applies to all of the faithful.

External regulations do not entirely govern the monk's actions. Instead, monastic tradition spares some room for the monk to implement his own prayer rule in response to Grace's Inspiration. Yielding to interior inspirations of Grace and the external blessing of obedience, he may pray more, fast more and discipline himself more than The Rule actually prescribes. He understands Grace and obedience together represent God's Will for his own interior and contemplative life.

According to The Monastic Fathers, the core monastic activities (i.e., monastic prayer, reading and meditation) directly aim at acquiring a pure heart that unconditionally accepts itself totally surrendering to God's Will in every situation. To obey God's Will—In Its Exacting Truth—as it appears amidst life's complex demands, pure-hearted individuals necessarily renounce all deluded self-conceptions and exaggerated estimates of their capabilities. Consequently, acquiring a pure heart correlates with obtaining a new spiritual identity, for The Reality That God Wills fundamentally contextualizes any recognition of the self. Specifically, contrasted with the old man's complex and potentially disreputable fantasies, the new man's enlightened awareness manifests as a pure heart. Therefore, monastic meditation precisely focuses on generating this new insight that completely upends our perceptual paradigm: directly knowing the self in its higher aspect.

The Church, through all of its tribulations, exhorts the world to steadfastly practice self-restraint, endure trials and endure patiently; to despise worldly things, regard riches as nothing and laugh at honor; to contemptuously view death and despise life; to disregard homeland, relatives, friends and kinsfolk; to prepare for all persecutions and joyfully leap on swords; and, to consider all of this life's "magnificent" things (e.g., honor, glory, power, luxury, etc.) as less significant than spring flowers.

Therefore, understanding the grand processes undergirding creation deepens the mystery of prayer, for physical processes mirror the spiritual transformations we seek: how tremendous heat and pressure destroy the old to generate purer new forms. Contemplatives who understand—even, partially—the processes upholding Creation find themselves in a natural liturgy. Specifically, the monk's cell represents a microcosm of cosmic forces. As neutron stars compress matter into its purest form, the cell's sacred silence compresses the soul toward its essence. These parallel processes of compression and purification demarcate new dimensions of prayer because the forces forging elements in stellar cores find their counterparts in those forging faith in human hearts.

Furthermore, the movement between darkness and light, as well as between emptiness and fulness, mirrors the journey between earth and heaven. The contemplative traverses the void to find essential reality, and humanity itself stands on a bridge between two worlds. Like stellar furnaces purifying gold, prayer's crucible refines the soul so that it becomes a conductor between heaven and earth, light and darkness, fulness and emptiness. Thus, as earthly and Heavenly realities interpenetrate without confusion, the individual soul's journey through the dark night participates in creation's larger movement toward transfiguration. Such a nexus finds its perfect expression in The God-Man Jesus Christ, Who unites what had been separated and reconciles what had been divorced: Divine Nature and human nature.

He will try the world like gold in a – crucible /
And the fi're will burn any im-purity /
Be fearful ~ my brethren ~ when The Son – Of God comes /
Let us hasten to take refuge in repentance.
~ Vespers of Tuesday, Bo'utho of Mor Jacob

The evangelical virtues differ from those of other religious and philosophical ethics in content and method. The God-Man Jesus Christ demonstrates and proves this method (i.e., The Divine-Human way of life) as the only naturally normal way of living and knowing with His Incomparably Perfect Divine-Human Person, The Theanthropos. He who follows this way of faith also discovers the way of knowledge in it. The other godly virtues (e.g., love, hope, prayer, fasting, meekness, humility, etc.) also validate the things that faith validates because each of these virtues becomes a living creative force of living and knowing in The Man Living In Christ.

Nothing is unreal, abstract or hypothetical in The Theanthropic way of living and knowing, for all is irresistibly real because all experientially grounds itself here. The Person Of Christ, The God-Man, utterly and empirically demonstrates and defines Transcendent Divine Reality. Christ's Incarnation gives human flesh the most subtle, transcendent and perfect reality that lacks any boundaries, for The Person Of Christ is limitless. Therefore, nothing bounds man's personality and his knowledge.

The Person Of Christ, The God-Man, presents in itself the perfect, ideal reality of theanthropic monism: the natural passage from God to man, the supernatural to the natural, immortal life to human life. Such a passage is also natural for knowledge when, on the bridge of faith, hope and love, it from man to God, the natural to the supernatural, the mortal to the immortal, the temporal to the eternal—thereby, revealing the organic unity of this life and the coming life, this world and the other, the natural and the supernatural.

The love of God is a power that brings the intellect to itself. Reading hymns and psalms, pondering on death and hoping for future life, all collect the intellect and protect it from fragmentation. The intellect can reign over the passions, rule over the senses and control them.

The character of your knowledge depends on the disposition, nature and condition of your organs of understanding, for your means of understanding influence the quality of your knowledge at all levels. You do not make truth; rather, the act of understanding involves making a truth—already given objectively or subjectively—your own. Effectively, understanding a truth means subjectively affirming it. Accordingly, the human person yields fruits of understanding. As the tree is its fruit, so the organs of understanding are to the knowledge they generate.

Contrarily, faith follows a pure and simple way of thinking, far removed from all guile and methodical examination. Faith abides in innocent thoughts and simple hearts.

Often, faith perceives ex nihilo, but knowledge impotently idles without a priori matter. Faith, not knowledge, can exercise power over nature. Without burning, faithful men entered the fire and quenched their flames. Others walked on water like dry land. Each trans-natural, they reveal the vanity inherent to the modes of naturally knowing. However, faith moves above nature. Natural knowledge ruled for more than 5,000 years, yet man couldn't lift his gaze from the world to understand His Creator's Might until his faith rose to deliver him from this world's dark works and his fragmented mind. The faithful man will lack nothing; but, in faith, he possesses all things when he has nothing.

Our nature originally enjoyed the charism of pure souls. Only the soul purified of the passions, finally healed of sin's sickness, can attain the glory its transgressions squandered. Truly, if a man becomes worthy of purity (i.e., a healthy soul), his intellect receives joy through spiritual awareness; for, he becomes a Son Of God and a Brother Of Christ. You achieve a pure soul if you overcome the passions.

The material universe can teach you prayer if you learn to spiritually interpret it. Thus, scientific knowledge can represent a rung on the ladder of divine ascent—albeit, the most lowly one—because natural laws signal corresponding spiritual principles. Stars teach us about creative destruction; gold, value that transcends utility; and, light, illumination that exceeds physical brightness. Every natural phenomenon contains kernels of contemplative insight—each waiting to blossom in the fertile soil of the burning heart that prayerfully attends to it. As the cosmos proceeds from simple elements to complex life, the soul progresses from basic awareness to Divine Consciousness—in fact, because God made our soul in His Image, such actually represents a return journey. Whether in the heart of stars or man, all things tend toward ultimate perfection after enduring cycles of pressure, transformation and recreation.

Everyone who's spoken to me about Ammachi overtly testified to her brilliance—dare, i say, her genius! Ammachi tutored my mom and sisters in Math and Chemistry, and she demonstrated a deep understanding of Organic Chemistry. I remember her joyfully telling me how, during her days as a banker, she could calculate the bank balances of individual clients down to the cent. Mind you, at the time, computers were nowhere near as prevalent as they are these days. She grinned as she told me that they called her The Human Computer.

uber courageous and fiercely intelligent, Ammachi never hesitated to speak her mind and do what's right

However, more than her raw intellectual horsepower, she also possessed a remarkable quantity of social intelligence of which Simren and Dojay—more so, the former obviously—definitely inherited the commanding lion's share (sorry ~ Milen 😭). She used WhatsApp more than anyone else i knew—even, those not bedridden! To this very day, there are entire friend groups of college classmates who studied together more than half a century ago whose friendships Ammachi rekindled.

Her rare intellect and knowledge inspired me to continue my epistemological inquiry and ask: what—or, rather, Whom—is worth knowing?

some words from The Ecclesiast

The worth of a good name exceeds that of olive oil; and, the day of death, that of the day of birth.

Ultimately, in the grand scheme of existence, most human endeavors lack any lasting significance despite our toils and struggles because our efforts are naturally transient. Life's cyclicality and ephemerality underscores time's inevitability and the limitations of human ambition.

Those who consume worldly goodness never experience satisfaction, for such pursuits produce pain and distraction rather than fulfillment. Instead, true satisfaction necessitates recognizing The Divine Hand in life's blessings and the natural limits of human striving.

Genuine sickness and misfortune manifest as guarding wealth, which will perish under the distracted stewardship of profligate progeny. Such men live their sick days in darkness, grief, bitterness and great wrath. As we leave our mother's womb naked, we shall return without taking anything from our life's labor. You will not benefit from any profit generated to pursue worldly goods in this life.

God gifts you with the authority to consume your wealth and receive your portion. You will not unless you enjoy this recognition, and God will distract you with your heart's merriment.

Do any work your hands find according to your power, for there is no work, calculation, knowledge or wisdom in hades—where you are going!

Our knowledge—the things of which we're confident—makes the world go wrong, preventing us from seeing and learning.
~ Lincoln Steffens

In The Black Swan, Nassim Taleb leverages Umberto Eco's embodied philosophy to describe our relationship between books and knowledge. Eco belongs to that small class of encyclopedic, insightful and non-dull scholars. Owning an enormous personal library comprising ~30k books, he separated visitors into two categories. The first reacted with awe and admiration before asking him how many books he read. The second—a tiny minority—understood that private libraries operate as precise research tools instead of ego-boosting appendages. According to your means, fill your library with what you don't know. As you grow older, you will accumulate more knowledge and more books. Moreover, the growing number of books should menacingly look at you. Indeed, as you know more, your collection of unread books—your anti-library—should grow more.

my library visually reminds me of what i don't know

Therefore, correcting this overconfidence necessarily depends on fixing our relationship with knowledge. Skeptical empiricists, anti-scholars focus on unread books without perceiving their knowledge as their treasure, possession or, even, devices for enhancing their self-esteem.

some more words from The Ecclesiast

My heart set out to learn knowledge and wisdom, and it understood many things. However, knowledge abounds where wisdom abounds, but more knowledge begets more pain.

Would that i'd rather be a poor and wise child than an old and foolish king who no longer knows how to pay attention.

Wise words beneficially stimulate thought and understanding, encouraging you to reflect on your life and the nature of existence. However, excessively pursuing knowledge engenders weariness, so you must approach such wisdom with balance. Nevertheless, all wise teachings originate from One Shepherd. Although human wisdom may abound, true understanding follows from Him, who imparts wisdom to mankind.

He gives to the good person wisdom, knowledge and merriment before His Face, but He gives to the sinner distraction to increase and gather that which He gives to the good.

Guard against writing too much; for, it has no end, and much meditation makes the flesh weary. Guard yourself against excessive righteousness and wisdom, which will overwhelm you. Avoid ungodliness and stubbornness, lest you die outside of your time. Do not defile your hand because all things shall come forth for those who fear God. Fear God!

Apart from Christ, there are no sinlessly righteous men who only do good. If you guard His Commandments, you will not know wicked words. The wise man's heart knows the time of judgment, for there's a time and judgment for all matters. Man's knowledge is great on him, yet no one knows how it will be.

You will fall into the pits you dig, and serpents will bite you if you take down fences. Lifting stones will wear you out, and splitting trees incurs risk. If the axe head falls off, you must exasperatedly work harder. Your futile defense systems will not save you from the serpents that strike without warning. Thus, unforeseen circumstances can diminish your potential, and wisdom alone neither guarantees success nor protects against life's inherent uncertainty.

Woe to the cities with young rulers who eat in the morning, for their careless indulgence triumphs over their diligence. Instead, wise leaders approach their responsibilities with balance, so they eat at appropriate times.

However, the maze of wisdom inevitably leads to wonder, for True Knowledge—a being not doing—transcends pragmatic guidance. In pushing human understanding to its limits, you discover that our most excellent knowledge necessitates recognizing how little we actually know. Thus, you properly prepare for wisdom's deeper dimension: the wonder of being itself.

True knowledge changes us, rendering "if only i had known" as semantically equivalent to "if only i had been a different person." According to Biblical exegesis, knowledge transcends merely collecting and managing facts. Instead, knowing necessitates participation or communion.

Deeply problematic if misunderstood, knowledge manifests in many forms. Christ's True Knowledge is Saving Knowledge, for It delivers him who knows It. It directionally transforms the knower to True Existence: conforming with The Image Of God.

Had the crux of life depended on propositional facts, Christ would have engaged in argumentative debate. Yet, He led His Disciples—those seeking True Knowledge from Him—towards The True Knowledge that transforms and saves.

Neither yourself nor nature taught you everything you know. Instead, The Spirit revealed to you knowledge of things that your weak intelligence cannot independently apprehend.

Only metaphysics and ontology (i.e., existence and being) survive the axiological crucible. Neither right or wrong nor the legally correct matters. Instead, the world reduces to what indeed does and doesn't exist. God is The Only Truly Self-existing One, and realizing our salvation in Christ manifests as continuously moving toward True Existence. Such constitutes Eternal Life.

According to St. John Chrysostom, St. Paul dictated some of his epistle to the Romans as he beheld an open sea. Perhaps, a certain dizziness before God's Ineffable Economy possessed The Lord's Apostle, who desired to plumb the depths of God's Providence. God's Wisdom—Its unspeakableness, limitlessness, ineffability and incomprehensibility—simply astonished him. Thus, turning away from the unfathomable body of water, St. Paul cried with great amazement:

Oh, the depth of The Riches and Wisdom and Knowledge Of God! How unsearchable are His Judgments and how inscrutable His Ways!
~ Romans 11:33, RSV

You cannot discover the limit of God's Riches, Wisdom and Knowledge. You cannot find His Ways. You cannot speak of His Gift. You cannot understand His Peace. Therefore, you have no excuse for demanding a reckoning regarding all of His Providence. It is precarious and full of madness to investigate and be inquisitive about The Ineffable Wisdom Of God.

In his 1st epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul emphasizes that you have the most minuscule measure of knowledge, even, if you have learned much. Underscoring our knowledge's significant deficiency, he affirms that God stores the greater part for The Coming Age. Finally, metaphorically leaning on development and sight, he clearly demonstrates the disparity between our knowledge here and That Knowledge There.

Follow the example of clay, which naturally submits to the potter without resistance and inquisitiveness despite its consubstantiality. Yet, a boundless ontological and epistemological disparity between us and God exists here. Then, what forgiveness can you expect to obtain for shamelessly prying into The Providence of Him Who Created You? The Divinity is inapprehensible not only to us but to the powers above.

Do not seek what is too difficult for you, and do not question that which is too strong for you. Ponder these things that have been assigned to you, for the secret things are not a concern for you. Do not meddle with things beyond your works, for things greater than the understanding of humans have been revealed to you.
~ Sirach 3:21-23, LES

Creation proves The Providence Of God. God crafted this wondrously harmonious creation for no one else but you. Its beauty, diversity and utility sufficiently sustain your body. It generates profitable wisdom for your soul, paving a suitable path to The Knowledge Of God—all of this, He prepared for you.

The Golden-Mouthed Saint prepared a litany of different created objects from which you can discern God's Providence. The clouds, seasons and passage of time teach you about Him. So do The uninhabited winds, seas, earth and the various creatures inhabiting them; the plants, amphibians and animals of all species; the events of nights and days, the rains and the duration of years; death, life and the toil that falls to our lot; despondency, relaxation and the food and drink we receive; the customs, arts and traditions; the mineable mountains, navigable seas and stones; the islands, harbors and coasts; the sea's surface and its depths; the natural elements framing our world, the season's dispositions and the varying lengths of days and nights; health, limbs and the soul's constitution; the arts and the skill with which men may acquire them; the most minor and most insignificant living things; the boundless quantity of fishes, birds, and animals; the plants, herbs and ore-bearing mountains. All clearly demonstrate His Providence.

All that ~ oh, man ~ is for your sake: arts for your sake, and ways of living and cities and villages and sleep for your sake, and death for your sake, and life for your sake, and growth, and so many works of nature, and such a good world for your sake now—and for your sake it will be better still!
~ St. John Chrysostom, on The Providence Of God (Ch. 7)

Providence demonstrates that we were given both the natural law and the written law and that noble men were provided who, sojourning in a foreign land, became teachers of the peoples who welcomed them, and then—the crown of good things that we were favored with The Coming Of The Only Begotten Son.

He unceasingly undertook everything for our race from the beginning to the end. He gave The Law, sent The Prophets, struck people down and raised them, delivered them up to captivity and deemed them worthy of freedom. Yet, that only creation brings us to Knowledge Of God did not satisfy Him because man's senselessness impeded him from deriving any benefit from it. Therefore, He contrived other means to teach us.

For the sake of us ungrateful servants, He gave up His Only-Begotten Son to an accursed and shameful death that society reserved for the condemned. The world spat on Him, slapped Him, struck Him on His Head, ridiculed Him and crucified Him high upon The Cross. His Followers charitably buried Him and sealed His Tomb.

He carefully submitted to all these things for your sake. Thus, He discarded the curse, annulled your former condemnation, abolished sin's tyranny, razed the devil's citadel to the ground, rent asunder death's sinews and opened Heaven's Gates for you. To teach you how to persevere patiently, He shared your experience of worldly grievances. He endured evil suspicions, false accusations, the enemy's plots, ill-treatments, attacks, lashings, mockery, abuse, assault and death. Yet, He exceedingly prevailed over all of them to teach you how to face them courageously.

He ascended into Heaven, freely bestowed The Holy Spirit's Ineffable Grace upon The Church and initiated The Apostles in His Service. Thereafter, He carefully permitted His Heralds Of Life to experience countless evils for your sake. Moreover, for you, He prepared a Kingdom and indescribable good things: the unique dwelling places appointed in The Heavens, the blessedness that words cannot describe.

Do not be inquisitive anymore, for Your Master's Love is more than tender than your father's, more caring than your mother's and more amorous than a bridegroom and bride. He regards your salvation as His Repose, so He rejoices over it more than you rejoice when you escape dangers and death.

Asking The Artisan for the reasons that He brings everything about without knowledge and experience on your part represents the peak of ridiculousness. Refrain from inquiring into His Wisdom, which is naturally infallible, unspeakable, unutterable, inexpressible and incomprehensible. His Goodness is great, and His Providence is indescribable. Insofar as your actions don't interfere, everything you receive from Him will benefit you because He prefers your salvation over your death.

The soul becomes a new being the moment The Lord lays His Hand upon her. However, you can only know this experientially because, on earth, you cannot know Heavenly Things without The Holy Spirit Whom The Lord gives.

Such natural knowledge manifests as three species of natural philosophy: sensual realism, epistemological criticism and monism. Each approach bounds knowledge's power, reality, force, worth, criteria and extension within perception; necessarily circumscribing them with the organs of understanding's sensual limits. They consider venturing beyond natural limits into the supernatural realm as not only irrational but also impossible, so they forbid their adherents from aspiring unnaturally: you dare not pass your senses, which directly and indirectly limit you. Fleshy desires lead knowledge at its lowest level, concerning it with wealth, vainglory, habiliment, comfort and searching for rational wisdom. Such mere knowledge invents the arts, sciences and everything else that perceivably adorns the body. However, it remains contrary to faith. Such knowledge thinks no Divine Thoughts, and its fleshly character erodes the mind with irrational weakness; for, the body overcomes the mind with it and its entire concern for worldly things. Pride fills it, puffing it up so that it refers to every good work to itself but not God.

Human knowledge vitally concerns itself with truth. Knowledge irresistibly pulls towards The Infinite Mystery, for only The Eternal and Absolute Truth substantiating Itself as knowledge satisfies this instinctive hunger. Knowledge must perceive itself as perceiving God so that it knows God in knowing itself. Only Christ, The God-Man—The Only Incarnation and Embodiment Of Eternal Truth in the realm of human realities—can give This to you. The Knowledge Of Eternal Truth constantly fills him who receives The God-Man into himself as The Soul Of His Soul and The Life Of His Life.

However, the fault lies not with natural knowledge, so you should not categorically reject it. Instead, faith supersedes it. Only knowledge that resists faith in any capacity deserves condemnation. However, natural knowledge unnaturally rises from the world into Its Creator's Supernatural Realm when it acquires dispassionate wings and joins with faith, harmonically unifying with her and clothing itself with her burning thoughts. Faith fulfills natural knowledge, endowing it with the power to rise to The Heights to perceive Him, Beyond All Perception, and see The Brightness that created minds and intellects can never comprehend. Man reaches the heights of faith from the level of knowledge, so he no longer needs the latter after summiting the former.

Faith immediately and clearly reveals the truth of perfection. Neither inquiry nor knowledge's power but faith teaches you The Ungraspable. Subsequently, faith assumes knowledge and absorbs it into itself, returning to the beginning and rebirthing it as spirit. Then, flying to insurmountable heights and plumbing the unfathomable depths, knowledge can ponder The Divine Principles wondrously governing corporeal and incorporeal natures. The work of the spirit in the immortal and incorruptible things belonging to that other realm awakens the inner senses, for only a supply simple mind can penetrate and grasp The Spiritual Mysteries. Such knowledge has already received spiritual resurrection—albeit, hidden in this world—so that it genuinely witnesses the renewal of all things.

The Holy Power Abiding Within The Man Of Christ, The Holy Spirit preserves his soul and defends his body from evil. Those with enlightened and sanctified minds perceive This Invisible Power with their faithful eyes, and the saints intuitively know It experientially. The saints who attain such a life above nature faithfully abide in its delights. According to the mind's testimony, The Light Of Grace that sustains the heart's confident hope, free of any presumption, begets such faith in the soul. Perfect spiritual knowledge requires receiving The Spirit like The Apostles did. The spiritual eyes of such faith perceive The Mysteries hidden in the soul: hidden riches that The Holy Spirit conceals from the sons of the flesh but reveals to The Disciples Of Christ Who Receive Him. Dependent on humility, actual spiritual knowledge perfects the souls of its acquirors (e.g., Moses, David, Isaiah, Peter, Paul, etc.). Those reckoned worthy of perfect knowledge within natural human limits constantly immerse themselves in pondering things strange to this world, in Divine Revelations and lofty contemplations of spiritual things and Ineffable Mysteries. However, their humble eyes see nothing more of their souls than dust and ashes. After you pass through the gate of faith, God will initiate you into The Spiritual Mysteries and open the sea of faith to your understanding. Thus, faith engenders The Fear Of God from which follow repentance and practicing all the virtues, which itself begets spiritual knowledge.

We, Christians, are indescribably blessed, for our joy consists of knowing The Lord and unceasingly reaching out to Him. Axiologically, nothing surpasses knowing Him, and nothing falls short of not knowing Him. Nevertheless, blessed is he who believes in God despite not knowing Him.

Our Merciful Lord doesn't want the enemy to trouble our souls, so He teaches us to discern between what to do and not to do. Therefore, when perplexed, you should seek The Lord's Counsel accordingly:

Oh, Merciful Lord ~ i am a sinful man who lacks right understanding, so show me what to do.

St. Silouan kept his mind in hell and burned in the somber fire. These thoughts greatly profited him, cleansing his mind and offering repose to his soul. Thus, tearfully yearning for The Lord, he said: "I shall die soon and abide in hell's dark prison where I shall burn alone. There, longing for My Lord, I will lament: 'Where is My Lord Whom My Soul Knows?'"

If you know much, thank The Lord for the knowledge He gave you. However, your salvation doesn't necessarily depend on knowledge alone. Your soul needs The Fruits Of The Holy Spirit—even, simply one tiny seed that bears an abundant yield in good time.

some more words from The Ecclesiast

Remember Your Creator in the days of youth, for unpleasurable years will arrive during the days of evil. Then, the sun, moon, stars and light will darken, and the clouds shall return after the rain. Then, mourners will encircle the marketplace, for dust returns to the land that it was when you return to Your Eternal House. Then, the wind returns to God, Who gave it.

Fr. Seraphim posits one good reason for earnestly studying religion: coming into contact with a deeper reality than the everyday reality that so quickly changes, corrodes and offers no lasting happiness to the human soul. Each sincere religion tries to open up this reality to spiritual seekers. However, the dangers of searching for reality manifest as many young people burn themselves out trying to find reality. Some die young, while the survivors drag out their dreary existence at a fraction of their mind and soul's potential.

Avoiding the traps and deceptions confronting religious seekers necessitates searching for Truth instead of spiritual experiences, which can deceive. Every serious religious student faces the question of life and death. Contrasted with the Western confessions, our Orthodox Christian Faith bears mystical the title because it facilitates contact with a spiritual reality, producing supernatural experiences that transcend earthly logic.

Once an idealistic young American searching for the truth, Fr. Seraphim zealously studied East Asian wisdom after rejecting the Protestantism of his formative years. He, even, learned Ancient Chinese to translate its religious texts. However, he later realized that the soul naturally seeks a personal God, leading back to The All-Compelling Truth Of Christ Almost In Spite Of Himself.

Nevertheless, his conversion may not have taken place had he not discovered The Orthodox Church, which was all but unknown in The West at the time. Moreover, he understood that Christ and His Apostles founded The Orthodox Church, so It alone retains the pure continuity of ancient Christian teaching. Yet, he embraced The Orthodox Faith not only because of its authentic historical testimony but also because only Orthodox Christianity satisfied his thirst for truth.

Through Divine Grace, Orthodoxy brought him into living communion with God and gave him a profound spiritual discipline with which he could grow into God's Likeness. Simultaneously, It provided him with the theological and metaphysical principles that his penetrating mind could use to perceive the universe as a coherent whole along with man's noble place within that whole.

Fr. Seraphim wholly devoted himself to searching for The Truth; and, after finding it, he equally dedicated himself to serving It. With another like-minded Orthodox Christian in San Francisco, he began a missionary brotherhood, a bookstore and a periodical—The Orthodox Word. Some years later, his brotherhood desired to retreat from the tumultuous world and seek God in quiet seclusion. Therefore, they moved to the mountains of northern California and continued their missionary activity through the printed word.

Fr. Seraphim spent the remainder of his short life—precisely 13 years—as a monk in this wilderness. He immersed himself in The Church's Prayer Life and The Holy Fathers' timeless writings, fundamentally transforming his inner man. He diligently studied Patristic wisdom to practically use it for spiritual growth until he could think, feel and believe like The Fathers, until he became one of Them. Fr. Seraphim is a modern Holy Father, one of the rare transmitters of Christianity's Unchanging Wisdom to the contemporary world.

Pleasing and carrying great power, spiritual knowledge requires a healthy soul and a healthy organ of knowledge. Patiently practicing the evangelical virtues yields a healthy soul, which produces knowledge. Only the perfect, healthy soul receives knowledge.

After the grace of ascetic endeavor heals the organs of knowledge, they bring forth pure and healthy knowledge: the sound doctrine of the apostles. Grace fills healthy knowledge as it develops, for man's volitive ascesis and God's Power, full of Grace, synergistically produce it. All of man shares in it with all of God. Practicing the evangelical virtues recollects the soul, gathering in the mind and thoughts.

Truths for the virtues are truths for knowledge. Each knowledge begets the another, as each virtue begets other virtues and knowledge. One virtue produces another and sustains it, and knowledge operates similarly.

Knowing The Unique Veracity Of Christ's Truth involves living It—indeed, an empirically and experimentally pragmatic path. Only those following the ascetic way, not the curious, can know The Truth. The Tree Of The Virtues (i.e., The Tree Of Life), through asceticism, yields knowledge as its fruit. Orthodox philosophy, for the faithful Christian, consists of the theanthropic ascesis of the intellect and the whole person, as Our Savior's arresting words attest.

As he intensely suffered from his final illness in the hospital, The Heavenly Realm for which he had long prepared himself became more near and tangible. He received unseen consolation from God, Who fulfilled his tormenting and all-consuming desire for Transcendent Truth. Tears streamed from his eyes as he, unable to speak, only gazed up into Heaven. Supposedly, he received a revelation from St. John Maximovitch—his reposed spiritual father—during his hour of trial. Nevertheless, his dying body prevented him from conveying the contents of this message to his brothers.

On September 2, 1982, death finally freed his soul from his suffering body. His face became radiant and peaceful, and his mouth naturally formed into a gentle smile. Those who saw him in his coffin witnessed the quiet joy awaiting those whose hearts received God's Revelation. His death planted a seed that continues bearing fruit in the lives of those seeking God. The world has come to know him as a bridge between uprooted modern man and The Fulness Of Truth because of his many books and biography. Fr. Seraphim's vital transmission of ancient Christian wisdom inspired more loving hearts to burn for The Truth that they may find in The Living Person Of Jesus Christ.

The problem of the nature of knowledge becomes an ontological and ethical problem, which evolves into the problem of human personality. The nature and character of knowledge ontologically, morally and epistemologically depends on the constitution of the human person and the state of his organs of knowledge.

Philosophical idealism depends on transcendental realities and criteria but cannot prove their existence. Despite its transcendental foundation, it cannot know The Truth so necessary to human nature or, even, partially quench the thirst for Eternal Truth and Enduring Realities.

We receive Objective Truth in The Person Of Christ, The God-Man. The Fathers—those experienced, holy and evangelical philosophers—fully developed how The Objective Truth becomes subjective (i.e., the pragmatic aspect of Orthodox Christian epistemology).

Leveraging his rare experiential understanding of the progressive path for apprehending Eternal Truth, St. Isaac The Syrian traces the process of healing and purifying man's organs of knowledge. Based on the experience of grace, St. Isaac's philosophy perfectly expresses the principles and methodology of the Orthodox theory of knowledge.

Despite modern man's spiritual denseness, the basic process of his conversion remains the same as it had been. The spiritual life spreads out in two directions. One will lead you higher than this corrupt everyday life. The other will lead you lower, literally causing spiritual and physical death. However, before the conversion takes place, man must feel the absence of This Truth and experience the suffering that follows, deeply desiring It. Thus, conversion precisely begins when God-Revealed Truth touches the heart and ignites it.

The heart's ignition paves the way for memory to greet Grace, building the soul's capacity to receive Divine Understanding. The waters of baptismal Grace flow into the depths of human memory, washing away false distortions and awakening accurate recollection of our Divine Origin. In the heart, man can receive The Divine Gift; therefore, authentic spiritual knowledge lays its foundation here.

Knowing God is not the same as believing He exists, for many philosophers and scholars have rationally affirmed His Existence without coming to know Him. Even, monks study The Lord's Commands day and night, but not all of them know Him despite believing in Him. You can study as much as you can, but you will not know The Lord unless you live according to His Commandments because only The Holy Spirit, not learning, engenders Knowledge Of God. Enigmatically, some souls know The Lord; some do not know but believe in Him; still, others neither know nor believe in Him. Many educated men fall into the third and final category, for unbelief necessitates pride. Proud men prefer studiously applying their minds to acquire knowledge. However, the Lord only reveals Himself to humble hearts, so proud men cannot learn to know Him. The Holy Spirit unfolds The Lord's Works, beyond our mind's understanding, to low and humble hearts. Thus, we can partially know earthly things through merely applying our minds, but only The Holy Spirit can teach us to know God and all Heavenly Things.

Only through The Holy Spirit can one come to know The Lord's Love. However, the peaceful soul preserving a pure conscience comes to know Him through His Works, that He created Heaven and Earth. Though in small measure, this also represents Grace's Activity. We cannot know God without Grace, for earthly things (e.g., riches, honor, glory, etc.) will continually attract our minds.

As Jesus Christ's Love escapes our comprehension so can we not conceive of The Depth Of His Suffering because so infinitesimally small is our love for Him. However, greater love begets more understanding, even, of The Lord's Sufferings. There is small love, modest love and perfect love, and your perfection in knowledge correlates with your perfection in love.

We can only systematically discuss and examine God insofar as we know The Holy Spirit's Grace. The Saints declare that they've seen God, and They only speak of That Which They Know. Had there actually been no God, the earth would lack a mere, subtle hint of Him. But, desiring to pursue their wants, people declare that He is not. Yet, their doing so establishes that He is. Even, the heathens sensed God's Existence, but they didn't know how to properly worship The True God. However, The Holy Spirit instructed The Prophets, The Apostles, The Holy Fathers and Our Bishops. Thus, we received The True Faith. We knew The Lord through The Holy Spirit, confirming our souls in Him thereafter.

If you endure the pain of exploring your feeble human heart, you shall see The Kingdom Of Heaven abiding in the saint's soul but darkness and torment in the sinner's soul. Your salvation crucially depends on this recognition, for you shall eternally dwell in The Kingdom or torment.

Glory be to The Lord and His Deep Compassion, for He endows sinful men with The Holy Spirit's Grace. Poor monks and shepherds know Him through The Holy Spirit, yet rich and powerful men may ignore Him. Therefore, knowing The Lord necessitates obedience, sobriety, a humble spirit and a love for fellow men instead of wealth and learning. The Lord loves such souls and will manifest Himself to them of His Own Accord to teach them love and humility.

Humble yourself under God's Mighty Hand, and The Grace Of The Holy Spirit, Whom We Know In The Church, will teach you to desire suffering for the sake of The Lord's Love. Hate sin and evil thoughts if you want to know The Lord's Love for us, and fervently pray every day and night. Then, The Lord will give you His Grace, and you will know Him through The Holy Spirit. After death, you will enter into Paradise where, like on earth, you will know Him through The Holy Spirit.

The soul that doesn't know The Holy Spirit cannot understand the possibility—let alone the necessity—of loving her enemies, so she will reject This Commandment. Yet, The Lord pities all, so he who desires genuine communion with The Lord must love his enemies. The man who, through The Holy Spirit, knows The Lord becomes like Him. Beholding His Glory, we shall be like Him and see Him as He Is. He who cries out against evil men without praying for them will never know God's Grace.

In Heaven and on Earth, you can only know The Lord through The Holy Spirit not through ordinary learning. Even, children lacking any formal learning come to know The Lord through The Holy Spirit. While in his mother's womb, St. John The Baptist felt His Presence. St. Simeon The Stylite was 7 years old when The Lord appeared to him, and St. Seraphim was 27 years old when The Lord appeared to him during Divine Liturgy. Age had stricken Simeon when He knew The Lord after receiving Him in his arms in The Temple. Thus, The Lord bends His Ways to bring more comfort to each of our souls.

Oh, Lord ~ grant me a lowly spirit, that i may unceasingly thank You for giving The Holy Spirit to the earth and for giving Him to my memory. He, Himself, helps me keep Him in my thoughts. Oh, Holy Spirit, Sovereign King ~ what shall i, steeped in iniquity, render unto You? You revealed to me Incomprehensible Mysteries. You gave me Knowledge Of The Lord, My Creator. You taught me to know His Immeasurable Love for us.

Oh, wonder of wonders! The Lord despised not me—wretched sinner that i am!—but taught me to know Him through His Holy Spirit. Oh, how frail and infirm am i! Once, i knew God's Love in Its Perfect Fulness, yet i cannot possess It for myself. My soul weeps every day, for i haven't received that for which my soul seeks! The Lord's Dear Love For Us surpasses all description, and only through The Holy Spirit can the soul become inexpressibly aware of His Love. The Lord is Mercy, Meek and Gentle, yet our words fail to speak of His Goodness. However, without words, the soul senses This Love and would remain wrapped in Its Soft Tranquility forever. He gave us The Holy Spirit, so He truly did not forsake His Promise that: I will not leave you desolate. (John 14:18, RSV) The Holy Spirit invisibly teaches the soul to acquire peace. He gladdens the soul, bringing her joy on earth. The Holy Spirit teaches us to know God's Love, which shall be fulfilled in Heaven.

The Merciful Lord gave The Holy Spirit to establish The Holy Church on the earth. The Holy Spirit revealed to us not only earthly things but also Heavenly Things. We came to know The Consuming Love Of The Lord through The Holy Spirit. Filled with Love and their spirits desiring that all men might know The Lord, The Holy Apostles went throughout the whole world. The Prophets, The Lord's Beloved, rejoiced in The Holy Spirit, so they spoke The Lord's Mighty and Pleasant Words for every soul to hear.

When The Holy Spirit descended on The Apostles in tongues of fire, they experientially knew The Lord's command to love God and love man. The Apostle wrote:

My little children with whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you!
~ Galatians 4:19, RSV

The soul who knows The Lord instinctively senses Her Creator's Presence and joyfully dwells in His Great Peace as if a son, who returns home after many years afar, can speak with his dear ones to his heart's content.

After Christ drew near them, The Apostles recognized their burning hearts. Thus, the soul recognizes and loves Her Lord, for The Delight Of His Love fervently burns. The hearts of all share the same Love in Heaven. However, on earth, some immensely love Him; others, barely; and, yet, others, not at all. The soul, wholly filled with Love For God, is oblivious to Heaven and earth. Invisibly beholding The Desired One, his spirit burns. God's Grace strengthens the soul to shed many sweet tears, and she cannot forget Her Lord for a single moment.

That all nations know The Lord would incomparably delight me! Oh, Lord ~ with Your Holy Spirit, grant them to know You. As The Apostles knew You through The Holy Spirit Whom You Gave Them, grant all people to know You through Your Holy Spirit. Oh, people of the earth whom God fashioned ~ know Your Creator and His Love For Us! Know Christ's Love and live peacefully, that The Lord who mercifully waits for men to come to Him may rejoice. Turn to God, and lift your prayers to Him. Like a soft cloud that the sun lovingly illuminates, the whole earth's prayers shall rise to Heaven. All of The Heavens will rejoice and sing praises to The Lord for His Sufferings through which He delivered us. We are created for God's Glory in The Heavens. Do not cleave to the earth, for God is Our Father who loves us like dear children.

Out of God's Grace, i write. Yes, this is true. The Lord Himself bears witness to me.~ St. Silouan | St. Silouan the Athonite, "On the Knowledge of God" (p. 353)

The Father loves us so much that He gave us His Only-Begotten Son. Moreover, The Son's Will accorded with His Father, so He incarnated. He lived among us on Earth; and, The Holy Apostles, along with many others, witnessed Him in the flesh. Humbly, according to St. Silouan's assertion, i affirm that The Holy Spirit taught me to know that Jesus Christ is God.

The Lord loves us like we're His Children, and He never forgets us. His Love, even, exceeds that of a mother, for she may forget her child at times. We only know how The Lord truly loves us because He gave The Holy Spirit to His Orthodox People and our great shepherds.

Knowledge moves, changes, rises and falls according to three modalities: body, soul and spirit. Although naturally unified, knowledge changes how it acts in relation to each of these modalities. God gifts knowledge to the nature of rational beings at their creation, their beginning. Body, soul and spirit functionally distinguish naturally simple and undivided knowledge into three degrees that characterize all of man's life. The soul's knowledge consists of at least one of these degrees: from the moment man begins discerning between good and evil to the moment he leaves this world. Natural knowledge concerns itself with the visible and sensible. Spiritual knowledge concerns itself with the incorporeal, for it perceives through the spirit not the senses. Divine power grants supernatural knowledge, unknowable and higher than knowledge. Unlike the first two species of knowledge that result from external matter, supernatural knowledge unexpectedly arrives as a self-contained immaterial gift.

Continually studying and desiring to learn produces the first knowledge. Properly living and firmly holding faith, the second. Faith—and faith alone—makes the third, for knowledge vanishes, activity ceases and the senses become superfluous in it. God gives us the faith only through which we can confirm the existence of The Mysteries Of The Spirit: supernatural knowledge that neither rational intellectual powers nor physical body senses can apprehend.

Man progresses from knowledge's first to its second degree once he, in body and soul, practices the virtues (e.g., fasting, prayer, almsgiving, reading The Holy Scriptures, struggling with the passions, etc.). Applying this particular knowledge, The Holy Spirit disposes your soul towards goodness and begins performing every good work. To the heart, It shows the paths leading to faith—even though, this natural knowledge remains bodily and composite. Knowledge's first degree cools the soul's ardor (i.e., passionate enthusiasm and fervor) to endeavor on God's Path. The second rekindle the soul, preparing it for the swift path leading to faith. The third rests the soul from toil when the mind feasts on The Mysteries Of The Coming Life.

Perfection demarcates knowledge's third degree. After transcending care for worldly things, knowledge starts examining its hidden thoughts. Internally scorning the passion's evil source, it exclusively concerns itself with The Coming Life. Thus, it rises to follow the way of faith and seek The Hidden Mysteries.

However, the third naturally cannot fully rise to deathlessness, overcome flesh's weight and perfect its spiritual knowledge; for, the man in body, although progressing through knowledge's degrees, cannot live in the world of death yet altogether leave behind its fleshy nature. Grace helps him; however, he lacks perfect freedom in this imperfect world, for the demons hinder him. Every work of knowledge requires actively habituated practice, but the works of faith consist of spiritual thoughts and pure souls—both of which transcend mere sensual acts. As knowledge is subtler than the senses, faith is subtler than knowledge.

Our Lord loves man and reveals Himself to us as it pleases Him. The soul humbly rejoices in Her Master's Compassion when she beholds Her Lord. Thereafter, though she may perceive all things and love all men, her love for Her Lord burns brighter than any other love. Despite her inability to verbally express such, the soul knows this love in its fulness. Only those on whom The Lord bestows The Holy Spirit can know this joy, this gladness. Through The Holy Spirit, the soul suddenly perceives The Lord and knows that it is Him. Thus, Heaven and Earth know The Lord via The Holy Spirit, who permeates the entire man in soul, mind and body.

The Prophets tasted Him and spoke to God's People who heard them. The Apostles saw The Spirit descending in tongues of fire; and, within us, His Presence feels sweeter than all earthly things. The Holy Ghost filled The Holy Apostles, who fearlessly preached salvation to mankind, for The Spirit Of God strengthened them.

Threatened with death on The Cross if he didn't stop preaching, St. Andrew replied: "Had I feared The Cross, I shouldn't preach The Cross!" Thus, all of The Apostles, The Martyrs and The Holy Fathers who struggled against evil—all joyfully advanced to meet pain and suffering. The Gracious Holy Spirit draws the soul to love Her Lord, and The Holy Spirit's Sweetness effaces her fear of suffering. In fact, many Holy Martyrs came to know The Lord and realized the unfathomable depths of His Help during their most arduous sufferings.

With much striving, many monks valiantly endure for The Lord's Sake. Likewise, they come to know The Lord, struggle against their passions and pray for the entire universe. God's Grace teaches them to love their enemies because he who doesn't love his enemies cannot know The Lord Whose Life Exemplified His Command when He died on The Cross for every man—even, His Enemies! The Lord is Love, and He commands us to love each other and our enemies. The Holy Spirit teaches us This Love.

Every human thought has force, so every human word carries energy. Then, what of The Divine Word? In The Holy Gospels, we encounter Christ's Words—so tender, gentle, fragrant and sweet. Yet, we cannot, even, begin to conceive Their Infinite Energy, for They summoned the incalculable diversity of all existing things out of the darkness of non-being into to the light of being.

Christ humbly speaks in easily acceptable terms of human language that we, His Creatures, can express in writing. The Essence Of His Words bears The Energy Of The All-Powerful God, He Who Created All Things. Moreover, we must approach His Words, a consuming fire that has been thoroughly tried, with fear and trembling, as The Scriptures warn.

Addressed to freemen, His Words are gentle and non-violent. However, They simultaneously carry The Absolute Authority Of The Undivided Master Of All That Exists, so They know no boundaries. Though Heaven and Earth shall pass away, His Words shall not.

If profound faith contextualizes how you receive Them, Christ's Word will lead you to Eternal Life along The Path where you will encounter many things that those who do not follow Christ may deem strange and unknown. On This Lofty Path, He will reveal to your being everything that you will experientially meet during your existence.

The Light Of His Word probes the depths of the dark abyss, revealing to true nature of myriad false doctrines attracting man. His Word is a fire that tests everything in man and cosmic existence, for His Sight perceives every creature. His Word is Spirit, Eternal Life, Love's Fulness and Heavenly Joy. His Word is Uncreated Divine Light. His Words address not our superficial discursive reason but our deep hearts, so you can become like unto God if you righteously open your heart to worthily receive This Divine Light. Thus, realized in life, Christ's Words make man a god.

The True Christian, in his devout ascesis, faces the whole range of human potential. Every problem of human existence (e.g., life and death, freedom and creativity, the meaning of life and suffering, etc.) confronts with extraordinary insistence. The dogmatic premises supporting these problems pass before the great ascetics in conditions radically dissimilar to how scientific activity operates; for, they manifest in the nexus of faith, revelation and knowledge, law and Grace, Eternity and time, God and His Affinity for man and the world, Creation's Destiny and Divine Judgement. The Spirit Of Christ leads the human spirit to the existential Knowledge Of God, that the very word knowledge refers to neither abstract intellectual assimilation nor rational understanding but communion with Divine Being.

Within yourself, the evolution of truth from something known to something lived signifies the transition from knowing about God to knowing God Himself. Prayer's deepest mystery—Grace transforming memory into living communion—emerges from this understanding of love. The soul's journey through remembrance culminates in prayer's pure fire that dissolves all conceptual knowledge into the immediate experience of Divine Presence. Moreover, the principles guiding the spiritual life now become guides through death itself, as the soul's habituated surrender to Divine Presence becomes its pathway through final transformation. Thus, the contemplative practice culminates in the soul's ultimate contemplation: passing through death into Eternal Light.

With a lively, attractive and unusually adventurous intelligence, St. Silouan maintained a healthy sense of this world's reality. However, his spirit, ever preoccupied with God and man, refrained from inquisitively attaching himself to worldly matters towards the end of his life.

St. Silouan understood that our minds alone cannot know how anything—simple or complex—came into being. Instead, if you beg God to teach us how He created The Sun, the answer will ring in your soul. Most importantly, if you humble yourself, you shall know not only The Sun but also The Creator Of The Sun. Yet, when The Holy Spirit teaches the soul to know The Lord, she joyfully forgets the whole world. She ceases her vain pursuit to acquire earthly knowledge.

St. Silouan differentiated two species of acquiring knowledge of being according to the direction of our attention. The usual way we all know consists of directing our cognitive faculty outward to meet innumerable varieties of phenomena. This form fragments all existing things ad infinitum, so any knowledge acquired thus lacks completeness and genuine unity, which the mind insistently seeks. Therefore, the mind recourses to artificial synthesis: a natural form of abstract thinking. Unfortunately, any unity in this manner lacks objective existence.

The 2nd species, that to which St. Silouan's soul aspired, of acquiring knowledge of being consists of directing the spirit in toward itself and, subsequently, to God through prayer. Turning away from the endless plurality and fragmentation of earthly phenomena, the mind addresses itself to God. Then, dwelling in God, it starts seeing itself and the whole world as it actually is without sacrificing its ontological unity.

Time marches on through centuries and millennia, and The Light Of Knowledge Of God diffusively reveals itself to us—weak and feeble though, we are—in an infinite multiplicity of words and images. If you move further from God, your thinking becomes increasingly fragmented, and your spiritual experiences are vaguer and disturbed. Conversely, as you move closer to God, the range of your thoughts increasingly narrows until you finally concentrate on one single impassible idea. However, no longer an idea, it's an inexpressible vision or spiritual intuition.

To understand St. Silouan, you must recognize the single principle that occupied his whole being. The Savior mystically appeared to St. Silouan without him searching, bearing the fruit of his understanding that God is Infinite Love. Moreover, only through The Holy Spirit did he know that God invariably pours out This Love on enemies also. The Holy Spirit revealed Christ to him and taught him humility, that he could love his enemies and every living creature. At the time of the apparition, he grasped the condition indicating true communion with God along with its immediate consequences: the criterion distinguishing The Authentic Way, the measure of every phenomenon of the spiritual life and the objective of our lifelong quest.

The potential of infinitely rich cosmic being fully opens up to the Christian ascetic entirely embraces human potential. The existence of every reasonable creature oscillates between two poles: loving God to hatred of self and loving self to hatred of God. Regardless of your conscious awareness of this existential principle, your personal life precisely accords with your spiritual self-determination on this plane. Conversely, the second refers to the sinful love of self and hatred of God. Any self-consideration diminishes and potentially quashes your ability to abide in Divine Light. Thus, those who love themselves to the point of hating God are those who love darkness rather than light.

Although the same terms define the two poles, simply modifying their order within their propositions radically transforms their meaning. The first refers to the holy species of total love and hatred, self-hatred springing from the fulness of one's Love For God. At this pole, one altogether forgets himself insofar as he totally concentrates the entire force of his being on God. Therefore, we can define such absolute reluctance to consider oneself as wrath or self-hatred. Those who know the delight of God's Love and the bitterness of losing It angrily turn away from everything that may incur such loss. For man, authentic and genuine freedom manifests as being in God.

After The Holy Spirit repeatedly visited him during long years of desperate spiritual struggle, his (dogmatic consciousness) formed. Then, when he actually rose into the pure spheres of (hallowed impassibility), in the most profound humility, he realized his duty to others: make known what had been given to him from On High.

St. Silouan's whole life cardinally attests: knowing The Divine Mysteries absolutely necessitates loving one's enemies. He categorically asserts that he who does not love his enemies does not know God, for his willful rejection of The Lord's Command separates him from God. Moreover, he whom the (wiles) of intellectual culture don't, he who sheds his heart's blood to pray for his enemies along with the whole world—his witness acquires exceptional force and significance. Contemporary civilization fails to corrupt him, making his testimony irresistibly convincing. Consequently, no human science can augment either the depth or the quality of The Truth to which his life bears witness.

Repentance represents the door of True Knowledge. The Greek word for repentance is metanoia—literally, a change of mind (nous). Such an action only manifests when a being genuinely moves from false knowledge to True Knowledge. Moreover, the journey to True Knowledge must pass through humility, which necessitates healthy shame. In fact, St. Sophrony describes shame as The Way Of The Lord. Whereas guilt pertains to what i have done, shame follows who i am. Thus, shame sits at the very heart of repentance.

Shame supplants guilt when conceptualizations of what i have done spills over into those of who i am. The mere awareness of shame can devastate a man. Shame's painful nature causes us to flee from it, but we must directly confront it to reap the fruits of true repentance. According to St. John of The Ladder, you can only escape shame through shame. Moreover, demons habitually persuade us to either avoid confession altogether or, if we do confess, blame others for our sins like we're confessing another's sins. Instead, without shame, lay bare your wound to The Physician, saying:

Father ~ it is my wound and my plague. Nothing other than my negligence caused it. Nothing but my carelessness—no man, body or spirit—bears the blame for it.

To avoid shame's pain, the mind and heart may subtly confess another person's sins. Subconscious thoughts and desires reflecting the complexities of human experience emerge during trials. Often, illusory pursuits distract humans from living meaningfully. Yet, avoiding shame wholly prevents metanoia. Successfully struggling to confess involves journeying to the heart where, upon confronting sin's truth, we strangely find shame. When you confront your truth—your ontological who i am—in The Light Of Christ, it appears broken, dark and paradoxically empty.

After confronting that place, we may intuitively feel our deep nothingness. This nothingness may impel us to instinctively retreat to the fearful place of loathing, which correlates with pride. Demanding to be something, we confront nothing. However, at the precipice of the ontological abyss, we simultaneously stand in Christ's Presence when we perceive our inherent nothingness. He entered into man's nothingness, into death and hades, to meet us there, where we receive the precious gift of our true self formed in The Image Of Christ Himself. Thus, experiencing the shameful kenosis (i.e., the complete emptying of self) necessarily precedes your Life In Christ.

St. Paul prayerfully asks to be found in Christ. The false self forensically imagines the righteousness of the law. My accomplishments amount to nothing more than legal "noises." They constitute neither my true self nor Eternal Life, and they do not help me know The True and Living God.

Properly reflecting on your actions produces the ability honestly stand before who you are and what you are not, which subsequently enables you to stand face-to-face before Christ Himself. Our God is Good, and He loves mankind. He does not desire to crush us with our shame into nothingness. Instead, He meets us there, and His Compassionate Company comforts us with the truth of ourselves.

Furthermore, try to integrate this penitential ideal into your prayers. Specifically, when you pray, practice pressing your shame to That Unbearable Place in which you stand before Him without hiding.

Regarding the discipline of confession: Fr. Serafim Aldea advises always presenting deeds to your confessor father, which you believe might make him think less of you. Thus, you can mildly practice being a "holy fool." Fear not, for good confessor fathers expect to hear such things. In fact, he participates in a much worse sin if even judges you for the sins you confess. Moreover, good confessor fathers rejoice when they accompany their genuinely repentant children into God's Bright Presence, which transforms shame into True Being.

In his vision of The New Heaven and Earth, The Beloved Apostle says: [They] shall see His Face, and His Name shall be on their foreheads. (Revelation 22:4, RSV) God revealed His Name—ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν—to Moses after he removed his shoes (i.e., his false self). At the world's end, God will inscribe His Name on us: The Icons Of Christ.

The whole man fears God and guards His Commands. In Judgment, God will remember every action and each overlooked thing—whether good or wicked. The whole man fears God and guards His Commands. However, such demarcates not an end but a threshold after which the soul's earthly pilgrimage transforms into its eternal journey. The same Divine Guidance that enlightened the prayerful path now illuminates the way through death's shadow. The habits that shaped the soul's spiritual life (e.g., surrender, humility, love, etc.) become its companions through its final passage, revealing death's office as the ultimate school of prayer.

Thankful that I'm blessed with pain /
At least, I get to feel somethin' /
99.5% of the time, [bleep], I won't feel nothin'.
~ EST Gee, I Can't Feel A Thing

The news of Ammachi's passing absolutely shattered me. Though i'm ashamed to admit it, i've historically reacted to such experiences with shattering things—an unhealthy, unhelpful and literally destructive response!

On March 26, 2024, on that frigid Tuesday morning of Holy Week, my mother called me in the midst of my prayer during which i—from my knees—begged God to God relieve Ammachi from her suffering. During the last time we visited Ammachi (the day i got my chain back), Shirley Kochamma told me that she spent most of her days whimpering in pain 🥺 After concluding my petition, i opened my door and walked into the living room before calling my mother back. She told me that Ammachi passed away during the night. I told Mama that i would drive home that afternoon and that i would immediately drive to the office to make arrangements for my absence.

Inexplicably, God answered my prayer before i even asked. Yet, after ending the call, i immediately threw my phone as hard as i could without aiming. By God's Grace, i only hit the armrest of my couch. However, the phone's screen cracked in many places, and the device's internal electronics suffered from irreparable damage.

Worse yet, i threw the phone with such force that i broke the prayer bracelet on my right wrist that Roshen—one of my best friends in the whole wide world—gifted me only 10 days earlier. A few weeks ago, i privately confided to him how the loss of a prayer bracelet i used to own left me deeply stricken, so he got me this bracelet out of his goodness and love for me. Oh, how distress afflicted me when i realized that, for a moment of anger, i squandered a reflection of Eternal Love!

clearly, i lacked a good understanding according to my faith, so i asked: what does The Orthodox Church teach us about the nature of death and its purpose?

Oh, my soul ~ trust neither bodily health nor fleeting beauty, for you see how death afflicts all—even, the strong, the fair and the young. Rather, let your whole heart and full mind cry out with one voice:

Lord, Jesus Christ—The Only-Begotten Son Of The One, True Living God ~ have mercy on me—a fool, a wretch and a sinner—and save me!

Modern exegesis tends to use an overly rationalistic lens to interpret the events described in The Holy Scriptures and The Lives Of Saints, emphasizing a literal meaning grounded in a realistic or "this-worldly" understanding. Such tend to obscure the Orthodox teaching about the soul's fate after death—especially, the soul's consciousness outside of the body and its mental acuity.

We look for the resurrection of the dead and the new life in the world to come.
~ Nicene Creed

More than just the matter and dust comprising the body, man consists of both body and soul. However, unlike the body, the soul does not die. It sees and knows everything. Therefore, we would have been inconsolable had The Lord not given us Eternal Life, and our sorrow for dying loved ones would know no limits. If they ended with death, our lives would be pointless. God created man for immortality, and Christ's Resurrection opened the gates of The Heavenly Kingdom and Eternal Blessedness for the righteous ones who believe in Him.

In a letter to a dying woman, St. Theophan the Recluse writes:

You will not die. Your body will die, but you—being alive, remembering yourself and recognizing the whole world that surrounds you—will go over into a different world.

That life does not or does exist after death manifests as a belief, and affirming either belief necessitates faith. Yet, to assert with empirical certainty, one must go there. Insofar as we haven't gone, some rejoicingly do good deeds because of their faith. Others, like demons, believe and tremble. Even, every unbeliever trembles when death confronts them.

Nevertheless, despite the increasingly endless varieties of therapies for prolonging earthly life, you will still not escape death. Indeed, only through faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ—The Way!—can you escape death. Upon remembering that death will dissolve our bodies, most people wail and bitterly lament. However, He ordained death and commanded that we meet such an end, for it shares the same source in God's Goodness as everything else.

Journeying through contemplative darkness prepares the soul for death's final darkness, where spiritual vision wholly subsumes physical sight. Death fulfills this transformed perception that prayer practices. After the veil between worlds completely parts, the soul sees with undimmed spiritual eyes what it previously glimpsed through faith's shadow.

Heaven exists in space, and It is up from any spatial point on Earth. Conversely, hell is certainly down in the bowels of the world. However, until their spiritual eyes open, men can see neither these places nor their inhabitants. Moreover, you cannot designate precise coordinates to these places on our plane of space-time. Instead, they exist in a different kind of space that, although it begins right here, extends in a different direction. Nevertheless, everyday experience testifies to—or, at the very least, hints at—this other kind of reality.

Three aspects mainly characterize the authentic Christian experience of Heaven. First, the soul ascends to It. Second, angels conduct the soul on its journey there. Third, Heavenly Inhabitants greet the soul there, and she joins Their Company.

St. Salvius Of Albi—a 6th-century hierarch of Gaul—returned to life after being dead for most of the day and gave the following account to his friend, St. Gregory Of Tours:

After you saw me lying dead when my cell shook four days ago, two angels raised me and carried me up to Heaven's Highest Peak until I seemingly had the earth, clouds, sun, moon and stars beneath my feet. Then, they conducted me through a gate that shined more brightly the sun's light, and I entered a building. The whole floor shined with gold and silver, and I cannot possibly describe this light. Many people—neither male nor female—filled the place, and they stretched so far in all directions that I couldn't see where they ended. The angels made way for me through the crowd of people in front of me, and we reached the place towards which we directed our gaze when we were further away.

A cloud more brilliant than any light hung over this place, but I could see a sun, moon or star. A cloud more brilliant than any light hung over this place, but I could not see a sun, moon or star. From the cloud came a voice like that of many waters. Many beings greeted me—sinner that I am!—with great respect. Priestly vestments adorned some of them, and others wore ordinary clothes. My angels told me that consisted of martyrs and other holy men we honor on earth with devotional prayers. As I stood there, such a sweetly nourishing fragrance wafted over me that I felt no need for food or drink until this very moment.

Then, I heard a Voice say: Let this man go back into the world, for our churches need him. Despite hearing The Voice, I couldn't see Who spoke. Then, I prostrated on the ground and wept, saying:

Alas, alas ~ Oh, Lord! Why have You shown me These Things only to take Them from me again?

The Voice that spoke to me said: Go in peace. I will watch over you until I bring you back to This Place once more. Then, my guides left me. Weepingly, I exited via the gate through which I had entered.

Such visions of Heavenly Reality—albeit rare—illuminate the path all souls must travel. Although some receive extraordinary glimpses of the spiritual realm before death, every soul must navigate the transition between worlds. Orthodox tradition preserves this journey's pattern, revealing the awaiting challenges and corresponding consolations.

Our earthly life prepares us for the future life, and death concludes this preparation. Then, man leaves behind all of his worldly cares, and the body disintegrates to rise anew at The General Resurrection. However, without cessation, his soul continues living. The soul's spiritual vision begins when it leaves the body and its physical vision ceases. According to St. Dorotheus of Gaza, departed souls remember everything that happened here—thoughts, words, desires—without forgetting anything. Yet, The Psalmist asserts that all worldly thoughts shall perish immediately when the soul passes out of the body. Therefore, you will remember how you acted according to virtue and vice. In fact, the soul becomes more alive and aware after death than before it because the body no longer burdens the soul's activity. Once freed from the body's earthliness, the soul remembers all of its deeds more clearly and distinctly than before.

The parable of the rich man and Lazarus proves that, after separating from the body, souls remain neither idle nor without consciousness...Moreover, they maintain their dispositions (i.e., hopes, fears, joys and griefs) along with some expectation for The Universal Judgment, which they've already begun to foretaste...Yet more alive, they cling to glorifying God with increasing zeal. The soul (i.e., man's most precious part) naturally contains not only the whole reasoning faculty but also The Image and Likeness Of God. Its presence alone invigorates dumb and unconscious matter, making the body sensitive. Consequently, after putting this present life's fleshly coarseness, it remains conscious. Therefore, physical death restores the purer and more refined condition of the spirit's mental powers.
~ St. John Cassian, First Conference (Ch. 14)

We only have certainty that beings from the other world came when Grace affords saints and angels to visit the righteous. Nevertheless, when dying people begin to see departed relatives and friends during ordinary circumstances, such represents a natural introduction to the unseen world that they will soon enter. Often, the dying experience this spiritual vision before the moment of death. During this vision, they may simultaneously converse with their loved ones. However, those surrounding them don't see what they see. Ostensibly, only God alone knows the true nature of the visions that manifest to the dying, so you have no good reason to pry into it.

Apparently, God grants this experience to share at least two insights with the dying person. First, it informs the individual that the other world is familiar, not totally strange. Second, it evidences that mutual love shared between close ones characterizes the other world. (c.f. dream grass) For example, further in his letter to the dying woman, St. Theophan The Recluse touchingly expresses:

There, your father, mother, brothers and sisters will meet you. Bow down to them; give them our greetings; and, ask them to pray for us. Your children will surround you with their joyous greetings. There will be better for you than here.

For two days after passing from the body, the soul enjoys relative freedom. It finds itself among other spirits—some good and some evil. Typically, it inclines towards those who are spiritually similar to it. It will depend on the same spirits—however unpleasant they may be—that influenced it while it was in the body. It can visit earthly places that it fondly remembers, but it moves into other spheres on the third day. Accordingly, in a letter to the aforementioned dying woman's brother, St. Theophan the Recluse writes:

Your sister will not die: the body dies, but the dying one's personality remains. It only passes over to another order of life...They do not put her in the grave. Just alive as she is now, she will be in another place. She will be around you during the first hours and days, but she won't say anything. You can't see her, but she will be right there. Be mindful: the loved ones left behind weep for the departed, but her condition is immediately an easier and happier one...She is better off there, but we agonize like some tragedy struck her! She will surely see this with astonishment.

In its gradual self-emptying, prayer foreshadows death's complete surrender in which the soul must release all earthly attachments. Specifically, prayerfully practicing such relinquishment becomes the soul's final offering and transforms death from a mere ending into ultimate communion. Therefore, prayer and death merge into a single movement of the soul toward God.

According to Fr. Seraphim Rose, The Life Of St. Basil The New (March 26) presents the most detailed account of the toll houses. In it, Blessed Theodora relates her passage through 20 specific toll houses, each testing particular sins, to Gregory, her fellow disciple of the Saint.

You cannot doubt The Judgment in the next life (i.e., The Particular Judgment immediately after death and The Last Judgment at the end of the world). However, God's Outward Sentence will answer to the inward disposition toward God and the spiritual beings that the soul cultivated.

Although seeming familiar to us, the other world will not only manifest as pleasant meetings with loved ones. Instead, the spiritual encounter will primarily test the soul's disposition in this life. Either it inclines toward the angels and saints because it virtuously obeyed God's Commandments, or it inclines toward fallen spirits because of its negligent unbelief. Even, temptations instead of accusations may primarily contextualize the aerial toll-houses.

This period concludes by the 3rd day or sooner. On the 3rd day, the soul passes through legions of evil spirits that obstruct its path. They accuse her of committing various sins with which they had tempted her. Traditionally, the soul traverses through 20 toll houses, and the evil spirits test her for a particular sin at each one. After surmounting one obstacle, it moves on to the next one. Terrifyingly, if the soul fails to pass just one of the toll houses, she will immediately be cast into Gehenna.

In fact, so terrible are these demons and their toll-houses that, for instance, The Theotokos begged Her Son to deliver her soul from them after The Archangel Gabriel informed her of her imminent death. Naturally, The Lord Jesus Christ Himself appeared to receive His Most Pure Mother's Soul and conduct her to Heaven. Indeed, the soul experiences great terror on the 3rd day after departing from the body, so she especially needs our prayers on that day itself.

We, Orthodox Christians, ought to count it as one of our greatest blessings that numerous Patristic writings and Lives Of Saints clearly teach about the aerial toll-houses and The Particular Judgement. However, according to Fr. Seraphim Rose, anyone who reflects on The Holy Scriptures alone will generate the same understanding.

Individual experiences of the "toll-house" model may vary considerably. Nevertheless, minor details (e.g., the exact number of toll houses, etc.) subordinate to the primary fact of the soul's experience after death: soon after death, the soul certainly experiences The Particular Judgment that summarizes its successful—or unsuccessful 😭—"unseen warfare" against the fallen spirit during its time on earth. Therefore, in a letter to the dying woman's brother, St. Theophan The Recluse writes:

After departing from the body, the soul soon begins its arduous passage through the toll houses. Here, she needs your help! Bearing this in mind, you will hear her crying to you! Here, you should direct all your attention and all your love for her. Love's truest testimony manifests as secluding yourself when and where possible from the moment of the soul's departure, leaving concern for the body to others, to immersing yourself in prayer for your beloved's unexpected needs in her new condition. Remain thus, unceasingly crying out to God to help for six weeks and, indeed, longer than that. Notably, for Theodora, her elder's prayers comprised the bag from which the angels took to separate from the tax collectors. Do not forget to do this, for your prayers will serve the same purpose. This is love!

After successfully passing through the toll houses and bowing down before God, the soul spends the next 37 days visiting The Heavenly Habitations and the abysses of hell without knowing where it will remain. Only on the 40th day does it learn of the place that has been appointed for it until the resurrection of the dead. After finally finishing with earthly things, the soul gets truly but partially introduced to the other world where it will spend Eternity.

An angel revealed to St. Macarius of Alexandria why The Church especially commemorates the departed on the 9th day after death apart from generally symbolizing the nine angelic ranks. Up until this day, the soul has toured the beauties of Paradise. Thereafter, it sees the horrific torments of hell until the 40th day, when it learns where it shall wait until the resurrection of the dead and The Last Judgment.

Again, these numbers constitute a general rule. Undoubtedly, all of the departed do not precisely complete their course according to this model of after-death reality. Moreover, the forms that such visions take are not necessarily "photographic" representations of how the soul appears in the other world. Instead, they are images conveying the spiritual truth of how the prayers of those remaining on earth benefit the departed soul.

After 40 days, some souls find themselves foretasting Eternal Joy and Blessedness; others, fearing eternal tortures that the consequences of The Last Judgment will fulfill. However, until The Last Judgment, the soul's condition can change if loved ones commemorate during Divine Liturgy (i.e., offer The Bloodless Sacrifice for them) and remember them during other prayers.

In passing through death, each soul participates in man's larger march towards transfiguration. Individual deaths represent steps in creation's ascent towards its ultimate renewal in which personal transformation enables cosmic transformation. Each soul's path illuminates the way for those following it, underscoring death's Divine Purpose. This whole corruptible world will meet its end one day, and The Everlasting Kingdom Of Heaven will dawn. There, the souls of the redeemed will join their resurrected bodies; and, immortal and incorruptible, they will dwell forever with Christ. Then, The New Creation's full joy for which God made man will replace the partial joy and glory that departed souls know, even, now in Heaven. However, those who did not accept the salvation that Christ came to Earth to offer mankind—their souls along with their resurrected bodies—will experience eternal torment in hell.

In the final chapter of his Exact Exposition Of The Orthodox Faith, St. John Damascene clearly describes the soul's final state after death:

We truly believe in the resurrection of the dead. Resurrection precisely refers to the resurrection of the body, for only that which fell can resurrect. However, the soul is immortal, so it cannot rise again. Moreover, death precisely refers to the soul's separation from the body, so resurrection represents the soul and body's perfect rejoining. Thus, the corrupted and dissolved living being that fell incorruptibly rises up again because He Who Formed Man in the beginning from dust can raise him up again after he returns to the earth from where His Creator decided to take him.

Had the soul alone contested for virtue, then it alone would receive crowns. Had it alone indulged in pleasures, the soul alone would justly receive punishment. However, the soul acquires either virtue or vice with the body, so Justice will recompense them together. Thus, with our souls reunited with our incorrupt bodies, we shall rise again and stand before Christ's Terrible Judgment Seat. He will give the devil, his demons, the antichrist and the impious sinners over to everlasting fire—a fire unlike any material fire we know whose essence only God knows. However, together with the angels, His Good Servants will shine like the sun unto Eternal Life with Our Lord, Jesus Christ. He shall see them forever; and, enjoying The Unending Bliss that He causes, they shall see Him forever. They shall praise Him together with The Father and The Holy Spirit now and always, forever and ever, unto The Endless Ages of ages. amin

In his Dialogues, St. Gregory the Great answers, "What can benefit souls after death?" when he teaches:

The Holy Sacrifice of Christ—Our Saving Victim—greatly benefits souls, even, after death insofar as they can be pardoned in the life to come. Therefore, the departed sometimes beg to have Liturgies offered for them...Naturally, the safest course consists of doing, during your life, what you hope others will do for you after your death, for exiting a free man is better than seeking liberty after finding yourself in chains. Therefore, despise this world with all of your heart like it spent its glory. Offer your sacrifice of tears to God every day as we immolate His Sacred Flesh and Blood. It mystically presents The Only-Begotten Son's Death to us, so This Sacrifice alone has the power to save the soul from eternal death.

You can do precisely nothing more excellent for your beloved departed, nothing better manifests your loving desire to truly help them than praying for them and commemorating them during The Divine Liturgy. Specifically, during The Liturgy, The Priest fractions Particles for the living and the departed. Then, as They fall into The Blood Of The Lord, he says:

Oh, Lord ~ through the prayers of Your Saints, wash away the sins of those commemorated here with Your Precious Blood.

Absolutely, immediately arrange for the 40-day memorial, which consists of daily commemoration at The Divine Liturgy for the next 40 days. If the church that served your departed's funeral celebrates The Divine Liturgy every day, The Priest may commemorate your departed for 40 days or longer potentially. However, if that's not the case, carefully order the 40-day memorial at whichever Church serves daily services. Likewise, send contributions to Holy Places (e.g., monasteries, Jerusalem, etc.) that constantly offer prayers. Therefore, immediately begin the 40-day memorial—if possible, in the nearest place with daily services—after death when the soul especially needs the help of prayer.

Starets Alexis, the renowned priest-monk of the Kiev-Caves Lavra's Goloseyevsky Hermitage, conducted the service of re-vesting the relics of St. Theodosius of Chernigov in 1896. Before uncovering The Saint's relics, he grew weary as he sat next to the relics and fell asleep. He saw The Saint in his slumber, and they had the following conversation:

St. Theodosius: I thank you for laboring for me. I also beg you to commemorate my parents—Priest Nikita and Maria—when you serve The Divine Liturgy.

Starets Alexis: How can you ~ oh, Saint ~ ask for my prayers when you stand at The Heavenly Throne and intercede for God's Mercy on behalf of others?

St. Theodosius: Yes, that is true, but The Offering at The Divine Liturgy is more powerful than my prayer.

Our departed always need our prayers and our commemoration during The Divine Liturgy. Still, they particularly need them during the 40 days when their soul proceeds on its path to her eternal habitations. The body feels nothing then. It neither sees its close ones who've assembled, smells the fragrant flowers, nor hears the funeral orations. However, the soul senses the prayers offered for her. Grateful for her earthly intercessors, she remains spiritually close to them.

Inform your priest as soon as your beloved falls asleep in The Lord so he can read the Prayers For The Departing Soul that The Church reads over all Orthodox Christians after their death. If possible, have the funeral in The Temple and read The Psalter over the deceased until the funeral. Rather than elaborately, ensure that The Church completely performs the funeral without abbreviation. At this time, instead of yourself and your convenience, think about the deceased with whom you are forever parting.

Moreover, if The Church has many deceased individuals at the same time, propose to serve the funeral for all together. When The Church simultaneously serves the funeral for many individuals, the close ones who gather together will pray more fervently than several funerals served successively. For the reposed, each prayerful word seems like a drop of water for the thirsty man.

The Church's prayer cannot save those who neither wish for their salvation nor struggle for it themselves during their lifetime. Perhaps, The Church or particular Christians wouldn't pray for the departed souls had they not done anything during their lifetimes to inspire such prayer after their death. Memorial services, prayers at home and good deeds (e.g., almsgiving, contributions to The Church, etc.) done in their memory benefit our beloved departed. However, commemorating them during The Divine Liturgy especially benefits them.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
~ Matthew 5:7, RSV

Mercifully care for those who departed into The Other World before you. As a relative or beloved of the departed, do what the departed needs within your ability. Do not use your money to adorn the coffin or the grave. Instead, to remember the departed, help the churches offering prayers for them and help the needy. Show mercy to the dead and care for their souls, for—whether peacefully or violently—the same path shall confront us all. Therefore, mercifully commemorate the dead according to how you hope others prayerfully remember you.

The Church's prayers powerfully assist the depart, but they also hint at more profound mysteries about life, death and spiritual transformation. These mysteries themselves point beyond the horizon of mere ritual to fundamental truths about human nature and Divine Purpose, so death's mystical dimension contextualizes the very essence of Christian life.

Man cannot live as a Christian, but he can only die a daily death. Therefore, insofar as he's in this world, a veil always wraps him. This veil prevents him from perfectly abiding and dwelling in God to Whom his soul aspires. On this side of life, the conventions of earthly being condition everything he does. The great mystery of death either denounces his earthly path as false or stamps his earthly path with everlasting truth. Only through the latter can he achieve perfection. Thus, although all men similarly experience the destruction of the organic body, death assumes its special purpose for the spirit.

Christ is perfect God and perfect man—in the sense of ultimate perfection, of really real man. Only He, The All-Perfect Man, fully plumbed the full depth of human nature. Consequently, His Commandment and His Spirit lead those following after Him to approach this fulness without totally realizing it during the confines of this earthly life.

Death doesn't harm the man who departs from this life, but he can receive an unfading and incorruptible body. Yet, those who survive him in the arena can reap the most significant benefit from his passing. Seeing the inevitable dissolution of those with whom you walked yesterday sobers you. Thus, you learn how to exercise restraint and cultivate virtue, that you establish in your mind humility: the mother of all good things. An exceptional tutor of virtue, death teaches us to moderate our thinking. Bridling the passions affecting our soul calms the waves and produces stillness.

Fully unveiling the mystery of Christian spiritual life is impossible. However, Christ's Commandments inevitably guide the Christian ascetic to the confrontational injunction: If anyone comes to Me and does not hate...even his own life, he cannot be My Disciple. Indeed, if you ardently desire the perfection commanded of you, you must accept, even, This Bidding Of The Lord deep in your heart. Only thereafter can you experience the last stage that man can access.

If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My Disciple.
~ Luke 14:26, RSV

The virtue of understanding humbles the soul and purifies it from clouded thoughts so that it may progress to contemplation instead of loitering among the passions. Such contemplation ("immaterial contemplation") returns the mind to its primordial nature. A spiritual virtue, it introduces the mind to God and contemplates His Ineffable Glory, bringing the soul close enough to primally contemplate The Spirit. Immaterial contemplation separates the mind from this world and, even, from perceiving this world. The senses share no part of the spirit's active life.

In the faithful man, spiritual contemplation—and, simultaneously, all revelation to the mind—begins with him occasionally experiencing himself outside of his body and, even, the world. Contemplation helps the mind grow, and it rises to Revelations Beyond Human Nature. In this world, contemplation brings to the faithful man all The Divine Contemplations and spiritual revelations that the saints will receive along with all the gifts and revelation he can naturally know. After the saintly intellect makes this life its own, spiritual contemplation replaces material contemplation and fleshy opacity.

Monasticism isn't necessary for realizing the fulness of universal human experience, which you can obtain in all circumstances. God gives each of us the same Commandment. He regards us with equal measure and belittles none of us in His Sight. He sufficiently provides us with what we need to acquire the ultimate perfection that man can attain. For every man, the price is identical: be utterly unsparing of self.

God's Providence shines more plainly than this world's light, so avoid wasting your attention on superfluously scrutinizing the causes of everything. Sure, God made me; He endowed me with an incorporeal and rational soul; and, He entrusted me with dominion over visible creation, conferring the scepter of superiority over all other creatures upon me. However, i must honor and worship Him precisely because He does not need us. God does not need my service, so He marvelously granted me existence out of His Goodness. God truly existed and possessed His Blessed Glory before bringing us, the angels and the powers above into being. He brought us into being and does everything for us only because He loves mankind.

At the intersection of abstract truth and concrete reality, we can discover how Divine Providence works, even, through the darkest circumstances. The path through death not only leads to life but also leads to participation in God's Triune Nature, so suffering becomes the doorway of Divine Wisdom. The path from death into Divine Life begins with the transition from suffering into Trinitarian Insight, which reveals how The Holy Trinity shapes all of reality—from the structure of human knowing to the nature of love itself. Such understanding realizes its fulfillment in Trinitarian Contemplation, where the pattern of Divine Love illuminates the entire gamut of human suffering.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn exemplified how God reveals Himself to suffering Christians. A firmly faithful man, his monumental book, "The Gulag Archipelago," details how atheism affects the human soul. Emerging as a victor because he obtained Christian faith within the prison, his experiences taught him that the atheist system pertains to a universal category of the human soul. Even, Dostoyevsky asserts that affirming atheism as true (i.e., there is no God) permits everything. Now, you can experiment with any new inspiration, perspective and kinds of societies.

Solzhenitsyn demonstrates that, once atheism becomes the dominant philosophy, there must be prison camps to exterminate religion. Man naturally desires religion, so forbidding it necessitates removing him from society—the communist ideology stems from this principle. The atheist philosophy naturally expressed itself as the gulag prison system in Russia because atheism roots itself in the evil in man's nature.

However, as the gulag reveals the evil in man's nature, it also represents the starting point for his spiritual rebirth. From his suffering in prison, Solzhenitsyn learned how human beings become evil and good. He was cruel as an army sergeant because his youthful successes intoxicated him with a sense of infallibility. He was a murderer and oppressor because he possessed excess power. Yet, he had many systematic arguments to convince himself that, during his most evil moments, he was doing good.

Only when he lay on rotting straw did he initially sense the striving for good within himself. Thus, his heart became soft and receptive to revelation. He realized that the line distinguishing good from evil passes through every human heart instead of states, classes and political parties. The heart that evil overwhelms retains a small portion of good, and an un-uprooted yet small corner of evil remains in, even, the best of all hearts.

Suffering represents the reality of the human condition and the beginning of genuine spiritual life, so Solzhenitsyn's experience plumbs depths that the Western man cannot fathom. Christ Himself incarnated to suffer on The Cross and die for us.

Suffering colors genuinely real experiences, for the indulgent life quickly produces fakery. St. Gregory the Theologian describes our religion as "suffering Orthodoxy" to which The Church's entire history attests. Many of our faithful brethren suffered persecution and torture. All of the apostles except for The Lord's Beloved died as martyrs. During the first three centuries of Christianity, believers worked out The Church's Divine Services—celebrated in similar formal today—while constantly expecting death. After the age of the catacombs, The Church fought to retain its Pure Faith when many teachers tried to substitute personal opinions for The Divine Teachings Our Lord revealed to us. Our Faith is actually a suffering Faith, for suffering helps the heart receive God's Revelation.

Death gloated over the dust of our fa-ther Adam /
And over his fair beauty consumed by - corruption /
Our Lord saw him – and was grieved and descen*ded /
To restore – Adam by – The Cross*

The Voice from the top of The Tree, Which shook – Creation /
Shall call and wake up from the dust those who – sleep in Christ /
They shall be clothed – in a garment of glo*ry /
On That Day – of The Lord's – Coming
~ Vespers of Tuesday, 2nd Qolo, "On the Departed"*

None can bear witness to Ammachi's courageous resilience, which Appacha supported, like Mama, Sheeba Aunty and Shirley Kochamma. Yet, her burning heart thoroughly touched mine, starting a chain reaction of events that no man can stop.

Beyond simply passing the torch, we're responsible for modeling how to know God intimately and personally. We, whether fair with youth or steeped with experience, must be living testimonies that God continually molds us. Of this stewardship, only noteworthy beings can truly bear the weight. Even, if it means being forgotten, they labor for their descendants to remember God.

Alice Thomas—the ammachi of Dojay, Milen, Simren and i—is noteworthy not because of her bold intelligence, her cheerful character or her remarkable resilience. She is worth noting because of the burning heart in which she staked her faith.

i learned that realizing My Purpose (i.e., Theosis, the reason for which God created me) necessitates reconciling my wretched heart according to The Holy Sacraments, which The Holy Orthodox faithfully administers through asking: what does The Orthodox Church teach us about the nature of the heart and its role in the salvation of man?

eyes, oh, eyes ~ why do you lie?
what i see opposes what i believe;

ears, oh, ears ~ how come you fear?
for me, the lack of breath deceives;

mind, oh, mind ~ what do you find?
without faith, do not perceive!

heart, oh, heart ~ what's your part?

According to Church Tradition and The Holy Scriptures, genuine Knowledge Of God requires revelation. Likewise, true knowledge of the self hides, so it must be made known. However, that which hides God abides within us, not outside us; for, only the pure in heart...shall see God. (Matthew 5:8, RSV) Not necessarily sinless or perfect, pure-heartedness manifests as stillness that can see what truly is without turning away.

God and the self share a deep nexus in Christian theology, for we cannot know one without the other. We only know God insofar as we know ourselves, and we only know ourselves insofar as we know God. Your being, from your heart to your body, is The Temple Of The Holy Spirit. Grace opens your eyes to discern between good and evil. Grace strengthens The Sense Of God within you, opening you to the future and filling you with Mystical Light.

Truth perceives The Things God Gives; truth perceives God. He who perceives thus both has and knows The Truth. Truth does not exist with those lacking this perception. Though always seeking truth, he will never find it until he perceives God so that he may perceive and know truth.

God abides within your heart—itself a vast, limitless universe. Here, you submit to madness, or you acquire the courage to enter and discover the Indestructible Life within. According to St. Macarius, you can find all kinds of evil (e.g., dragons, lions, poisonous beasts, etc.) in your heart. Yet, despite its small size, you can also find the entire Treasury Of Grace. God, The Angels, The Life, The Kingdom, The Apostles, The Heavenly Cities—each abides in your heart.

Although the intellect is a species of the soul's senses, the heart contains and governs the interior senses. They root themselves in the heart. All of God's Laws and Commandments exist to purify your heart. God took on flesh to cleanse your heart and soul from evil, welcoming you back to your original state. Only from Holy Roots stem Holy Branches. Therefore, having a pure intellect necessitates having a pure heart. Instead of an exalted state of consciousness, acquiring Truth only requires a loving, broken and contrite heart that suffering, repentance and faithful longing open to God's Revelation.

God reveals Himself to burning hearts, hearts wholly ready to receive Him. He reveals Himself to individuals when His Presence moves and changes their hearts, when His Spirit fills them or when they hear His Truth preached. Thus, He endowed His Apostles with the power to traverse all of the inhabited world to preach The Gospel to all people within the first decades after His Resurrection.

God reveals Himself to loving hearts although we usually do not let ours open up. The Scriptures reveal to us that God is Love, and Christianity is The Religion Of Love. Despite the mysticism permeating The Orthodox Faith, the genuine Orthodox person always faces every situation confronting him with both of his feet firmly on the ground. You can only encounter God if you accept what manifests itself in you, and acceptance requires a loving heart.

Knowing The Truth necessitates a loving heart, even, though God must sometimes humble and break down the heart to make it receptive. The human heart's past, present and future are all present to God, so He clearly perceives where He can break through to communicate. Cold calculation stands in direct opposition to the loving heart that receives revelation from God. To find Truth, you must search deeper.

Christ Himself joined two of His Disciples who walked on the road to Emmaus on the very day of His Resurrection, and He inquired about their excitement. Consequently, they incredulously ask if He's the only person Who did not know what happened in Jerusalem. They heard that Their Master had risen from the dead, but they knew not what to believe. Christ started opening their hearts and explaining how The Old Testament prophesied The Messiah's Sojourn. Yet, His Disciples did not recognize Him because He did not dazzle them with signs and wonders.

Later, when they reached Emmaus, Christ feigned as if He would've proceeded further. Seemingly, He would have departed from them unrecognized had they, out of simple love for a needy stranger, not asked Him to spend the night with them. When He sat down with them and "broke the bread" as He did at The Last Supper, their eyes opened. They saw Him as Christ Himself, and He vanished right before their eyes.

Questioning themselves, they remembered how their hearts burned while He walked with them on them, even, though they had not recognized Him. They recognized Christ because of their burning hearts not because He vanished from their sight.

In his gospel account, St. Luke describes the experience of two disciples—Cleopas and Simon according to tradition—who, on the road to Emmaus, encountered The Risen Lord. However, they didn't recognize Him until He broke the bread at table with them. Nevertheless, upon reflection, they realized that their hearts burned within them when The Risen Lord interpreted The Scriptures for them during their walk.

The Risen Lord doesn't change, so He doesn't disguise Himself. Thus, the change must occur on the side of those experiencing Him; their mind grasps new knowledge—a recognition! Mary comes to herself when Christ speaks her name—i.e., she recovers herself, who she really is. Whereas, the eyes of the disciples on the road to Emmaus opened when Christ broke the bread, a clear Eucharistic reference. Therefore, encountering The Risen Lord consists of personal and eucharistic aspects. When we behold Christ face-to-face, we will learn who we really are and have always been. On The Last Day, we will know the meaning of personal and Eucharist and recognize our identity that currently hides with Christ in God.

However, contemplating his blessedly vivid experiences achieved through enduring his arduous ascesis, St. Isaac presents a dialogue to describe them. According to him, knowledge means perceiving Eternal Life. Moreover, Eternal Life means perceiving all things in and through God; for, understanding produces love, and The Knowledge Of God rules over all desires. Every earthly delight seems superfluous to the heart that receives This Knowledge, for nothing compares with The Delight Of The Knowledge Of God.

Therefore, knowledge represents victory over death, linking this life with immortality and uniting man with God. The very act of knowing approaches the immortal, for man passes from the limited subjective to the unlimited trans-subjective through knowing. Moreover, when God becomes your trans-subjective object, knowledge's mystery becomes The Mystery Of Mysteries and The Enigma Of Enigmas. The man united with God mystically weaves such knowledge on the soul's loom.

After a man moves from the temporal to the eternal through an evangelical asceticism, after he lives and thinks in God, after he speaks as of God, after he sees the world as sub specie Christi—he perceives the world in its primordial beauty. His pure heart's gaze penetrates the crust of sin to see Creation's Divine Core. The faithful ascetic contemplates The Holy Trinity, essentially Mysterious and Unknowable, manifesting in this world through love, mercy, meekness, humility, prayer and toiling for all, rejoicing with the rejoicing, weeping with the weeping, suffering with the suffering and repenting with the penitent. His life in this world reflects his life in That Other World Of Mysterious And Invisible Values. His thoughts and acts in this world root themselves in The Other World from which they draw their wondrously life-giving strength and power. Tracing his thoughts, feelings, acts or ascetic practices brings him to The Holy Trinity, The Primary Source Of Them All. From The Father, through The Son, in The Holy Spirit, all things come to him.

The Realm Of The Spirit manifests within the man with a pure mind; The Light Of The Holy Trinity shines within him like the sun, and This Realm's inhabitants breathe The Holy Spirit—The Comforter—as if air. Their life, joy and gladness totally subsist in Christ, The Radiance Of The Father's Light. The contemplations of such a man's soul always gladden him. This Realm is Jerusalem, The Kingdom Of God, which The Lord says hides within us. Only the pure of heart may enter This Realm, The Cloud Of God's Glory, to behold Their Master's Face and fill their intellects with His Light's Radiance. You can only see the beauty within you after you completely discount and despise all the beauty outside you. As soon as the humbly meek man with a healthy soul prays, he sees The Holy Spirit's Light within his soul. He rejoices in beholding The Rays Of His Light, delighting in contemplating Its Glory.

Unspeakable contemplative wealth enriches the faithful ascetic, so love and compassion fill his whole being when he turns toward creation. He loves the sinner but loathes his works, for humility, mercy, repentance and love weave him together. Love for every creature fills his heart. The merciful heart burns with love towards all of creation—men, birds, animals, demons, every creature. Even, at the mere thought of them, tears overflow his eyes. His heart patiently contracts from the mighty sorrow constraining it, and he cannot bear to perceive creation suffering any harm or misfortune. Therefore, with incessant tears, he prays for irrational beasts, the opponents of truth and those harming him, that they may receive mercy to preserve them. Moreover, he also prays for the reptiles with an immeasurable sorrow in his heart, likening him to God.

Signs of purity include: rejoicing with those who rejoice, weeping with those who mourn, hurting with the sick, anguishing with the sinners; rejoicing with the repentant and agonizing with the suffering; criticizing none, while seeing all men as good and Holy in one's mind.

You must live God because God is Life.
~ Fr. Roman Braga

Orthodox philosophy and its ascetic epistemology, filled with Grace, give man all that various metaphysical systems cannot. In theanthropic realism, Eternal Truth Himself stands before your knowledge in The Fulness Of His Infinite Perfection—giving Himself to enlightened men endowed with Grace. Transcendental Divine Truth manifests before man in The Person Of Christ, The God-Man. In Him, Truth objectively becomes immanent and presents an immediate and eternally vital historical reality. To make it subjectively immanent (i.e., making it your own), practice the virtues to make The Lord, Jesus Christ, The Soul Of Your Soul, The Heart Of Your Heart and The Life Of Your Life.

Prayer and other ascetic practices transform the mind, purifying it and teaching it how to contemplate God with Divine Eyes instead of human ones. The faithful ascetic ascends to contemplation with the help of gracefully living a good life. Initially, his confidence in God's Providence towards men increases. Love towards His Creator illumines him, as he marvels at How He Cares For The Rational Beings He Made. Consequently, two experiences arise within him: The Sweetness Of God and a Heart-Felt Burning Love For God—The Love That Burns Away The Passions Of The Soul And Body. Thus, he becomes drunk with The Wine Of Divine Love. God draws his thoughts beyond themselves and captivates his heart.

At every instant, contemplating God necessitates guarding your heart from the passions and maintaining constant vigilance over your soul. If you watch over your soul at every hour, your heart will rejoice in revelations. If you draw your contemplations within yourself, your intellect will contemplate The Dawn Of The Spirit. If you recoil from mental diffusion, your mind will contemplate The Lord in your heart's inner recesses. You will see radiant angels and Their Lord Himself with them and within them if you are pure, for Heaven is within you. The righteous man's soul shines brighter than the sun, contemplatively rejoicing in revelations at every hour.

Sometimes, contemplation springs from prayer and silences the prayer of the lips. Subsequently, the prayerful man experiences the state of contemplative prayer in which he, contemplatively standing outside himself, becomes a body without breath. With varying degrees and diversities, myriad gifts exist in contemplative prayer because the mind has yet to pass into that realm where prayer no longer exists—that realm in which something greater than prayer exists.

Though manifold, prayer's modalities have one aim: pure prayer. In pure prayer's depths lies a non-prayer rapture, for everything known as prayer ceases; though contemplating, the mind cannot utter prayers. Contemplative prayer reaps what prayer sows, and the wondrously abundant yield from the meager inputs amazes the harvester. In such prayerful contemplation, the intellect passes its own limits and enters That Other World.

The heart is a very complex thing. Suffering helps the human heart's transformation, but there exists no infallible means of achieving it. Yet, when conversion ultimately takes place, the revelation process occurs: the needy person suffers then, somehow, the other world opens up to him. The more suffering inspires your desperation for God, the more He will come to your aid. He will reveal to you Who He Is and show you the way out.

The passage from suffering to Transcendent Reality reflects Christ's Life, for He endured the most horrible and shameful death on The Cross before rising from the and ascending into Heaven. Then, He sent His Holy Spirit to instantiate His Holy Church in human history.

Don't seek spectacular things like miracles because they can invite deception. Rather, the correct approach consists of the heart humbling itself to recognize its suffering. Moreover, it intimately knows the existence of a Higher Truth that not only assuages this suffering but also brings it into a fundamentally different dimension.

All spiritually alive things inevitably return to God. However, the successful return journey requires understanding the sacred architecture undergirding epistemology: how, through properly ordered faculties, Truth manifests in human experience. Our Almighty God performs saving miracles, and He doesn't let His People defenselessly wallow in suffering before many enemies.

All levels of knowledge depend on man's religious and moral state. Fundamentally a religious and ethical problem, knowledge depends on the religious and ethical content and quality of man—especially, the religious and ethical culture of his organs of knowledge. Perfect knowledge positively correlates with spiritual and moral perfection because God made man such that, within him, his morality balances his knowledge.

Knowledge, at every developmental stage, depends on the ontological structure and ethical state of its organs. The organs of knowledge become holy only after man's patience in the evangelical virtues purifies and heals them. Pure knowledge can only flow from a pure heart and mind. Turned towards God, the pure and healthy organs of knowledge gather pure and healthy Knowledge Of God; turned towards creation, knowledge of creation.

Knowing reflects the active ascesis of the whole human person, not one part of his being (i.e., the intellect, the understanding, the body, the senses). Every act of knowledge involves the whole man with his entire being—in every thought, feeling and desire.

Two species constitute Faith's genus. The first comprises perceiving information (e.g., hearing, seeing, etc.), and the second confirms and proves it. Specifically, contemplative faith—the second—depends on that which you've perceived.

Two species constitute knowledge's genus. Natural knowledge—the first species—precedes faith and involves discerning between good and evil. Spiritual knowledge—the second—follows faith and contemplatively perceives The Mysteries, hidden and invisible.

Faith frees you from natural knowledge so that you can acquire spiritual knowledge. That Unknown Power making man capable of spiritual knowledge descends to man via the ascesis of faith. Prevent natural knowledge's web from trapping you, for acting according to it means living against the edge of a sword.

In man, knowledge progresses through the virtues and regresses through the passions. The virtues weave knowledge on the human soul's loom, which extends through all of the visible and invisible worlds. The virtues are not only the powers creating knowledge but also the source principles from which knowledge springs. Ascetically endeavoring transforms the virtues into the elements constituting your being so that you can advance from knowledge to knowledge.

The virtues are the sense organs of knowledge. The religious and moral power of The Virtues heal the man and make him whole. Man advances from one virtue to another to progress from one comprehension to another. Asceticism necessarily characterizes the single, unbroken path from faith—the first virtue—to love for all—the last virtue. Through the grace of his ascetic endeavors, man forms, transforms and transfigures himself on this long path. His pure and integrated knowing expresses his personal purity and integrity. Thus, he heals his being from the illnesses of sin and ignorance, restores his personal integrity and unifies his spirit, making himself whole.

In the faithful ascetic, knowledge naturally evolves into contemplation. Contemplation senses divine mysteries hidden within things and events. The mind's finest workings continually pondering on God finds contemplation, which abides in unceasing prayer. Thus, it illumines the intellect: the soul's spiritual aspect.

According to The Holy Fathers, contemplation carries an ontological, ethical and epistemological significance. Contemplation means, through Grace's Action, prayerfully concentrating on The Mysteries that surpass our understanding. Such Mysteries abundantly manifest in not only The Holy Trinity but also man's person himself and All Of God's Creation.

Vividly aware of the links binding him to the higher world, the faithful ascetic contemplatively lives above the senses and the categories of time and space. Revelations containing those things which no eyes have seen, no ears have heard and on which no hearts have meditated nourish him. Yet, such an ascent necessitates actively confronting the dragons inhabiting our inner selves.

Knowing the self requires journeying into and through the shame surrounding it. However, the true self is not the shame-self. How i feel about myself defines the self-conception of the shame self, which the true self sits deeper beneath. Yet, God resides beneath, even, the true self.

You must encounter all of the evil treasures within to behold that beauty. Without undertaking this singular pilgrimage, you will waste your whole life without genuine knowledge of God or the true self. Tragically, the shame-self will dictate such a superficial life, itself amounting to nothing more than puppetry. Over time, its treasure of evil will beget more dragons and lions, feeding your desire to devour your neighbor instead of loving him.

Patiently striving in asceticism, filled with Grace, yields a pure heart and intellect, healing the intellect and other organs of understanding. The Fountain Of Light, which pours sweetness on The Mystery Of Life and Of The World, bubbles up in the faithful ascetic's pure intellect.

God and man's common action, the synergy between God's Grace and man's will heals and purifies the organs of human knowledge. On purification and healing's long journey, knowledge itself becomes purer and healthier.

Additionally, the body must suffer with and for Christ to cleanse the intellect, sufficiently preparing it for glory with Christ. The body glories in temperately submitting to God, and the intellect glories in truly contemplating God. Fasting, prayer and tears—those paramount tools of purification—achieve the beauty of temperance, paving the way for faith's power to transform your heart.

We initially experience disappointments and hardships as shame, and these experiences subsequently transform into anger and depression when the shame becomes unbearable. The heaviness stems from the shame of seemingly declaring our unworthiness, incompetence and inadequacy. Sin similarly operates in our lives because shame (i.e., how sins make us feel about ourselves), not guilt, is hard to bear.

The passions are specific hardnesses or ontological insensitivities, and the things of life cause them. Whether the hunger for wealth and comfort, the thirst for honor and power or the desire for glory or bodily preservation, all passions share one common name: the world. Here, 'the world' roughly refers to 'the carnal mind carnally conducting itself.' Therefore, 'the passions' refers to 'how the world uses its things to attack man,' who can only repulse them with help from Divine Grace. Passions uproot your soul while settling in you. They confuse your mind, disturb your thoughts and fill them with fantastic forms, images and desires. The prostitute world beguiles the soul with its soul-destroying desires to undermine its virtues and destroy its God-Given Purity. Naturally, yet tragically, the prostitute soul begets impure knowledge.

The passions make the soul drunk, but pursuing the virtues represents the rehabilitating path to sobriety. The virtues flow from sorrow and afflictions, which weave them together. Every virtue is a Cross, according to St. Isaac the Syrian. Loving your oppressions and sorrows frees you from worldly things, detaching your mind from the world's confusion. God generously extends to you the offer of adoptive sonship, whose acceptance necessitates actively exercising your volitive will. Therefore, being born of God requires first freeing yourself from the material world. The economy of knowledge flows as that of God's Grace.

Only purifying the soul from the passions and evil can heal it. The soul's sickness manifests as the passions, but its health manifests as the virtues. The virtues remedy the soul and the organs of understanding through progressively eliminating their sicknesses. However, the virtuous remediation process is slow, so it demands significant effort and patience.

Unbelief accompanies the love of the body. Faith frees the intellect from the sense categories, and fasting, vigils and pondering on God sobers it. Intemperance and a full stomach cloud the mind and distract it, dispersing it among fantasies and passions. However, bodies that love pleasure cannot behold The Knowledge Of God. Fasting yields healthy understanding, but debauchery follows from satiety; and, impurity, excess. Faith confirms the intellect in pondering on God. Constantly remembering God represents the way of salvation.

The ascesis of faith starts treating and curing the soul afflicted with the passions. After settling in you, faith begins uprooting the passions from your soul. However, to heal your soul of the passions and overcome the material world, your soul must feel faith's power; faith in God must intoxicate your soul. The ascesis of faith comes with a negative side—freedom from sinful matter—and a positive side—oneness with God. The senses disperse the soul among worldly things. Still, the ascesis of faith—i.e., the soul fasting from material things and devoting itself to constantly remembering God—brings the soul back to itself. The ascesis of faith is the foundation of all good things. Spiritual growth depends on progressively freeing yourself from your enslavement to sinful matter. Concentrating your thoughts on God, incessantly pondering on God's Words and poverty marks the beginning of this new way of life.

Faith concentrates the mind, previously dispersed among the passions, frees it from sensuality and endows it with peacefully humble thoughts. The sick mind lives sensually (i.e., by the senses) in a sensual world. Faith transports the mind from the prison of this world where sin stifles it to the new age where it may freely breathe wondrous new air. The asleep mind is as dangerous as death, so faithfully rouse your mind to perform spiritual works because performing spiritual works helps you overcome yourself and drives out the passions.

Persecuting yourself will drive your enemy from your proximity.
~ St. Isaac the Syrian, Homily 2 (p. 121, Holy Transfiguration Monastery)

True freedom consists of a soul resurrecting with Christ and enjoying freedom from the passions. Only practicing the virtues overcomes the passions, and you must fight every passion to the death. Faith is the first and chief weapon for struggling with the passions. The mind's light and intellect's strength, faith drives the mind away from the darkness of the passions and banishes sickness from the soul. Faith internally bears the principle and substance of not only itself but also all the other virtues, for they develop as concentric circles around their predecessors.

Faith linguistically expresses itself as prayer. Faith begins the healing of the organs of understanding, and prayer continues it. Prayer guards and guides the intellect, transforming all thoughts into good ponderings on God. However, prayer is a hard struggle, calling the whole person into action. You crucify yourself in prayer, crucifying the passions and sinful thoughts clinging to your soul. Prayer slays the carnal thoughts of man's worldly life. Fundamental to your salvific labors, patiently persevering in prayer is a very hard ascesis, for it requires denying yourself. Prayer is salvation's fount, for it acquires all other virtues and good things.

Monstrous temptations assail the prayerful man, but only prayers save and protect him. The intellect's surest guardian, prayer drives away the clouds of the passions, illuminates the intellect and brings wisdom to the mind. True perfection requires unceasingly abiding in prayer. The process stretches the boundaries of human personality, progressively replacing self-centeredness with God-centeredness.

Prayer begets love, as faith begets prayer. The virtues have one substance, so they beget each other. Love for God indicates that the new reality that faith and prayer lead exceeds that which had gone before. The work of prayer and faith is love for God and man: without faith and prayer, you cannot feel true love for man. Prayer yields Love for God, for love is prayer's fruit. Without struggling with prayer, you cannot acquire love from God. Knowledge begets love, for prayer and faith deliver man to the knowledge of God.

The faithful man renounces egotism's law along with his sinful soul. Although he loves his soul, he loathes the sin within. Focusing on healing your soul of its sin, prayerfully strives to replace egotism's law with That Of God, passions with virtues and human life with Divine Life. Impurity and sickness of souls accrete unnaturally; they constitute none of the soul's created nature, for purity and health are its kingdom.

The modern heart has become the warehouse manufacturing the meanest human experiences. Our outer-directed culture—our age that distracts us from true knowledge of the self—particularly impedes the inner activity of knowing yourself. We objectify the self (e.g., selfies, etc.) when we consider how others perceive us, reducing us to mere commodities. Despite its sensually phenomenological clutter, it lacks the order necessary to reveal the greater depths, enabling proper sensemaking of who we are. Surrounding the self (i.e., everybody's self) hovers an unavoidable experience of shame associated with the inner sense of "something is wrong with who i am", which life experiences instill in us. Shame strangely bounds our culture, which ceaselessly shatters every proper boundary.

A soul that the passions have weakened is fertile soil for cultivating hatred, but only through healing your soul can you acquire love. Love is of God, for God is love. He who acquires love puts God Himself on with it. God lacks boundaries, so love must also be boundless and unlimited; he who loves through and in God loves all things equally and without distinction—such a man has achieved perfection.

Conceptual antinomies disappear in the kingdom of love. Strive in love to enjoy a foretaste of Paradise's Harmony in yourself and God's Creation around you, signaling your deliverance from the hell of self-centeredness and entrance into The Paradise Of Divine Values and Perfections. Paradise is The Love Of God in which the sweetness of all blessings lies. Hell is the absence of The Love Of God, and love's whiplash tortures those tormented in hell. Perfectly acquiring The Love Of God—man's original form of contemplating The Holy Trinity—means acquiring perfection: true wisdom that The Cross shapes.

Faith, knowledge and all their counterparts appear as one indivisible and organic whole to him who practices the virtues to perceive and know the truth so that he may restore and transform his organs of knowledge. They fulfill one another, and each confirms and supports the other. The mind's light begets faith, which begets hope's consolation; and, hope fortifies the heart. Faith enlightens the understanding. Faith hides from the darkened understanding, which fear sways and cuts off from hope. Faith bathes understanding in light, freeing man from pride and doubt. Faith knows Truth, which manifests as faith.

A Holy Life produces Holy Knowledge, but pride darkens It. The light of truth will increase and decrease according to how you live. Terrible temptations torment those seeking to live a spiritual, so the faithful ascetic must suffer great misfortunes to know the truth.

Faith, as its own way of life, has its own forms of thought, so Christians live and think faithfully. Faith presents humility, a new mode of thinking that affects the entire exercise of knowing in the believer. Within faith's infinite reality, the intellect itself before the ineffable mysteries of new life in the Holy Spirit. Intellectual humility overcomes intellectual pride, and modesty replaces presumption. The faithful ascetic humbly protects all his thoughts—thereby, internally cultivating The Knowledge Of Eternal Truth. Prayer restores humility, which unendingly grows.

Crucifying the intellect and the flesh frees you from the passions, enabling you to contemplate God. Driving out unclean thoughts from the intellect and uprooting the passions from the body crucifies them. The Knowledge Of God cannot abide in the body that pleasure controls.

From humility flows temperate senses manifesting as meekness and righteous recollection. Humility adorns the soul with temperance, and they prepare the soul to pledge itself to The Holy Trinity. Humility heals the intellect and makes it whole.

Prayer and humility equally balance each other, so progressing in one means progressing in the other. Humility is the power that collects the heart within itself, preventing it from scattering among proud thoughts and lustful desires. The Holy Spirit upholds and protects humility, which draws God and man to each other. Humility impelled The Son Of God's Incarnation, God's Closest Union with man. Humility adorns Divinity, for The Incarnate Word speaks to us through The Human Body With Which He Clothes Himself.

Grace only gives humility, the mysterious and Divine power, to the saints, those perfected in the virtues. Within itself, humility contains all things. The Holy Spirit's Grace reveals The Mysteries to the humble; therefore, in wisdom, these humble are perfect. The mysteries of the new age spring from the humble man.

The virtues attain True Knowledge, The Revelation Of The Mysteries: the knowledge that saves. Humility chiefly characterizes and proves This Knowledge. All questioning ceases after the intellect abides in the realm of Knowledge Of The Truth; and, upon it, a great calm and peace descends. Perfect health necessitates such mental peace. The soul learns through The Spirit after Its Power enters it.

First, open your heart to Grace to acquire the capacity to see into your own soul, for you can see neither yourself nor others insofar as impurity and darkness reign over your soul. If you desire to see God within yourself, purify your heart through constantly recollecting Him. Thus, you will see God at every hour with your mind's eye.

He who commits sin is of the devil; for, the devil has sinned from the beginning. The reason The Son Of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God commits sin; for, God’s Nature abides in him; and, he cannot sin because he is born of God. By this, it may be seen who are The Children Of God and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not do right is not of God, nor he who does not love his brother.
~ 1 John 3:8-10, RSV

The humble man reveals his whole personality when his humility imitates God's Incarnation. However, he remains unknown among men, as the body cannot perceive the soul. Rejecting men's recognition, he seeks to fully recollect himself within himself and become a non-existent non-being, utterly unknown to his soul. He belittles himself before all men, so God glorifies him; for, God's Glory abundantly sprouts where humility blossoms, and the soul produces an imperishable flower.

After The Gospel's Strict Ascesis, man finds within himself His Ontological Divine Center along with This Visible World's Locus of Transcendent Divinity. Subsequently, he rises above time and space to behold himself from eternity, seeing himself as deathless and eternal. True self-knowledge fundamentally knows God truly; for, man walks the shortest path to God, as God created his soul in His Image. Each of your paths toward God reaches a dead-end, but only true self-knowledge—which St. Isaac greatly emphasizes—indeed leads to God in Christ. God must count you worthy to see yourself, and proving such value affords you more incredible honor than, even, if He counts you worthy to see angels.

The true nature of kenosis shares a deep nexus with shame and The Crucified Christ. It describes how we should think and live. Christ emptied Himself of Divine Prerogatives to humbly accept death on The Cross. A profound act of love, Christ's Own Offering not only emptied Himself but also filled Himself in union with our brokenness.

While bearing a little shame represents one species of self-emptying, giving thanks always and for all things—a positive albeit equally difficult path—constitutes another. Everyone gives thanks for pleasurable things they enjoy; but, giving thanks always and for all things brings us face-to-face with Christ, particularly when we want to turn away from Him.

Yet, in our weakness, Christ saves us. Conversely, our strength offers us the opposite of shame, so it shares no identity with Christ's Self-Emptying. Not only from our sins, we are saved through our sins because we behold Christ face-to-face when we give thanks always and for all things. We primarily bear our shame when we give thanks in its midst, for it embraces and unites us with The Fulness Of Christ's Offering on our behalf. Moreover, we discover the fulness of self-emptying in giving thanks always and for all things. The Cross Of Shame subsequently becomes the joy that elevates the soul toward The Trinitarian Vision.

The soul experiences three states: natural, unnatural and supernatural. The soul's natural state knows God's creation—both visible and spiritual. Its supernatural state contemplates The Super-Essential Divinity. The soul's unnatural state mixes with the passions, for the passions naturally don't belong to it. Therefore, passion describes the soul's unnatural state; and, virtue, its natural state. That Holy Beauty of genuinely being in God's Likeness adorns the soul when the virtues—especially compassion—feed the mind. The holy beauty of man's being reveals itself to a pure heart. As you cultivate this holy beauty within yourself, you will increasingly see the beauty of god's creation.

Only The Holy Spirit's Light can help you understand your soul's nature. The Holy Scriptures refer to the causes of the passions when discussing their nexuses with the soul and the flesh, for the soul is naturally passionless. God created the soul in His Image, so it is naturally free of the passions.

True knowledge of nature and, generally, the material world requires self-knowledge. Submitting all things to yourself necessitates submitting yourself to God. Self-knowledge fulfills the knowledge of all things, so he who knows himself can know all things. All creation humbles itself to he who humbles himself before God. Overcoming temptation begets true knowledge, which begets true humility; therefore, struggling against the temptations yields true humility.

The uplifted, active and engaged mind experiences three modes of natural contemplation: two of the created world (i.e., the rational and non-rational, the spiritual and physical) and the third of The Holy Trinity.

The intellect perceives revealed mystical contemplations after the soul has been made whole. Practicing the virtues to cleanse your soul makes you worthy of spiritual contemplation. Purity sees God. You will behold God if you cleanse yourself from sin and unceasingly ponder on God.

St. Isaac identifies The Kingdom Of Heaven with spiritual contemplation. Only with Grace, not intellectual activity, can you taste It and with a pure heart, neither learning nor teaching, can you acquire It, so cleanse yourself. God blesses those living purely with pure thoughts. Guarding the heart and striving beget pure thoughts, which begets the understanding's enlightenment. Subsequently, Grace leads the intellect to the realm where the now-powerless senses cannot perceive any information or exformation.

Struggling to harmonize your own will with God's Grace grows your faith to perfect stature. Such synergy progresses through degrees; for, Grace, given to the humble before all else, enters the soul very slowly.

The more grace God gives to the faithful man, the more He reveals to him the evil abysses in the world and man. Simultaneously, He allows frighteningly greater temptations to assail him; thus, the faithful man may test The God-Given Power Of Grace to understand that overcoming evermore scandalously fearsome temptations necessitates The Help Of Grace. Accordingly, once Grace perceives you, making yourself great in your own sight, becoming self-sufficient, It leaves you; letting temptations assail you until, becoming aware of your sickness, you humbly take refuge in God.

Christian life squarely aims at contemplating The Holy Trinity. Love, per St. Isaac, primarily contemplates The Holy Trinity. Performing the commandments attains purity, the first of The Mysteries. Contemplation—the intellect's vision and spiritual contemplation—occurs when understanding of that which was and will be enraptures the mind. It chastens, renews and cleanses the heart of evil.

Human nature can experience true contemplation when exercises the virtues to cleanse itself from the passions. Christ's Gift consists of truly contemplating the material and immaterial world and The Holy Spirit Itself. Fully renewing human nature in His Own Divine Person, He reveals this contemplation to men and instructs them in it. He clears a path to The Truth with His Life-Giving Commandments. Human nature can experience true contemplation after the man suffers misfortune, fulfills the commandments and endures the passions to put off the old Adam. The intellect, thus capable of spiritual birth, can contemplate the spiritual world, its true fatherland. The Spirit, in which the intellect spiritually delights, reveals the new world's contemplation occurring under The Action Of Grace. This contemplation nourishes the intellect, preparing it to receive a yet more perfect contemplation. One contemplation evolves into the next until the intellect reaches the realm of perfect love. The spiritual man abides in love, which dwells in pure souls. Grace works in the intellect that reaches love's realm, sharing spiritual contemplations so that it may behold hidden things.

In vigilant prayer, the mind takes wing and ascends to The Delights Of God. It swims in the knowledge surpassing human thought. The soul striving to persevere in this vigilant pursuit receives the cherubim's eyes that will constantly dwell with it in Heavenly Contemplation. The soul sees God's Truth through the power of his way of life (i.e., the life of faith). He will find The Light if he truly contemplates in The Realm Of Truth. The vision of God comes from knowing Him, so it cannot precede This Knowledge.

Familiarizing itself with The Mysteries Of The Spirit and the revelations of knowledge, the heart rises from knowledge to knowledge, contemplation to contemplation and understanding to understanding. It secretly learns and grows. Eventually, love catches it, and it incorporates hope. Joy resides in its innermost parts, lifting it up to God and crowning it with its own created being's natural glory. Thus, the mind becomes purified, endowed with mercy and counted worthy to contemplate The Holy Trinity.

Wisdom, Filled With Grace, gradually reveals The Mysteries to the humble; one after the other, culminating in The Mystery Of Suffering. Grace reveals the meaning of suffering to them, so they know why man suffers. Grasping the meaning and purpose of suffering and temptation depends on the quantity of Grace with a man—however immeasurable, let alone inconceivable, such a value may be. Spiritual prayer begets ecstasy in which The Mysteries Of The Holy Trinity reveal Themselves. Thereafter, the intellect enters that Sphere Of Holy Unknowing that, exceeding all knowledge, culminates in the harmonious dance of Divine and human natures.

In Itself, The Person Of Christ—The God-Man—presents the ideal image of human personality and knowledge. From Itself, The Person Of Christ traces and defines every path of The Christian Life. He most perfectly realizes God's Mystical Union With Man, simultaneously revealing God's Human Work and Man's Godly Work.

The simplest proof of Christian activity in the world is God and man working together. God works with man, and man works with God. Although the Christian, working within and around himself, entirely gives himself to ascesis, he can only do so with Grace (i.e., Divine Power's Ceaseless Activity): The Gospel depends on the help of God's Grace to inspire thoughts, feelings and actions within Christians. Man freely brings desire, and God gives Grace; this synergy (i.e., mutual activity) begets Christian personality.

You need Grace's help and support to acquire every evangelical virtue, to ascend each rung of the ladder of perfection. Grace and free will uphold everything in Christianity, the common work of God and man.

Perseverant prayer cleanses the intellect, illuminating it and filling it with The Light Of Truth. Compassion leads the virtues, as they give peace and light to the intellect. An act of Grace ethically and experientially cleanses the intellect: an activity neither theoretical, dialectic nor discursive. Ascetic practices (e.g., fasting, vigils, silence, prayer, etc.) purify the intellect.

Divine illumination virtuously striving achieves the pure intellect, the fruit of ascetic effort in the virtues. Practicing the virtues increases Grace in you, and bringing Grace to the intellect cleanses it from impure thoughts. The saint's intellect ascetically gains purity, clarity and discernment.

Asceticism, filled with Grace, gradually drives sin and the passions from your organs of understanding. Purifying the body cultivates experiential intuitions that instinctually reject the flesh's impure stains. Cleansing the soul frees it from the passions that discretely accrete in the mind. The Revelation Of The Mysteries signifies the intellect's cleansing. Such ascetic effort heals you of these death-dealing illnesses and unceasingly renews yourself, your whole being; thus, Grace purifies your organs of understanding.

Particularly, the intellect—the chief organ of understanding—influences man's personality, so you must especially care for it. Vigilance, nowhere else as vital, powerfully purifies the intellect. Managing this task requires battling with all of your forces to synergistically renew and transform your intellect with the evangelical virtues that Grace fills.

Only the mind that Grace cleansed can offer pure, spiritual knowledge. The mind receives spiritual knowledge after—and only after—becoming pure, completely free from its manifold thoughts. If you have great knowledge and accept wickedness, you cannot cleanse your mind. Few are those who can return to man's primordially pure mind; and, without question, i—in my current state—cannot number myself among the elect.

Who am i that i may, even, dare to inquire into my very own ontogeny? Who am i that, because He loves me, He pulled me from non-being into being with His Own Hand? Who am i that He saw it good and fitting to create me?

Unquestionably, nothing happens against His Will except the consequences of decisions that agents of free will make—especially, the conception of a human being. Even, St. Joachim and St. Anna couldn't bear their child—The Holy Theotokos, Supremely Super-Blessed—until they fervently entreated The Lord, Our God. Although my own mother carries St. Anna's name, justice would reckon my lineage as the most sinful among men if it just impartially records the deeds of my wretched self.

Lord, Jesus Christ—Son Of God ~ have mercy on each and every one of us!

As my soul is to me, so God is to my soul. From The Highest Place—His Indescribable Seat Above All Else—He looks down upon His Servant's Lowly Soul. Thus, so, too, may i look down from the seat of my soul to thoroughly search my faint heart to search for decency, some semblance of good. Yet, after collected, careful and close scrutiny, i've concluded that, within me, there exists not a single good thing for which i'm the first cause.

Every good idea that enters the human mind is from above, from God. The only thing that is ours is the mucus that runs from our noses when we have a cold.
~ St. Paisios the Athonite, Athonite Fathers and Athonite Matters (p. 231)

Instead, any good quality i happen to embody—though this be categorically infrequent—reflects Divine Characteristics of our All-Good, All-Love and All-Merciful. Likewise, any trace of goodness of mine must participate in Divine Goodness, which naturally inheres to God's Essence. Consequently, any false goodness—or, more precisely, true not-goodness (i.e., sinfulness)—does not participate in God because it naturally cannot. Thus, my sins are mine and mine alone, yet my worthy deeds are God's.

I am afraid of my sins /
That they may be – a wall, which keeps me /
From The - Garden Of Delight /
Which is – kept for all the saints /
Rescue me ~ Oh, Lord ~ from hell /
And where You will – there ~ Lord ~ let me dwell
~ Service Book of The Holy Qurbono, Compline – Option 1, Qolo 1 (p. 32)

Truly, i search myself for evil and, initially, notice nothing; using your face as a mirror, i look slightly closer but notice all of your sins. Then, i focus on Christ as my mirror and, with His Grace, gaze inwards; everywhere, my nous sees evil abounding without constraint. I am terrified that, despite my perceptual disposition, i see no horizon of my evil. Likewise, i search myself for righteousness, and a vacuous vacuity stares back at me—the cold void, barren and empty of any delight. As, within me, exists nothing good and everything evil; surely, i—my soul, my mind and my heart—must be in hell. I, in my very actions, betray my God—how can i, even, hope to enjoy The Last Principle if i disobey The First?

However, my God curated my components not to die but to live! Despair shall i not, for My Savior—My Lord and God, Jesus Christ—Incarnated for me; He willingly subjected Himself to shameful death on The Cross for me; He Rose the dead, of His Own Will, to reconcile human nature with Divine Nature—thereby, paving The Way to reconcile myself with Him. He, even, established His Holy Orthodox Orthodox Church as His Own Body—forever intertwining me with Him when He, out of His Superabundant Goodness, placed me in an Orthodox Christian family. Beyond your wildest imaginations, God so loves you that He sent His Only-Begotten Son to redeem you.

May i, at the moment of my repose and every moment before, offer You a heart thoroughly purified through participating in The Holy Sacraments You give us!

Outside of my office in San Francisco at 555 California St rests a large sculpture. When Masayuki Nagare crafted it from 200 tons of black Swedish granite in the late '60s, he called it "Transcendence." However, as Bank of America initially located its corporate headquarters in that building, the San Francisco Chronicle pithily referred to the cold, black and unfeeling piece of art as "Banker's Heart."

Day after day, i ascended 43 floors to work as an investment banker. And, night after night, my heart grew colder, darker and more unfeeling as i distanced myself from The Church until God intervened in my life through My Church, my family and the very fabric of my being.

Lord, Jesus ~ teach me your way, and guide my steps along Your Path. Instill Your Meekness in me. Plant The True Faith in my heart, and teach me how to cultivate True Prayer. Bless me with Your Humility, that i may enjoy Your Grace in Its Fulness. Guide my heart to submit to Your Will, that i may love all—brothers, neighbors, strangers, enemies and all of Creation—as You love me. Teach me to trust Your Consoling Wisdom and participate in The Church's Sacramental Life, which represents the essential mode of purification. Give me the strength i need to cheerfully endure the suffering i shall experience over the course of purifying my heart, for i desire one thing and only one thing: to be as i am in You as You are! That Thou hast made such available to me—man, most unworthy—i thank Thee.

My heart is the centermost part of the being—my centerview, per se. As the root is to the tree, so my heart is to me. It is my ultimate necessary condition—that without which i, as you know me, cannot be—so it must permeate every aspect of my being. Regardless of what i say, my heart genuinely expresses its truth with my tongue, pursues its desires with my hands and offers its worship with my attention. Therefore, above all else, i prefer silence and stillness; for, they represent good uses of my tongue, hands and attention, so my heart can acquire righteousness in them.

From my inquiry, i believe that The End consists of The Heart of Adam—all Adam without exception—loving God. However, i cannot become a conduit of This Uncreated Fire to other men until i, making no provision for the flesh, purify my heart with God's Grace. Moreover, my heart cannot hope for purity until sorrow, contrition and compunction—those precursors of repentance—completely inundate it. Insofar as my finite self drives my being, my reserves of energy and time are also finite. However, if i wholly submit my drive—my volitive will—to The Will of The Uncreated, Self-Existent and Eternal Holy Trinity, then what reason justifies believing that i shall perish? I shall live if and only if i diligently attend to His Command with faith, hope and love.

So that Uncreated Fire can effectively burn away all of my impurities, i must offer God my broken, contrite and—dare, i say—shattered heart. Thus, my cold, dark, unfeeling banker's heart can soften, and His Love can wound it. Through this wound, His Heavenly Light can pour into my heart and illuminate my entire being. From this wound, i can live with His Heart and mine, His Breath as mine and, truly, His Very Life as mine.

For He formed my heart in His Image, i am who i was before the world colored my eyes in certain ways; yet, that person hides under layers of experiences acquired over my life's successes and failures—barely glimpsing myself, i sit at the edge of recognition in this age. My heart burns within—it must, that it may become pure, that i may see God! Truly, the greatest love story ever told—that of God and man, that of God and you!—has yet to reach its end :)

Moses said to God:

Look: I will go forth to the sons of Israel, and I will say to them: "The God Of Our Fathers has sent me to you." They will ask me: "What is his name?" What will I say to them?

And, God said to Moses:

I am THE ONE WHO EXISTS...Thus, you shall say to the sons of Israel:

THE ONE WHO EXISTS has sent me to you.

And, God said again to Moses:

Thus, you shall say to the sons of Israel:

The Lord, The God Of Your Fathers—The God Of Abraham, The God Of Isaac and The God Of Jacob—has sent me to you.

This is My Name forever and a memorial from generations to generations. Therefore, when you go forth, gather the council of elders of the sons of Israel and say to them:

The Lord, The God Of Your Fathers—The God Of Abraham, The God Of Isaac and The God Of Jacob—appeared to me, saying:

With observation, I have observed you and the things that have befallen you...I will bring you up out of [your] affliction...into [the] land flowing with milk and honey.

That very day [that the women saw the empty tomb], two of them were going to a village named Emma′us, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus Himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing Him. And He said to them: What is this conversation which you are holding with each other as you walk? And they stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, named Cle′opas, answered him: “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” And He said to them: What things? And they said to Him:

Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, Who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered Him up to be condemned to death, and crucified Him. But we had hoped that He was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since this happened. Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at The Tomb early in the morning and did not find His Body; and they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that He was alive. Some of those who were with us went to The Tomb, and found it just as the women had said; but Him they did not see.

And He said to them:

Oh, foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that The Christ should suffer these things and enter into His Glory?

And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, He interpreted to them in all the scriptures The Things Concerning Himself. So they drew near to the village to which they were going. He appeared to be going further, but they constrained Him, saying: “Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent.” So he went in to stay with them.

When He was at table with them, He took the bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized Him; and He vanished out of their sight. They said to each other:

Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?

And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven gathered together and those who were with them, who said, “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” Then they told what had happened on the road, and how He was known to them in the breaking of the bread.

As they were saying this, Jesus himself stood among them. But they were startled and frightened, and supposed that they saw a spirit. And he said to them:

Why are you troubled, and why do questionings rise in your hearts? See My Hands and My Feet, that it is I Myself; handle Me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have.

And while they still disbelieved for joy, and wondered, He said to them: Have you anything here to eat? They gave Him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate before them. Then he said to them:

These are My Words which I spoke to you, while I was still with you, that Everything Written About Me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled.

Then He opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and said to them:

Thus it is written, that The Christ should suffer and on The Third Day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in His Name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of These Things. And behold: I send The Promise Of My Father upon you; but stay in the city, until you are clothed with Power From On High.

Then, He led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up His Hands he blessed them. While He blessed them, He parted from them, and was carried up into Heaven. And they returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple blessing God.

• Saint Silouan the Athonite ~ St. Sophrony

• The Soul After Death ~ Fr. Seraphim Rose

• The Climate of Monastic Prayer ~ Thomas Merton

• On The Providence of God ~ St. John Chrysostom

• Man and the God-man ~ St. Justin Popović

  • Chapter: 'The Theory of Knowledge of St. Isaac the Syrian'

• The Book of Ecclesiastes from The Lexham English Septuagint (LES)

• God's Revelation to the Human Heart ~ Fr. Seraphim Rose

• The Insane Science of Neutron Stars ~ SEA (channel)

• What is The Origin Of Gold? ~ Insane Curiosity (channel)

• The missing law of nature, and how we found it ~ Robert Hazen

• The Way of Shame and the Way of Thanksgiving ~ Fr. Stephen Freeman

• Knowing the Knowledge that Transforms ~ Fr. Stephen Freeman

• Identity and the Resurrection of Christ ~ Fr. Stephen Freeman

• The Liturgy of Life ~ Fr. Stephen Freeman

• Where does gold come from? ~ David Lunney

• How astronomy makes neuroscience even cooler: brains, gold and neutron stars

If you've reached this point of Ammachi's memorial, i thank you from the depth of my heart. For your sake, i need not belabor the personal significance of sharing good ideas. Therefore, i will close with the final words of St. Maximus the Confessor's 7th Ambiguum on 'The Beginning and End Of Rational Creatures':

If my discussion hasn't strayed from the truth, my entire gratitude goes to God because He led me, whom your prayers uplift, to rightly think about these matters. However, if the truth escaped me in any way, shape or form, you can instruct me because God inspired you to know these things.

May all glory and honor be to The Blessed Trinity—The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit—now and always, forever and ever. amin. ☦️