Hesychasm

This comes from the Greek hesychia, meaning “stillness” or “quiet.” This is the theological backbone of the Eastern Orthodox Church. It focuses on the pursuit of theosis – divine union with God. At its core, Hesychasm is a tradition of prayer that seeks to find God through inner silence & the cessation of all thoughts.

The “engine” of Hesychasm is the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.” (We think that even if you aren’t religious/spiritual, we’ve all prayed this prayer before!) Unlike Western meditation, which often involves visualizing scenes from the Bible, Hesychasm is apophatic (negative).

The goal is to strip away images, concepts, & intellectual chatter to reach a state of “pure prayer.” Practitioners (known as Hesychasts) aim to move the prayer from the lips to the mind, & finally, into the heart.

In the 14th century, certain techniques were popularized to help the mind. These include:

• Breath Control:
  • Syncing the prayer with the rhythm of breathing.
• Posture:
  • Sitting for long periods with the chin resting on the chest, eyes fixed on the “place of the heart.”
• The Goal:
  • To achieve a state where the prayer becomes “unceasing,” continuing even while the monk sleeps or works.

The history of Hesychasm is defined by a massive 14th century intellectual “cage match.” On one side, Gregory Palamas, a monk from Mount Athos. On the other side, Barlaam of Calabria, a Western-influenced scholar who thought the monks were essentially deluding themselves with “belly-button gazing.”

Barlaam argued that God is absolutely transcendent & unknowable. Therefore, any claim to “see” God was impossible or heretical. Palamas countered with a distinction that saved Eastern mysticism: The Essence vs The Energies.

The Divine Essence:

God’s inner nature, which remains forever hidden & inaccessible to any created being.

The Divine Energies:

God’s “activities” or “operations” (like Love, Grace, & Light) that permeate the world & can be directly experienced by humans.

Palamas argued that when the Apostles saw Jesus glowing on Mount Tabor (the Transfiguration), they weren’t seeing a metaphor. They were seeing the Uncreated Light of God’s Energies. Hesychasts claim through intense prayer, they too can see this Taboric Light.

Palamas wasn’t just a “cloud-dweller.” He was a brilliant aristocrat who gave a promising career at the Byzantine imperial county to become a monk. When Barlaam attacked the monks’ practices as “superstitious,” Palamas wrote the Triads in Defense of the Holy Hesychasts. He bridged the gap between the experiential “feeling” of the monks & the rigorous theology of the Church.

Palamas was even imprisoned for a time during a civil war. But he was eventually vindicated.

In 1351, his theology was officially adopted by the Orthodox Church. To this day, the Second Sunday of Great Lent is dedicated to him. He’s the reason Eastern Orthodoxy views God not as a distant object of study. But as a personal presence to be participated in.

For centuries, Hesychasm was mainly confined to monasteries like Mount Athos. In 1782, a massive anthology called the Philokalia (“Love of the Beautiful”) was published. It collected the writings of the desert fathers & Hesychast masters from the 4th to the 15th centuries.

This book sparked a massive revival. In Russia, it was translated into Slavic (The Dobrotolyubie), fueling the “Elder” (Starets) tradition seen in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. In the 19th century, a tiny book called The Way of a Pilgrim (about a wandering Russian peasant practicing the “Jesus Prayer”) became an international sensation introducing the “Jesus Prayer” to millions of non-Orthodox Christians.

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"Supernal Triad, Deity above all essence, knowledge and goodness; Guide of Christians to Divine Wisdom; direct our path to the ultimate summit of your mystical knowledge, most incomprehensible, most luminous and most exalted, where the pure, absolute and immutable mysteries of theology are veiled in the dazzling obscurity of the secret Silence, outshining all brilliance with the intensity of their Darkness, and surcharging our blinded intellects with the utterly impalpable and invisible fairness of glories surpassing all beauty.

"Let this be my prayer; but do, dear Timothy, in the diligent exercise of mystical contemplation, leave behind the senses and the operations of the intellect, and all things sensible and intellectual, and all things in the world of being and nonbeing, that you may arise by unknowing towards the union, as far as is attainable, with it that transcends all being and all knowledge. For by the unceasing and absolute renunciation of yourself and of all things you may be borne on high, through pure and entire self-abnegation, into the superessential Radiance of the Divine Darkness. - Dionysius the Areopagite

https://esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeII/MysticalTheology.html

#MysticalTheology #DivineDarkness #Prayer #Contemplation #Apophatic

A #CradleCatholic. As a wee lad, I did all the stuff - Baptism, First Communion, Confirmation. I was born here all my life. When I was around four years old, the church kicked out my mom and, by extension, my family. An #ExcludedCatholic? I explored other practices and faiths, #meditation, #yoga, #Buddhism, and all the things. I wanted to not convert to a religion or practice that I had not been born to or wasn't otherwise ancestrally connected. A deep dive into Protestant fellowships lead to immersion into the #EarlyChurch Fathers and early #ChurchHistory. Entering the #OrthodoxChurch, I lived in several monasteries and wandered around the US like the guy in Way of a Pilgrim. I was ultimately drawn to #Theosis and the #PrayerOfTheHeart, sometimes called the #JesusPrayer. Long story short, decades later, a pandemic, and a few ends of the world, here I am. The #2024Election US has me wondering about US Christianities that support social actions and movements that contradict the teachings of Jesus. Shouldn't Christ's Gospel teachings be central?

Some of my interests:
#NewMexico #Ogapoge #SantaFe #SantaFeRiver #Water #Birds #Plants #Medicine #Hiking #Walking #NaturePhotography #Biophilia #Wilderness #Rewild #Rewilding #Regenerative #RegenerativeDesign #UniversalDesign #RegenerativeAg #RegenAg #AppropriateTechnology #Contemplation #Hesychasm #Prayer #Ancestors #Death #Dying #Grief #DeathDoula #DeathAdvocacy #Apophatic #RadicalCompassion #Compassion #SocialJustice #PublicHealth #SocialWork #EnvironmentalJustice #DisabilityRights #HealthEquity #Recovery #RecoveryPosse #Drawing #Writing #VisualThinking #WriteToThink #Journal #BulletJournal #SystemsChange #Humanrights #Inclusion #Accessability #InvisibleDisabilityRights #DisabilityVoice #RacialEquality #PublicHealth #Grief #Hospice #Humanrights #Food #Health #Fasting #Movement

I'll continue to post interest hashtags in this thread to be.

#introduction #introductions

There is a wanting of God so much that you are willing to forsake everything Godly to find him. Ponder this, the god who is beyond what is godly. Know this, That you have to leave more that you ever imagined behind.

- Meister Eckhart

#theology #mysticism #apophatic #spirituality