The Master's Ladder, Step Two

The Master's Ladder – Step by Step.

Step Two

Blessed are they the mourn: for they shall be comforted.

For many decades of my life, I could see nothing of value in this sentence. I always thought it was a truly silly saying. Firstly as grief does attract comforters, it is a normal part of the Human Condition.  Secondly on a deeper level I didn't believe it was true. I knew that it wasn't always true in a literal sense because I had witnessed people mourning in egoist isolation, wrapped in a bubble of their own pain, unreachable, untouchable, inconsolable, eyes looking and brain registering nothing but numbing pain, in the shock of loss. I was also familiar with the bitterness of grief, the mourning that can color ones life, grinding grief that lasted decades.2Co 7:10  For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, without regret; but worldly sorrow produces death. 

2Co 7:11  For behold this very thing, that you sorrowed in a godly manner, how much diligence it produced in you, even an eagerness to defend, even indignation, even fear, even longing, even zeal, even vengeance! In all things you demonstrated yourselves to be pure in this matter. 

But, I have learned something about mourning which I would like to share.  Please forgive me because it is in the context of my own life and I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would find it interesting. However I'm hoping some will find it "instructive." I received a letter of comfort following a personal loss. It shows an expert "comforter" at work and it is his work that is instructive.  I have to share my part or his instruction would not have context. The exchange of letters, teach much about the blessedness of mourning and the reality of God's comfort.

From: Bishop (-----)

To: Father Symeon Elias

November 4th, 1997

Early morning on the Hill. Milky white mist permeates the sky. The silence of yellow leaves in cold autumn light. "Mole's End" is cold but I cannot make a fire because my books are stacked in front of the fireplace rather than logs. So I drink cups of hot tea instead and warm myself.

The Indian summer of my life has passed by. It is time to take stock of things as I start my week-long holiday at 8 pm tonight. An old grief aches now like a soldier's scar in windy weather. It is a great mercy of God that out of love for us, the searing pain of grief will end in the stillness of memory. And we always have then this choice. We must decide where to take this grief, how to let God transform it, use it, shape it, and ultimately transfigure our souls. Sometimes people grasp on to their old griefs and die slow deaths. In Orthodoxy we speak of synergy which is the transforming action resulting from Man's will connected to God's grace. And so we must take our grief, we must bring our sorrow to God and say, "Lord, here am I, wretched sinner! Have mercy upon me Sweet Lord! Here is my broken heart. Take it and restore me for I have no where to go but You."

I have friends who suffer very deeply at this time. Throughout this world that God so loved that He gave His only Son to redeem it, men and women suffer, grieve, weep, despair. And I have friends who stand now at the Cross. How to help them? How to comfort them? Everything begins with us. With our own hearts. With the transfiguration of our own souls. With the death of our own selfish passions.

Have we lost someone we love as dearly as life? Have we lost a cherished dream or ambition? Has some doctor grimly told us that we have only a brief time to live? Are we being crushed by the burdens of life, of debts, of hardships? Do we live day to day with a feeling of hopelessness, of anguish, of profound loneliness?  I know people, people who are my friends, my neighbours, my colleagues, who are experiencing these earthly sorrows. And I have known them myself.

I look at my beloved Father Seraphim of Sarov. And I see the years he lived in the wilderness devoting himself to the podvigs of prayer, work, and the emptying of passions. And when his heart had been transfigured by God, when he had arrived at that special place when God revealed to him who he was and why he was born and what he was called to be. When Father Seraphim had learned to be centered in his heart and stored up great spiritual treasures within his soul, then the Holy Mother of God told the Staretz that he must open the doors of his hermitage and share the love of Christ with all who seek a way out of pain, misery, and confusion.

You see, Father, “We cannot give what we do not ourselves possess. We cannot bear the unbearable unless our hearts are filled with grace. We cannot weep tears with the sorrowing and comfort them in their pain unless we have suffered brokenness ourselves and have turned to God in our darkness and asked Him for help like a small child full of trust.” You remember these words, you wrote them to me.

Father Symeon, for you, your hermitage is your own heart, your own life and your own home. Who among us turns his home into a haven for those needing God's comfort, and those choosing to serve the least? Yet this is what your home is and what you have done. And each day you do not hurry, whether it is your prison work and other ministries, your piano work , your art work, or your music and recording. I have learned all these are also ministry and without regard to monetary necessity you move slowly through your days never hurrying for anyone, and in your "paced day" you open your heart and your home to people of all walks of life. So now you stand among your books, feeling the reality of your Indian Summer, and you look at the fireplace which is too often like mine, without a fire, and you warm yourself with cups of coffee and grieve. But in the grieving you continue to bless and you do not curse and the reality of your heart is exposed for all to see. Remember there is genuine witness in your tears.

What a wonderful day it is on the Hill. I thank my Lord for the cold because how can I appreciate the warmth of the tea or the comfort of my beloved "Mole's End"? Soon I must put on my shoes and wear my coat and prepare for the day's work. I must go and say words. I pray for this one thing. That God opens my heart to whomever will need me today. I ask Him to help me be a friend to somebody who needs a friend. In giving we receive. In loving, we are fulfilled in our existence. In praying for others, we will be blessed. In being merciful, we will be forgiven. And we will know something of God's love in all suffering humanity and the created world.

Christ is amoung us!

Bishop (_____)

+++

In the first step we talked about the idea of coming to recognize that our own answers are inadequate. That our methods and philosophy are so much "vanity" and dusty rags. We may discover this wisdom only in old age as King Solomon did and at that point be able to write books on grief and the vanity of it all.  No matter when this awakening happens, when we realize the "natural futility of life," that is the burden of mortality, we go through a process of mourning. And in that state everything we see and say is only half-true. I know it will come as a great shock, since it is "scripture" and of course "inspired" . . . still most everything Solomon said in Ecclesiastes is only half true.  He certainly painted clearly the futility of the human condition without experience of Christ and the constant presence of HIS Holy Spirit. 

You see, we spend time stuffing our hearts with the hurts and disappointments of life, real and imagined, the pride, the greed, the lust, the anger, the envy, the entropy, the hurtful advice we have given, the horrible things to which we have given our consent through the false idols we have worshiped, the provocations we have given and followed, the praise and flattery we have extended to evil, the cowardly silence we chose when others were abused, treated unjustly, mock and even killed and that greatest fault of all the myriad times we have gone to the mat defending our transgressions, justifying our actions, psychologizing our wickedness away. When we first reach to that deepest part of ourselves . . . when we become brave enough to truly take the mind and walk it down to our heart's door and enter our own heart, in the company of Jesus Christ who has been standing their incessantly knocking, it is a painful journey, we dare not take without his company, because if you have lived any time at all, you have to know, it is ugly down there. 

Jer_17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

Rev_3:20  Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.

You see, that is just IT, what Jeremiah did not know, is that the incarnation of Jesus Christ, clearing the way for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit gives us the tool to do just that, to with much pain and much effort, much repentance, and more repentance, and more repentance, come to layer by layer, object by object view the garbage stored in our hearts and clean house. If it isn't a painful journey into the heart, it is NOT real, if what we discover is not shocking, tormenting and painful, we are playing a spiritual fantasy game. However, with the recognition of our own weakness and taking on the spiritual eyes of the "rule of God" (entering the Kingdom) we grieve deeply and do not hide from it, looking at not only the state of ourselves, our own lives but the lives of those around us and how we effect them, color them, inspire or vampirize them; we also become alive to the seemingly intractable problems of mankind. Every baby aborted, every child raped or abused, every victim of the murderer's weapons, every fraud of business, the inane circus of politics, the arrogant ignorance of irrational behaviorist education, the abysmal ignorance of the so-called sciences, the folly of the deconstructionist and rational theologians and philosophers, the pride of the cultist and denominationalists, the sad carnival of the rich; these things and many more become a huge grief to us.

If we are bound by the "happiness seeking sickness of religion" the “fake it till you make it movement” “the hold on repent nothing, Jesus has saved me movement” we can NEVER reach to our hearts and what is more we never TRULY let Christ in. 

Without the knowledge how and why, reaching deep into our souls and finding this grief, this ugliness, we balk, and are likely to rationalize that we have accepted something false, some error of dogma, some heresy because of the pain it causes us. Aren't we are told again and again that we are to experience "joy" and "happiness" in Christ. Who can justify purposely opening old wounds and purging them of their content!

A famous mystic said, "Before the soul can stand in the presence of the Master, its feet must be washed in the blood of the heart." She was a Theosophists, but as a Pagan reaching to God constructed a flawed but graphic imagery of first steps of The Way. It is true that we begin our walk on The Way, not just with the "tears of remorse" for our own sins, but in shock and grief at the "state of life" at the damage Satan has done, at the scars on our heart and the scars we have placed on others, at the waste of our lives and others, at the state of the suffering world. A beautiful Galatian liturgy says,

"As we draw near to the peace of atonement, may we see the wonder of God's presence, may we see the wasting of God's people, and may we see the wounding of God's Son." 

The wonder of God's presence is an "awesome" sight -fearful in the archaic sense of the word. The wasting of God's people is a grief engendering sight which by God's Grace is held from us and we are only allowed to view it as we come to see the Wonder of God's Presence or seeing it would cause such psychic weight it would kill us. Today many live in deep bitterness looking around at the Luciferian Damage to this planet, the slaughter, the genocide, the chaos, the cynical enslavement.  Such pursuits without the proper heart conditioning is a fool's errand. 

You see, the only way such wounding of God's people may be viewed in perspective is through, the wounding of God's Son.  Standing, kneeling, prostrated at the Holy Cross, is so necessary. The sight of it cannot be by-passed with glib dismissing words like, “Well, I like to think of Jesus' Resurrection.” Most people see the resurrection as the miracle, but it is not so.

It was only natural that the Life and Love of the Lord of All Life -LIVES; - that's a no-brainer.

The miracle was the crucifixion of the Lord of Glory; who could have predicted it? Who can truly understand it? Who can reach to the ends of the POWERS it generates for US? It was against the backdrop of the wasting of God's people that this miracle of the Cross occurred, the condescension, beyond human conceptual language. When someone thinks they can explain it to you in “religious slogans” they have never gained a vision of the Cross, which is absolutely necessary to healing/salvation. It wasn't a legal action, it was not in response to theft.  It was an organic process, the birth of the First Born of All Creation. 

What can we know of mourning and comfort when we are bound by the "happiness seeking sickness of religion" of our culture? A culture that makes a manikin of a corpse, sprays it with perfume, chemically retards its decay so that everyone can say, “Doesn't he look good. Just as if he has fallen asleep.”
I have such a wicked wit I have to bite my tongue at such times to keep from saying, "Yea and ready to take a dirt nap, too."

The people speaking are the ones asleep. They know nothing of the repentance that says, “My soul, do not trust in health of body and quickly-passing beauty, for you see that the strong and the young die. How can I keep from weeping when I think of death, for I have seen my brother in his coffin without glory or beauty? What, then, am I to expect? And for what do I hope? Lord, only grant me repentance before the end.” What can we know when we fear the grief that is an absolute part of true purification and illumination? 

You see, if we truly reject the grief, it is because we lack faith to believe Jesus' words, that there is Comfort quickly coming, unexpected, REAL. No ACTING involved. 

Please let me share how I answered the Bishop's letter, using it as an opportunity for “katharsis” to after many decades pull up deep long held griefs, look at them graphically and at least confess them, even if I could not yet send them away. Those pages that were tear soaked are not part of me now, except in deep love that filled the empty spots, which letting them go caused in my heart.

To: Bishop (____)

Father Symeon Elias

Saturday December the 6th, 1997

Your Grace, Greetings in Christ.

I want to express deep gratitude for the beautiful words of comfort you expressed in a note of lovely prose about the loss of (__________). In my prison chaplaincy work especially, and even with close friends, in fact for most my life, I found it difficult to share my own grief.

(Digression: you see I know the egoist isolation, wrapped in a bubble of ones own pain, unreachable, untouchable, inconsolable, eyes looking and brain registering nothing but numbing pain, in the shock of traumatic loss. - many people do.) 

Though I did share the "fact" of my grief, I could not share the depth of the grief, it being too deep, too painful and too soon – even decades later. Having been shocked by loss very early in life, although I was very close to my father, not a tear at 13 when he reposed. It was seventeen years later before I found myself alone one day tears streaming down my cheeks. In their broken, though loving ways, friends tried to express comfort. What a burden it is to try to comfort a "comforter!" We know all the words, all the pat phrases -and in our own loss it is difficult to find meaning in our "stock" words. 

Part of the Christianity which is real is being open to the Holy Spirit of all Life. This makes us open to The Truth, and in truth we should not and cannot hide from our grief. In Truth we should not act contrary to ourselves, we must know grief's suffering significance in the healing of our psyche. One reality of truth is that if love is real, it is without repentance and though the body goes to the grave, and the soul to the comfort of the Almighty, the love remains with us, to comfort us and break us. The love of those who have reposed, is a bitter-sweetness of great riches, a price of gold paid for our benefit. It is the reality of the blood warmly flowing from our broken hearts which is the life blood of The Way. Without it, all entertaining of ideas of faith are mere speculations and suppositions, maybe even prideful fraud.  We run the risk of turning our system of belief into superstition and phantasy. 

So I choose not to lose the loving memory of my childhood friend Leslie, killed by a homosexual rapist. I remember the sun drenched days of playing "civil war" with our plastic soldiers in the sand, and on rainy days on the front porch. The loser of course had to be the Yankees, next game. We would walk to the Old  Soldier's Home and actually talk with Civil War Veterans, three of them, whose age was a century or more, but still amazingly full of stories. What a wealthy childhood it was! I remember the taste of Coca-Cola on ice his mother would serve us on a tray in the back yard in the shade. I remember every day the mile walk to kindergarten and how we felt brave, and knew that together we could face any foe. And of almost drowning deep in the storm culvert when a Summer rain storm caught us unaware. I still do not hide from the sight of Leslie in the coffin, at peace following a horrible death. I have not lost the sense of guilt wondering why it was him and not me who was kidnapped and killed.

I choose to love and remember my very own angel who graced my young days, my raven-haired cousin,  she and her sister, who doted on me as if I were their own child, then gone at seventeen, still the prettiest female this earth has known; such an exaggeration I'm sure, but that's my mind's eye. It was the same Summer of Leslie's murder, and following Barbara Ann's death my Father had the first in a series of heart attacks that seven years later would take him. I sat dazed that Autumn and Winter, seeing my robust father's complexion, pale and his face sometimes ashen.  Confronted with a new world I did not much want to know, I knew at six my childhood was over.  

Something magic happened, and though it never was again a normal childhood, (if there really is such a thing in this challenged world) the Lord used the pain to open the heart of a mystic in a young boy. Suddenly I was very aware of the beauty of this place, the dance of the trees, the symphony of light and color, the movement of the wind, the song of the birds, the gardens like paintings, the underlying harmony and dissonance, the beauty of movement and sound captured me, the aura of Life clung to the landscape and the clouds preformed just for me. In no uncertain terms, in the pain of that year the Lord opened to me the beauty of creation, and gave me a hint of the complete beauty which is to come. In the fog of that grief, I found the incongruity of living. He comforted me with the certain knowledge I have never been and will never be alone. I still see radiant beauty out of the corner of my eye often in my deep thoughts. My guardian angel, I think the constant reminder of the energy inside the samsara. 

I choose to love and remember my fiancee', killed in an auto accident the Summer of my eighteenth year. Her face has not faded, because I will not let it. Her strong Choctaw features, the tint of her skin, the sound of her speech pattern and voice, the fear and humility I felt when someone so beautiful and full of life gave herself to me. The five years of our friendship and the two years of our deep love are a pivot point, when I balance the meaning of my life, it seems even at this age it is viewed as everything before and after her. I choose to love her still, and always will. I will never let her memory grow dull.

And in that promise I choose to remember my buddies killed in Vietnam, our crazy teenage tricks, our dangerous high speed races and reckless driving, our drinking and hiring a lady of the evening to (censored for propriety sake). I choose to love and remember my best friend, Doug, killed via chain-saw. I remember the night we met, the cursing, drinking, pool games and gambling, the arm wrestling con that got us thrown out of many bars. I remember his tears and conversion and the love of Jesus Christ in his eyes, witness and sincerity, how he became a real father to his sons, and a loving husband to the wife he had regularly abused. And all the others I choose to continue to love and to remember with immediacy, my Father, Mother, Brother, Aunts, Uncles and Cousins, the babies lost. The bitter-sweetness of their memory purposely kept alive, purposely experienced, with a smile on my face and glint in my eyes, purposely spoken and brought to the eternal moment of my prayer everyday.

My best memories of (-----) are of her as young child of eight-years, as she was recovering from years of abuse at the hands of her step-father who is still in Prison for his crimes against her and her sister. I loved her, counseled her, taught her how *not* to approach everyone in a sexual manner, it was

all she knew! In God's Grace I helped her to heal.  So cut to the core was I and insulted, when I learned she suffered the further indignity of a violent death and horror of horrors a severed head. So in it all, the reality of my mal-formed-ness and lack of sanctity was all too evident in this loss. It stirred murderous rage, I choke back, because there is no place and reason to express it. For though I loved her with my core, with whom could I share the loss, too full of pride I was to openly weep the anger and bitterness of my heart. Evidenced, in that the expressions of comfort from friends were sadly very uncomfortable for me and made it even more difficult to carry on. I felt like saying, “Can't you just let this go and we get back to normal.” That had been my trick, bury my Dad the next day go to school as if nothing had happened. Bury my Mother in the early afternoon and at five o'clock I'm at symphony hall tuning for that night's performance.  "The Show Must Go On."  I know the damage I've done to myself by these procrastinations, "Sure, I will deal with it later."

It has been a time also when some who while observing my Orthodox witness, have wished to "prove" or maybe "dis-prove" the validity of my faith. I know that this is from their own questions and needs and is no part of my reality. Yet in witness it IS, so this grief has been a chance to see me at my worst, to see if I would "fake it" or fall into dissimulation and play the hypocrite. For their spiritual health and healing I would not and could not hide my grief as a fundamentalist Christian does, as so many have learned to do, at the funeral home, saying "What is there to grieve about? He's in a better place!" and the like. In my deep grief all I could say was what I know to my core, "God is in control. The Evil One is vanquished. All things come to me in the synergism of the Holy Spirit for my good. The Lord Gives and the The Lord Takes Away, Blessed Be the Name of The Lord." And I think, Your Grace, for the first time in my life I meant it, actually meant it without admixture of question, Why? Why her? Why so young? etc. 

I began from the first day to teach that one must be real, and not hide from their loss. Via the reality of the synergism of the Lord of all Life, I know that the Lord placed me in a position to live out this grief in front of people from whom I could not hide. I guess I could have really. I could have taken a leave of absence but knowing the tragedies of some of our members, that for me was not a choice. But here in the chaplaincy there was no work in which to hide.  There was no choice, I had to stand and say words. 

Although each week following the loss, I have called her name at Liturgy, those who love me, and those who observe me, needed more. I knew that I needed to share with them more. But I truly did not know how to, or where to find the strength or the vehicle to do this. However, the week of Thanksgiving your letter served as a beautiful method of sharing that grief with them, and also teaching them that the Apostolic Ministry is not static, not a cold thing passed down from generation to generation, not a thing of dusty books and rules, but alive and individually expressed via the Holy Spirit in power. I explained how in comforting at the worst times, we must remind others of the beauty and dignity of life and the commonality of grief and death, and give ourselves and others permission to continue in the Love and the Life that is Real. Your letter was the perfect vehicle for that. I saw smiles and tears in the eyes of twice convicted murderers and rapists, some of them men who will never see the outside again, and at the women's prison, broken women, mothers whose babies were born crack addicted and with AIDS, weeping sweet tears, and loving you for your words of comfort to me, and loving me for sharing them, and entertaining the possibility that there is still something about them worth loving. If I could love them and respect them enough to go through this pain of sharing my grief with them, I saw in their eyes that it truly meant something.

Your letter gave me the vehicle to extend a blessing via the Holy Spirit, which was beyond my capacity in my grief. I cannot express the true significance of the blessing your sharing has wrought. Not just to them, but to me. Well, Your Grace, I love you for the comfort you have given me and the beauty of the blessing and the hope I was able to see on the faces of these least of the least.
May God bless you with the comfort you share and fill your life with beauty and joy.

IHS

Father Symeon Elias

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We all have our griefs to face, in Him is the only comfort and it is His Joy in our core that sustains at the most grievous and bitter times. But, The Way, is IN the suffering of Human Life and NOT removed from it in some nebulous mystical fog of religiousness and frosty spirituality.

From: Bishop (____)

To: Father Symeon Elias

December 7th, 1997

Dear Symeon, Sunday afternoon is my favorite time of the week. It often takes all of Saturday to recover from the battering we can receive during the work week. And so today is a good time on the Hill. Silence reigns in Mole's End and I have deliberately not played any music choosing to allow the sounds of this morning's Divine Liturgy to linger in my head and to enjoy the silence and allow it to sink deeply into the soil of my heart. How do hyper-active Americans survive I wonder if they are constantly on the go, constantly driven by radical materialism, needing to drive out to the malls, constantly shopping for what they do not need, and did not know they wanted until they were told by the continual hypnosis of the culture, constantly running away from themselves and the emptiness within? In my ideal society people would work three days a week acquiring all the necessities they need to live comfortably and modestly. And then they would have two days to take care of errands and other domestic chores. The remaining two days would be for spiritual, artistic, and intellectual survival which include time for prayer, solitude and silence.

(Edit) Too personal to share, where he scolded me in very stern words for having held too much grief for too long. He told me I suffered the sin of melancholy and “wallowed in the sin of nostalgia.” He asked me this very pointed question, “All this grieving love you choose to hold as a museum piece of your heart, who in your present life, and in the Eternal Moment, are you robbing. Big hint . . . It is not just yourself, I dare say your wife, your children and grand children and your Lord.” Whew the words stung, but they were so true. And I knew I had been so very stupid, painting in my heart a great and beautiful mural of my personal mythology, of my favorite and sweetly bitter pain. How had its noise not block me from ever hearing God's voice, but of course it had to have! How could it not!  He gave me this one quote, which source do not know:

"It is the goal of the Hierophant to first still the heart and silence the mind. It cannot happen when a ragtime band beats discordant sounds in the heart and the mind sees a carnival stripper, or the strains of heavenly symphonic melody play and the beauty of the pines of Rome flow by in endless procession.  The person, who has thoughts – good or bad – inside his heart, is the person who from a Patristic point of view is a suffering soul. Regardless even if those thoughts are moral – even supremely moral – or whatever else they may be.  He is not living in the eternal moment, he is distracted by his own ego. In other words, according to the Fathers of the Church, whoever has not undergone catharsis of the soul and cleansed of his passions and has not reached the state of enlightenment by the Grace of the Holy Spirit, is a suffering soul."

Well, certainly that label fit.  I immediately though, "the slap of a righteous man is a kindness." 

I've also edited the friendly banter he added in beautiful prose to soften the blow of his very blunt reprimand. 

He continued:

Dear Symeon, he IS here and in your heart. It has to be, for you at this time of deep grief to be concerned with the effect your grief may have on others. This is a sure sign of your priestly heart and the humility to live out your vocation. In reality this is what we are called to do, to make our life a Sacrament of Living, in which others find The Way. Grieve On In Joy, my friend, so that all with eyes to see, may see Life in the ashes! This is my "sage" advice. Is it any wonder that St. Ignatius used the image of the phoenix to picture the Life of the Suffering Servant? Turning the gruesome into inspiration, and loss into riches, and suffering into gain, this is the reality of the Life engendered by the Lord of All Life and you are living it.

Christ is amoung us!

Bishop (____)

The comfort comes in the experience of loss, the lessons we gain. Tears of remorse are met with unexpected and sometimes tough words of mercy. How does a soul find real healing without a spiritual father and confessor?  The isolation of the human condition is MOST CERTAINLY NOT the Path of Christian Growth. The role of the arrogant "individual spiritualist" hold no place in Christianity for even those who choose a hermitage.  

Blessed are those who face death, for you shall have pure and good life.--Buddha
I faced a lot of death very early and it did not stop me from terrible sins or racking up a dumpster load of garbage and deep scars in my heart.

Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. -The Master
I know this to be very true, if we allow ourselves to be cracked open and not allow Satan to construct layers of scars, seducing us into nostalgic imagination, sucking the life force from THIS MOMENT.

The mind's journey into the human heart is so that we may create in ourselves a “heart-mind” holding wisdom and intelligence greater than what we hold in our brains, outside of the confines of the straight-jacket of rationalism, or the other side of the coin the fantasies of imagination. The "heart-mind" (what the ancient fathers and Saint Paul named the NOUS) is then where the innate knowledge by the Holy Spirit informs us of HIS WILL, of what is life engendering and what is death engendering; Where the Holy Spirit exposes to us our own attitudes and actions and the attitudes and actions others, and judges them by that same rule.  It is just silly but I hear the Star Trek voice over, saying, “Going where no man has ever gone before.” The analogy is not at all far fetched since the heart contains all the dangers of everything alien to life, killing toxins which have to be identified, named, examined, repented of, and expunged, so that what is worthy and virtuous, that is LIFE ENGENDERING, may fill the void. 

In the introduction to this series entitled: "Gnostic Creep into Protestant Thought" where I spoke of The Apostle Paul becoming so full of God's uncreated energy that the rags laden with his sweat became instruments of healing enlightenment and deliverance from evil;  Realize that state witnessed in him, did not come as some magic "gift of the Holy Spirit" but the rigorous ascetic work to which Paul was willing to not just "passively submit" but ACTIVELY practice, empower by the Holy Spirit to do so for purpose.  When you begin to grasp the "organic reality" of what I am describing to you here about very, very deep healing/salvation, the emptiness of the "self-help books" like "A Purpose Driven Life" become exposed. 

 Psa_84:4  Blessed are they that dwell in thy house: they will be still praising thee. Selah. 

The Master's Ladder - Step One

The Master's Ladder – Step by Step.

The introduction to the Sermon on the Mount commonly called the Beatitudes was always an enigma to me. Growing up I heard many sermons on the subject, saw people scold others using this Beatitude or that, as if they were “commandments.”  It just did not make sense to me.  All of it left me feeling like there was something there, after all it was Jesus speaking, but no one I knew had the slightest idea what Jesus actually meant.  I heard many guesses and none of them rang true. 

It was so curious to me, that when I became a Methodist Minister, I started collecting all the “Beatitudes” I found in the bible and books of other faiths.  It was interesting and I'm going to include it as an addendum to this short booklet and call it "Broken Ladders." There is wisdom there, but the story is incomplete. The tradition of teaching "Blessed is the man that . . . " has a history centuries older than the Beatitudes in the New Testament. 

I had run across the concepts of repentance/purification, 
enlightenment/theophany, 
sanctification/theosis 
or as the Greeks call it, Deification, 
which was a very frightening word to me.  This was the Orthodox Christian process of healing.  And truthfully it was the first time any “salvation” theology made any sense to me. It was earthy, talking about real healing here and now, not some “miracles of divine healing magic” or waiting to get to heaven,  but deep psychological healing which included ascetic discipline, that tied the mind and body together;  Something I had discovered a shadow of in eastern religions but not really in any form of Western Christianity; certainly not in Methodism, which by the 20th century was nothing more than Christianized Masonism.  

I stopped into an Orthodox Church and heard them singing the Beatitudes. While listening intently to the singing, enjoying the subtle harmonies as much as the words, I realized I was absently looking at an IKON of Jacob's Ladder, which I had just learned the Orthodox called The Ladder of Divine Ascent.  It dawned on me in that second that the Beatitudes were placed in order by Matthew, and not randomly selected, because they were instructive of the true steps of SOZO – that is HEALING/SALVATION.  (repentance/purification, 
enlightenment/theophany, 
sanctification/theosis/ 
and there is that frightening word, Deification. 

The insight to me was blinding, and beyond my vocabulary.  I KNEW, but was unable to speak it to describe it.  I began my search for the words to say what I already knew.  It took sometime. 

The Beatitudes begin with Mystical understanding – what a surprise! Mystical understanding isn't bad you see, when it is the Holy Spirit teaching wisdom and not some compromise to Satan teaching theology to those he fears may slip from his grasp. 

Seeing the multitudes, Jesus went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him: 

Great Oriental Teachers sat to teach. 
(EIDO - SEEING) the crowd, means more than seeing an object, it means discernment, perceiving more than the eyes can see. Jesus realized that there were many in the crowd that needed to be taught and were ready to be taught.

This was not a usual crowd that followed Jesus. Most people came to see the signs, to gain healing and relief from suffering. Some came to receive relief from guilt. This day, as Mathew explains in his opening, this crowd wanted to hear what Jesus had to say. 

The Greek literally says that Jesus walked (EIS = INTO) a (OROS =mountain). That is pretty strange language until you learn that it is a phrase used to connote taking on a huge task. The word mountain used by the Mystics meant a great problem or obstacle. So here is a double meaning. Jesus stepped into a mountain, taking on a huge task. This is mocked by Francis Bacon the “inventor” of the New World Order, when he penned the line, "If the mountain won't come to Muhammad then Muhammad must go to the mountain." It has no antecedent in Mohammedianism.

(A Digression - Now do you have a better understanding of what Jesus meant when he said that tiny, tiny faith could move mountains.)

When he was set He opened his mouth and taught them saying. 
This word (KATHIZO-set) has a double meaning also, that of sitting and also of being settled for a task. 
The word (STOMA = mouth) is a real surprise. It means, simply put, just the physical, animal face. It does not mean the heart, the soul, the mind or any of the expressions we use to mean the deeper or deepest parts of someone. We “share our souls” and “expose our hearts”.  The deep meaning the Sermon on the Mount holds, was less than nothing to the Wisdom Teacher Jesus, less than potty training.  He did not have to open his (nous- heart/mind) or (psychae-soul) or (kardia-heart) or his (pneuma-spirit). The teaching that has puzzled us for two millennia, did not begin to touch the depth of his understanding. 

Step One 

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

Feeling poorly, are we?  To some this means, a person in poor spirits, grumpy, or depressed. So it appears to us that this sentence means; if you are grumpy or depressed you can claim heaven as your property. 
Wait!  
This is so strange and  silly it must mean more. 
We have all met the permanent victims, the professional and confessionally depressed, those slogging down the road of perpetual disappointment to their heavenly reward.
“Master, there has to be some other meaning here!”  

The phone rang, and it was a friend asking me about a certain piano he was rebuilding. He had run into a problem and it looked like after many, many hours of tedious work he needed to take it apart and redo a procedure the way I had suggested weeks prior, when I consulted.  He was asking now for labor, not advice, since his mistake opened him to breach of contract lawsuit. 

I hung up wondering why Brent had not taken the extra four or five hours of labor, as I suggested, that seemed objectively obvious to me. Instead his nearly thirty hours was wasted and he had it all and more to do again. I always found it uncomfortable talking to him.  He had a habit of asking my time and advice only to ignore it.  Most times he would dismiss my advice immediately and tell me why I was wrong, with the air of a teacher dismissing a wrong answer.  I always wondered why he bothered, why he engaged in what I had come to realize was his ritual of self-assurance.  The Master said “Brent, is rich in spirit.”  

It hit me like electric shock; How being poor in spirit is the first step on the Path of TRUE Repentance, Enlightenment and Theosis!  A person who is poor in spirit has realized the poverty of his own rational thinking and personal mythology. Ideas of history, philosophy, science, piety, religion, culture, ideas gained in schools of education, all the theories of material being, even the so-called wisdom of common sense, the advice of parents, these are poverty, in the Sacred-Mystical sense. We must understand that a hierophant (one versed in sacred and spiritual understanding) realizes that his highest understanding is almost total ignorance, in the presence of Truth, the Person, The Master, Our Lord and Physician, Jesus Christ. That was the first time it came into focus, what was so very different about the teachings of Dr James A Keillor, over the teaching of the others of my childhood. He constantly talked about Jesus the Physician and never emphasized “divine healing.”  - You will understand the significance of this last sentence later. 

Richness of spirit on the other hand cannot listen.
It is so full and complete it cannot cannot absorb anything new. 
Richness of spirit is pride and arrogance, self-assurance, and certainty.  
It is most often the state of youth.  “He will not listen. What can I say?” 

Until poverty of spirit is approached by suffering or disappointment or on some rare instances by purposeful humble inquiry, nothing else may happen. 

The Church Teaches, from the beginning, although it used different words, that such a person is a psychopath, and it is not a stretch.  We are not talking about what the fake sadistic science of modern psychology calls a psychopath, some creature that even the ordinary psychopaths of the culture find odd.  No, rather psycho – path, is a transliteration of psyche - pathos, that is a soul - suffering. 

How is it that what we call “normalcy” in this culture is a psychopathic state? 
(Romans 1:18For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all the iniquity and wickedness of men who unjustly suppress the truth; Because that which may be known of God is manifested to them, for God has revealed it to them. For, from the very creation of the world, the invisible things of God have been clearly seen and understood by his creations, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse. For they knew God and did not glorify Him and give thanks to him as God, but became vain in their imaginations and their hearts were darkened so that they could not understand. And while they thought within themselves that they were wise, they became fools.)
All of life is based on (to use Buddha's term) the "something invisible" in samsara. 
The samsara the Buddhist will tell you is the lively world around us of animation and beauty, yet a world compromised to sin, the world of death and decay.
Samsara is the realization of material being as both Beneficence, Harmony, Beauty but also, Malevolence, Disorder, and Ugliness. 

In the common human state of psycho-pathos, we struggle to avoid it, to understand it and in some cases we try to conquer it by utopian or other psychopathic means. 

The attractive illusions of false knowledge, and worse evil knowledge that defiles. 

Self-delusion  comes in many models, shapes and forms. The examples of talented, gifted, wealthy people living lives of foolishness and misery are myriad in our culture. Lives of every possible creature comfort most often do not bring peace and happiness. Despite possessing a suffering soul, the ego rebels at the idea that it really doesn't understand things as they are. It will cling to ideas of natural philosophy, be conceited in false knowledge, claim reality for fantasy.  The depth of the psychosis is very deep and it runs in ALL the culture and EVERY religion.  This blocks us from true models of reality, wherein healing may be discovered. It is spiritual blindness, which is the nascence or ignorant (as in “IGNOR -ance”) of the Physician Jesus Christ, "truth Who is The Person, Jesus Christ." 

Sadly most Christian religionists will say Amen to that last sentence without the slightest comprehension AS YET, what I mean.  "After all" they will say, "is not the crux of it, knowing Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior?" Yet knowing your doctor exists, is in a sense your "health savior" does not cure your cancer. Holding social conversations with him, accomplishes nothing. Even holding consultation sessions with him cannot produce health. He may even give you very good advice, but your wealth of spirit will not absorb it.  Remember my friend Brent.  He continually asked advice because he suffered fear. The exercise was to assure himself he was already doing that right thing.  Anything that challenged that was immediately rejected. 

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have Mercy on Me, a Sinner.” 

God's reality (true reality) includes phenomenal nature, and phenomenal nature is a good thing.  It is the "the primary Grace of 'Being."' 
But God's reality (truth) quickly steps outside and beyond phenomenal nature.
So then, if you hold your ideas, partial knowledge of phenomenal nature as ultimate truth, then you are unable to see anything past that flawed and insignificant knowledge. You may know everything humankind has learned of phenomenal nature and be a wealth of knowledge and spirit, but still a Psychopath – a suffering soul, devoid of the reality of True Healing and True Joy, which is the presence of God, in Therapeutic form, as Physician more than in name only. That presence BLOCKED by your own "wealth of spirit." 

To be poor in spirit, means to entertain the idea that your own knowledge is imperfect, partial and sometimes just simply wrong. 
It is also acknowledging that all of man's knowledge is only partial. 
If you can then in humility, when confronted with "greater truth" admit that you were wrong, totally or partially ignorant, even deluded into an opposite or false view, then you are recognizing the poverty of your own spirit. It is that humble poverty of spirit that creates the ground upon which seeds of truth can be planted and grow to maturity.

Jesus said, “Suffer little Children to come unto me, for such is the Kingdom of Heaven.”  And again, “Unless you become as a little child, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”   What is a child but a blank slate ready to learn, ready to hear truth, ready to grow, in fact ANXIOUS to grow, impatient to grow, ever ready to ask questions; rarely ready to express an opinion. Ask a child a question and the most common answer is, "I don't know." 

This idea is affirmed on one level, by the "pseudo-science" of psychology/psychiatry. They call actively clinging to a false paradigm "resistance." This idea is so simple it is profound. If an individual can give up their resistance to recognizing what is false and accept the truth of any situation, they are cured, or would be.  In Secular Psychology this almost never happens. If mental illness is not truly physically-based, via injury, toxicity or disease, it could be cured simply by giving up resistance and hearing and accepting the truth of any situation. Yet, the psychologists' offices are full to overflowing with people who want to talk endlessly "around" and never truly confront the truth. In fact many so-called therapists sustain their practices by teaching people how to skillfully live WITH their false paradigm, instead of confronting their false paradigm. If the therapist is honest, the patient's  “richness of spirit” stands in their way of healing. If the therapist is dishonest he has a client for life. Most mentally ill people feel offended that they cannot conform the world to their paradigm. “Why can't they . . . . “  "It ought to be . . . " are the most common opening words of psychopaths.  

As "the Human Race" we hold a similar view when asked to face the obvious magical mystery of our own Cognition. Here we are seeing and thinking and we truly do not have the slightest idea, HOW.  We try with all our waking effort to mold reality into our idea of it, we complain and experience disappointment and disillusion when we fail.  When we do wildly succeed at forming reality into our paradigm we cannot endure the “happiness” of our success, and our chances of   suicide are multiplied exponentially. Ask any lottery winner. All around us we are faced with the reminders and anomalies, the things that just won't fit the model of our little reality and we live in resistance and denial. We are psyche – pathos .. . Suffering Souls.  

What is gained by the recognition of one's spiritual poverty? 
Jesus said the kingdom of heaven i.e., the reign of God in the Center of oneself -the heart.

"Don't look to the sky or the sea for the kingdom, it is inside of you and around you." 

In the pain of life, lingering grief, grinding anxiety, numbing boredom, frantic activity, its loneliness, and our inability to make it make sense, we sometimes recognize the poverty of our reasoning and truly cry out from the depths of our beings (in spirit and truth) to our God for help.  And in that instance of sincere seeking we become aware that we are spiritual beings. For the atheist, agnostic, strict naturalist and radical materialist this is a huge step. 

When we cry out we turned God-ward. In that act we "connect with reality-truth which is a person." We turn inward trying to understand how we got to be as we are and in the process of coming to know ourselves, we come to meet and love God. I explained this process in a paper, entitled "To Know God Is To Love Him." 

THIS is why Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven." 
In spiritual poverty we search for what we lack and discover the riches of the Kingdom. We can style this many ways, but this first step corresponds to “conversion”  - that is turning around – which is what conversion means; turning and facing God. "I don't know what to do God, You Do, I'm listening."   
It has an element of repentance, since to get here we have to repent of at least the things that blocked us from making this first step.

To be continued - Step Two.

Gnostic Creep into Protestant Thought

Resurrecting the Body, Resurrecting the World.

Improper use of; 
Unfortunate experience of; 
Wrongful understanding of; 
material experience and the nature of matter itself, 
causes damage to character and scars upon the psyche/soul, which is not healed by simple Christian conversion.  But which can become healed in time, through spiritual discipline via the synergistic work of the Holy Spirit creating wisdom, knowledge and understanding.

(1) What is improper use of material experience?
All substance abuse falls into this category. All sexual idolatry falls into this category, where people are seen as object of selfish and fleeting pleasure, and not taken in the fullness of their humanity, which is in the Image of God.  Improper use of material experience includes every fetish, every idolatry, every excess of lust, perversions, gluttony, obsessions and compulsions, envy, and greed.  

(2) What is unfortunate experience of the material world?
Every assault upon the human body and psyche, accidental injury, wounds of war and crime, rape, physical and mental enslavement, hunger, deprivation, want, extreme material poverty, and disease. 

(3)  What is the wrongful understanding of material experience? 
The irrational FEAR that matter is evil. And thus, the fear of good material experience, fear of matter itself like the Gnostics denouncing matter and this earth as evil, this life and its blessings and cursings as just a sort of dream you have to get through to get to heaven, worthless "in toto," except for the hope of blessed release from this illusion of suffering.  The Gnostics went so far as to view the material world as the construction of a rebellious god, who created matter as an attack upon the real God, who is purely spiritual and would NEVER stoop to any sort of creation of matter, much less stoop to experience of and BONDING WITH, MATTER as of course Jesus Christ did by his incarnation.

How do these three things distort character? 
As Human Beings we are both material and spiritual and there will never come a time this is not so.  If one attempts to live strictly on a material plane, one becomes distorted making an idol of matter, seeking from matter and material experience what it is incapable of producing. The soul starves as the body tries to feed it, as the soul wastes toward death so does the body, worn from trying to save its own soul, or maybe trying just to dull pain of the experience as the soul perishes in poverty.  It matters not if the person has enormous material wealth or is poor, the person unconnected to the Life Engendering Spirit of God perishes in great poverty.  

If one rejects the material world, and tries to live strictly on the “spiritual plane,” without the proper comprehension of the value, worth and blessing of material existence, the goodness of the earth itself, it creates a distorted image of their own humanity.  It turns the heart to stone, makes the personality brittle, it makes that person less human, incapable of the experience of all the healthy range of human emotions, it dulls the beauty of everything it sees, it causes a devaluation of ALL LIVING THINGS, plants, animals, pets, people.  The earth itself becomes barren of any good, follows isolation and frozen emotions, wrapped in pride and bitterness and constant boiling sometimes demonic boring anger which sometimes passes for “spiritual discipline” and existence on a higher plane. ( I know I'm saved, to hell with the rest of them.) The life is ruined of all promise, potential is destroyed, talents lost, time WASTED. 

This is the realm of brittle religionism, where discovery of anything in depth is rejected, learning ceases, one is guided by “verses” used as sophism, each slogan confirming the self-satisfied delusion of “spiritual wealth” and the worthy guarantee of heaven. Just pacing time with the worthless sinners here, until one can get to heaven. 

True Christianity which is True Healing and cannot be anything other, is not matter rejecting. Quite the contrary it is the means by which all matter will be renewed, it is the means by which at the present time Christ dwells with us, physically incarnated into this world, present in our BODIES.  

“1Co_6:19  Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?” 

Our Christian God deigns to condescend and dwell in the very matter he has created. In that matter in his creative energies he is “everywhere present and fills all thing, the spirit of blessing and giver of life.” No one single eye sees, or mind thinks, without the cognition he the Living Word gives.
Joh 1:9  That was the true Light, which enlightens every man that cometh into the world. 

The creative energy of GOD is present in every sub-atomic particle, every atom, every molecule, coursing existence into being from his abode outside of being.  For those who have met Jesus Christ, if INDEED they have truly met him, he abides in them in his uncreated energies, renewing our minds, feeding our souls, so our souls can feed our bodies.  Just as there is not a single molecule of the human material frame not imbued with the energy of the soul, there is not a monad of the Christian's human frame that should not be inhabited by the uncreated energies of God, made possible by Christ's incarnation and sacrifice. Of which we may literally feed, in Thanksgiving (Eucharist). 

If you think this thought far fetched and unlikely, to wit:

Speaking of Saint Paul:
Act 19:7  Now all the men were about twelve. 
Act 19:8  And he entered into the synagogue and spoke boldly for three months, debating and persuading the things concerning of the kingdom of God. 
Act 19:9  But when some became hardened and disbelieving, speaking evil against the Way before the multitude, he withdrew from them and separated the disciples, each day debating in the school of a certain Tyrannus. 
Act 19:10  Now this took place for two years, so that all who were dwelling in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks. 
Act 19:11  And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, 
Act 19:12  so that even handkerchiefs or aprons from his skin were brought to those who were sick, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out from them. 

Can you not see, that this tells that every atom of the Apostle Paul's Body was so filled with the uncreated energy of God, that the rags with which he wiped his sweat were capable of producing mighty healing wonders and deliverance from evil? 

Our object as Christians is not to "hold on here" so that we may get to some floaty place which we hold in our collective imagination, but to become HEALED, and so imbued with LIFE, with the uncreated, life generating energy of God that our very sweat becomes Life Creating.  Why? So that we become LIKE HIM, like the Divine Human Person Jesus Christ, able to stand in his presence with the shield of his grace and mercy, removed, seeing him in His Glory Face to Face. 

1Jn_3:2  Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is. 

Those not prepared will also stand in his presence, and that Divine Energy, that Glory, that Consuming Fire, will be to them the reality of hell. 

2Co_13:4  For although He was crucified in weakness, yet He lives by the power of God. For we are weak in Him, yet we shall live with Him by the power of God in us.

Are you beginning to understand that heaven is not our goal, but to become imbued with HIS LIFE is?   This life is NOT about pacing time till we get there, or enduring till we get THEIR, but TRUE HEALING REDEMPTION IN HIM, Here and NOW bringing HIS power, His reality, to this World HERE and NOW.  Not through campaigns of religions and programs of evangelism, but for REAL in REALITY, in MATERIAL BEING, in our OWN PERSONS, HERE AND NOW.  

He is our healing/salvation and WE become a healing presence HERE and NOW, IN HIM. 

Eph 1:7  In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace 
Eph 1:8  which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and insight, 
Eph 1:9  having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, 
Eph 1:10  for an administration of the fullness of the times, He might bring together all things in Christ, those in heaven and those on the earth--In Him. 

Read that again, "For an administration of the fullness of times, He might bring together all things in Christ, those in heaven and those on the earth-- In Him.

Salvation is not the “saving of souls” and escaping evil matter with our soul in tact to the next life, that is the LEAST form of rescue.  True Salvation is Purification, Enlightenment and finally Deification also called Sanctification and Glorification, the HEALING of the complete and whole person, Spirit/Mind, Soul/Body.  Some bodies of saints have become so imbued with God's uncreated energy so Sanctified, that when the Soul slept, the corpse without embalming was preserved in part or whole, permanently, for a witness of the truth of sanctification, of Sainthood, that even the FLESH of those who have become truly healed, remains for centuries in a state, not living, not decayed to dust, but in a state the Church calls "uncorrupted."  

Only those Christians, so damaged in CHARACTER by the misuse of Material being, that they cannot battle their damaged Character, and are enslaved to passions, so much so that nothing but hellish suffering may awaken their resolve to God, Saint Paul says, “deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, in order that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.”

Those who think this sort of man and those people who have in this life become a living presence of Jesus Christ Himself, will occupy the same places, live in the same manner with total equality in the next life are deluding themselves.  What we DO, in this life, how we, “inherit this earth” by Christ's power, how we first take possession of our own material being, and subdue our passions and participate in the healing of our deformed character, makes a difference and very much governs what the next life will be. 

There is a companion piece coming, explaining The Way, The Path, The Discipline of the spiritual life, as created and outlined by Jesus at the Sermon on the Mount. 

Archpriest Symeon Elias.

Mark Passio - Well Worth The Time

Natural Law as the teaching of "Luciferianism" i.e., Enlightenment.  


Despite this fellow's attack on "all religions as false and evil" the greater portion of what he says about natural law is "correct." However, taken outside the understanding of the Holy Trinity Passio's exercise, to "free humanity from the hypnosis of the dark occultists," he merely teaches the "religion" of Anarchy. And yes, Anarchy is a religion as taught by Passio, we could further say, using his definition and how he teaches Anarchy, that he has "occulted it", and not in a good way. (more on this later)

However, even Passio's teaching of "Natural Law" is "theologizing" even though he calls it "a science, and not religion at all, not at all."

I explain in my article written many years ago, "The Three Paths of Theology/Spirituality" "one is a theologian whether one intends to theologize or not."  Passio is an excellent "second path" theologian.

(LINK: The Three Paths of Theology/Spirituality) 

That Passio is "theologizing" and teaching a "religion" is self-evident if we look at some of the historic definitions of the concept of religion. We will discover that Passio's "philosophy of Natural Law" and his faulty conclusion of "Anarchy" actually fits three different definitions of religion.

In "Human Personality" (London 1903) Dr Leuba defines "religion" as, "The sane and normal response of the human spirit to all that we know of cosmic law." I think Passio would love this definition and accept it as true, and would see it even more true if we altered the phrase "normal response" with "natural response" or "desired response."  He would claim however that Christianity does not provide this and does not teach it. He is wrong at least as it applies to ancient and Orthodox Christianity.

Frazer in, "The Golden Bough," a book I'm sure Passio is MORE than familiar with, defines religion saying, "By religion, then, I understand a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of Nature and of human life." Again, Passio explains in detail why the Quality of human life is controlled by coming into "harmony" with the "powers superior to man" as exhibited in the "laws of nature."

James Martineau, in his "A Study of Religion" states that religion is "the belief in an everliving (sic) God, that is, in a Divine Mind and Will ruling the Universe and holding moral relations with mankind."
Passio certainly teaches this in his very narrow but very true definition of the morality demanded by Natural Law and "the Creator of the Universe."

Dr. McTaggart defined religion in his "Some Dogmas of Religion" as, "Religion is clearly a state of mind . . . It seems to me that it may best be described as an emotion resting on a conviction of harmony between ourselves and the universe at large."

Passio also explained in his own "testimony" how he views this as the central theme and reality he had achieved = i.e. his own "balance" between the left and right half functions of his brain, placing him in harmony with the Universe.

Passio's very well thought out presentation so then, describes his religion as (1) a mode of behavior, (2) an intellectual belief or opinion (learning to balance the right and left half of the brain, etc) and (3) a system of feelings - "learning to care."

So far so good. However then Passio goes off the rails promulgating his "occult" which is, a lower religion of Anarchy. (Third Video in the series). He begins by first giving a totally false etymology for the word Anarchy. He defines it etymologically as an-arkon - that is without ruler.  How very convenient for him, but it takes some verbal gymnastics and inNORance of facts to come to his conclusion. 

Actually Anarchy is simply an-archy, = without principle. The very first words of Genesis in the earliest Greek bible, extant copies hundreds of years older than extant copies of the Hebrew scripture, are, Ἐν ἀρχῇ - en-archy - it means "in the first principle", God Created. It is usually translated "in the beginning", however its primary meaning is "in the first principle." This interpretation is confirmed when the Greek was translated into Latin as "in principio". Both archy and principio can be used to have meaning as an "analogy of time." The Hebrew also conveys the meaning of "principle" in the word used, ראשׁית = ray-sheeth, which holds the meaning of the first, in time, in order or rank, first and principle.

Greek "AN" meaning "without," combined with "archy" as in anarchy clearly means WITHOUT PRINCIPLE, NOT WITHOUT RULER as Passio suggests.

So the masterful teaching of natural law, by Passio is the preamble for his "occulted religion" where he HIDES the meaning of Anarchy, while suggesting that Natural Law "suggests it" in fact demands it as the only form of LIBERTY and Freedom. He hides the meaning of Anarchy - without principle, and offers that it really means, "the moral adherence to natural law" having defined that "moral adherence" simply in New Age terms or better in terms of Theosophy. What he then takes great effort to teach is ultimately rejection of the Laws of God (Natural Law and Moral Law) and a rejections of ALL principle, except in this case of the principles as held and understood by the so-called "ancient pagans of Light" i.e., the good "Luciferians" for whom Passio is their evangelist.

While I'm sure that Passio could give many examples of abuses at the hands of every system of Government, I'm sure that he would reject the idea that there could be "just governance."  In truth there is no "just governance" so long as man is evil, governance will remain, only in degrees, more just or less just.  This is the story of all history. Even the pre-king "families" where mere judges adjudicated disputes, there were "un-just judges." And prior to the extended families called tribes, there were Patriarchs, who "ruled" families, and justice was as variable in quality as his heart was mutable.

What Passio has not offered is a single instance, a single situation where Anarchy was NOT chaos and death.  Even though he argues passionately that it is not. But history records, The Jacobin Anarchists, the Japanese Anarchists in China, the killing fields of Anarchy in Cambodia.  This is the history and I would challenge him to present a positive example.  He will be left to give examples of people in dire circumstances, who because of isolated location are forced to depend upon one another, and cooperate, etc.  This is not anarchy, because they did not arrive in the situation from a vacuum without principles.  Even the most isolated and primitive indigenous peoples, subsisting in "tribes" have strong principles and penalties for infractions. There are no primitive anarchist tribes, they all have a system of governance.

Let me suggest that were every people on earth conversant with natural law, and not prone to sin, man would need no further governance.  But the second that mankind bought the first lie, "today you will be as God" governance has been necessary, for the survival of the human species.

However, at present we are in the control, endangered by insane and genocidal governance, and the reason I suggest that ANYONE and EVERYONE view Mr Passio's lecture on Natural Law, is because he gives a very clear and reasonable presentation of "unalienable rights."  Americans talk about "unalienable rights" and immediately start talking about Constitutional Nostalgia, NOT realizing that these unalienable natural rights have NOTHING to do with paper and ink, are immutable and unalterable by any body of men, nor may they be protected, except by the muscular exercise of the same.  Just as a man's heart can fail him, and his muscles atrophy from disuse, so may a man's natural rights be surrendered to evil, decimated by his own IN ACTION.

It is a great insight that Passio shares, that RIGHTS are not concepts, but actions. And that is true, except he argues himself against it being "absolutely true." Since he argues rightly, that no action can occur without first being formed as a thought, so also no RIGHT ACTION can be initiated without conscious or unconscious knowledge of the same. Knowing ones unalienable rights and acting upon them cannot be separate events, since one informs the other. 

If you read my comments above, you will have a clear idea why this following debate was silly from the start.  God help the man who had this lawyer to defend him. This is a debate on the "viability" of Anarchy and it is clearly a "setup" to make Anarchy seem, reasoned and reasonable.