And I don't imagine that they were any more conscious for those people back in the 4th century than they are for us in the 5th century. I remember a news item from a psychologist about how it was just a matter of theories being made that people in Old Testament times saw apparitions and things of God, and it would take the breadth of being able to ascertain from God and make decisions. He said that there were people who were at that time on a level where their subconscious was present to them as if it were real and so they actually experienced it in a reality that was their subconscious projecting out. Okay, you can turn that around and you can say that nowadays we have made subconscious things that are actually existing in the sense that we've created a subconscious and put a ceiling on it and closed it up and put down into that realm of unreality.

[01:03]

A lot of things which really are really around us, spiritual things for instance, we can claim that. But it seems that primitive man was much more like that. It's almost like his unconscious and his external world, there's very little between the two to filter, you know, and so they were much more one. As it is, it seems, with a child. Before his ego establishes itself in between and starts to filter things out. Question from the audience. So that means that with respect to these people, if you had a particular vice back in the 5th century, like contempt for your brothers, it would be much more visible than

[02:06]

it is nowadays. But we've got something that we've erected in between. It's part of our ego, it seems, and it corresponds to our external civilization which conceals the unpleasant, you know, it conceals that which we don't want to be seen. And we've got an internal thing that corresponds to that, that keeps away from our consciousness and away from the consciousness of other people seeing it. The objectionable parts of our being, I think. Question from the audience. It's better in that way. We don't instantaneously fly into a rage. We're more likely to even not allow ourselves to believe that we're angry and just repress it and get sick of it. That's what many people kill. Question from the audience. You break down communication entirely, okay? Because if primitive man, if earlier man, ancient man, was able to express immediately

[03:13]

his passion, his anger or his contempt or pride or whatever it was, okay, at the same time his love was able to communicate itself, and at the same time he didn't have these walls of repressed passion keeping people apart, okay? Because those things solidify. And we have to build a wall to keep the thing in. The wall is almost made of our own energy. And that's what separates us. We can't be spontaneous with one another and we can't have spontaneous communion if we've had a lot of repressed stuff. And fear has to do with a lot of things. So that naturalness made it easier for man to be one with his brothers and brothers. And see, psychiatry comes up when repression comes up, really. What Freud started working on when he invented psychoanalysis was repression, was the fact that people were pushing things down and hiding them. And it was at the time of a particularly repressed society, which was the Victorian society, the 19th century, or early 20th century, before all the eruptions we've had since then, including the sexual eruption.

[04:14]

But that was when they said this kind of thing was at a maximum, because people were trying to believe in a certain kind of world, that the world was really a certain way, and all these other things just weren't allowed to come into the picture. And it's the complete contrary of what you have in the picture of a more primitive man. But we have to remember that there were also some pretty rigid society controls in those days, too. Even as you find them in African tribes and things, they have some extremely rigid constrictions of one kind or another. They seem to have another way of getting things out, a natural one. It's important a bit to bring this up, because it's throughout what we're talking about here. And it makes it seem a little unreal to us sometimes, because it's so frank and so spontaneous. We're not like that. We don't see ourselves in the same way. But it makes... You know, there's a kind of a law there, that the early things are more visible.

[05:15]

There's a kind of a law in history that the early things are more visible. The typical example is that there's a stylite stone that stood on a 30-foot pole in order to make a point. Not to make a point, but because the Holy Spirit wanted them to give that witness at that time, for that time, that high-visibility witness for that time and for succeeding generations. We wouldn't do it in the same way, but we may have the same... be trying to witness the same thing in a different way, but it won't be as visible. There seems to be a kind of a... It's different now. It's on a social level, it's horizontal. It's two different things. Religious causes. Right. Religious causes, but it's changed. It's not vertical. And vertical, if we're going to be high-profile, it seems to be singular things. Today, it tends to be somewhat more massive, to be in a more horizontal direction, towards other people, towards social injustices, rather than just pointing towards sin.

[06:18]

... Okay, well, that's a high-visibility thing. Very high-visibility, just like these two Buddhists that walked up there. And for them, it was their discipline. That's not theistic. It's kind of vertical. Everything is for mankind. ... It's true. There is a visibility, but not in the same vertical direction. Okay, our kinds of pride. So the third and fourth kinds of pride are what he calls the pride of this world and the pride of the monastic life, even though they're both obviously in the monastic life. But really, one is the pride of possessions, of having, and the other is the pride of doing. You can say that the monastic pride is the pride of having virtue, but he's talking about it as doing something, as your practice, being proud about your monastic practice. Whereas the first one, the pride of the world, even though a monk has it, it's pride in things

[07:27]

that are externally visible, and so on, and things that he can possess. They're not so interior to him, apparently, as is his monastic practice. It's not his own doing. A monastic pride is about what you do. I'm different because I'm a better monk, because I do these things. Like the Pharisee, found in the Gospel, because I fast and I give tithes. Now he talks about the two kinds of humility. There's another thing underneath this. Besides the humility with respect to your brother and the humility with respect to God, often you find the distinction between kind of natural or acquired humility, and supernatural, spiritual, infused, or mystical humility. We talked about that before when we were meeting Robert and so on. But that's important. If you read Silvanus, for instance, he said, well, you can do all you want to to acquire humility, but it's a whole different thing from when God gives you humility, supernatural, spiritual, and directed.

[08:31]

That's just a whole new vision that's given to you. Whereas our attempts at humility only change us. It's like bending a branch instead of breaking it. They only change us a little bit. And we're at the expense of a lot of people. Yeah, one is the way towards the other. It's a kind of... As long as we don't get over-stuck on even our practice of humility, or don't fall into other pitfalls, one is the way to the other. It's the indication that we want it, and somehow it disposes us for it. I think the desire for the thing, even if the way that we seek it may not be that efficient, but the desire for the thing is something that attracts it, attracts the grace of it. Also, the fact that we desire something means that we've got the seed of it somehow within us, very probably. Because it's the grace that makes us desire the grace. It's very hard to desire something, a virtue, or something supernatural, or something which is a grace, unless we have a bit of that grace in our life.

[09:33]

But we shouldn't be too careless about talking like that, because we can desire the image of something. That may not be the case. The idea of something. Okay, the first kind of humility is to hold my brother to be wiser than myself, and in all things to make him higher than myself, and simply, as the Holy Man said, to put oneself before everyone. And that's not easy. Now, this first, notice, when I talked about that other division between acquired humility and supernatural humility, this first one is already supernatural humility, or spiritual, infused humility, because you can't get to that point by your own influence. Why? Because, look, it's beyond reason, in some way. It's beyond... You can think all you want, but you can't get to that point. When you get finished thinking, you'll say, well, yes, so-and-so is better than me, in this way, but I'm better than him in four other ways, besides. And then I'm better than all these other guys, too. So, with your mind unassisted, you can't get further than that.

[10:38]

So this already comes through grace. And the second one is to attribute to God all virtuous actions. Now, these things are too literally put, in a sense. Here we get into that point again where he's putting things out very clearly in words that are much more mysterious and elusive, I think, in our hearts. These dimensions of God. And also, I think, they tend to be very much related. So if a person has that sense of being lower than all, he's also got a sense of the virtuity of God, and that nothing, no good comes from itself. About the critique of all this, we don't need to go into it now, because we'll come back to it a little bit later. Of course, we can have all kinds of questions that we ask about this. Then he gives a beautiful image of the tree. And notice that his emphasis is on the commandments. The second kind is to attribute to God all virtue. This is the perfect humility of the saints, it's generated naturally in the soul by the performance of the commandments,

[11:40]

just like a tree bearing much fruit. And this image of the tree is a beautiful one, because it fits right into the scriptural picture, in a way. We hear about the fruits of the Holy Spirit, and Jesus talks about the tree that needs to be cultivated and fertilized, and so on. He often uses that image, it seems to me. In fact, it's a very frequent scriptural image. In some way, the tree corresponds to the nature of God, in some way. We are a tree, and we are to bear fruit. And this business of the commandments. Remember, the commandments are not the Ten Commandments, and not the Old Testament. The commandments are the commandments of the Lord. Basically, the two commandments of love. But really, the whole gospel. In other words, he's talking about the teaching of Jesus, he's talking about the Word. By doing the Word, the tree bears fruit. You talk about teaching the commandments to not make very much difference between the Ten Commandments and the Old Testament. Not really. That's a continual word that's used by the spiritual writers.

[12:43]

And what they mean is all the commandments of the Lord. But the real emphasis, if you read them, when they get down to talking about what they mean, the real emphasis is on the commandments of Jesus, the teachings of the gospel. Is that the same thing about the epistles? I don't remember. When they talk about the commandments. I'd like to see a particular passage. I'm guessing. No, St. Paul's talking about the Ten Commandments at a certain point. Remember where he says all the commandments are summed up in this? Don't do any harm to your brethren, love your brethren as yourself. He's talking about the Ten Commandments, and he's doing precisely this transposition from the multiplicity of the Old Commandments to the simplicity of the New Commandments. He's doing exactly that. He's taking that step at that point. But then later writers will talk about the commandments of the commandment. More often the commandments, when you read the Eastern monks, in the sense of the commandments of the gospel.

[13:44]

Already having made that step, it's in Paul's name. That thing that we naturally want to do, we want to break anything that's broken. That's right. In other words, it's all been simplified and boiled down to something. There's no tree bearing much fruit. It's the fruit that bends the branches and lowers them down. But when there's no fruit, the branches point upwards and grow straight. Now this is an interesting thing, because it goes backwards and forwards. It's the fruit that bends the branches down. But then he says, well, there are some trees that grow straight up. But when they grow straight up, they don't bear any fruit. So you bend the branches down to make them bear fruit. So somehow the process is reversible. The stones are hung on the branches to bend them down and to give them their fruit. So it is with the soul. When it's humbled, it begins to bear fruit. And the more fruit it bears, the lower it becomes. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing. Maybe you might not like to have stones hung. There's a negativity in that too, which might bother us a bit.

[14:47]

Notice that image of the tree with the branches that shoot straight up. The branches that go straight up... And then think of the ego. Think of the way that we tend to grow unless something else comes in and changes our direction. We tend to go straight up. We tend to self-exaltation. It's like the ego shooting its suckers, its branches, up right into that heaven. That's the way we tend to go when we're unchecked. Something has to bend those branches down. Okay, then he starts telling stories. And what he's illustrating with these stories is a principle that the closer you get to God, the more you'll see for yourself as a sinner. There are a lot of them in the sayings of the Fathers to that effect. And not only the Fathers, but this is throughout spirituality.

[15:54]

Partly it's because the biographers like to collect them. So they'll be sure to get that and put it in the biography. Because it's become so traditional. You have a little trouble with St. Anthony or somebody when he says, I don't fear God anymore, I love him, and that's why I'm better than you. He said that to... who was it he said it to? He said it to another woman who maybe is discordant, I don't know. But he had evidently reached that super stratosphere. You're so humble that you don't even have to be humble anymore. I forget who it was he said that to. It was another very virtuous father. These were the two great ones and they met one another. I don't know what to make of all this. So he tells the story of... The stories often have this thing of the person who can't understand

[16:56]

how the saint can be calling himself a saint. You get the same thing with the Sophists. But here it's the Great Light of Gaza. The Great Light of Gaza is not a monk. He's a businessman. An honored man in the city. And so it's a comparative matter there. In the sight of God you're a dust. Mato was, in the sayings of the Fathers, a couple of beautiful sayings. One, you've read his reports, right? One is that when I was young I thought I was going to do something good, but now that I'm older I see that I'm never doing anything good. It's a marvelous, deliberate saying. Because he was, I mean, he was a good monk. He was one of the best. But somehow that kind of perception, that saying, liberates us from a whole way of operating, from a whole kind of false expectation. Because we're continually interior, trying to climb on top of something

[17:57]

so as to be able to get to the point where we say, I've done something, I've done something, I've done something. That saying sort of cuts right through that to the perfect point of detachment from any sense of achievement in the future. In other words, it's like saying, I'm never going to have the satisfaction of believing that I've done something, so why don't I forget it right now? Which is liberating. And at the same time, the point is, at the same time you go ahead, at the same time a person puts all those efforts, but he does it with that lack of gravitation of having cut off from his own ego, from his own striving. I think they'd say, fine, if you can do it. But they would say that you can't do that and still grow, and still go ahead, because you've got to keep your ego full of gas on you in order to move. In other words, you have to look forward to the satisfaction of achieving. So you can only do that when you have a certain grace. That's...

[19:03]

Oh sure, you can't be competing in a competitive world and arrive at that point, right? You can't, because it trains you on another direction. You have to pull out of competition. Sure, sure. The basis I have is that there are a lot of states in the United States... Yeah, that's right, I remember. Or this year I'm worse than last year. Okay. Do you see the humility of the saints and how their hearts were set on it? Now here he gets to another point. He's subtle because he moves from one point to another without letting you know. This fact that the saints would spurn honor and things like that, now that has become so much of a trope. It's become so banal because they've heard it so many times, they've retired on it. Nonetheless, if you find it quickened,

[20:08]

if you find it living, and find the nerve of this contempt for honor, get behind the platitude, it's worth it. There was Abba Pambo, remember, who said, don't glorify me in this life, I'm showing my descent. Physically. They take flight from human glory lest they be stained by it. Jesus says, you who receive the glory of men from one another how can you misuse the glory that comes from God? It's as if you have to have an appetite for glory and pride. It's sort of obscene, huh? But really it's a question of what direction we look in. If you look in one direction, you can't be looking in the other. Those who desire that kind of glory are like the naked man who always wishes to find a few rags, anything at all to cover his shame. There's a thing here. What's wrong with covering yourself with a few rags? Most people dress in order to cover themselves. There must be a point then when one doesn't need to cover oneself,

[21:14]

to conceal oneself, okay? It must be that there's a point at which there's a kind of honor which in some way belongs to us so we don't have to superimpose an honor that doesn't belong to us. Instead of this time of falsity when we have to cover ourselves to hide our shame, there must be a time of truth in which we can simply be what we are or be what is given to us without striving after an extra layer and still be honorable, okay? So it's a matter of moving from falsehood to truth, but moving from a kind of self-created or self-sought glory to the glory that comes from God, the glory that comes from the Father, the glory that comes from the Son, that's all the glory that we can ask for. It doesn't come from us. And what's more, we don't sort of... It's a whole different dynamic looking in that direction from looking towards the honor of people. Why? Because it's a matter of faith in something. Who do I believe in? What glory do I believe in?

[22:14]

Do I believe in the stuff in the world or do I believe in what comes from God? That seems to be the critical choice there, okay? What kind of glory, what kind of fulfillment am I hoping for? That which only comes from God, which is on His level, or that which comes from the world? Yes. Yes. Okay, yes.

[23:44]

Okay, that's true. Okay. That's still... What did you say? Finally. And still... Yes. That's right.

[25:04]

Which is what Jesus did. And then sometimes you grow up like this... That's what gets it out of the category of any other form of human acquisition of power. Because human power goes up and stays up as long as it can. The only thing that brings it down is death. And this is death, you see. It's death which has been gone through early in anticipation. So death can't be part of it, but it's real. The awareness of death would be something to be very close to. Somehow the person has already died, he's already accepted death, and so he's able to live without that gravity, not without that gravity itself, but egos. I wonder if you could explain that, what we've been talking about, the sense of restrained power that's in everyone, because at birth, you know,

[26:07]

you're discouraged by somebody, you don't know who you're talking to. The words that I speak, you know, it's just my way, somewhere I cannot reason, I'm just talking to myself. And the things that I say are not my own words, it's what I say in my practice. I say what my practice tells me to say. Yes, I was going to say something about that. I don't know for sure, because on one level Jesus had powers that he could have done. On another level, he only did what he knew was the Father's will at every particular moment. He wouldn't step outside of the Father's will. Take the situation in the desert. For instance, when he was tempted in the desert, he was tempted to use his powers in some way. Now, did those powers really exist? Could he have cast himself from the pinnacle of the temple and picked up without harm, as a demonstration? I don't know. It was outside the Father's will, that's for sure. And regarding the saints too, sometimes there are those powers, and powers of healing probably, that they have and they deliberately don't exert them. And that bothers us a little,

[27:10]

because why didn't he heal them? On the other hand, sometimes I think they see it's outside the Lord's will to use powers, except when somehow they're sure that God wants it, when they're sure that it's the impulse of the Holy Spirit. These powers... I don't know to what extent those powers are consistent, for one thing, in a sense. How they can do a miracle whenever they want to, or is it sometimes just that they see God wants that miracle to be done through them? This comes up in healing. I'm not sure. If we think about the same thing, they're not interested in using the power except if the Father is not willing. Except insofar as they have to. They've somehow weaned themselves from the eagerness to do it, from the excitement of the glory of it. That's right. That's exactly detachment. In other words, it's not their thing. Sure.

[28:17]

Yes. That's right. You can go either way. There's a choice there. Because there's always a... What would you call it? There's a realm in which you can use something for your own gratification. The saints don't. The people who ought to be can do it. The road forks at that point. Because you get to people who are... The people who are performing miracles and are going to be excluded from the kingdom and run the gospels. What is that thing? And there have been people who have performed miracles who have been on the wrong road. Maybe God wanted the miracles... Anyway, we're getting into the complexities of it. We'll get back to you. In any case, he couldn't do it. Because he said, you believe I can do this. Yeah, in other words, it says he couldn't perform any miracles because he didn't have much faith. It's hard to tell.

[29:26]

It's hard to tell. It seems like this is a pretty touching point and something that would be relevant today if you were to be a master. If you were to be a master instead of trying to make a deal with your father. When you became a philosopher, they call it the cities. The powers that you have in a certain state. That's the point where as you get higher up they get harder and harder to control or show humility. Those powers are so reasonable. And that's almost one of the final steps before you get over that big hurdle. I just think about some of these leaders now that we're going after. Sai Baba doesn't materialize as much. Right. Maserati. All these people that I mean they have this there's no doubt about it

[30:27]

they have some kind of power that they've acquired. They're using it. People are really open to that. People are really susceptible to it. People hold it to that kind of a as David called it spiritual spirituality material spirituality. I was wondering how a person feels about that. If it's just from grace that he shuts away from that or whatever it's on his own powers. Is the person's own willpower hard to deal with that sometimes? I can only talk about Christianity. But in this tradition it seems to me the Holy Spirit usually gives people an instinct to shy away from self-centered views of anything. And you'll notice that the miracles that are done are almost all healings they're things that have some very human they're filling some very human need.

[31:27]

And they're all part of salvation. No stunts. Hardly ever. If there's a stunt, it's to verify the faith. Like Antony of Padua would do a stunt once in a while. But that would be because he was Well things come through the mail. There's this little booklet about Antony of Padua. He had to prove the presence of the Lord in the blessed sacrament. So there was this rich unbelieving merchant in the town who said all right, let's have a showdown. I'll starve my mule for a couple of days and I'll hold a basket of wheat out there and we're going to do this in public squares where everybody can see it. You hold up the blessed sacrament. There's a stunt for you. So the mule walks up to the St. Anthony of Padua merchant and he looks down. Yeah. So there are things like that but they turn to the glory of the individual. It's hard

[32:29]

to make a rule but there's a different quality it seems to me that there's somehow the mercy of God or the truth of God and the glory of God leaps through these things in a way that it doesn't through those other stunts which somehow create an aura of glory around the individual. Which sometimes the individual just swallows up and sometimes he just revels in it. And you just don't find that in the authentic sense. But sort of enjoying the aura of the marvels and sort of lavishing this stuff on you. You don't find it unless, you may find that like Seraphim. Seraphim and Metophel up there when he sort of surrounds him with this aura of the Holy Spirit. But he does that through prayer and then he attributes it immediately to God and casts it all out to the glory of God. It's a different quality. We've got to digress. We're bound to finish this chapter.

[33:30]

So he's talking now about the ineffable quality of this humility. First of all how the saints just spurned him and Gloria the fact that you can't understand this humility from the outside you know it if you have it. And then he gives this good story of Zosim I think that was arguing with a sophist and the sophist said well look here you know you're pretty good you're an exemplary fellow. He said oh don't confuse me I tell you. That's exactly how I feel. How can you call yourself a saint? I just know it you see. And then Dorotheus goes on and once again he's got this kind of this kind of seal for reality that comes out as it did in the story of the image of the tree. He's got this feel for the thing. Which is kind of beautiful. I said to him, he tried to explain it because the old man couldn't explain how he was

[34:36]

why he felt that way. So there he's talking about father Zosim like a specimen now before him. He said father isn't like this like philosophy or medicine. When a man is studying carefully and practicing a little viability and doing the work he acquires a state of mind. Now this seems obvious but then there's a feel underneath it that's the feel of the reality. Father the sophist or a doctor is unable to say and does not know how to explain how little viability has led him to that state of mind. With a soul absorbed in a precipice. The same sort of thing is found in the work of fulfilling the commandments generates a state of humility and the process can't be explained in words. So it's not a thought happening at all. Contrary to what you were thinking from reading Dorotheus when he said well he explained he articulates pride like this. And contrary to what you would believe reading writers who say well they give you the reasons why you should consider yourself

[35:38]

well the reasons of meditation Jesus Jesus says no it's by doing it's by the work the word work is important because he brings it up later in the physical it's the work of doing the commandments that leads us to humility. Now here again we get the idea of something that pulls us all together body and soul and spirit and also something that somehow is bigger than us so it's not a question of getting ourselves around something as we do with our mind but letting something get around us we're dealing with something larger than us so it's a matter of entering into it the whole of ourselves including the body a matter of commitment forward motion it's the semitic thing once again rather than the greek thing understanding When he heard the sasmos he was glad and embraced him and said you've found the answer it's just what you said a sophist For the elders it is to say that by doing certain things we intend to cultivate when the state of true humility is generated

[36:39]

no one can find an adequate description of it but notice he says by the work of fulfilling the commandments so it's not simply by doing humble things but it's doing the Lord's will it's doing the word doing the word that we receive in spirit it's not by focusing straight after humility that's one of the problems when we try to do something humble it's usually kind of ridiculous or at least very common There's this beautiful saying up at the top of 101 now he's getting to talking about how you get to humility now this is his final subject his final aspect of it How do you acquire humility? What is it? The elder replied humility is a great and divine work the road to humility is labor bodily labor while seeking to know oneself and put oneself below everyone else and praying to God about everything this is the road to humility but humility itself is something else I forget who it is

[37:41]

that writes about the sayings of the fathers that says very often you either get two things or you get three things when you ask a question from one of the fathers sometimes you just get one sometimes you say go home and sit in your cell sometimes he says two if he says two, one's going to be for the body and one's going to be for the soul there's words that Evagrius used to say a lean diet and lots of prayer will get you to heaven here we've got three one for the body, one for the mind and one for the spirit for the body the whole organism participates in this quest for humility the body is labor bodily labor for the mind it's seeking to know oneself and put oneself below everybody else and then to pray to God about everything for the spirit and Dorotheus goes on to explain how prayer is a way to humility all of these things are not only ways but they're in general, especially this it's not only a way but it's an expression prayer is the expression of humility, it's the act of humility

[38:42]

in a sense and precisely that humility that attributes whatever we have, not to ourselves but to God and here of course we come to one of those points where we can find the lack of humility is ordinary we don't see, ask ourselves to what extent we pray for what we need to what extent we pray our life is suspended from prayer to what extent we feel the need to ask God therefore to what extent we look to Him for what we have, for what comes to us to what extent we simply let the routine provide it what's expected is a matter of course we know how to get it for ourselves and that's all a question of humility some people say you know, well, petitionary prayer doesn't really have any meaning there are all kinds of reasons for people saying that but one reason can be that they're out of touch

[39:43]

with this quality we're talking about the humility which on the other side is a quality of faith yeah yeah, and that's a tolerable attitude if it's that way, if it's really that way but the important thing is if the person has a close contact with that, there can be a real living bond between him and God then he doesn't have to ask for anything but very often it can be the other way the person can be kind of indifferent about God and not really thinking that God exists in the future this is the state of much modern thinking miracles are a possibility for a person who doesn't know God so God doesn't intervene in the human, in the world He lets it on by itself He doesn't interrupt that beautiful integrity of the world by busting in and messing with God He keeps his distance because he operates for good and bad

[40:43]

by himself yeah, it's deist it's like he winds it up like a clock I don't know there are two poles there there's the man who trusts in God and therefore asks with desperation and there's the child who feels very close to God and therefore doesn't and when Jesus said don't worry about what you're going to do your father knows even before you ask him so he takes that you move between those two that's right but he went out and prayed so I don't know how to answer that one part of it is

[41:49]

we've got two parties here part of it is part of it is the way in which you look at the relationship between material things and spiritual things if you say well I only want God so all I want to do is pray to him and everything else will come to me because God is the kingdom of heaven if I get close enough to him I have everything else that's a valid way to think if it's in harmony with your surroundings if it works I would say not just in a practical sense but in a spiritual sense in other words if you can go spiritually that way well okay for some people it's wrong to get too concerned about asking for things all the time simply because it makes them very very nervous and I don't know makes their life a turbulent life well when I ask for a practical thing to do to meet it it's God's will for you and then you can pray for

[42:50]

freedom all the time and that's asking God but that's your relationship to God the more we pray the more the prayer tends to simplify and somehow everything is implicit in prayer without it being articulated you see what I mean so that the prayer itself is like a total open mouth towards God it's like a big basket just empty and holding itself before God for everything and among within that everything is all the things we need for our daily life yes yes

[43:51]

yes yes I think so I think that you have to allow for a lot of difference between different people in this regard for some people it's all going to be very very simple and they'll pray a lot but everything is implicit in their prayer they just open their mouth towards God other people like St. Arnold said like a child that doesn't know what it needs other people are going to be inspired by the Holy Spirit to ask for things in particular and to as it were at each step to ask the next step from the Lord that kind of thing so people are led in different ways and I think both ways are wrong the important thing is the intensity of the prayer is that the relationship with God be kept taught by that dependence rather than kind of a confident self-reliant independence that wears off and the prayer is really thought of as a lifeblood, it's like breathing and then the way it's articulated is not so

[44:54]

essential that's right and of course we have occasion to do that in our liturgy in our common prayer it should be also in our hearts but there is this principle that the more prayer there is well some people like Dorothy Day she probably prays for a hundred people every day all her life ordinarily or very often in the contemplative life maybe the contemplative life is part of it, depends on how your life is made up to how much it's simple or how much it's complexified in the world involved with other single situations but for the contemplative person a person in a contemplative setting the prayer tends, the more there is, the more it tends to simplify to become one thing sure and that's good but those intentions become implicit after a while, you can think of

[45:55]

the prayer as being inside you somewhere and you try to get close to God and you're bringing the intention close to you now now, it returns to the question why physical labor induces it it's funny, it's just as if it were transcribed from a talk you put that little thing about physical labor and he forgets it this would take a moment Dorothy has tape but why physical labor does it and you know, just like the thing he said before about the commandments you can't really say, it just happens but here he tries to he theorizes about it a bit because the soul having fallen away from the commandments into disobedience as he fell into the woods was delivered as St. Gregory says that's Ignatius to love of pleasure and to the independence that fosters earth so he comes to love the satisfaction of the body

[46:56]

so it's moved from the spirit towards the flesh it's as if the soul is standing between the word and the flesh and as it turns away from the word through disobedience it turns towards the flesh the same thing you find it's important from the spirit to the flesh now the flesh is not just the body but it shows you find this in Genesis as soon as man sins you know the curse involves labor labor labor bodily labor in both cases bodily labor for the woman who has to bring forth children and the word labor and bodily labor for the man who has to get his bread from the ground the scattered weeds herbs so labor labor is the way back from sin and the thing that works is the body the spirit doesn't feel fatigue I don't think the soul feels fatigue because of this connection with the body probably so work means body

[47:58]

and so we become less fleshly less carnal we don't become less bodily but we become less carnal that is less enslaved to the flesh by bodily labor we get free from the body by bodily labor now what do I mean by free from the body we don't become detached souls in the platonic sense we don't split the soul from the body but we change the order because in our unfortunate state often the body is king the body rules the soul we all have that experience the body rules the soul and the spirit it confines the spirit so the problem is to get the order turned around so that the soul, the spirit is able to master in its own house by bodily work they've all already done 20 or 30 years of hard labor that's the real hermits some of them do not very many

[49:01]

those are the most peculiar hermits of all it's different in different traditions some of the eastern hermits would do prostrations for instance Paisios was a hermit and his thumbs were octagonal from his prostrations he was worn down to a knot like an old principal razor from his prostrations but there are other traditions in which there isn't much work at all of that kind our fathers, St. Peter Daniel and the others of Fontaverano would whack themselves with sticks and things like that they didn't do a whole lot of manual labor in the sense of productive work they did a lot of physical penance things that really surprised and disconcerned us things that caused actually a discipline for a long time you mean in their solitary life? yeah they did

[50:01]

sure you've got to remember also that the hermits are a great faster in the tradition and therefore they did a lot of heavy bodily work bodily labor for them in the orthodox tradition in the eastern tradition prostrations, inflections and similar things even fasting is a bodily labor because it afflicts the body labor for us, work for us is exertion it's muscle stuff but for them it's anything that that humbles the body that wears the body but it's very hard to do this in the wrong way well in the synodium that's the way it is the cenobitical practices are very often very heavy on work I remember it in Ireland but it depends on the community it depends on if you have a small group of monks and big monasteries and I'm not sure that that's always the the way in theory they say that these two monks often put down work in the synodium often there's plenty of

[51:03]

I think it differs sometimes it varies there's one thing I wanted to read you from Deuteronomy chapter 8 this is the way of the Israelites in the desert, remember Deuteronomy is after the Jews had just finished their 40 years in the desert and you shall remember all the way, and Moses is talking to them, this is the way it's set up, you shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you these 40 years of the wilderness that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart. Now this whole thing this whole trip to the desert was bodily work in a sense, even though they weren't making bodily affliction and this is what the fathers are talking about whether you would keep his commandments or not, once again the commandments it's the same story remember the desert of the monastic he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know that he might make you know that man does not live by blood alone but that man lives by everything that

[52:04]

proceeds out of the mouth of God know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you. This idea of humbling the soul by humbling the body, humbling the heart by humbling the body, humbling the body by affliction humbling the body by the affliction of not having to walk through the desert for a long time but also by hunger all these things are bodily work and the effect of the body on the soul the disposition to the healthy person one thing those of the sickly person another hungry person notice what he's saying there because it's not explicit what is he trying to get to in that paragraph he says the state of your body conditions the state of your soul where you are in a physical way or what you're doing or how you dress

[53:04]

affects the attitude of your heart let work humble the body and when the body is humbled the soul will be humbled with it so that it is true and so the father tells a story I've never heard that before this is another another reason okay next time maybe we can ask a few questions about the subject of morality a few objections to it because a lot of people they're bound to be unconscious and try to arrive at a more or less satisfactory view before we pass on to the next discourse about conscience and meanwhile you can read that one if you have some questions about the subject of morality it might be a good idea to note them down perhaps we won't spend as long

[54:06]

reviewing each conference as we do with this one but this is a basic subject it's kind of a question of the validity of the whole of the monastic approach okay

[54:16]

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