Although mankind speaks of different kinds of “spiritual” energies, here I will speak only of one – which I call “spiritual love” (leaving aside the question of whether there is any other kind of love), including both our own and the “love of the Creator” transmitted to us and through us “from above” by means of active “prayer.”
The “energies” animating our presence include both this “spiritual energy,” which I call “blue,” and the “carnal energy” of the “flesh,” which I call “black.” They manifest in each of us in different proportions, changing depending on the moment.
The “blue” has the power to transform the “black,” and this is the fundamental “mechanism” both of the “spiritual transformation” of the “flesh” and of the “work of the people” to achieve “unity in Christ.”
Saint Gregory Palamas in his Triads in Defense of Holy Hesychasm, Part C, “The Hesychastic Method of Prayer and the Transfiguration of the Body,” describes this process:
“As for that which takes place in the body, but comes from the soul full of spiritual joy, it is a spiritual reality, although it operates in the body. When the pleasure which comes from the body enters the mind, it imparts to the latter a bodily aspect, without the body itself being in any way improved by this intercourse with the superior reality, but rather imparting to the mind an inferior quality, and this is why the whole man is called ‘flesh,’ as it was said of those who were overcome by divine wrath: ‘My Spirit shall not dwell in them, because they are flesh’ (Genesis 6:3). On the contrary, the spiritual joy which comes from the mind into the body is in no way corrupted by intercourse with the body, but transforms the body and makes it spiritual, because it then rejects all the evil desires of the body; it no longer drags the soul down, but is elevated with it. Thus the whole man becomes spirit, as it is written: ‘He that is born of the Spirit is spirit’ (John 3:5-8). All this, indeed, becomes clear from experience.”
The “spirit” is the component of the human trinity that is capable of “prayer.” It is thus the arbiter of “what stands in the way of your prayer” (though the “mind” also plays a role). The struggle of the “spirit” with the “flesh,” on one level, is the struggle of the “spirit” to overcome things within us that “stand in the way of our prayer.”
It is false to say that we are either “in the spirit” or “in the flesh” at any given moment. There is no dichotomy in itself. Man necessarily has a presence in the “flesh,” which is “spiritualized,” at least as long as he remains unified. Of course, this state of unity comes and goes. The process of spiritual transformation that St. Theophan speaks of can be considered a long-term process of “spiritualization” of the “flesh,” through which we are increasingly in a single united state.
But there is another level to this struggle that is also crucial to “the work of the people” in prayer. This involves communicating to “neighbors” the “spiritual love” that we receive through prayer.
To explain this, I must first explain that the most significant “interpersonal energies” we encounter in everyday life are fundamentally “fleshly” energies, involved in what I call the “heaviness of the flesh.” There is a sense of “weight of the flesh” that is regularly “passed” between us. This “weight” is experienced differently from the separate worlds of “masculine” and “feminine,” and this difference ultimately accounts for the “fundamental tension” between these two worlds. The “weight” of other people, as indicated by the “black” marker, has a predictable tendency of “interpersonal energy” to “weigh” you down—such is the nature of the “heaviness of the flesh.”
So when you work to concentrate in “prayer,” it requires effort to counteract the predictable effect of the “heaviness of the flesh.” If you do not do this, the “black” “interpersonal energies” will pull you down, and you will be overwhelmed by negative emotions and the like, fall out of unity within yourself, and, at least for a time, lose the ability to continue to receive the “love of the Creator.” The countermeasure is to love your neighbor as yourself. This, not coincidentally, is the primary duty of Orthodox Christians. (44)
But what does it mean to “love your neighbor as yourself,” and how exactly do we do it?
We learn this in the liturgy, which is both an overtly mystical ritual and a grand collective “method of prayer.” Every person is different and has his or her own mystical experience. And while the service itself is almost the same each time, every gathering is unique. The “work of the people” that takes place during the liturgy involves the individual struggle of each person’s “spirit” with their “flesh” to move from the “I-of-the-moment” of the “plane” defined by the “weight of the flesh,” which I call the “plane of bodies,” to what I call “liturgical time” — another “level” of the same “place” in “space” and “time,” where we receive the “love of the Creator” and become not only individually one, but collectively one in the “Mystical Body of Christ.” This collective unity is the “trinitarian communion,” where each of us retains his or her individual identity. At the same time, there is a tangible bond between us that is seamless and indivisible and that cannot be “partitioned.” This is the state of “love your neighbor as yourself.” I like to say that we reach the state of being “in Christ” when we acquire this.
The physical volume of our body is defined quite specifically and literally by its physical contours. But the “presence” we “project” is actually quite variable, including “blue” and “black” in various relative proportions. At any given moment, each of us has a sense of “presence,” which I call our “perceptual volume.” Furthermore, our sense of “presence” as a person occupying a “perceptual volume” is related to what I will call “vibrational density,” or a sense of “perceptual weight.”
Encounters with people, in general and also specifically in the liturgy, involve an attempt to reach a common “perceptual volume” and a related common “vibrational density of perceptual volume.” The act of doing “love your neighbor as yourself” can be seen as the difference between a passing projection of one’s presence (effectively saying “get out of the way”) and an active feeling of “I love you.” The doing calls for saying “it is not me” to everything inside you that does NOT love this person (even to the point that it sometimes actively “hurts”). In a sense, it is “making room” for the presence of other people within a common “volume of perceptual vibrational density.” In the case of encounters between “men” and “women,” their encounters are, to a first approximation, essentially complementary within the “gravity of the flesh.”
During the course of the liturgy, there is always a change in our “vibrational density of perceptual volume.” For example, in my experience, if I show up to the liturgy at the exact time it begins, I usually do not have “perceived volume of vibrational density” conflicts with women at first, but I invariably do have such conflicts with certain particular men. By “perceived volume of vibrational density” conflict, I mean feeling someone’s “weight,” “pulling,” or “pressing” on you. When the inevitable conflicts arise, I work to love the person with whom I am in conflict as myself. With men, this process sometimes feels like “stepping into their shoes,” in a sense, “making room” for myself, doing what I call “projecting my spiritual love” into the “space” they occupy, always with love in my heart, until the conflict disappears.
What I have called “projecting my spiritual love” might be phrased for another person as “transforming into love that in me which reacts” to a “perceived volume of vibrational density” conflict. This may seem counterintuitive, but “pushing away” a perceived sense of “weight” by projecting “spiritual love” into it IS “loving thy neighbor as thyself.” When I do this, I try to hold “I love you” in my heart at all times and fight, i.e. say “it is not me,” any negative reactions or thoughts about the person until the conflict goes away. “Volume of vibrational density” conflicts also often arise with certain specific women later in the service, which I resolve in a similar manner.
At some level the “blue” and “black” are transformed in this process, whether it is within me or without, I do not always know.
In a successful “meeting” all such conflicts eventually disappear, and the “place” we occupy becomes one “place” where we all stand together in one “volume of vibrational density perception,” experiencing the “peace of Christ” which is “not of this world.” (John 14:27) Ironically, the struggle of the “spirit” with the “flesh” to overcome what is within us that “stands in the way of our prayer,” and to “love our neighbor as ourselves,” and thereby attain the “peace of Christ,” is sometimes actually a fierce struggle with ourselves (Matthew 11:12).
Notes:
(44) Technically, this is the primary duty of all Christians. But among Protestants, their simplistic and, some would say, heretical “I believe, therefore I am saved” doctrine has greatly confused matters. It asserts that the only thing that matters is “the individual’s personal relationship with Christ.” It is unclear what obligations this entails toward “one’s neighbors,” and this obscurity is, I think, due to the absence of anything more than “blather” in Protestant teaching about the concept of “Trinitarian fellowship” in Christ, that is, that the individual man, as is the Creator, a “trinity,” and the “unity” of individuals in the “assembly in Christ” is, correspondingly, “trinitarian.”
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