A central theme of this blog is the mysterious spiritual phenomenon of “sobornost,” which continues to exist in Russia, albeit in a form that is less palpable than that which existed in the days of Holy Rus or even still in the 1990s. (Discussed in post 21 “‘Sobornost’ – the spiritual component of economy in Russian society.”)
As I have already written, “sobornost” is threatened by the current development trajectory of “the system” towards western-style consumer “mechanical capitalism.”
“Mechanical” life can thrive in spiritless “mechanical capitalist” societies. But “real life” is holy. Real life depends upon spirit, that part of our trinitarian being that is able to perceive and receive and grow in the Creator’s love that is always raining down on us.
As I use the term “sobornost,” I do not refer to outright “unity in Christ,” but to something that is ultimately derived from 1000 years of efforts to achieve “unity in Christ” in Russia – the existence of what I call the “blessed middle.” This is the comparatively unified “spiritual space” between the “two worlds” of “male” and “female.” “Sobornost” is effectively the “well of spirit” from which both “worlds” draw and to which both “worlds” contribute in their interactions within Russian society.
“Sobornost” can be distinguished as “above and beyond” the related phenomenon of “collective love” of a people (nationality). First and foremost, it’s origin is the “unity in Christ” that is achieved between the “two worlds” in the Orthodox “sacrament of the assembly.” Second, it is very actively “fed” by the conscious efforts of many Russians to perceive and receive the Creator’s love which they then share with others “loving thy neighbor as thyself.”
Here I present some recent (obviously subjective) observations from my efforts to live in peace and repentance as an urban monk in Saint Petersburg, striving always to BE my prayer within the “blessed middle.”
(a). My morning prayer walk.
Within my metaphorical construct, the energies of the flesh, associated with the passions of the flesh, are termed the “black” while the energies of the spirit are termed the “blue.” (Discussed in post 12 “Letters to my godson on the ‘work of the people’ and the future of Russia” – (d). The struggle of the spirit with the flesh.) The things in myself that “stand in the way” of my morning prayers can almost inevitably be traced back to my failure to adequately love my neighbors (everyone with whom I come into contact) as myself.
The “black” acts inter-personally with a kind of force that I call “the gravity of flesh.” My own “black” reacts “automatically” to the “black” of others, including the many other people in the apartments around me whom I cannot even see. And in reacting, my own “black” drags my presence “down” out of the harmonious unity of spirit, soul and body (associated with successful prayer, whereby my spirit is filled with the Creator’s love) into a disharmonious condition where self-will, negative emotions and all manner of distractions push me “off course.” The remedy for this problem is to “push back” with “blue” against the sense of the “gravity of flesh” that is gripping me through my own “black” – to say “this is not I” to “it.” Sometimes this work takes a long while, sometimes not. But the work is not finished until my prayer is, at last, successful.
Then it is time for my morning walk.
Out on the street, there is always a stream of people whose presences as trinitarian persons partition into the “two worlds” of “male” and “female.” The “two worlds” (and there are only two and not 72 as in the “free and democratic” West) are defined by the “passions of the flesh” and mediated by the “black” inter-personal energies.
In my view, the familiar Russian emblems for “male” and “female” provide an elegant, simple visualization of how the “two worlds” are configured in terms of their orientation towards the “black” and the “gravity of flesh” (at least in Russia): In the “female” world, the individual ego “pulls” the “gravity of flesh” into their sense of themselves and their presence as a person in a body. In contrast, in the “male” world, the individual ego “pushes” or “projects” the “gravity of flesh.” Between the “two worlds,” these countervaling tendencies of the “black” neutralize each other.
According to my perspective, in Russia, as a general rule the “female””world” is generally associated with a projection of “blue,” while the “black” works mostly inside the mind of the individual “female” ego in attracting the “gravity of flesh.” The “male””world,” in contrast, is generally associated with a direct projection of “gravity of flesh” as “black,” with “blue” being highly variable between different individuals and different circumstances. In terms of the partitioning of inter-personal “black” between the “two worlds” in Russia, I think of the “male world” as being “black””figure” and the “female world” as being a kind of anti-black “ground.”
My constant aim is to BE my unified presence within the “blessed middle” of this stream. I know with certainty, from long experience, that the “blessed middle” exists as a spiritual reality – that it is just one step removed from the Mystical Body of Christ itself. The only question is what do I need to do to get there? Usually, immediately upon leaving my apartment I begin to experience the “gravity of flesh” of neighbors “black” interacting with my own “black.”
Each neighbor encountered has a sense of their presence which I call their “perceptual volume” and which is associated with a perceived “vibrational density.” They inevitably view the world around them from this perspective. And their “black” will inevitably affect me unless I consciously prevent that from happening by “pushing back” with “blue.” It may seem counter-intuititive but this “pushing back” with “blue” is, in fact, “loving them as myself.” The work to get to the “blessed middle” is all about this “pushing back” with “blue” against the perceived “gravity of flesh” thereby transforming my own “black” (or that of the encountered neighbor) and “making room” for myself as a unified presence within this stream.
This work to integrate myself within this stream typically must be undertaken in stages. The first level, essentially involves projecting my presence right through the encountered neighbor’s “perceptual volume.” I call this “approaching at right angles” to the “gravity of flesh.” Arriving from the level “farthest removed” from this stream, sometimes even from a great distance, there is a sense of approaching, as a presence, encountered neighbors at “right angles” to their “perceptual volume” without regard to whether they are in the “male” or “female” “world” and “pushing back” with blue against the perceived “gravity of their flesh” while holding in my heart the constant thought “I know the Lord loves you and so do I” and while saying “this is not I” to the (sometimes negative) reaction of my “black” to theirs.
From a level “partially but incompletely integrated” within this stream, there is a similar sense of approaching at “right angles” and using “blue” to “push back” against the perceived “gravity of flesh,” but now using a different approach with neighbors in the “female” “world” compared with neighbors in the “male” “world.”
Moving from “partial integration” into the “blessed middle” – with female neighbors, there is alternatively a sense of using the “blue” to “substitute” for “male” “black” within their accustomed sensation of the projection of “male” “black,” or, in other occasions, actively working to “make room” for them within a shared “perceptual volume.” With “male” neighbors, there is alternatively in some occasions a sense of using the “blue” to “substitute” for “male””black” within their accustomed sensation of the “chest-butting” projection of “male” “black” or, in other occasions, similarly with “female” neigbors, actively working to “make room” for them within a shared “perceptual volume.”
Sometimes my presence within the “blessed middle” can be maintained, with only a little effort here and there, for an extended period. But in any case, whatever my condition may be at any given moment on my morning prayer walk, I am always either in the “blessed middle” or working to get back to it.
(b). The antimens of Victory Park.
For me, at least, consciously returning to the “blessed middle” is essentially returning (with the support of grace) to the “peace of Christ,”which is not of this world (John 14:27). From this vantage point, I am present as real “I”- a trinitarian being with unified harmonious spirit, soul and body in trinitarian communion with the surrounding society of people. This vantage point is, in every case, associated with a palpable perception of the Creator’s love raining down on us that is very similar to that achieved at home in morning prayer. And this provides a context whereby we can define the term “real time” – the “time” in which real “I” is in trinitarian communion with his neighbors while perceiving and receiving the Creator’s love.
It is impossible to overstate the profound significance of this being ROUTINELY POSSIBLE to achieve while “swiming” WITH the stream of Russian society – an undertaking which is NOT POSSIBLE to achieve at all in the “mechanical capitalist” West. This underscores the singular importance of “sobornost” for the support and maintenance of Christian well-being and the need, above all, for Russia to NOT follow in the “footsteps” of the West.
Reaching this peace is achieving victory over everything in myself that stands in the way of BEING my prayer while “loving my neighbor” as myself:
“It is thus not the man who has killed the passionate part of his soul who has the preeminence, for such a one would have no momentum or activity to acquire a divine state and right dispositions and relationship with God. Rather, the prize goes to him who has put that part of his soul under subjection, so that by its obedience to the mind which is by nature appointed to rule, it may ever tend towards God, as is right, by the uninterrupted remembrance of Him. Thanks to this remembrance, he will come to possess a divine disposition, and cause the soul to progress towards the highest state of all, the love of God. Through this love, he will accomplish the commandments of Him whom he loves, in accord with scripture, and will put into practise and acquire a pure and perfect love for his neighbor, something that cannot exist without impassibility.” Saint Gregory Palamas in “Triads in defense of Holy Hesychasm, C. The Hesychast method of prayer and the transformation of the body.”
Appropriately, this endeavour, my morning prayer walk, is undertaken in Victory Park, just a few minutes from my apartment, and the location of my home parish the Church of All Saints Who Shone Forth in the Russian Land. (Sometimes I stop in for liturgy, which is conducted every day except Mondays, either before or after my walk or both.)
Victory Park is perhaps the most sublime possible context for this work (although I do the same work on crowded Nevsky Prospect with less effort required). Our church is a small memorial structure built within the park, which is itself a memorial to the victims of the Siege of Leningrad. The church is built on the site of a brick factory that served as crematorium for some 629,000 Leningraders who died of starvation and shelling by the forces of (now NATO) Germany and Finland, along with soldiers who died defending the city. (95) The park itself is effectively the largest war cemetery in Europe. There is an “other-worldly” sense of the souls of these victims praying with us and we pray also for them, never forgetting the horrific price the Russian people paid for the Victory over fascist Germany in World War II.
My daily experience of “real time” in Victory Park causes me to believe that the claims of “Russian world” theology are indeed correct – the Lord has indeed charged the Russian people with a sacred duty. The future of the world depends upon them. I believe that the fulfillment of this duty hinges critically on the restoration of “sobornost” here to its historical quality. And I believe that the Lord especially loves the long-suffering Russians, which is why he did not allow them to become completely perverted by the allure of consumer trinkets and baubles that has led to the downfall of the West.
(c). Russian society as a macroscopic liturgy of Christ.
I characterize the “mechanical capitalist” society of the once-noble but now satanized “Reagan economic miracle” USA as a “liturgy of Mammon” (Discussed in post 18 “Taking the hyphen out of ‘Christian-Satanist’”).
All Russians must now realize that the threat is very real that the same thing (or something even worse) could happen here. On the one hand, whatever may be one’s opinion concerning “the system” here, it is clearly necessary to support it in this second “fight to the death” with the forces that contol Germany (and every other “Reagan economic miracle” country). This is “keeping faith” with the almost inconceivable sacrifice that was made to defeat the Germans the first time around.
But when this fight is over, “the system” must be reformed in order to restore Russia to its Orthodox Christian trajectory – not just as propaganda but for real in the same sense of this word as I use it in the context of “real time in Victory Park.”
The ultimate burden for affecting this reform, for enabling the fulfillment of the “Russian world” destiny, falls squarely on the shoulders of that small percentage of the population that regularly attends the “sacrament of the assembly” and that knows how to do the spiritual work that takes them to “real time.” Isolating yourselves with the thought that you are much better than the fallen masses is precisely the WRONG attitude. Take the work of the liturgy to the streets, to the metro, to the buses! BE the “measure of yeast that raises the whole” (Matthew 13:33)! (Discussed in post 17. The “measure of yeast” effect.)
95. “A memorial temple to the victims of the siege and new miracles of St. John of Shanghai. Conversation with Archimandrite Jerome (Testin)” Pravoslavnie RU January 27, 2026
https://pravoslavie.ru/175359.htm
Leave a Comment