A couple of days ago I was experimenting further with Fr Silouan’s advice [Silouan the Athonite (Russian: Силуан Афонский) also sometimes referred to as Silouan of Athos].
Saint Silvanus the Athonite or Staretz Silouan (January 17, 1866 – September 24, 1938) was an Eastern Orthodox monk of Russian origin, born Simeon Ivanovich Antonov who was a poet and monk of the St. Panteleimon Monastery.
A Mind in Hell
Of course, one’s mind in hell is monstrous and hell has always been in mine – objectified as trauma, resisted by genius – but it places consciousness on a meat-hook of ferocity & despair. Vox clamantis in deserto, analyzing Plautus’ Amphitryon in my library above Arte del Fulmine [etc] when a girl’s voice called up, You are a genius & so I went to the open window & replied, Only a big genius [to a very pretty young thing] & she said, Yes – i.e. – someone who could SEE – hence, I invited her & her father, a professional photographer, up to see some more. He was seriously interested in my book illustrations & snapped away [> he’d probably taught her to LOOK, but Luke 24:45 is vital.
Hell is resisted by genius!? Not successfully. Insanum esse me? Numquam, despite the black shit of evil slaughtering & mutilating for one f***ing rotten god or another.
Thoughts from the enemy
Understand two thoughts and fear them. One says, “You are a saint,” and the other, “You won’t be saved.” Both of these thoughts are from the enemy, and there is no truth in them. But think this way: I am a great sinner, but the Lord is merciful. He loves people very much, and He will forgive my sins.
St Anthony was asked to describe humility & he responded by saying as he’d only lived for 110 years he’d not yet witnessed any, neither in others & certainly not in himself – hence, the pretense of humility I’ll leave to Uriah Heep, As a Theologian – i.e. – someone with the power to take others into the direct Presence of the Lord God Almighty, I boldly assert 3 things with great certainty [1]: I am Christ’s genius > intellectually & artistically [2]: I am a sinner on whom the Lord God frequently bestows His loving mercy [3]: Unless a man – whether he be Pope, Imperator, Patriarch, monk, laymen et al – receives the INCREATE LIGHT of Heaven, he is NOT a Christian – hence, heresy & false Christianity abounds – e.g. – there were 28 different kinds of Methodism by 1912, so it is well that Christ’s gods [John X:34-35] – of whom I am one – can lift up the worthy or not. Keep your mind in hell & fear not!
I love the succinct way Jim writes. A single sentence is like a whole page in other writings, apart from the Bible. Atheists cannot have a clue what he is saying because they have not received the light of Christ and so are blinded by that light.
As a counsellor who has a gift to see, I would like to share that I have recently been mulling over and noticing that if a thought like “I am this or that..” comes along, I know it is a lie, but in contrast, if I acknowledge my imperfections – what I do – e.g. “I am one who sins” then I do not lie and trust in the Lord of all righteousness that I am spared.
His mercy comes to me as the still quiet voice of the Holy Spirit (the psychologist Eugene Gendlin knew of it and named it the “felt-sense”) and it is through listening to that guidance and accepting (reflecting on it and assimilating [from Fritz Perls – Gestalt therapy] or embodying it) that I learn the fundamental truths about myself and hence the suffering attached via the initial trauma (or “pain”) is obliterated by the meaning I have been given.
Reminds me of John 16:12 “A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world.”
Reading the above comment I was intrigued by the mention of Eugene Gendlin’s “felt sense” and read up what Wikipedia has to say on him. It includes:
‘A felt sense is quite different from “feeling” in the sense of emotions; it is one’s bodily awareness of the ongoing life process.’
Further on, this is clarified by a quote from Gendlin:
‘When I use the word “body,” I mean more than the physical machine. Not only do you physically live the circumstances around you but also those you only think of in your mind. Your physically felt body is in fact part of a gigantic system of here and other places, now and other times, you and other people–in fact, the whole universe. This sense of being bodily alive in a vast system is the body as it is felt from inside.’
So, here he is talking about the body and the mind. How does this approach relate to your experience as a counsellor and what has been your experience of the spiritual results of this sort of counselling, if one can put that into words?
Thanks for your research and questions, Steve.
To answer you briefly, unlike the reductionist philosophy behind Freud’s “psychology”, a body-and-mind approach is about integrating all that you experience. As Jim once said to me “it’s all you”.
In counselling work, I use my own felt sense to monitor any counter-transference, so that “my stuff” doesn’t get in the way of me “seeing” the client. In this way, I can maintain empathic understanding – that “seeing the world as if I was temporarily in the client’s shoes” – keeping in mind I am me.
It seems that what the clients experience in therapy you would call getting in touch with the inner self, or in Theological terms, the god within. Personally, I believe that the increase in self-awareness that this brings about is essential to healing, which is actually a spiritual healing – their awareness is becoming whole.
Or as Jesus puts it, “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.” (Matthew 6:22)