Another View 2-4

Staretz is a little known word, Russian in origin, that refers to the Spiritual Father/Mother, the wise being that sees into the noetic world -- that is, the world where human knowledge gives way to the truer knowledge -- the spiritual realm, where the heart knows what the mind cannot figure out. It is called the realm of intellect in the early tradition of the Desert. It is not to be confused with the “rational faculty” of the human being, but rather is a direct knowing, the apprehending of spiritual realities in a direct manner.

With much frequency inquiry is made as to how to get closer to God -- which is always about eros -- longing. What is truly going on is that the noetic self is calling from the heart, and what we are listening in on and seldom know it is God’s longing for us. Or as is said by the Psalmist, “deep is calling to deep.”

St. Silouan, one of the great staretz’ of the Desert Tradition of Christianity, and a 20th Century contemporary, said “Prayer keeps the world alive, and when prayer fails, the world will perish.” There is noetic knowledge -- and largely ignored by most of us today. “Getting close to God,” this inquiry stated earlier, is about acknowledging this most neglected part of our lives. The turn-around on the quote from Silouan is, “Prayer keeps me alive, and when I fail to pray, I begin to perish.”

So, I wonder with you (I hope), what is the obstacle to us praying. If we are perishing, which many might think a bit overstated, then why wouldn’t we pray?

Is this overstated? Are we truly perishing? So, a question to answer a question: “Is your/my life truly content? And what does/would that contentedness hold within its container?” Well, for some its certainly about the extrinsic things -- that is, the “things outside of us we seek to create what we come to apprize as happiness.” Interesting word, happiness. The prefix hap means chance. So, there is not a permanence to the word or world of happiness. It is always fixing me temporarily.

For instance, my road bike is in a state of disrepair just now. I took it in this week, and will have it made road-ready by Friday. Other than my backside, the rest of me will be happy. Will it bring me absolute permanent happiness? Temporarily “yes!” Will it be the be-all-end-all happiness? Ummm…probably not. Happiness, the chance that for a little while, I will be content. But it will not satiate the deeper longing -- genuine and permanent contentedness.

Call me crazy, okay. My continuous personal experience, and the experience others afford me as well through others being vulnerable in sharing their life and their longing, is that permanent contentedness is the struggle that comes in listening to the heart. And, there is a large distraction working all the time to prevent us from this inner listening. All of the things we substitute for permanence in our lives -- so that longing is never fulfilled because it finds only substitutes that can never (yes, never) truly satisfy. This eros is the undying power of seeing, grasping, wishing, desiring, perpetuating, loving, living, willing -- and so on. Do you experience the drive of this eros?

Think of the things that we misinterpret to represent this eros: a good name (sometimes meaning status); enough money (usually equated with having little understanding of the word enough); a good job (often an over-identification of my ego with my worth related to my doing); recognition and influence (often the attempt to find some illusory immortality, and therefore a denial that this life is fading fast, and I am in a state of denial). And so on. Get it? All traps, all signs that we truly are perishing, for none of them are permanent, all are temporary states of happiness.

And the grasping goes on and on, which sometimes we refer to as the rat race. Let me tell you when I experience myself (and others) paying attention to the noetic realm. Well, whenever there is crisis. Let my “happiness world” get crunched, let despair or disappointment, death of the threat of death, arise -- and I want to know where is God (now that I know that all my rational knowledge is failing).

It is true eros knocking at the door -- the noetic realm is attempting to lure you back; it is the Eternal calling you to your Self, because the self has exhausted its knowledge, and has been found floundering and wanting.

Perishing all the time, because we lose our sense of the truest longing of the heart, and the eye of the heart is in captivity to everything else that has promised happiness. Standing on the guillotine of this false self-sense, this psuedo-eros, we plunge. Where to turn?

To the “One who still longs” for your love, and that you and I learn to love from this deeper place of love and life. Most of what I believe to bring me joy -- the mask of some false god called happiness. Just another Temple I’ve constructed, from which stone-by-ugly-stone, it must be cast down. And then what? “Return to the Root of the root of yourself,” says Rumi. There -- just there -- the noetic -- the spirit of me, you -- resuscitated, breathing again, touching the hem of the only garment that has ever mattered.