in His entirety

Through grace God in His entirety penetrates the saints in their entirety, and the saints in their entirety penetrate God entirely, exchanging the whole of Him for themselves, and acquiring Him alone as the reward of their ascent towards Him; for He embraces them as the soul embraces the body, enabling them to be in Him as His own members…the intellect, because of its freedom from worldly cares, is able to act with its full vigor and becomes capable of perceiving the ineffable goodness of God.

St. Gregory Palamas (1296 – 1359)

Path and Current

Talking to a friend last week I noted that I feel as though I’ve stepped into a “current” in taking the ordination to the priesthood and in devoting myself to serious study of Gnosticism and the Western Mysteries. I was intending to use the word in the sense that western occult folk do — a coherent (sometimes ancient, sometimes emerging) tradition, the Golden Dawn current, the Chaos Magick current, etc — the river metaphor implied by me “stepping into” it was unconscious.

But my friend wasn’t sure what I meant and demanded an explanation.

Two things came out in our conversation that I wanted to share. One is my interior, very river-like sense of stepping into a current. I have, over the years, taken on various practices, read various books, occasionally sat with various teachers, but I always found it hard to shift a deep feeling that this was just all me. I was doing all the work, whatever changes were my psychology, shallow or deep. Sometimes I might project all that on other people or things, but ultimately it was all me. Lots of striving and seeking.

What’s shifted for me is a new sense that, in addition to me and my various efforts and strivings, I’m being nudged, assisted… drawn along on my journey. Something not entirely recognizable as me, not quite inside me, not quite outside me is exerting pressure to keep going. When I engage in a practice, there’s a very different sense going on, it’s not that it’s easy… perhaps it’s like I have company.

There’s a current which is also a sense of communion.

The other thing I wanted to mention is the distinction between a current and a path. This is simpler to point out. When I talk about my Path, and it seems similar when friends use the term, I’m referring to my personal journey with the sense that it has a continuity from past to future. My Path is very individual, each person’s Path seems to be, though that’s likely to be an artifact of us all being individualists.

A Current, by contrast, is not individual. It’s something that becomes present to me, that I choose to step into, that I can allow myself to be drawn by or that I can explore. My Path joins the Current.

Buddhists (and others) talk about the Way. A Way is really a Path trod by many in common over a long period.

I guess for a Way to develop a Current, it would need to rain pretty hard. Eventually you might get a stream or a creek or a river. Like the Nile. Or the Ganges. Or the Jordan.

St. John in the Wilderness

St. John in the Wilderness, originally uploaded by genericavatar.

My Flickr-friend genericavatar has been travelling in India and uploading some spectacular photography. For obvious reasons, this caught my eye.

About the First Man…

This is the one who is called “Son”…
the form of the formless
the body of the bodiless
the face of the invisible
the word of the unutterable
the mind of the inconceivable
the fountain which flowed from (the Father)
the root of those who have been planted
the god of those who exist
the light of those whom he illuminates
the love of those whom he has loved
the providence of those for whom he provides
the wisdom of those whom he has made wise
the strength of those he has given strength
the assembly of those with whom he is present
the revelation of that which is sought
the eye of those who see
the spirit of those who breathe
the life of those who live
the unity of those who are united.

The Tripartite Tractate 65.29-30, 66.13-30 (Courtesy of April de Conick’s wonderful Forbidden Gospels Blog)

I think it’s very easy to imagine this appearing in a liturgical context. Try reading it out loud.