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entering the wilderness
within
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Let the mouth also fast from disgraceful
speeches and railings. For what does it profit if we
abstain from fish and fowl and yet bite and devour our
brothers and sisters? The evil speaker eats the flesh
of his brother and bites the body of his neighbor.
Saint John Chrysostom, d. 407
And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from
the Jordan and was led about by the Spirit in the wilderness
for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And He ate
nothing during those days; and when they had ended,
He became hungry'. (Luke 4:1-2)
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It
is the central teaching of the mystical Christian
tradition that all that Jesus of Nazareth endured
and preformed owns both a historical truth (it
did transpire in Palestine 2000 years ago), as
well as a profound message for our spiritual life
(it will transpire within us now). The travails
and triumphs of Jesus — as recorded in the
Gospels — occurred to the Son of Man, and
remain as the path, the way, for faithful Christians
to transverse that they may also rise above this
world, and give birth to the Christ Consciousness.
After the dust of the New Year has settled and
many of our resolutions have fallen by the wayside,
we are offered a reprieve. The Lenten Season,
the fasting season, begins year 2001 on the 28th
of February with Ash Wednesday, and continues
until Easter Sunday. It is a period of self-examination,
repentance (from our fruitless ways), and anticipation
(to behold the resurrected Christ).
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Marc Chagall, Moses,1970
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The forty days
of Lent (minus the six Sundays that occur over
the period) is modeled on the forty days in which
Jesus withdrew to the wilderness, fasted, and
confronted Satan.
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And immediately the
Spirit impelled Him to go out into the wilderness.
And He was in the wilderness forty days
being tempted by Satan; and He was with
the wild beasts, and the angels were ministering
to Him.’ (Mark 1:12-13)
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The forty days
in which Jesus wandered in the wilderness echoes
Noah’s long days afloat when ‘the
rain fell upon the earth for forty days and forty
nights’ (Gen. 7:12). Moses, as well, ‘entered
the midst of the cloud as he went up to the mountain;
and Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty
nights’ (Exod. 24:18). The earth was purified
during Noah’s sojourn, and Moses was made
ready to receive the Ten Commandments with his
Mount Sinai encampment. These are ‘emptying
processes’ where the old structures die
away, that the new can be born. Artistic renditions
of the wilderness experience of Jesus often place
the event in a desert. Deserts are arid, quiet
places where the senses (sight, hearing, taste,
touch and smell) have little to encounter. The
self is drawn within itself in environs offer
little to pull man out. We read that Jesus fasted,
but the fast is not only designed to starve the
body, but to force all the elementals (desires,
appetites, and wishes) within us to make themselves
known. Starving the physical body is of value,
only so long as the subtle bodies make their hungers
known. Jesus said, ‘it is not what goes
into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is
what comes out of the mouth that defiles.…
But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from
the heart, and this is what defiles." (Matt
15:1 + 15:18) The waking-self is suspended between
two opposing forces: the nobility of the unified
soul and the multifarious subconscious. The greater
the territory the subconscious has in the self,
the less room has the soul. C. G. Jung called
the subconsciousness the ‘shadow’;
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Elementals, once created,
have their own intelligence and desire.
We have within the personality elementals
that are primarily noetical [mental] in
nature, and elementals that are more emotional
in quality. The subconscious is where these
elementals live, and from where they act
on the personality. As the physical body
needs nourishment to reconstitute itself,
so do the emotional and noetical bodies
need food (etheric vitality). Elementals,
especially strong or group ones, need etheric
vitality to live, and they drive the self
to act in such a manner that they are well
fed. Elementals are first created to serve
the self, but when they fall out of our
control the self then serves the elementals!
The subconsciousness is basically emotional
in nature, and until we learn, and control,
the elementals in the self we will suffer.
Dr. Stylianos Atteshlis (Daskalos), 1992
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The shadow or the egoism is a great
and clever foe, which in the hustle and bustle of daily
life finds plenty of opportunities to feed and recreate
itself. Daily Introspection is perhaps the greatest
and surest tool of unearthing egoism. But the seasons
also support such important work. The Lenten time, the
forty days before the Passion Week, is a perennial purification
that cleans the self (ever more each year) that we can
behold the beauty of creation, and emerge out of the
narrow confines of the personality. In this complicated
and modern world it is difficult to make the forty-day
‘wilderness experience’. Few of us have
the time or a desert nearby. Yet to delay such inner
work because of other more mundane contingencies leaves
us in painful patterns. We need, should we wish clarity
and simplicity, to find other ways of shedding light
on the shadows.
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Self-conquest is the greatest of victories.
Plato
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The Christian Mystic Dr. Stylianos
Atteshlis, Daskalos, in agreement with Jung’s
profound observations, spoke of the subconsciousness
pervading the three bodies, and composed of elementals…
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Elementals, once created,
have their own intelligence and desire. We have
within the personality elementals that are primarily
noetical [mental] in nature, and elementals that
are more emotional in quality. The subconscious
is where these elementals live, and from where
they act on the personality. As the physical body
needs nourishment to reconstitute itself, so do
the emotional and noetical bodies need food (etheric
vitality). Elementals, especially strong or group
ones, need etheric vitality to live, and they
drive the self to act in such a manner that they
are well fed. Elementals are first created to
serve the self, but when they fall out of our
control the self then serves the elementals! The
subconsciousness is basically emotional in nature,
and until we learn, and control, the elementals
in the self we will suffer. Dr. Stylianos
Atteshlis (Daskalos), 1992
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We
must note that the Gospel writers all say that
Jesus hungered only after the forty days had passed.
This speaks to us. Once the self is emptied, then
comes the first real hunger: to be filled by the
Divine! When our Satans (personal egoism) are
overcome, and our wolves (the fierce shadows)
lie down with the lambs (the true, gentle self),
we have a unified self (cf. Isa 11:6). The internal
struggle comes to rest. The soul is well at home
in the personality.
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Master LCz, The
Temptation of Christ, c. 1500/1505
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