Putting Our Focus Where It Belongs, In The Heart
We all need to set sensible priorities, making sure we pay attention to our health, our family, and our spiritual life. We must not let our life be so full of work that we don’t allot time to focus on the things that bring us joy. We may think we don’t have time to visit an art museum, have lunch with a friend, or take a day hike with our children, but lasting fulfillment requires time for play, for fun, and for spiritual contemplation.
Focusing only on work can lead to a restless sense that something is missing in our life. Thoughts of where we’d rather be living, or the job we’d rather have, displace any joy that could be ours. Most of us, if we really think about it, already have everything we need for happiness right in front of us. We mustn’t wait to enjoy what we already have.
When we give ourselves over to things of the material world, we fail to notice that which is of the spiritual world. We ignore that which relates to the soul, as if only our body is of importance. We forget that the science of the soul is noetic and can be examined and experienced only through the activation of the nous.
The nous in Orthodox Christian theology is the “eye of the heart or soul”, the mind of the heart. God created us with the nous because the human intellect is not capable of knowing Him without it. The intellect alone can not know God, for human reasoning is limited to the things that are of a material nature. God is unknowable without His divine revelation, and only the nous can perceive this knowledge. The depths of God’s grace remain inaccessible without noetic knowledge. Science has its place, but only the heart can know God.
The things that are of God are far beyond the capabilities of our finite mind to comprehend. The divine can only be known through the nous, that place in the heart that is our true center. It, unlike the brain, is capable of knowledge that is beyond human comprehension, coming as it does from noetic knowledge.
With love in Christ,
Abbot Tryphon
About the author
Fr. Tryphon is the Abbot of the Monastery of the All-Merciful Saviour, which was established in 1986 by Archimandrite Dimitry (Egoroff) of blessed memory. The Monastery is under the omophore of His Eminence Kyrill, Archbishop of San Francisco and Western America, of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.
1 thought on “The Heart”
Thank you for your invaluable work. You are a true blessing.
☦️