death

About the benefits of overwhelmedness

Thoughts about the most beautiful manifestations of spiritual depths

 

1. Our very good reasons why we have banished the term of overwhelmedness from the dictionaries of our time. Nowadays we don’t like being overwhelmed. According to the dictionary, overwhelmedness is „being shocked/shaken caused by a distressing circumstance or a disaster”. The synonyms of overwhelmedness are shock, trauma, grief, consternation, indignation, amazement. Well… It is not a comforting list… If we do not want to be shaken, would it mean that we would like to be unshakable? I wouldn’t believe that this is the public opinion. Warriors of the Middle Ages, the epic heroes should be unshakable. We don’t want to deal with this ‘overwhelmedness thing’. We would like to be happy again together. We have been deprived enough from joy – years in advance. (If you would like to know more about this, please read my essay here.)

 

2. About the benefits of overwhelmedness. "Shock, trauma, grief, consternation, indignation, amazement" – what do they have in common? The root cause of overwhelmedness is a radically new situation. A situation, what we cannot react to as we used to. Something, what cannot be avoided, proudly refused, or swept under the carpet. Overwhelmedness happens when something radically evicts us from our comfort zones. What happens to us when we are overwhelmed? We’ve just been given a chance to learn something very new. We’ve been given a chance to improve our survivability. We’ve been given a chance to be really creative. We’ve been given a chance to have a new life… Is it such a big problem? (If you would like to know more about this, please read my essay here.)

 

3. About the real purpose and meaning of overwhelmedness. There is an interpretation of overwhelmedness that we do not realize nowadays. The soul’s overwhelmedness is not a conversation topic today. When does our soul become shaken? The soul’s overwhelmedness is provoked by our experience of the ultimate questions of life. Life, death, love: commitment to someone forever. What happens to our soul when it meets the ultimate questions of life? The most important experience of the shaken soul is that it is not alone. That there is Someone who wants to get connected with our soul. We feel that the overwhelmed soul meets love, don’t we? The love, what wants to give something important to our souls. Love, what wants to grow and improve our souls. The overwhelmed soul meets the inexhaustible love of Jesus and the Father. Even if it feels – lacking the necessary experience – that something so terrible has happened to it that it cannot cope with it. Now, between Easter and Pentecost, let’ think about all these – and let’s wait for, let’s ask for the possibility of overwhelmedness – because we can be enriched by it in a previously unimaginable way. (If you would like to know more about this, please read my essay here.)

 

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Life situations of fulfillment at young and old age

Thoughts about the Totality of a life in Jesus

 

 

 

1. What is the difference between the young and the old? Being young is identical with our openness to the world, the diversity of our responsiveness and our capacity to lifelong learning. The old age can be described with an experience encoded as an effective behavior pattern, the wisdom of distinguishing the substantial issues from the unimportant ones and the restraint from the extremes. The young and the old behaviors are not linked to the chronological age. Systems become complex if they are capable of both behaviors – alternately. (If you would like to read about this more, please, read my essay here.)

 

2. Life situations of fulfillment at young and old age. Young age is the age of exploration and enrichment of the information of the environment. In young age there is no permanent order. The young cannot be controlled, it is vigorous and happy. For the young every moment is a whole life. The fulfillment of the young breaks the limits and creates a new world. The old age is the age of clarity, the capability to identify what is important and what is not, thus the age of wisdom. The old age has learnt to wait. The old age has learnt to listen. For the old the whole life is a moment. The old age has experienced the beauty of purity and silence. (If you would like to read about this more, please, please, read my essay here.)

 

   

3. Life situations of fulfillment in Jesus. The man living in Jesus is not alternating between young and old but he has entered the timelessness of the Holy Trinity where he can be both young and old at the same time. Jesus as the Door (John 10:9), opens the Totality of the Father that gives an unlimited space for the youth to grow and enrich. As the Path and the Truth, Jesus endows the old age’s capability to identify the essence with the Totality of Vision. Jesus, as the Life, joins the impulsivity of the youth with the timelessness of the old. Man living in Jesus lives in the Resurrection where death is not the end but the door opening to God’s Totality. (If you would like to read about this more, please, read my essay here.)

 

 

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Can the Devil be domesticated?

How can we overcome our faults?

 

   

 

1. Our attempts to domesticate the Devil. We like the little, comfortable compromises in our lives: I have had a little virtue then I will have now a little (oops, sorry, sometimes I go too far, and then: a big...) sin. That is not working. The Devil cannot be domesticated! Mercy can only be complete if I have opposed the sin, if I have realized its depth, if I have named the Devil, if I have refused it, and if I want to live a different life after all these. From this point of view there is no a tiny little sin and a bigger one. What is important is the approach to sin (Devil) and God. I stand either on one side or the other. It is impossible to dance around between the two. (For further details, please, read my essay here.)

 

   

 

2. The fight against sin. If we have realized that it is impossible to make a compromise with the Devil then for the everyday thinking only one thing remains: the fight against the Devil – till death. But our own fight against the Devil is a hopeless and useless one. A sin-centric life is a dead end. There is no self-mercy. It is not our own fight that defeats the sin in us. Our own efforts are too small for this, are zero, nothing. It is only Christ born within us who is able to overcome the sin in us. There is no other way. Thus the fear of God is not a servile fear of God’s punishment, which presumes our separation from God, but an admiration of God’s true greatness revealed for us and a determined protection of the love-communion connecting us with God. All this does not mean that I would think: we do not need any kind of fight against our sins and faults because "God will take care of them". No! Mercy is not for free. Just to get close to God makes us feel Christ’s and the Father’s immense pain when they see our sins, makes us hate these sins and helps avoid them. (For further details, please, read my essay here.)

 

   

 

3. How can we overcome our faults? Neither with "making good on them". Nor only with fighting against them. We can overcome our faults only with accepting Jesus and with protecting the love-communion we have with the Father by all means, relying on Their power. Thus the source of repelling sin is the attraction to Jesus and the Father. That is how we ourselves become able to be peace- and love-sources in our environments. (For further details, please, read my essay here.)

 

 

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