A stranger in this world

and the title of the chapter a Russian pilgrimage yes in August 2004 and I had just re-read the chapter but you start the chapter with it is not unusual for those people who seek a deeper communion with God to distance themselves from their fellows to pray silent and alone and that really speaks to me and I think a lot of your viewers too they're in this um dichotomy of being in the world but wanting to slowly be less in the world so let's pull I thought maybe you could talk a little bit more about that this this transition that kind of happens naturally from distancing yourself from the world and how to how to move through that when you still very much connected to family and maybe a job life my first read about um this sort of thing I must have been quite Young maybe even at school and it appealed to me enormously and not being not being a very social boy and um I love the idea of that I read about hermit shopping the Himalayas or in the desert right yes that's appealed to me no end um I was rather disappointed when at the age of 26 I went for a school of meditation in London and was told that our way is the way of the householder I didn't really want that I want to do it the way of the of the um recluse the extreme I wanted to go I was all for the hair shirt in those days I wanted to be told to you know walk around the world in my hands and knees that sort of thing I was always a shocker for punishment and so I was slightly disappointed to me not to get that with my meditation but um we were told in the way of the householder but as the years have passed I've come to be grateful um but by long long tradition there is of course you know all religions in the uh the way of the recluse um there's a Time on the term well you one might think that's a that's a more effective way of getting close to God um after a lifetimes experience I'm not at all shows it is really I think I was very fortunate to be told but I've got to continue a worldly life and and integrate meditation with it which is the way I have lived my life although I've I've never been a very social man I was a farmer in the first part of my life and I've spent many years in solitary even desert places The Voice I've ever always been a rather solitary sort of man um even though functioning in the world um so let's visit a huge traditional ways in this um chapter you write about um the months from and I I apologize I probably am gonna not pronounce these Russian yes of course faces correctly but um coming to solovki solovki is that how you say it is right okay yeah and what started as a simple Hermitage developed into the greatest monastic Fortress and administrative Center of northwest Russia yes yes correct yes yes it was the most impressive place it was built out of gigantic boulders which weren't cut into um into convenience shapes for building that there was an art in in somehow dragging these Great Sea washed round or oval-shaped Boulders up from the shore and somehow fitting them together which is uh has created these walls around this hugely impressive um ancient fortification which gone through many many centuries and uh and uh in the early part of the last century what was taken over by the Communists and converted into one of these uh extermination camps um to exterminate priests and and members of the church because it was Communist policy to annihilate religion nuclear religion presents people with the authority of God whereas a communism the idea of Communism was with man rather the man yelling or whoever was Top Dog in the communist or hierarchy called the shots and it was hits to him that uh it was really a substitution of man for God really that's what communism was all about um well many years they they tried and and this is as the church was the opposition they had to somehow get rid of all the clergy didn't they when they were close on a million were transported up to this remote part in Northern Russia and put through horrific neighbor working in these forests where apart from the cold and winter and summer the anybody's you wouldn't believe the ferocity of the insect life or just south of the tundra they literally Eat You Alive these creatures but when I was there myself in another part of Russia soon after I arrived at a village where actually my mother used to live when she was a little girl of the village children had strayed into the forest got lost and they found her a few days later just eaten today listen to death by the insects it's not uncommon they're very strictly uh advising to be careful when you go keep you you know if you look at Asian paintings of Russian Russians working in the fields in the suburbs they don't roll their sleeves up they keep pulled out Focus so that was sort of key and uh oh God all the nightmare oh Jeremy I couldn't tell you what awful stories they told us when we were there but what happened God we would start cutting off their fingers and gamble at night under the certain just because cut off the one knuckle after another that's how they would bet look when life gets to that sort of pitch you can guess my God what happened what man can do to man is unbelievable when life gets that desperate so that's what happened to all those Bishops and from the yeah from the Bishops downwards down to the devoted monks and nuns it seems like history where pizza itself so much you know around things like that I think of the Tibetan people that yeah all the monasteries that got destroyed and that is still going on yes history does repeat itself extraordinary people always think these Dreadful Things Are you know like after the first what second world first and second world war there were movement United Nations for example was something to end Wars wasn't it we never learned there's something about um interesting words of Jesus that will always have wars like the poor will always have them with us it's it's all really a consequence of sin I I have to have to come on to that later on in this chapter because how else can you explain these things you have to come back to the home predicament of man and what man is and why these things happen we've got to get back to the basic cause of it all I just can tell horror stories without hearing about the effects um it was also a more inquiring mind I wanted to get to this cause why why does it happen you write on chapter on page 222 what causes us to rise up against our Brethren the question is as old as history and it seems a part of pilgrimage that we all have to answer for ourselves and then you you touch on the monster you call Pride yes yes and and there's this one sentence where you write what is the basic Pride I think the basic Pride well embracing the basic Pride I can't remember what I wrote here but but it's um yes that that we set ourselves up as separate from God we need to talk away from God this is the basic sin until we end up separate and hence this Pandora's pop box of of less and less fortunate circumstances we turn away we leave home we leave our natural spiritual home and fall into what we call mortality subject to death and we build up all sorts of stories to justify our doing this um that we can make the world a better place would always think of the children these days everybody wants to leave home don't they and set up on their own it used to be the boys that did that most of the girls were stayed home now it's both boys and girls who want to leave home go the wrong way Etc really is it a good thing to do what the beta Ballers now I think I was part encouraged partner that wanted to join the family business but I thought I knew better you know we think we can do to uh make the example a bit more homely you know we think we can somehow ignore nature that we think we can somehow bypass the laws of nature we can for example produce convenience Foods [Music] um we can allow get away from working on the land that extraordinary but we've divorced ourselves from nature you know not many of us even aware Woolen cotton clothes these days all synthetic isn't it you always forget what wool is and where it comes from and the get what fruits in its season actually is the supermarkets have the same fruit 12 months of the year don't they um we somehow substitute a world of man from the natural man and of course the most natural thing for man is to be close to God there's nothing more natural than that it may sound absolute Bonkers to some of my listeners what do you mean by that they'll say oh God should have gone so far out of our experience personally we think we can make the world better by electing another government or something that will coming up with more libertarian ideas about one thing or another um [Music] but if we do that if we bypass bypass the god or bypass that the authority of God we live with the consequences and that's really I suppose what this chapter is about at it worst the the inhumanity of man to man knows no limits we like to think we're uh we're living in life in life but my God think of the consequences and they think of the consequences of consequences on those natural Ecology of the world what we've done oh well for of the world to be live comfortably the other half is impoverished you've only got to scratch the surface to find deep deep [Music] how can I push it deep deep um inconsistencies with with the these sort of accepted View if if this chapter is this place unbelievable or communism idiot the Communist no doubt started off with the best will in the world you see it was to remedy the injustices of this world and going to make the world a better place the early people that who socialism and see socialism still a big part in the world today it's not the Socialist civil keen on somehow making the world a more there and Equitable place or just place no saying the road to hell is paved with good intentions [Music] um as well if some people don't agree that's the trouble then of course things can get a bit aggressive well we know better should be like this before you wear it know where you are you've got conflict can be very unpleasant in the traditionalists and the new thinkers the new age thinkers [Music] um or in communism this spilled over into absolute Dreadful Civil War nobody knows how many millions about half the population of Russia was lost believable how many millions including my own family and in particular the church which of course was a it was amazing sort of um god-centered organization um were singled out to be annihilated in a way to do that which caught all this judged Personnel off to some remote place others shoot them or work them to death if you work the police you've got something after them before they died laugh grave cockness did a great picture and shove them in by the thousand John what was your um inspiration to go on this pilgrimage and what would you say was your big um take away I loved Russia I could not love her because Russia's my own Keith and Kane and all these things had happened in Russia are in me I recognized it my own struggles with myself I'm very Russian um I'm really more Russian than English mother was Russian and I just wanted to be there with her I just wanted to to drink as deeply as I go to all this has happened in Russia and to share her suffering to share burdens as well as her glories and there are glories great glories in Russia the best and the worst and um it's a funny thing love no love seeks to share in the corners of the Beloved isn't it love wants to take on that you know if your dog is ill you want to sit back you do anything for your little dog wouldn't you into spend money on it give it your love and sit up all night comforting it to do good help I felt that way about Russia I just wanted to take all this suffering into my own heart and somehow Derek help there's a cross that's what it was to help Russia's cross that's right I'm glad I did it's one of the best things I do and then at this time I was really um Better Learning the work of prayer you see that's exactly what prayer does prayer takes the horrors of this world and submits them to God and so relief comes that's exactly what happens you see [Music] um and there's no greater power in this world this game this may seem silly to those who haven't reached this point in your spiritual experience but I assure you it is um I suppose it seemed even more appropriate of these awful things that happened in the name of God should finally be Redeemed by the opposite by submission them to God [Music] um what does that do well again I'm because I would rather leave this place and wander off which may not be appropriate to you see what is reality what is real how real is this world so I'm at the point now where I'm I'll die soon it's very very obvious to me that that my mortality the John Butler the the man you see on this screen talking to you will soon die but what about what's left you see this is the important bit not what's going to happen to this it's what's left now in other videos I've talked a lot about this you see this it's almost like a butterfly coming out of its cocoon you see this is the emergence of what's called Immortal Life or spirit after each imprisonment in the flesh and in a way that happens to all these people in sort of keys your prayer isn't really so much changing the worldly conditional as recognizing that the worldly condition isn't as real as you think and that there is this spiritual um the spiritual essence of life in everything every flower it will be personal which is untouched while you've seen that the happenings to the flesh you raise it to God you you recognize the immortal spirit in the in Mortal man you've got a bit of a puzzle look on your face I think I guess you get to deep water here right now but um it is you know a pilgrimage is much more than just a geographical um exploration of time and time and place it just says gets you thinking why why why why do these happen what is sanctity what is sin what is our what is our duty what is our real purpose what am I here for what what's what's our purpose you give an example so I'm not always of of these uh excellent of these extermination tabs when we've got all sorts of human conditions you see um holy men of the past have lived and struggled I've been on many pilgrimages both in Russia and one also very here in England but a few is in Russia pilgrimage has taken very very seriously and he said its main part of any believing Russian how they spend their summer um I plan to go to these Department if not more pilgrimage well I suppose my whole yes my periods of the life yeah years I lived in Russia were sort of extended pilgrimage in that way we find this um very helpful John how real is you know this world really exactly exactly on on page 225 it kind of ties into this if you write it can be misleading to equate religion too closely with truth yeah at best it's but indicative a mixture of human sin and divine origin like every other child of man and subject to error and destruction yes indeed yes as history shows judgments is only too capable of being a certain monster of Pride and persecution yes the true church is not a creature of Earthly material and human speech at all it's no more it's Earthly body and thoughts and I am mine gosh I wrote that a long long time ago yes this one are these things these Paper Tigers what were this honestly I I actually know in old age I look back on my childhood for example where is it I can't find it well where is it where has it gone where are my years of being a strong farmer you know striding around with cow milk on my boots and you know able to do anything I thought oh there it is he's gone isn't it and what about those screams of torture victims and there's Northern foreign desperation for a gambling debt those are all gone what's happened to it this is floating around in the cosmos somewhere on Earth all I know is that in this simple Act of what I call prayer somehow taking this home in openly Soul sort of impossible in this whole inexplicable okay what if we would call mankind I'm just looking into this infinite no thing that we call God somehow it just helped somehow it all just Falls away falls back to Earth as real as it was and this in and used to replace by this infinite it's quite quite extraordinary dude after a long life of spiritual work how this invisible world becomes a million times more real than the visible world you come to see that this visible world is a sort of dead crystallization of the real world which is Spirit it's you know graph focus is the wrong way around we think that matter is real and so of course it matters doesn't it it matters terribly whether whether you do this or that but but when you get Beyond Master into Spirit it doesn't matter at all matter is a transient thing it's like dust dust to the ground it just blows things looks like me the body just matters and that's every day now you know a rather pathetic events to prolonged life latest medical research and Ray we solved this all that and we're all going to deliver them a month or two year or two it's laughable really so much not the point the real point is to prepare for our transition you see to eternal life that's what matters turn to God older the shoes in some way with if we do that I didn't quite know how it works yes I know there's nothing better I can do to help the world serve serve the world and I really like that I can't believe I can help but maybe I can serve I feel better in Russia only did after I've been living there some years I started I think I felt I received an instruction actually to go and pray I suddenly realize this is the work I really want to do been doing it ever since then maybe I am following my inspiration as a boy from those Hermits and I came and it's just that I'm in the world all alone in a cave I'm sort of alone really alone but not at home merged into this infinite John wouldn't you say that um we're all alone I suppose it depends from what point of view who are looking and asking that question you think if your reality is there is the social world but when you know if you're we used to go to Dance season when I was young and started from other form of social Affairs there and then and girls doesn't dance on their own the girls would sit around the the wall and not wait for a young man to come up and ask them to dance and I was taught to go up to God and say may I have the pleasure of this dance and if she was a gracious girl she just say thank you stand up take my hand and we would go and dance can you believe it how many people would do that now they'd laugh at you and say the girls are more likely to choose their Partners but when I was young it was the other way around and um oh yes and because of those driver unfortunate because not all the girls got asked and if if they didn't get asked were sitting there or sort of waiting for someone to come and ask them they were called a Wallflower rather unkindly and uh yes nobody wanted to be a Wallflower you know a bit cruel really but it's like it was then sorry what was your question dear oh yes to be alone yes of course yes must have been Dreadful then [Music] I I often felt alone because I sort of couldn't join in really most of the as I could have joined him I didn't want to I just felt I didn't really it wasn't my thing and I didn't belong I figured I was part Russian I didn't really understand it at the time so I think that's the reason why for much of my young life I felt so alone which is different they look at the immigrants now people of different color and race also you know it's one thing for politicians to say we're all equal but human behaviors doesn't necessarily fall out there's some I know only too well what it is to be a you know who's different in a society that things otherwise really especially most of my life like that I feel I see him young immigrants sort of wandering around trying to do they think's the right thing not so easy is it whatever the rules say the outer rules a nice phrase in the Bible where the human Humanity are described as strangers and pilgrims in this world I like that I think I guess I've always felt a bit of a stranger in this world didn't really belong here I'm not really and really sort of believe in the world's values you people don't understand me I'm not really wanted in this world yeah some people are all sort of you know social drinking and being jolly and how much of it is just pretense I think most of it it probably pretends that you can put on a good act can't we we can fool others we can fool ourselves not many people look deeply into their souls for that we get by that's when people come to death they're afraid of it they don't want to die do their best to postpone the inevitable they hang on to the structures of this life probably to answer your question yes deep down in our hearts we're all alone with because we're not at home you see we're not we've left our home this is the cause of this whole is where we die this is sin I think until we we come back to God come back to whom we are because it's the Bible says strangers and pilgrims in this world you don't really belong here the famous words of Saint Augustine when he writes thou Hast made us for thyself the heart of man is restless until he finds his rest in the profoundly truth isn't it funeral nature of ideas most of us find we need God even if it's only on your Deathbed when you're screaming out your last breath what's it all for otherwise but we all just for nothing there's a sentence a sentence John on page 226 that I think I triple highlighted it and I must have read it 20 times but it really hits home you write the more we open ourselves to Union the more we bear the sins of others too it's no use blaming them for they are me yes what's this some page 226 in the second chapter paragraph the second paragraph sorry yeah me yes I really felt that in Russia I felt there's nothing really as I said earlier on of the glories or the auras of Russia that it's a lot of reflection of myself including the Abominable cruelties has happened there by God what we're not capable of within ourselves under certain circumstances you know um a lot of these things are avoided in our normal sort of civilized life we're not exposed to your awful rawness of life it's when you're on the last legs of survival you can use all sorts of things you thought you never would eat a dead rat fight over yeah those are the stories told about uski of the prisoners would murder each other so eat a dead rat when you get that hungry what what we do happening in Poland during the German the Jews the Jewish German concentration camps sure which happens throughout history every country we won't do to each other and to Nature to animals whatever comes within our and then there's on the other hand we can we've all got this marvelous actress in The self-sacrificing Love with ourselves for others advice ourselves without hesitation amazing stories of Love come out of wars but man what one man will do for his comrades die for another die for each other without hesitation with such a mix aren't we there were such extremes of once they're all over certainly good to go to these sort of places just to be reminded of the extremes of you of our Humanity we need such shelters lives we agreed about starvation and that but it's until you see it face to face it doesn't seem too real because it's just something that happens to other people in other countries that is how real is this is it all just a nightmare in order to dream washes away what is real these are great questions we need to face who what is John Butler oh is he just uh passing phenomena just a little way from the ocean of life yeah today I'm going tomorrow is there anything you'd like to add John before we wrap it up or can I say my dear is except just I keep telling you these days to turn into this you see he turned from the separate from the separate and the temporal into the warm eternal and somebody's in that infinite absorption into what becomes ever more clear to me now is the love the love of God I feel even more confident Now using that term the love of God to begin with I used to call it terms like absolute or the infinite or the infinite consciousness that all these things I've seem to have grown out of now it seems even more like it's really the love I've been seeking all my life the love that we get little drops of it in the reflections of it in this life and these are what keep us going somehow these seems the most worthwhile things we experience in life it's like finding the the source of which they all come from this now in my last year as I just they went through her motivation I think these days just I don't draw at least the opposite of ground and I come to life it's uh which is that sense of total surrender into that infinite love what it's all about at least in my experience and I couldn't wish anything better for all of us if all of you and these awful dramas of what's happened in this world or somehow take it up into those loving arms there was a just on the radios earlier on today I was having lunch I was listening and they were talking about Saint Francis that well no Italian month of saint and at one time he he loved Jesus so much that he was imprinted with the signs of the cross on his hands and feet and um I think there was a painting painted uh I forget exactly what the narrator was saying but um he he she there's a picture painted off this man Saint Francis being held and cuddled by a angel this was a woman Angel like a child like a mother might hold her child her baby um I absolutely love that it's it's sort of what I've always felt but long for in a way myself that fell after the trials of this life and the sort of the comfort of a woman expanded and sublimated into the into the this infinite comfort of God I don't I can't bear the way um a lot of sexual relationship these days is sort of cheap and vulgarized and made common I think it's it's terribly sad because you're missing the missing the point of it really which is Sublime sacred and it's uh it's really deeply deeply symbolic of the Divine comfort that that is the reality behind all this work I think more traditionally more traditional um periods of history when uh when women have been more objects of reverence when there was moral distinction between the the essential nobility and validity of man or woman this distincts in the in the Heavenly order um and uh and uh I think we brought up to reverence women they were regretted it really as it helped me very much in life well that's one of the many things that's made me feel mistration this modern world because because of that time women were were also brought up to receive it to uh it was expected so both sides both men and women were sort of um brought up in this in this way well of course not always at that high level but it was brought down of course but at its best yes it will ultimately I wonder if any of you seen it in uh is a wonderful it's not Truth by Michelangelo called the theater this little pity which we chose after Jesus was crucified lying on his mother's lap and the uh love compassion in her eyes and she into her son's body what it takes this whole God talk about the nobility of woman but you see that like that must have been as you happen to some Francis myself in the same position but I feel this the end of my life after all the mess I've made it with all the mistakes I've made all the wounds I've collected somehow to come to this infinite comfort and so being held in the arms of love there isn't a woman now but it's sort of it's a spirit but anyway there seemed to be much different I think the two sort of merged together really where a physical woman becomes a spiritual woman I'm not sure I think the two pretty much run into one into the other I wouldn't know where one answer one begins I suppose when you see beauty that's sort of like a what is beauty sexing the spiritual physical isn't it light isn't it the end of it all we are comforted we're brought home and whether we ever understand the purpose for all this pain but maybe we do maybe it's just the price of sin that Jesus was crucified for sin so we somehow bear the pain for others that's what it is I think I feel that with my farm animals when I went with them to the butcher I felt I could bear that pain Their Fear oh make it easier for them or loved us sorry I'm going on too low God bless you all

Channel: Spiritual Unfoldment with John Butler

Views: 10,549

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Id: -mcFGVQPo7E

Length: 51min 53sec (3113 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 06 2023