One of the books that Eastern spirituality has always focused on is "The Ladder" of Saint John. I don't dwell on it as often as I'd like, but I do so with a certain recurrence out of the need for a minimal exercise in seeking spiritual vigilance.
Important pages have been written about this "Ladder." I make no claim to bring anything new, only the desire to bring it to attention in a time preoccupied with all sorts of personal development, all sorts of spiritual gurus, a multitude of more or less spiritual information and recipes that have oversaturated the public space, or the challenges of Artificial Intelligence, which we now consult more than the Oracle of Delphi.
In all this media chaos, we are in an attention deficit. Simone Weil spoke of the structural causes of the religious crisis, mentioning the decline of attention, a crisis of sight and hearing. The picture she suggests cannot but make one think:"Perception is almost gorged with informational and communicational waste, with visual and auditory debris. We are turning into consumer livestock. Perception is increasingly driven by stimuli and dependence. And, because it does nothing but consume, it can no longer see", for "only the soul that fasts can see". In this sense, contemplative attention is essential for gazing.
We live in a time of digitalization that accelerates the "availability" of reality. Everything has become consumable and accessible, and information, as stimuli, fragments attention. We are constantly distracted, even if we know that deep attention is not driven by stimuli."God is attention without distraction".Perhaps, if we weren't distracted, we would be with God.
Therefore, I believe it is necessary to carefully peruse Saint John's "manual" as a possible path to acquiring spiritual attention. Of course, many will say it's a manual addressed to monks. True! But each of us has the desire for a spiritual life, as long as we are aware of it.
The Saint's book synthesizes the principles of Christian life, without which our external expressions, participation in holy services, seem merely ritual. The attention we need is, ultimately, testimony. Through it, the Saint conveys not the obligation of the path, but shows us his practice, his own experiences gained in hesychia through perseverance, self-restraint, fasting, prayer, and vigil. In fact, it is the journal of his life, continuing the tradition of earlier authors such as Evagrius, Origen, Gregory the Dialogist, and Ephrem the Syrian.
The thirty steps of The Ladder are an invitation to spiritual introspection, to a form of voluntary asceticism towards the goal you have freely and voluntarily chosen. I believe that only by being attentive to this kind of active presence of the self can you gain something of the joy of meeting the Lord, which is no longer a simple declamation of ideas based on a theoretically acquired doctrine, but life itself in Christ.
Father John Mack, in his book "A Path to Heaven: An Interpretation for Those in the World of the Ladder of Saint John Climacus," arranges the thirty steps into three groups, corresponding to the three stages on the path to God:
1) renunciation of the world, which brings with it the renunciation of vain life, dispassion, and estrangement;
2) the practice of virtues – or rather, ascetic life – which focuses on two directions: the first exercises fundamental virtues (obedience, repentance, remembrance of death, and joy-producing lamentation), and the second, the struggle with passions. These passions are also organized into three groups: spiritual passions (anger, remembering evil, slander, excessive talk, lying, and spiritual laziness); bodily passions (gluttony, fornication, and love of money), and spiritual passions (insensibility, cowardly fear, vainglory, and pride);
3) union with God or the contemplative life, which includes stillness, prayer, dispassion, and love.
Given the complexity of the "Ladder's" structure, it's almost impossible to believe you have any chance of discovering Christ further along this path. In a world increasingly devoid of contemplative attention, it is extremely difficult to transfigure the mundane. It requires desire and a change of life. The author of the Ladder reminds us that a Christian is one who follows Christ through words and deeds, and believes with a righteous and blameless mind in the Holy Trinity. In fact, the purpose of the "Ladder" is Christ-centered – to have Christ always in our hearts, as far as it is humanly possible.
And I don't believe we can truly reach this state without working on freeing the heart from worldly concerns, from selfishness, and from "the exaltation that follows obedience." For the person in the world, solitude is not the way, but rather the art of not giving up on God because of human relationships, a fact that seems infinitely more difficult to me.
There would be a great deal to write about each step of the "Ladder," but I will limit myself here to a few words about obedience, an essential step in the spiritual ascent.
In a world that hears but does not listen, this virtue has become essential. Today we perceive the world in terms of information, and information transforms into a new form of existence, one that no longer appeals to any moral instance. Man no longer seems interested in dialogue with the world; social networks are enough for him, which he navigates without his own identity and without the need to make friends, because this would implicitly mean obedience and relating.
One of Saint John's definitions troubles contemporary man: “Obedience is the mortification of the limbs through a living thought. Obedience is the incomprehensible movement, voluntary death, uncurious life, the acceptance of danger without care, an unbidden response before God, fearlessness of death, the safe floating on the sea of life, a journey in sleep.”Although it seems rather poetic language, the Saint concentrates in a few words a diversity of experiences that propose to those interested in life in Christ to renounce selfish existence in favor of a communion of love, born from the relationship with one's neighbor, always filtered by self-introspection in relation to the Lord.
The Saint calls obedience "martyrdom," without which none of those enslaved by passions will see God, and the forms of martyrdom are multiple and diverse in our times. The simplest form from which we could start is to obey those in the house, to be attentive to their needs, to listen to them by hearing them, not to transform possible dialogue into monologue, to listen to those at work without judging their decisions, to be useful to our neighbor in their most trivial needs, to be present in the lives of others with discretion, without in any way nullifying their freedom.
Why would we need obedience? The profile of the authentic Christian has, in his DNA, the desire for holiness, which implies exercising patience through cutting off one's own will and through abandoning all judgment. Without this exercise, it's very hard for me to believe that man has truly understood what Christ calls us to be. Only through obedience can we overcome the crises of pride that continuously dominate us, becoming the source of spiritual downfalls. And for this, we need will, spiritual meaning, and practice. It is not by chance that Saint John called it “a tomb of the will and a resurrection of humility”.
In a consumerist world on all existential levels, the exercise of obedience becomes vital in recovering the inner dimension that can bring us closer to the evangelical image of Christ.
From here begins the ascent.
Father Cristian Muntean
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