Metanoia and Repentance

[Nick_A]

One of the clearest distinctions between traditional and esoteric Christianity is in the appreciation of metanoia translated as repentance.

In traditional Christianity it is a change of thought that allows a person to be worthy of forgiveness. The concept appears in many faiths with different variations including Islam.

Repentance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In esoteric Christianity it refers to a conscious awakening to what we are in relation to our conscious spiritual potential. It does so by placing metanoia at a level that connects heaven and earth.

Luke 7

28I tell you, among those born of women there is no one greater than John; yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he."

Esoteric Christianity appreciates this connection as seven levels of reality

Largely ignored by church teaching is the sevenfold nature of all things, spoken of many times in scripture, from the seven days of creation to the seven seals of Revelation. This is the law of transformation, - of creation.

7. understanding (comprehension)
6. knowledge (science and conscience) {-- KINGDOM
5. receptivity (directed attention)

4. intellect (conditioned thought / metanoia) { -- CHANGE

3. emotion (automatic feeling)
2. senses (physical senses) { -- ORDINARY HUMANITY
1. superstition (imagination)

The fallen state of humanity is basically the world that hates the message or "Plato's Cave" and includes the first three levels.

Metanoia is a conscious psychological change from conditioned thought and action based on influences from the external world into the conscious awareness of the life and scattered quality of our inner world. It calls us "to be."

The conscious self development of our inner world furthering a higher human perspective in opposition to our habitual conditioned responses proceeds through stages referred to as levels of the Kingdom.

But without metanoia, there is no connection to connect the higher and lower within our collective being.. We lack the quality of attention to be receptive to higher influences to further "awakening" so as to make science and conscious manipulation of universal laws sometimes called "magick," a servant to human conscience or inner morality and finally to become One with human meaning and purpose through conscious "understanding" of a quality far beyond the conditioned way we normally define as "understanding."

One word, "metanoia," which has the different levels of meaning to match different qualities of developing human understanding. Quite a word.

 

[Nick_A]

I see the question of metanoia is not all that inspiring. However for anyone lurking sensitive to the question, I've come upon a related question concerning the value of theology.

I became disenchanted with the new theology board since through its stuffiness IMO it defeats the essential purpose of religion which is experiential.

Theology is the study of God (theo). But how do we study what we don't know? What happens is that accepted ideas become organized into systems of partial truths. Take for example this explanation of systematic theology:

THE VALUE OF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY

Systematic theology can be defined as the discipline which develops and follows a system of doctrine which incorporates into its system all the truth about the Christian God, His universe, and his relationship to it, from any and every source available to the mind of man.2 In other words, it is the development of an “organized world view” which arranges the teachings of the Bible in an organized fashion while using the Bible to evaluate all possible claims about God and truth.3 With this view in mind, I want to outline the practical value of Systematic Theology for Christian ministry.

Being that the Christian God is outside time and space, it is not so easy to do.

But my question is if any of this speculation could lead to the experience of metanoia or does it doom one to the world of associative thought and arguing theology?

2 cor 3

4Such confidence as this is ours through Christ before God. 5Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. 6He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

Does the Spirit exist in such theology or without a certain preparation, does it just kill? Not an easy question.

From an article on esoteric Christianity:

Traditional Christianity, as it has existed for most of the past 2,000 years, has been largely a socio-political, cultural phenomenon concerned mainly with collective belief and thought. However, there has been, from the beginning, an inner teaching that has been ignored and rejected by organized church Christianity. It is this inner (or higher) message that carries the ageless, universal truth of the teaching of Jesus Christ. It is contained in the Gospels but is not in the literal words. The Teacher himself, though literate, chose not to leave one written word by his own hand, saying that the letter kills. He left to others the inevitable task of trying to record in words what cannot be expressed directly, but can only be received indirectly by way of parable or higher psychological thinking. The written account is a step down from the actual living message, but if one has the key, it can be received.

It seems to me that Jesus taught in parables just so to avoid the normal psychological pitfalls of this type of associative thought which puts up a barrier to the inner experience of metanoia.

I know I experienced metanoia but from writings of men that had previously experienced metanoia and its effects were in their writing.. It can be done. I know for a fact that the Book of John has had an awakening effect on some. But can it come from theology as it is normally accepted? I don't know and do question its value as it relates to the importance of the inner experience of metanoia.

Why can't I be normal and just be concerned with the inauguration or the Superbowl? But no, now I'm pondering this question of the dubious value of theology. Well if I'm stuck with this question, a Dewars and soda may reveal some additional insights. Worth a shot. Pun intended.

 

[wil]

Metanoia, to change your mind. Often in reference to a spiritual conversion. So Muslim to Christian, Christian to Taoist, Taoist to Muslim...all someone having an experience which caused them to change their mind.

Being an ass to being compassionate....

Being compassionate to being an ass...

I don't see anything in Metanoia indicating you are always moving up the perverbial ladder...just changing ways through some experience.

Repentence on the other hand indicates feeling bad for your previous wicked ways and vowing to do better, no?

So you can repent and in not be Metanoia...you are striving to be a better person, but has the mind changed yet?

And repentence also adds that note of remorse or contrition that Metanoia does not require.

Yes, no, maybe so?

 

[Nick_A]

Metanoia, to change your mind. Often in reference to a spiritual conversion. So Muslim to Christian, Christian to Taoist, Taoist to Muslim...all someone having an experience which caused them to change their mind.

Being an ass to being compassionate....

Being compassionate to being an ass...

I don't see anything in Metanoia indicating you are always moving up the perverbial ladder...just changing ways through some experience.

Repentence on the other hand indicates feeling bad for your previous wicked ways and vowing to do better, no?

So you can repent and in not be Metanoia...you are striving to be a better person, but has the mind changed yet?

And repentence also adds that note of remorse or contrition that Metanoia does not require.

Yes, no, maybe so?

Hi Will

This is hard to explain when not familiar with these ideas. Esoteric Christianity deals with conscious self evolution through the help of the Spirit and higher consciousness. The highest is conscious or awakened Man and the goal of re-birth in esoteric Christianity. So the first step is in considering that there is this qualitative difference in awakened and sleeping Man. Plato's cave and the Buddhist parable of the burning house are all expressions of this ancient idea.

You are familiar with new thought and Thoreau wrote of this qualitative difference in Walden

"The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life." Thoreau

These examples refer not to a "change of linear mind, to change from democrat to Republican for example, but rather of the "transformation of mind" Explaining the difference is not so easy and requires an additional quality of perspective to become familiar with. I appreciate this excerpt from Dr. Nicoll for shedding light on the distinction.

Referring to murdered Galilaeans, Christ told his disciples,
"...Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." (Luke XIII.4-5)​

But what is to repent? How is the word to be understood? Unless, Christ says, a man "repents", he is useless and suffers a common fate -- that is, a fate common to everyone who has not reached the stage of understanding called "repentance."

The word translated throughout the New Testament as repentance is, in the Greek, meta-noia, which means change of mind. The Greek particle meta is found in several words of comparatively ordinary usage, such as metaphor, metaphysics, metamorphosis. Let us take metaphor; it means transference of meaning. To speak metaphorically is to speak beyond the literal words, to carry over or beyond and so transfer the meaning of what is said beyond the words used. Metaphysics, again, refers to the study of what is beyond purely observable physical science, such as the study of the nature of being or the theory of knowledge or the fact of consciousness. Metamorphosis is used to describe the transformation of form in insect-life, the transformation of a grub to a butterfly -- a transference or transformation of structure into entirely new structure, into something beyond. The particle meta therefore indicates transference, or transformation, or beyondness.

The other part of this word translated as repentance -- noia -- is from the Greek word nous, which means mind. The word metanoia therefore has to do with transformation of the mind in its essential meaning. Thus we see that the translation 'repentance' is inadequate, or indeed, wrong. The English word repentance is derived from the Latin poenitare which means "to feel sorry." Penitence, feeling sorry, feeling pain or regret -- this is a mood experienced by everyone from time to time. But the Greek word metanoia stands far above such a meaning, and is not a mere mood. It contains no idea of pain and sorrow. It refers to a new mind, not a new heart, for it is impossible to have a new heart without first possessing a new mind. A new mind means an entirely new way of thinking, new ideas, new knowledge, and a new approach to everything in life. Although a great deal has been written about the real meaning of this great word and about its wrong interpretation and although it has been emphasized again and again by scholars that repentance does not give the right rendering, even new translations of the New Testament still render the word as "repentance" and so imply that a moral and not a mental change is indicated.

It is worth while going back to Christ's words to his disciples in view of this meaning of metanoia. The whole conversation becomes clearer. The disciples are thinking wrongly and Christ is answering them not in the sense "unless they repent" but "unless they can think quite differently" -- that is, think in a new way. He is saying that otherwise they are bound and fixed and cannot escape from a general fate common to all people who start always from the seen, the apparent, the visible, or, in short, from the senses, and derive their ideas and views from visible evidence. The first step is metanoia.

-- excerpted from The Mark, by Maurice Nicoll

Such ideas are both incredibly beautiful and meaningful to our budding soul but poison for and hated by our conditioned personalities since they deprive them of their needed self importance that sustains the power of imagination that keeps man in "sleep."

 

[Nick_A]

Thomas wrote this on another thread:

Well here we need to proceed cautiously: a nature cannot transcend itself, as a nature cannot be other than itself. It might realise depths of itself that are new, or profoundly different to its common order of experience, this may well be an awakening, but it is not transcendental. The nature remains as it is.

A properly transcendent experience requires the action of the higher drawing the lower out of itself, into Itself, so that the lower sees with the higher's eye, as it were.

We live in a triune universe but are always tempted to perceive it as dualistic. "Itself" becomes a dualistic conception rather than a triune one.

Compare the above statement with both the faith of the Centurion and the Gospel of Thomas. First the Centurion

Luke 7

1When Jesus had finished saying all this in the hearing of the people, he entered Capernaum. 2There a centurion's servant, whom his master valued highly, was sick and about to die. 3The centurion heard of Jesus and sent some elders of the Jews to him, asking him to come and heal his servant. 4When they came to Jesus, they pleaded earnestly with him, "This man deserves to have you do this, 5because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue." 6So Jesus went with them.
He was not far from the house when the centurion sent friends to say to him: "Lord, don't trouble yourself, for I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. 7That is why I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you. But say the word, and my servant will be healed. 8For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, 'Go,' and he goes; and that one, 'Come,' and he comes. I say to my servant, 'Do this,' and he does it." 9When Jesus heard this, he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd following him, he said, "I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel." 10Then the men who had been sent returned to the house and found the servant well.

The Centurion's faith is exceptional because he experienced himself as a middle between the higher and lower. He was a middle that kept the distinction alive in his psych, He was an authority to those below him and yet nothing compared to what is above him In this way the recognition of this triune inner alignment allowed him to receive from the higher and give to the lower. "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."
From the GoT

(3) Jesus said, "If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty."

The "middle' in this account is that which consciously witnesses the mechanicality of the animal lower and in turn becomes capable of becoming consciously known and receiving from above. Again the classic inner triune vertical relationship.
Now if you put this in the light of the seven steps of man's transcendent evolution described in the OP, after the first three, each step becomes a "middle" in a vertical triune relationship and the whole sequence is connected.
The point here is that from the dualistic conception, the Christ enters the lower but from the triune relationship, the Christ opens the "middle" for the Spirit to witness the lower. This metanoia and invites the inner change in psychological direction. Dualism restricts us to the linear or horizontal perspective while the triune relationship opens us to the realistic vertical triune progression.