Hello again. I have a request for discussion. A thought has been going through my mind over the past couple of days... In Orthodoxy, we have physical icons. Icons that can be touched, kissed, censed, contemplated, connecting us in this realm with those in the next. But in Orthodoxy, we also have a strong prohibition against what could be called "Icons of the mind". Visualizations, images impressed in the mind's eye, visual fantasies, day-dreaming, lack of trust of dreams and visions, delusions, etc., are all things we Orthodox are to be very careful with, as we know they to be tools of the Evil One which are easily manipulated by him, by God's economia to him for our testing. Whereas, in the majority of what is called the Christian World (the non-Orthodox Christian world, often quite rightly called "the West"), there is a rampant Iconoclasm. I don't need to give examples because I am assuming that everybody here knows what I mean. *But* what one *does* find in abundance is a blind trust in dreams,

Hello again. I have a request for discussion. A thought has been going through my mind over the past couple of days... In Orthodoxy, we have physical icons. Icons that can be touched, kissed, censed, contemplated, connecting us in this realm with those in the next. But in Orthodoxy, we also have a strong prohibition against what could be called "Icons of the mind". Visualizations, images impressed in the mind's eye, visual fantasies, day-dreaming, lack of trust of dreams and visions, delusions, etc., are all things we Orthodox are to be very careful with, as we know they to be tools of the Evil One which are easily manipulated by him, by God's economia to him for our testing. Whereas, in the majority of what is called the Christian World (the non-Orthodox Christian world, often quite rightly called "the West"), there is a rampant Iconoclasm. I don't need to give examples because I am assuming that everybody here knows what I mean. *But* what one *does* find in abundance is a blind trust in dreams,
visualization, fantasies, day-dreaming, visions. In the West we are encouraged to analyze our dreams for content, to imagine Christ in this or that particular situation, to imagine one's self to be more beautiful or more healthy, to picture one's self as richer, happier, etc. In my possibly warped thinking, it seems to me that we have: Eastern Orthodox: Physical Icons, but Iconoclasts of mental images Elsewhere: Iconoclast of physical icons, but trust mental images. Am I missing the mark here, or seeing something that isn't here? If this is in fact the case, is there a deeper meaning to this that I'm not quite catching yet? Thank you! Kenneth -- :-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-: :-: [1][log in to unmask] - NJ Rational Mystics BBS 908/241-8528 :-: :-: Waffle 1.65 - FX-UUCICO/32-bit - Amanda1j - YARN 0.91 -: :-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-: : *******************************************It is later than you think.

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