The Notion Metanoia - Essay Example

Metanoia When people converse into some religion and have true faith in God they often have a feeling like something in their minds is turned on and they can’t look at this world like they used to look any more. We can say that their minds are changed in some way as they start to think differently, they realize more and understand the world in some new way. This realization is often called “metanoia” and is widely presented within religious discourse. Though metanoia has different meanings depending on the realm where it is used but in religion it is frequently concerning the results of confession and redemption and especially plays a great role in Orthodox Christianity. The notion “metanoia” literally means “change of mind” (Branch 55) and most widely is presented in the way that a person has a certain way of thinking and consideration of the phenomenon of the world and then something changes the way of thinking for good. This notion mostly concerns religious change of thinking. From the very beginning of a person’s religious path some acts can be called metanoic, for instance, it can be conversion into religion from atheistic point of view, or from another religion. The point is that metanoia requires a person to change one’s way of life according to the new understanding the person acquired from the act of metanoia (Clarkson 225). It is very important to divide different types of the notion “mind” considering metanoia. Dealing with spiritual realm we find that mind has certain gradation which is following. “Mind” as both intelligence and consciousness don’t really deal with metanoia in religious aspect. But “Mind” as spiritual intelligence (SQ) means the need of every human being to feel this life as something filled with meaning and spiritual power that rule everything (Powell n.pag.) and this kind of mind actually changes through the metanoic process. This means that metanoia works in changing of spirit which makes it totally existential even though some researches try to describe it as ethical process when a person realizes that one’s previous way of life was in some way unethical and decides to change it into a decent one (Friesen and Guhr 724). The difference between ethical and existential change (metanoic one) can be described through the famous biblical example from the Gospel of St. Mark, 10: 17-27. When a rich guy came to Jesus asking how he can reach the salvation, Jesus answered him that firstly he had to follow the God’s commandments and secondly he had to sell all his treasures and dispense them among beggars. The guy was upset that he was supposed to give his current life away and refused to do what Jesus said. Thus, the advice to follow God’s commandments in the example above describes ethical change of mind but the metanoic act here would have been if the guy had changed the ontological quality of his life giving up his prosperity. That’s why metanoia is quite essential change, where a person not only changes one’s behavioral patterns but, first of all, changes the meaningful attitude to the life itself and this change leads to the personal modification as well. In religion fundamental changes in mind are usually associated with some kind of redemption and metanoic act is not an exception. When a person makes a confession to a priest it means that a person has realized one’s sins and decides to ask for forgiveness. The act of religious confession has a great therapeutic effect on people. Researches show that often people feel so much revealed and consider themselves as moral beings after the confession that it seems to them that since then their life style is going to change into decent one for good (Hymer 43). But in fact later it turns out that it is only temporal ethical change and people are simply get affected with the ritual of confession when the way they live doesn’t change at all. Thus it is a very rare occasion when people truly go through metanoia during the redemptive process. The process of metanoia can manifest through different forms and processes. Pastoral description of metanoia can be in the following example. When a person (a philosopher) seeks to find the fundamentals of the universe he starts his search with asking the metaphysical questions about the origins of everything. These questions usually lead to some intellectual dead end when it is impossible to give rational answers any more. In this point of his inquiry the philosopher feels a kind of emptiness because he can’t understand so many things and it seems to him that there is nothing truthful in the world (or some other desperate feeling). Usually in such situation people start to seek for at least some truth and often they eventually come to faith and religion and believe in God stronger than any believer who always was religious. The situation describes the pure embodiment of metanoia in the form of feeling that God abandons the person and metanoia helps one to attain His favor again. Since the moment the person attains God one’s life changes and the human starts to live according to God’s rules, as the one always feels His presence around. In this regard another discussion about metanoia can be raised: whether metanoia is a process or a result. Philosophical researches as well as the psychoanalytical ones often describe metanoia as the result of certain analytical (and frequently therapeutic) procedures. The theory of transactional analysis created by Eric Bern describes a therapeutic process during which a patient is supposed to realize his life game and change the way he lives into more decent and gameless one. Through the process of therapy the patient’s mind is being changed (metanoia) and he starts to live a new life (Pitman 48). Philosophers claim that metanoia can be reached through maieutics (Socratic Method), the way of acquiring knowledge from a person’s soul through questioning (Wirzba 130). Even though these methods indeed lead to a certain changes in mind still they often don’t make people more spiritual when real metanoia in religious sense leads to a deep spiritual (ontological) changes in human nature not only the changes of a behavioral pattern. In the situation with being abundant by God and attaining Him through searches, metanoia is both a process and a result. It proceeds when the person is looking for truth and finds it so here metanoia works as a process but later when the person’s identity is being modified and if the one forgets about the changes metanoia appears again in a form of remembering that experience that led to the transformations. Another kind of metanoia is when the essential changes in a human’s mind happen because of some outside stimuli that make him transform oneself. For instance, if new conditions of one’s life suddenly change and the person should adapt to the new life through changing the entire attitude to things in general. It often happens when a person goes through some serious disease or when something terrible happens to the one’s relatives (Richter 67). The tragic situation makes people think about essential things of one’s life and often through such experience people come to another world view, manage their priorities, and change their lifestyle. The faith that comes with metanoic process is the strongest one because when people are in greed they desperately look for something they could rely on. But they feel unprotected in this world, so it turns out that God is the most powerful force to rescue them and they obey His rules in order to change the quality of their lives. Metanoia is one of the central concepts of Orthodox Christian Church. The point is that genuine conversion into Orthodox Christianity is impossible without going through metanoic process. Orthodox theology claims that in order to get closer to God through religion, every believer should experience metanoia in a very special way. Firstly, in this case metanoia doesn’t only mean change of mind and life style but also sincere and faithful approach to the action with dedicating yourself to service for people and the Lord (Richter 78). If a man decides to go to monastery and become a monk and abandons his family in order to serve the Lord, this change cannot be called truly metanoic. Indeed the situation is a certain change of mind and life style but the intention beneath the action is not metanoic. The real Orthodox metanoia is when a person changes one’s life style in order to serve people because that’s how it is possible to show God your loyalty. Though monachism can be a perfect example of pure metanoia, as if a monk pries and makes good things to people he lives the life with minimum of wickedness and maintains his spirituality. Thus in some way metanoia should be a purpose for every conscientious Christian. In fact the real Christian metanoia is almost unreachable in modern society. The temptations are always somewhere close to everyone and people often can’t stand them. Metanoia requires dedication to pure decent life and society can be considered as something opposite to the purpose. The only way to get metanoia is giving up on society which can be either asceticism or monachism but only in case when it is metanoia what leas person to the decision to leave society. Though this decision can be made logically and person doesn’t need to go through some terrible events or look for metanoia for a long time. It is possible to come to the conclusion that there is a need to change life through its deep analysis. In this case person naturally develops one’s spirituality because it can even be in some way advantageous for the one. This self and world analysis can be a kind of self-maieutics (Wirzba 134). My personal experience probably cannot be called metanoic in Christian understanding of the notion as it was not that deep. Still I believe at least once in our lives we go through some changes in our minds and our view on the world is being transformed for good. Although I haven’t experienced some deep religious insights like metanoia some essential changes are yet to come anyway, perhaps, with time and age. Metanoia is a concept that is used in different realms. In Orthodox Christianity it means a change that happens in a person’s mind under certain circumstances which transforms the essential understanding of this life by the person and also changes the nature of one’s personality and lifestyle. Works Cited The New Jerusalem Bible. Ed. Susan Jones. New York: Doubleday, 1985. Print. Branch, Lori. “Metanoia: an Eastern Christian Vision for the Study of Religion and Literature”. Religion & Literature. 41(2009): 53-60.   Friesen, Duane K., and Guhr, Bradley D. “"Metanoia" and Healing: Toward a Great Plains Land Ethic”. The Journal of Religious Ethics. 37(2009): 723-753. Clarkson, Petruska. “Metanoia: A Process of Transformation”. Transactional Analysis Journal. 19(1989): 224-234. Richter, Stephan. Metanoia: Christian penance and confession. Sheed and Ward, 1966. David Powell. Spirit Intelligence. Thorogood Publishing, 2003. Wirzba, norman. “From Maieutics to Metanoia: Levinass Understanding of the Philosophical Task”. Man and World. 28(1995): 129-144. Pitman, Elizabeth. “Transactional Analysis: an Introduction to its Theory and Practice”. The British Journal of Social Work. 12(1982): 47-63.   Read More