Close Your Door, Change the World

The Practice of Awareness

About forty five years ago I was awakened by a loud noise. I have not gone back to sleep since then.

The loud noise was my household. Doors slammed. Cabinet drawers banged shut. Pots and pans dropped and clanged into the sink. Silverware clattered on the table. Cups and glasses banged onto the tabletop. People stomped up and down the staircase.

I was disturbed in my soul. I felt the chaos of the fallen universe within my house. And I awoke from the nightmare of the sleep of mindless, careless action and became engaged with and focused on the present moment. I put my mind and spirit to being aware of my surroundings, my community, and my actions within them. I slowly (and still) set my spirit to examine my actions, demeanor, speech, and countenance: Are they peaceful or an agitation to myself and those around me?

I did not know at that time that there was a name of a spiritual practice for that awakening. I did not know that I was beginning a spiritual discipline that would shape my soul. I just knew I needed to pay attention and change how I lived. But not in a radical, profound “conversion experience” way, but subtly, in the small, unremarkable, insignificant aspects of my existence. I began paying attention to the noise I generated, the force I used to do things, the energy I over-expended, how I moved, even how I walked.

Years later I learned the word for my awakening from Kallistos Ware: “Nepsis”. It is the practice of awareness of the absolute present moment and our relationship to everything in it. He called it “the hardest spiritual discipline” (The Orthodox Way). The spiritual masters of all religions teach the discipline of “living in the present moment”. The current pop spirituality draws from these sources and calls it “mindfulness”, the practice of being aware, which is a beginning.

The practice of nepsis is counter-cultural. Social media, politics, culture wars, pop culture, influencers, pundits, prognostications, and even personal mental health are focused on the “BIG picture”, global political, cultural, and environmental issues, things over which we have no individual control. But nepsis calls on us to be aware, not of global issues but the issue of how I put my silverware in the sink. We have no peace with the world at large over which we have no control because we have no peace with the smallest actions we DO have control over. Christ said we must be “faithful in the small things to have greater things added to us”. Peace in an uncontrollable world is a big thing. Peace in our small world is also a big thing, but it is an attainable thing. If we wake up, become aware, and become faithful we will find peace in the small things. “Awake sleeper, arise, and Christ will shine on you!” St. Paul says in Ephesians. Wake up! Arise, be faithful in the small things… But the “small things” are much, much smaller than we imagine.

Closing a door is a very, very small thing, but it is also a manifestation of a very big thing: It is a manifestation of our obliviousness to our selves and our surroundings, our lack of graceful consideration of others and our lack of awareness of the consequences of our habitual and thoughtless actions. In a sense the slamming of a door is a violent action, an explosion in a place of silence and peace, an invasive distraction into the calm and centering of those with whom we exist.

We are in Lent as I write this, a time traditionally defined by abstention from food and activities that is intended to heighten our awareness of the spiritual warfare between our flesh and our spirit. But it is more than an awareness of our growling stomachs and lust for meat and cheese and our awareness of the harness our fleshly passions have over us. It is intended to be a complete awakening of our soul and our senses to avoid the spiritual destruction of a state of unawareness of our self and our relationship to God in ALL things:

“Arise O my soul arise
Why are you sleeping?
The end is at hand, destruction hangs over you,
Come again to your senses that you may be spared by Christ our God
Who is everywhere present and filling all things.” (The Great Canon of St. Andrew)

Christ God is everywhere present and fills the smallest, insignificant, unnoticeable, ignored, unconscious, familiar, habitual things in our life and we are to wake up and notice, pay attention, and master them all by the practice of conscious engagement with them. By this we become aware of the greater things of God and have a soul prepared for a vision of the vastness of holiness and sacramentality of all creation.

But our distractions are not only global and fleshly, they are also historical and temporal: our experienced past and our imagined future. When faced with a consequential event, we usually react in the present moment based on a visceral feeling rooted in a past event, trauma, resentment, or failure. We also act in the present moment based on prognostications of a future based on our un-examined desires, goals, fantasies and unresolved past experiences.

These imaginations and ideas that are not real in the present moment but influence our present moment decisions and actions are what the Desert Fathers called “logismoi”, or simply “thoughts”. Nepsis is the gate, the “Watchman” through which thoughts must pass to influence our present actions. If the thoughts meet no Watchman to challenge them then we just “RE-act” to our past or the illusion of a future we imagine. Nepsis examines the present moment, the past and the delusions and guides us to claim the present moment, our reaction, the visceral feelings and then ACT in the present moment in the grace of God and in the image of Christ who fills all things (including our present moment). But if we have no practice being neptic, aware of acting conciously in the small things, we cannot lift the heavy things of life because we have not trained our minds by lifting the lighter things and offering them to God.

What are the lighter things?

Closing a door (of course): Turn the knob, guide the door into place then gently turn the knob back into place rather than letting it snap closed.

Guide the cabinet drawer, cabinet door, car door and trunk lid into place without slamming it (technology has replaced our lack of spiritual discipline with soft close drawers, hinges, and self-closing cargo doors… Sigh.)

Push buttons deliberately only as far as they need to go in order to engage instead of jabbing them with your finger.

Set your glass, cup, drink, silverware, plate or pan down on the dinner table without making a sound.

Do your dishes so there is little slamming or clatter in the sink or loading the dishwasher.

Listen to your footsteps.

Be aware of how hard you are pressing the keys on your keyboard and mouse.

How do you put your groceries on the check-out conveyor belt?

Can you hear it when you close the toilet seat?

When you vacuum do you slam the baseboards?

Do things rattle when you close the refrigerator door?

Do you yank cords and cables out of sockets instead of pulling them deliberately?

Do you FLIP light switches or do you guide them into place?

Do you yank on the cords to mini-blinds, shutters, or shower curtains or pull them deliberately?

Do you set your books down or do you drop them?

So, I could go on and on. I’ve read that Zen practice has identified 90,000 gestures and movements that we could be mindful of. I’ve yet to master the 22 or so above. But then neither have many of the monks I know so I’m in good company. Becoming “neptic” (awake/attentive) is not dependent on your environment, it is becoming aware OF and paying attention TO your environment and to your self. We are a physically relational faith: bowing, prostrations, prayer ropes, kneeling, making the sign of the Cross in a certain manner… all these things are bodily movement in relationship to creation and we pay attention that we are doing them in the prescribed way because the movements mean something. This is to train our senses and discipline our mind to be aware that EVERY movement, gesture, and act is holy and should be done consciously and in a manner worthy of Christ. One does not need to live in a monastery to pay attention. The greatest ascetical Desert Saints found greater saints than they in the cities, in kitchens, in marriages/domestic life, in menial labor jobs. Those people were neptic, paying attention to the world and to the people in their community with which they existed and responded to them as Christ would.

I look to the Gospels and see Christ with the people. Every moment is a present reality and nothing is accidental, unconciously done, or without awareness. He filled people with Himself because He was fully present. He knew people’s hearts because He paid attention. He manifested the eternal God in each moment of time. Every movement, every event, more importantly, every person was a gift of God and to be accepted and reacted to with grace, patience, love, mercy, consideration, peace and joy.

May I always be faithful in the small, seemingly meaningless and inconspicuous things of my life. May I always live in full awareness, in absolute conciousness of everything that surrounds me. May the closing of a door, the setting down of a cup be a manifestation of grace, an act of peace and consideration, a silent witness to the awakening of my heart to the fullness of the relationship I have to all things.