Is our Christianity too other worldly? Too interior? Are we fleeing the people God put around us? 

There are a few things that I really think need to be said here, but there will be insufficient detail due to limitations on time. 1. Just because Church Fathers used Platonic language doesn't necessarily mean that they are influenced into falsehood or confusion by Platonic thought. The Desert Fathers, speaking about _nepsis_ and _hesychia_ are often speaking in terms that are more familiar to Buddhists or Hindus, but we don't generally see people assuming that they were influenced into falsehood or confusion by the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama. There will necessarily be some overlap in spiritual practices, because wheels must be round if they are to roll. 2. To borrow from the allegory of the cave and say that Christianity has taken on this idea of 'transcending the flesh with reason' and to later to critique mystical prayer as being a way to transcend thought seems to be an odd choice. Middle Platonism and neoplatonism, contemporary to the rise of the Church, were both very much about this idea that intellectual meditation alone would lead someone to the true light. From the Desert Fathers and through most of Byzantine theological history, this kind of distinction and interior contradiction has been rejected. St Maximus seems to have systematized the process in his discussion of the interior unions that happen in the mystical life, bringing the mind, body, and soul into direct, non-contradictory union with each other as they grow in union with God. It's much closer to Buddhist or Stoic thinking than Neoplatonic thinking as a result. 3. At least in the Philokalia and the spiritual guides I've met, the emphasis of ascesis is only loosely related to Plato's allegory of the cave or similar ideas. For example, the cultivation of _nepsis_ is not about rejecting creation or ignoring the body, it's about a transformed interior world that necessarily requires change in the exterior world. As one's awareness and watchfulness increases internally, so does their external virtue and righteousness. None of this is foreign to Scripture, even the way I used to read Scripture as a Protestant eventually led to a place where the category of "mystical prayer" seemed necessary for one to align their whole life with the Christian path. 4. A total rejection of Creation isn't taught by virtually anyone, least of all Orthodoxy. There is a great emphasis on simplicity and straightforward living, and a recognition of the need for ascesis to train oneself to live that simple life. None of this rejects Creation. The simpler my life has become, largely through ascetical means and mystical prayer, the more I engage in the real elements of life and shed the false elements. I spend less time arguing about nonsense, wasting time worrying about politics, fretting over money or material possessions that are not necessary to keep going, and so on. That now freed-up time is spent not only in prayer, but also engaging more with real people and their concerns, real issues in a community, nature itself, animals, and so on. 5. Especially as time has passed, Orthodoxy has come to recognize that there needs to be more written for the laity, but we've only seen the rise of this content on mystical prayer in the writings of people like St Nektarios or St Paisios. I suspect that most things we read now were written for monastics (who were more literate than the rest of the population) and were understood in that context. When a layperson reads "you should give up all worldly possessions and live interiorly," this sounds like they need to swear off their wife, abandon their kids, and run off into the desert to pray. In reality, this was written to those who had _already_ sought to give up their external life and were being counseled on becoming a more interior person. I will freely admit that the draconian policies about the flesh in place in some ancient local canons or early medieval Fathers leans more to that 'utter rejection of Creation' side. When you have people sincerely arguing that intimacy within a marriage is evil if it leads to enjoyment, or saying that we endanger our souls if we consume any dairy during Lent, or act like swallowing your spit could be a violation of your Sunday fasting practice, something is wrong. I don't think that this was ever the dominant sense among the mind of the faithful, and the infallibility of the Church (in Orthodox dogmatics) is linked not only to the Episcopate or the Patriarchs, but to what the Catholics call the _sensus fidelium_. Honestly, I think the bigger problem we are facing is that we treat Hesychasm almost as some kind of occult knowledge. Becoming watchful/mindful within the context of a non-monastic Christian life is just as helpful as becoming watchful/mindful within the context of a monastic life. Lived out according to your station in life, this practice is anything but gnostic or overly interior, it's a process of reaching out to God more and more without refusing his efforts to transform us. We just need to translate the meaning beyond the monastic experience so it is intelligible to the laity.

Is there a worry that we might over emphasize a certain elitist attitudes. It seems to me theres three dangers: 1. Scripture is authoritative ergo my interpretation of scripture is authoritative and you must assent to it. There will always be an innate epistemological distinction between the intepretation and the authoratatuve teaching os scripture. The goal is have the two line up to the best of ones ability but its dangerous if we automatically assume our reading as fact and then enforce it with the authority of God behins our fixed interpretation. It seems like it might be helpful to have a different hermeneutic. Henri Lubac's stuff on Origen is really good on this. 2. Conflating the bible with "my bible." Specifically a lot of proestant theology can run into a bias where it may be self enforcing. DBH has a lot of great stuff on this and especially if you read his translation of the new Testament it certainly seems that theres a good case to be made that protestant translators assume some of their modern theological texts into the work. Hart talks about this very well, as well as others. 3. This leads into a third concern it might produce a kind of alienated elitism to where only a select scholars are in a position to interpret scripture because the historical, linguistic, philosophical knowledge needed to engage everything in Holy Scripture. Lastly, I think its a very interesting question about contemplation vs. action. Is the inward retreat a mistake? And I think one concern may we may have too western a conception, that is deeply industrial. People and vocations are evaluated merely on their usefulness to a broader context and narrative. A cog in a wheel. On one hand, as it felt in my protestant uprining this can sometimes lean into an idea that God needs us to spresd the gospel, needs us to save people. God wants to use us and our transfiguration has to so with loving others by sharing the Spirit and Gospel of our Lord Jesus, but he does not need us. The second concern is that it may demolish who some people are to have a one size fits all vocation. Ive been reading the mountain of silence which is like part memoir, travelogue, and orthodox spirituality all together, and Fr. Maximos talks with a Christian who is skeptical of monasticism on this point. At one point theres a young doctor who is a novice and the man makes the point that wouldnt it had been better off if the man used his abilities as a doctor to help people in some impoverished nation and spread the Gospel through that means. And the doctor simply answers that he doesnt know but that he felt such a burning desire to be a monk that if he didnt become one he felt like he would surely dir. And Fr. Maximos remarks is that we see everything in terms of utilitarian usefulness rather than starting with who someone is as a person. The life of contemplation and action are one, insofar as in stillness we throw away our cares and open ourselves completely, no longing judging ourselves trying to figure out whats "right." But we simply allow ours3lves to be who we before Christ and before the world. Any goodness or grace produced must come from the overflow of that authentic discovery of our deepest self in Chrisg, letting go of, perhaps even qyite sound thoughts and messaging about what we ought to be and hiw we must be different than what we are. Simply living in that stillness where everything we have ever desired is already present in Christ. This is what is offered in the incarnation that Christ identifies even with me and comes to live in me as my one true self. Theres a temptation in the active life to have the cause serve our false self and our own faithless need for self justification. In the contemplative life there is the temptation to introversion, by whcih rather than loving my neighbor in then Oneness of Christs solitude in the desert and the garden i seek to avoid him because i cannot face my own insecurity beofre him because I do not really believe in Christs love. All things in balance, some I think are called more to one side of the spectrum than others, but a personal faith, a pistis, far from a propositional assent, a deep personal encounter and openess with the Infinite revealed in human flesh is the bedrock of Christian life, ministry and theology. Some thought thay I hope arent too montonous. As always i love watching these and thinking. My prayers and joy are with you brother 🫡 I also have to mention im biased because I love neoplatonism and see that it only really makes sense fully in the early church fathers. The Trinity and the Incarnation resolves the problems of Neoplatonism (And if they were very Platonic its because Paul was also very Platonic.) "In whom we live and move and have our being..."