This is not meant to be a religious discussion, even though you are invited to see it that way if you choose.
Mary, mother of Jesus, introduced the phrase, the mind of the heart, but it has been mistranslated thoughts of the heart. You may have heard the words “love God (Name) with all of your mind,” but stop there and ask yourself, how does the mind love? While English has only one word for our mental faculty, mind, Greek has a few different words for it.
The Mental Function Dianoia
It is no mistake that the Greek word for mind in to love Name with all our mind and in Mary’s words, mind of the heart, are the same, dianoia. The key takeaway here is that the function of our mind that loves works as a function of the heart, inseparably. This one truth has changed lives. It changed mine.
So put the concept that love, agapé, is not a mind thing but happens only in the heart on hold and see where this goes. Each of the Greek words for mind refers to a different mental function, but not all of them work directly with the heart like dianoia. Knowledge of Word states that Word came and gave us a dianoia to know him in Name. This is not just knowing about Word and Name but the experience of knowing them in person with the dianoia of our heart.
The Mental Function Nous
Knowledge of Word instructs us to renew our mind to be transformed. This one is nous, the mental function of logic and reason.
If we try knowing or loving anyone with the nous directly, it is an intellectual effort and is really not agapé or knowing them at all. That is where the concept came from, but it is only partially correct.
If we use the loving mental function of our heart, dianoia, to love in full as is natural, the nous stops trying to turn the feelings of agapé and knowing someone into logic. Then, we can start doing our job and use the nous to understand who and what the dianoia allows us to experience directly.
The Mental Function Noéma
Next in the knowledge of Word, there is the warning not to allow our mind to become blind. This one is noéma, the mental function of envisioning and seeing with the living light of our heart’s inner vision. It may sound simple, but the inner light we see with is always the light of agapé. Blindness is the absence of agapé, nothing more. Yet blindness will turn every which way to change this truth — until suffering makes us want to know what is really going on.
The noéma function of envisioning in our heart is essential for developing our relationship with Name and Word and thus our awareness of agapé1 — preventing hatred from taking hold in us. For “we will be like him (Word) because we will envision him just as he is.” This reveals the nature of agapé’s light to become in character whom or what it envisions. Envisioning is key, therefore, to having Word’s agapé as our own and increasing our vision of it. But this is possible only when the noéma works with the functions of loving and understanding in our heart.
Knowledge of Word states that agapé grows in knowledge and all perception. The word knowledge here is mature knowledge in Greek, which, combined with the perception of envisioning Word just as he is and all other perception thereafter, is the enlightening formula of life when working with forgiveness.
When our dianoia, nous and noéma do not work as one in our heart, our inner vision gets entangled in the light and darkness of this world. It blinds us to the light of agapé already functioning as our inner vision. It makes us think we are comfortable with tolerance or hatred for some, instead of just their actions and who they think they are, until suffering makes us want to know what is really going on.
Work From Soul
These mental functions of our heart—loving, understanding and envisioning—produce visions in our heart, not just our noéma, when we work from our soul,2 our position in the one soul of Name. When they are seen with and as the agapé light of our heart, this is as real as life gets.
We use the functions of our mind to form everything, but for it to manifest in our heart, it all depends on what we work from. Knowledge of Word states—whatever you form (with your mind, the unity of all functions), work from soul. This alone manifests it in our heart. Without following this knowledge, we have little or no control over what blindness enters our heart when current events push us too far.
However, when we envision Word as he is from our soul, our noéma is no longer blind in our heart “to the radiance of the gospel (good conveyance) of the glory of Christ (Word) beaming forth, who is the image of God (Name)…who (Name) has shone, in our hearts, the radiance of the knowledge of the glory of God (Name) in the face of Christ (Word).” This is the light of Life shining in the face of the truth of Life .
The Mental Function Ennoia
Then there is the powerful mental function of intention in our heart, ennoia. In knowledge of Word, ennoia is used to remind us that the intentions of our heart, which we choose, should always guide us to follow our true desire, the desire of our soul. This is why working from soul is the all in all, for the true desire of our soul is for Name and its memory. All of us desire Life and its memory.
With the experience of personally knowing Name in Word in the dianoia of our heart and seeing them in our noéma, our ennoia empowers us to plan for the best way of using the agapé manifest in our heart for everyone. It prevents the poison of hatred or fear from blinding us to the future or at least blinding us any further, until we can learn the needed knowledge and gain the needed perception of the radiance of Name shining in the face of Word and afterwards all other perception.
The Nonfunctional Function Nephros
All four of the above words for mind are related in Greek, in fact, nous is the root of dianoia, noéma and ennoia, although dianoia is key. Another Greek word translated mind comes from a completely different root. It is nephros, a symbolic function that is used to deceive or be deceived, while it fundamentally just means kidneys.
Consider first that, like the kidneys, the brain and physical heart are just physical organs also, used by our living mind and heart of spirit to express ourselves in the world.3
The kidneys symbolize the failure to express the true nature of our mind and heart, the light of agapé. Suspend any defenses working around your thoughts on this subject for a moment to consider this for your own sake, as well as everyone else’s.
To help us understand the contextual definition of deceiving applied here to nephros, consider how nephros is used just once in Word will judge our minds and hearts. For nonbelievers, think of judgment here as the natural processes of the conscience (suneidesis)4 at work. Why would our kidneys need to be judged unless, like all other organs, they have a contextual or symbolic meaning?
In the greater context of Word’s actions, Word stated earlier that judgment is based on whether we show agapé to the least among us,5 requiring the dianoia loving mental-function of our heart.
Using the word nephros for kidneys, instead of dianoia for the mental function of loving in our heart, reveals that something has stopped us from loving the least, our enemies, and is causing us to only tolerate or hate them, openly or secretly.
And that something is the deception of spiritual blindness. It deceives us into thinking that it is our duty to judge them (in worldly matters, using righteous judgment is our duty) and that that overrides the need for us to love them, the least among us. But Word never says that any of us are ever in that position. The conscience never puts us in that position.
Spiritual Blindness
To understand this deception, consider that Word said, if our eye is evil—the noéma in our heart—our whole body is full of darkness, spiritual blindness.
The key to understanding this is that Word also said not to resist evil, because it is a state of mind, a distortion in our perception. Word did not treat evil as a substance. For a shadow falsely projected from one’s perception cannot be resisted. It can only be understood with the nous reasoning mental-function — if we are already loving the deceived with understanding and have good intention for them in their future without being against ourselves.
Therefore, when we are deceived, it works through the symbolic nephros mental-function, which is not part of our heart. Even physically, the kidneys are not part of the heart,6 but symbolically, they point to the fact that the inner vision of our heart can be deceived when lacking knowledge. And when deceived, we see the least among us, our enemies, as evil substance, instead of in a deceived state of spiritual blindness, without the radiant knowledge of Name’s glory, unable to envision it manifest in Word’s face.
Through the distorted perception of deceived inner vision, seeing them as evil substance, we are forced to tolerate or hate them. We certainly do not have compassion or agapé for them in their state of spiritual blindness. Their actions and how we see who they think they are become part of our distorted perception, the beam in our eye.
Now since seeing them as evil substance works according to the nature of spiritual blindness, it prevents us from realizing that we ourselves are blind. And in our blindness, how sure can we be about their blindness? Thinking that we may be blind is the last thing we consider when we are without Word’s knowledge and perception of its radiance. We are incapable of using the functioning functions of the mind of our heart to love them, as perhaps they may be incapable of using theirs to love us.
We deceive ourselves into believing that we do not have to love them without going against the nature of the dianoia of our heart.
But when we are not deceived, as Word puts it, when our eye is single, our whole body is full of light. And with the true perception this brings,7 we awaken to using the inner light of agapé as the eyes of our hearts, the radiance of Name shining in the face of Word and vice versa, their exquisite light as the suneidesis of our heart. The singleness in each of us is between our mind and heart, specifically the dianoia of our heart, between all of us, it is the singularity in which we all exist in Word as members of Name’s family of agapé names.
Phronéma and Phrén, the Sixth and Seventh Mental Functions
Focused on the spirit of Word’s singularity, we use the sixth and seventh Greeks words translated mind to serve Name’s agapé in Word. The sixth is phronéma. When we focus it on the spirit, it is the phronéma of the spirit, combining all mental functions in a oneness and revealing their spiritual nature, which neutralizes the nephros. “The phronéma of the spirit [is] life and peace.”
However, when we focus it on our physical experience,8 it is the phronéma of the flesh, and “the phronéma of the flesh [is] death [spiritual death or spiritual blindness].” The life and death of spirit co-exist in the duality name, understood with the spiritual nous of the phronéma of the spirit.
The seventh is phrén, the state of our phronéma in the singularity of Name’s agapé in Word. We are reminded “not to be children in our minds (phréns), although babes in the worthless [states of the phronéma of the flesh], but to be mature in our minds (phréns) [requiring one of the mature states of the phronéma of the spirit].”
Word taught that being mature9 as Name is rests on loving the enemies of suneidesis, the principle. Therefore, attaining maturity in our phréns depends on envisioning Word from soul to see Word practicing the principle in our hearts with the phronéma of the Spirit of Name. This is the Holy Spirit, the Great Spirit, or whatever the Spirit of Life is called in our beliefs.
Word, likewise, says that he can do nothing unless he first sees Name doing it.
The Dianoia of our Heart
Therefore, if we try to love from our mind or heart alone, the dianoia of our heart becomes vulnerable and weak, easily deceived in our nephros by others who are already deceived in theirs, and “the whole world lies in the evil [of spiritual blindness].”
However, when loving Name with all our agapé from the dianoia of our heart, through those of us spiritually blind in Word’s singularity, it becomes agapé stronger than death. For with mature phréns, we know Name in person in the spiritually blind. They, in their fullness as el-elohe-names, are simply incapable of receiving or giving the inner light of Name’s agapé already in them.
The Phrén and Dianoia
Viewed religiously or not, this is the instruction Word gives all of us, to love Name with all our heart, soul, dianoia, and strength — and (through) our neighbors as ourselves. This is loving Life back with the agapé it loves us with — through the most important members of Life, each other, including the least of us.
Does not Name love us through the ones we love and the ones who do not love us, even though it is often not understood at the time? And we must love them without being against ourselves.
For all seven mental functions and the desires of our heart and soul tell us to love the spiritually blind wisely, never allowing them to blind us with their tolerance or hatred, which can be so deceptively clever.
So be safe by loving them wisely with your phrén, sincerely from the dianoia of your heart, and by understanding their roles in The Spiritual Story of Democracy. And when practical, according to the Practical Guide, resist the actions brought forth from spiritual blindness, peacefully as much as possible for you.
Suggested reading:
Short Lessons on Unconditional Love: How Does Agapé Deal with Dangerous People?
The Eyes of Democracy (Introduction and Index of Articles)
The Spiritual Story of Democracy
Agapé is always unconditional, for when we do not love some people, our agapé only appears to be conditional and no longer agapé for them in our eyes, yet the essence of our agapé is still unconditional. For agapé cannot be limited by our blindness. Even when loving someone more than another, the same unconditional love is present for both, even though we are blind to part of it. For the greater agapé grows in us, it grows for everyone. And expressing agapé differently according to the relationship does not change its essence in our heart. Name is agapé.
Soul has always been a dilemma. For in knowledge of Word, in the first stage of being, we are called living souls, used as a label for us. But it is also used as something we have, but rarely understood this way together, as in a soul has a soul. It is cleared up when learning that Word taught that we must give up our soul to keep it forever. From this perspective, it is mistranslated life, as in, we must lose our life to keep it forever. It is corrupt in its initial state, but soul enters a noncorrupt state when we are life-giving spirit, no longer called living souls. Here, we can see it as a function of spirit, the first level of conscientiousness, the second level our heart. When we can transform into life-giving spirit is explained in the Section Should Bear/Shall Bear.
When I hear arguments that boil down to whether life is from matter, I ask if it is reasonable to think that constructs from neurons in our brain would have and take the choice to cease to exist for the sake of another? When someone dies for another by choice, an act of unconditional love, do you think the brain has a choice in the matter?
How else do we think if not through the biological brain? In spirituality, the mind is of the spirit. It is like a person operating a laptop. The brain is the laptop, without life to make living decisions. It just does what it is programmed to do, even AI programming itself to a measure, by the living person of spirit enclothed in dust in front of the laptop.
Computer animation shows us flashy lights and the narrator tells us that this depicts the neural activity that forms constructs of consciousness. Conscientiousness is our reality, which only conscientiousness can know. That is between two living beings, nonorganic. With all due respect to the greatness of science, scientists have not found anything remotely like us with such a reality.
While the goal of these articles is to teach how to love the enemies of conscience, discussions of this nature are relevant when beliefs prevent us from attaining this level of love.
Suneidesis, pronounced soo-NAY-day-sis, is a Greek word that joins our natural awareness with our sense of conscience. Click on the link for a detailed explanation. It is central to this teaching. Using this foreign word regularly in discussions helps us get accustomed to experiencing something new and positive working in our awareness itself. When the word conscience is used, it will refer to the aspect of suneidesis that involves right and wrong, but this aspect cannot be separated from our co-conscientious awareness of all things.
If I understand that my awareness of something as simple as a cup includes co-conscientiousness, I do not allow myself to get blinded by the cup alone but know it as part of all creation at the hands of the Creator or the universe, depending on one’s beliefs. Spiritual maturity does this naturally.
In Matthew 25:40, when Word said, “one of the least of these my brethren”, he was not limiting it to the Christians among them, since he said there is great reward for loving our enemies but no reward for loving those who love us, such as fellow Christians. And when Word defined brothers as those who do the will of his Father in heaven, he was only speaking figuratively since in Hebrews it says that he was ashamed to call them brothers. Knowledge of Word plainly states that we are all one family under God. That is why loving the enemies of conscience in a democracy is simply following the truth of one family.
The brain is not part of the physical heart either and depends on it also like the kidneys. However, in a much more complex way than the kidneys, the brain contributes to the wellness of the physical heart by allowing it to “provide the nervous system with crucial sensory feedback about the body’s state…This information allows the brain to monitor cardiovascular health and to modulate the heart’s function…The stresses caused by hatred disrupt the nervous system of the brain, effecting the wellbeing of the heart.” Google AI Overview
True perception in our inner vision is clean perception from the oneness between mind (nous) and suneidesis, free from the illusion that we can use our mental functions and desire to possess anything other than the light of unconditional love. For only agapé has substance in our heart, Name being agapé as well as all of us.
At one end of the spectrum, there is seeing the physical presence of a person as evil substance, at the other end, there is seeing the physical presence of a person as desirable substance to be possessed in our heart.
Under a deceived state of mind, one moment we may see a person’s appearance as desirable to be possessed and, the next moment, may see the same person’s substance as evil—if their actions turn our distorted perception to do so. We make every effort to make ourselves think we do or can possess the first state, but when the second state appears, we try to unpossess them and that brings emotional pain.
We may go through life thinking we possess the physical appearance of the people we choose to manifest in our heart, but under this state of mind, we must unpossess them if they change into evil substance in our inner vision — or our inner vision changes.
Even those we never choose to possess must be unpossessed—if seen as evil substance—when our inner vision is trained in its distortion to supposedly possess everyone at least at first, just like light reflecting on a distorted surface.
Fortunately though, underlying this is the reality that we are all the agapé light already serving as each other’s hearts. For knowledge of Word states that Word is the all and is in all. As the life of all of us, Word brings that allness into all of us. This is what is behind the attempt to possess others through distorted perception. Our real desire is to knowingly possess everyone already serving as the light of our heart with the agapé light they are. In a deceived state of mind, trying to possess or unpossess what we already possess naturally and irreversibly is the problem.
But true perception in our inner vision is free from all the deception of spiritual blindness. With knowledge of Word, we know we already possess the agapé serving as the dianoia of our heart. So, being fulfilled by loving everyone in our heart, we can find a balance in responsibly enjoying or avoiding the presence of people and things in the world.
Knowledge of Word speaks of the glory of the grace of Name and of heavenly glory and earthly glory, indicating that even the physical is ultimately the glory of Name’s grace. It is ultimately the grace of Name, the greatness of Life’s attributes. Distinguishing every kind of glory enables us to learn which parts of Name’s nature are displayed in them. The heavenly glory is Name’s theios divine nature, agapé, and earthly glory is manifest by Name’s theiotés divine nature, which means the nature we see in our physical bodies is not part of Name’s nature and thus not part of ours.
However, when we focus on the spirit, which is Name’s theios divine nature, we have the phronéma of the spirit and can see the physical, formed out of Name’s theiotés divine nature, within but not of the spirit — all part of the glory of Name’s grace.
We experience this clean perception with our suneidesis in its oneness with our nous, the nous giving us understanding of the experience. In spiritual fasting, we bear, in our physical body, the symptoms of addiction in those who are blind, along with any involuntary reactions of our own, with the glory of the grace of Name in Word in our suneidesis. Here, we can transcend the states experienced only physically with the phronéma of the flesh. Remember, practice spiritual fasting only when you yourself are not addicted.
Knowledge of Word uses teleios in the passage referred to, which is translated mature or perfect, the former appropriately applied to us, the latter appropriately applied to Name. For teleios comes from the meaning “to end”, indicating a cycle where completion results in maturity, and since Name never needs to complete any cycle, teleios is better translated perfect in Name’s case.
Whoa…. Whoa….. i just got bigger on the inside than I am on the out, and that’s from just my first read-through; it’s going to take several to fully wrap my mind around this - I’m grateful to have found you!
As a Muslim , this so insightful.