The Movements of Nature

The movements of nature are three: toward God, toward the self, toward the world. In the original state, all three were luminous: the movement toward God was ascent, the movement toward the self was knowledge, the movement toward the world was service. After the fall, the order breaks: the movement toward God fades, the movement toward the self darkens, the movement toward the world becomes unleashed. Man no longer ascends but closes in; no longer knows himself but confuses himself; no longer serves but consumes. Saint Maximus shows that nature does not move by itself but is moved: in the fallen state, the movements are no longer rational but impulsive. The movement toward God becomes fear, the movement toward the self becomes egoism, the movement toward the world becomes passion. Man no longer lives vertically but centrifugally: he scatters into desires, reactions, pleasures, fears. Nature is not degraded by sin but by the loss of direction. When the movement toward God disappears, the other two become disoriented and turn into mechanisms of survival. Man is no longer a person but a knot of impulses. Healing does not mean stopping the movements but reordering them: toward God through obedience, toward the self through illumination, toward the world through love. The movements of nature are not the problem; their direction is. The fall is movement without God. Rising is movement back toward God. Everything else is detail.