Esoterism and the Order

What Seyyed Hossein Nasr writes concerning the relationship of Sufism to the tradition of Islam applies, I believe, to the work of the Oriental Orthodox Order in the West. We are attempting to create (and recover) a new relationship to the exoteric tradition of Christianity as it has been expressed over the centuries in the West. Our model uses both Sufism as a more recent example, but more importantly, Oriental Christianity as it was expressed beyond the Occident. That model is one which informed early Christianity, and guides us now.

Since it is based upon the social and juridical teachings of Islam, Sufism is meant to be practiced within society and not in a monastic environment outside the social order. But the attitudes of monastic life are integrated with the daily life lived within the human community .... Sufism is the way of integration of the active and contemplative lives so that man is able to remain receptive inwardly to the influences of heaven and lead an intense inner contemplative life while outwardly remaining most active in a world which he moulds according to his inner spiritual nature, instead of becoming its prisoner as happens to the profane man. (Shi'ism and Sufism, 37).