Discovering the Eternal Logos (Word) in the Tao w/ James Kourtides

@JAMESKOURTIDES reveals how the ancient Eastern writers intuited the eternal Logos (Word) of God as the Tao (the Way) hundreds of years before the full revelation of the Logos in Christ. James shares his full-circle journey from Greek Orthodox Christian upbringing to modern philosophy at university to Eastern practices and a restored embrace of his Christian roots.

The Taoist concepts of Order/Chaos, made popular recently by Jordan B Peterson and others, are described in an attempt to understand the correlations with the concepts of Christian cosmology - heaven/earth and time/space.

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[panokostouros]

Fellow Greek! I'm glad to have discovered your videos.

[JAMESKOURTIDES]

Thanks Derek! Really enjoyed our conversation. Looking forward to continuing the discussion. Blessings!

[metaspacecrownedbytime]

This was great, you guys are on the mark. Jesus is the truth. The same for me, Jordan then johnathan and Mattheu and symbolism. I live for this revelation and spend every moment attempting to implement truth.

[lisaonthemargins]

51:18 That's a beautiful icon <3

[billywest]

Dao is a word that can mean both way and word. In many translations of the bible in china in john 1-1 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God." It's translated as "in the beginning was the Tao and the Tao with God and the Tao was God."

[panokostouros]

Derek, I forgot to mention this earlier but I think you might find this interesting. At around the 12:00 mark, you pose the question of whether *Order* & *Chaos* can be directly attributed to *Heaven* & *Earth* . Matthieu Pageau himself directly addressed this a few years back in a comment on an interview Jonathan gave with Rachel Fulton Brown called "Getting Feminine Symbolism RIght".

Matthieu said that _"The concepts of 'Heaven' and 'Earth' should NOT be confused with 'Order' and 'Chaos'. Order and disorder describe the relationship (or lack thereof) between 'Heaven' and 'Earth'."_

[panokostouros]

1:35 Exactly, this was my problem as well. Greeks take their wonderful Orthodox tradition for granted and even mock it while Protestants here in the West are starving for a deeper Liturgical life based on the Logos, on meaning.

Greeks migrate to America thinking they'll have a better life (which is true in many ways) but many don't take the time to reconcile their simple village life to the Western mind the way the Russians did. The basic pattern is as follows:

_Send your kids to secular schools to become refined in intellect but then subject them to "outdated" rituals in an outdated language so that we don't make our grandmothers worried, who are then bewildered when many of their grandchildren leave the Church or marry non-Greeks._

I love my Greek culture, but I hate how so many Greeks focus on its superficial aspects but refuse to intimately understand the Church that gave it life and strength. I almost became an atheist because of this. Now despite my tone, I understand the challenges simple-minded immigrants face, I really do. You can't expect people from a simpler world to educate their children against the Western mind, especially since for centuries, no one needed to explain anything as life itself was structured around the Church intuitively and symbolically as the Pageau Brothers would say, like being required to explain the difference between the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems instead of just telling people to breathe.

However, here in America with our focus on the individual over the culture, we don't have that problem. Glory to God. It wasn't until I went to a Church with 90% Protestant converts all singing together in English, including the clergy, that I began to understand what the Orthodox Church was all about. Get that! I had to go the Christian "Gentiles" to leave my Greek "Pharisee" upbringing, haha.

[MANDAMUS_]

Hebrews 4:12
King James Bible
For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart..

Soul - yin
Spirit - yang
Word - Christ (John 1:1-14)