I finished reading Fr. Anthony Coniaris' Confronting and Controlling Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia (Light and Life: 2004) this weekend. It is a modern primer on the intellect, the heart, thoughts, the unity of mind and heart, and the Jesus Prayer. Fr. Anthony combines a wealth of citations from the Philokalia, mixed with his own summations and some modern-day (and well-used) parables and applications. In terms of tone, this makes for an uneven work. But it is a useful work, or at least it has proven so for me. If one wants the pure air of the Philokalia, or the compilation, Writings from the Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart, and one's spiritual father or priest has given his blessing, then it is available for those who desire it. For the rest of us who aren't even beginners, Fr. Anthony's book is a useful and practical introduction.
I have already noted, in a previous post, some of the helpful patristic gems from the book. This morning, I want to continue sharing what I have gleaned.
Our minds, and definitely my own, are awash in a miasma of thoughts. Fr. Anthony notes:
Research at the University of Minnesota has revealed that the average human being has about 4000 distinct thoughts in a sixteen-hour day. This means that over a life span of seventy years a person has a total of about one hundred million thoughts. According to the church fathers the majority of these thoughts (logismoi) are not positive but negative due to our fallen nature. (Confronting and Controlling Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia 36)
Four thousand distinct thoughts a day--and somehow I am to unite these in unceasing prayer. St. Theophan both describes my present reality and the goal I deeply desire:
[Thoughts] continue to jostle in your heart like mosquitoes. To stop this jostling, you must bind the mind with one thought, the thought of God only. An aid to this is a short prayer, which helps the mind to become simple and united: it develops feeling towards God and is engrafted with it. . . . Together with this short prayer, you must keep your thought and attention toward God. (Confronting and Controlling Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia 30)
And if I can keep my mind-heart turned ever toward God, such a reality is most sweet.
St. Martyrius elaborated, "You should remember God at every moment, then your mind will become heaven." (Confronting and Controlling Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia 43)
The present reality of my thoughts, however, is one fraught with sin and the passions, and the disordered soul. It is a constant, moment-by-moment struggle, not only against the thoughts arising from my own sinfulness and habits, but also those arising from the demonic.
St. Thalassios states:
There are three ways through which thoughts arise in you: through the senses, through the memory, and through the body's temperament. Of these the most irksome are those that come through the memory. (Confronting and Controlling Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia 47)
In addition, the Fathers teach that logismoi can come from the Holy Spirit, and also from the demons. St. Hesyhios:
The provocation comes first, then our coupling with it, or the mingling of our thoughts with those of the wicked demons. Third comes our assent to the provocation, with both sets of intermingling thoughts contriving how to commit the sin in practice. Fourth comes the concrete action--that is the sin itself. If, however, the intellect is attentive and watchful, and at once repulses the provocation by counter-attacking and gainsaying it and invoking the Lord Jesus, its consequences remain inoperative; for the devil, being a bodiless intellect, can deceive our souls only by means of fantasies and thoughts. . . .Intellect is invisibly interlocked in battle with intellect, the demonic intellect with our own. So from the depths of our heart we must at each instant call on Christ to drive the demonic intellect away from us and in His compassion give us the victory. (Confronting and Controlling Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia 62)
Fr. Anthony summarizes the progression as: a suggestion (prosbole), a dialogue (syndiasmos), consent (synkatathesis), and finally, the act and captivity, passion or obsession (Confronting and Controlling Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia 63).
So, I must remain always vigilant (the discipline of wacthfulness or nespsis) if I am to experience the union of mind and heart, the union with the Holy Trinity, and the transformation of body and soul. St. Symeon the New Theologian writes:
In short, if you do not guard your intellect you cannot attain purity of heart, so as to be counted worthy to see God (cf. Matt 5:18). Without such watchfulness you cannot become poor in spirit, or grieve or hunger and thirst after righteousness, or be truly merciful, or pure in heart, or a peacemaker, or be persecuted for the sake of justice (cf. Matt 5:3-10). To speak generally, it is impossible to acquire all the other virtues except through watchfulness. (Confronting and Controlling Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia 82)
And St. Hesychios adds:
Watchfulness and the Jesus Prayer, as I have said, mutually reinforce one another; for close attentiveness goes with constant prayer, while prayer goes with close watchfulness and attentiveness of intellect. (Confronting and Controlling Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia 98)
In particular, we should guard our thoughts by guarding the senses. St. Nicodemos of the Holy Mountain writes:
St. Isaac has noted, the enemy is standing and observing day and night directly against our eyes to detect which entrance of our senses will be opened for him to eneter. Once he enters through one of our senses because of our lack of vigilance, then this devious shameless dog attacks us further with his own arrows. We must also struggle to protect our senses because it is not only through curious eyes that we fall into the sin of desire and commit fornication and the adultery of the heart, as the Lord noted. There is also the fornication and the adultery of the sense of hearing, the sense of smell, the sense of taste, the sense of touch, and all of the senses together. (Confronting and Controlling Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia 69)
As St. Hesychios teaches us how to combat the logismoi:
The name of Jesus should be repeated over and over in the heart as flashes of lightning are repeated over and over in the sky before the rain. Those who have experience of the intellect and of inner warfare know this very well. We should wage this spiritual warfare with a precise sequence: first, with attentiveness; then, when we perceive the hostile thought attacking, we should strike at it angrily in the heart, cursing it as we do so; thirdly, we should direct our prayer against it, concentrating the heart through the invocation of Jesus Christ, so that the demonic fantasy may be dispersed at once. (Confronting and Controlling Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia 98-99)
Having vanquished such thoughts, however, we must not relax our vigilance, but we must remain on guard. St. Theophan the Recluse writes:
After every thought has been banished from the soul by the memory of God's presence, stand at the door of the heart and watch carefully everything that enters or goes out from there. (Confronting and Controlling Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia 69)
This seems an impossible and daunting task, but St. Philotheos of Sinai said:
Be extremely strict in guarding your intellect. When you perceive an evil thought, rebut it and immediately call upon Christ to defend you; and while you are still speaking, Jesus in His gentle love will say, "Behold, I am by your side ready to help you." (Confronting and Controlling Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia 64)
And St. John the Dwarf adds:
I sit in my cell and I am aware of evil thoughts coming against me, and when I have no more strength against them, I take refuge in God by prayer and I am saved from the enemy. (Confronting and Controlling Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia 75)
This is a great comfort. I have a very simple yet powerful tool against which to fight the battle of impure thoughts: the name of the Lord himself and his promise to be with me always, even unto the ages of ages.
But as I confessed previously, I am torn. I have been greatly concerned about my use of the Jesus Prayer. I know it is to be prayed reverently and fearfully, not lightly or inattentively. Herein is my dilemma: my prevailing state of mind in prayer is chaotic thoughts and lack of attention. To pray the Jesus Prayer in this context is to risk praying inattentively, to, apparently, invoke the Lord's name in vain.. But apart from praying the Jesus Prayer, is there any other way to unite one's thoughts in the heart? It is like not being able to begin because I cannot accomplish that which is necessary and which I so greatly desire.
Abbot Nazarius has said about the Jesus Prayer that we should practice it always and everywhere:
The head and beginning of all virtues, is, to the extent possible, unceasing prayer to our Lord Jesus Christ, which is called, by way of abbreviation, the Prayer of Jesus; the Apostle says concerning it: Pray without ceasing (I Thes. 5:17). That is, one must call upon the Name of God always, whether we be conversing, sitting, walking, working, eating, or doing anything else. At every time and in every place it is fitting to call upon the Name of God. For by this means, writes Chrysostom, the temptation of the enemy is consumed. Beat the warriors, says St. John Climacus, with the Name of Jesus, and a stronger weapon you shall not find either in heaven or on earth. Praye is the banishment of sorrow and dejection, the germination of meekness and angerlessness, the offering of joy and thanksgiving; and innumerable good things are acquired through prayer. (Abbot Nazarius of Valaam: Little Russian Philokalia vol. I [St Herman Press: 1983] 66)
And he lived this in his own life.
The Blessed Elder was meek and humble, and his heart was aflame with love toward God, so much so that at no time would he cease to say the mental Jesus Prayer, constantly going over the knots in the prayer rope in his hand. "Let us pray with the spirit and let us pray with the understanding also, " he wrote to a nun. "Let us enter into the words of St. Paul: I had rather speak five words with my understanding than ten thousand words in a tongue (I Cor. 14:15, 19). I am unable to express how fortunate we are that we have become worthy to utter these five words. What joy! Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me a sinner. Just think! O Lord! Whose Name am I pronouncing? That of the Creator, the Founder of everything, before Whom all heavenly powers tremble! Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God! Thou has shed Thy blood for me, hast saved me, hast come down to earth. . . . Put your understanding and your heart together, close your eyes, raise your mental eyes to the Lord. . . . O sweetest and dearst Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God . . . ." (Abbot Nazarius of Valaam: Little Russian Philokalia vol. I [St Herman Press: 1983] 22)
But still, there is the deep concern that I not engage in vain babbling, that I do not carelessly pray the Jesus Prayer without attention. Yet, if I do not at least begin to pray the Prayer, how can I begin to gather my thoughts to attention and unceasing prayer?
Archimandrite Sophrony, disciple of St. Silouan, provided me the encouragement I needed, as he writes in His Life is Mine (SVS Press: 1977):
Often when we would pray the Jesus Prayer the mind is besieged by inopportune thoughts of every kind which distract the attention from the heart. Our prayer seems fruitless because the mind is not participating in the invocation of the Lord's Name and only our lips continue mechanically to repeat the words. But there is meaning in this influx of untimely thoughts: our prayer becomes as it were a shaft of light focused on the dark places of our inner life, revealing to us the passions or attachments occupying the soul. We learn what we have to fight against: we see the iniquities that sway us. And then we call all the more urgently on the Name of God, and our repentance is intensified, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me. (cited in Confronting and Controlling Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia 101)
I have come to see my very praying of the Jesus Prayer itself as a training in doing the very thing I am called to do. The irreverence is not in the mere inattentiveness. I am a sinner bound by the passions I have invited into my heart and mind and soul and flesh. I have a mind that knows only the habit of chasing after unfruitful thoughts. So, though I am careful to pray the Prayer in moments when I can give such attention as I am able (while I am walking, on the bus or the el, as I am waiting in line; not while I am driving or speaking with my wife and daughters), I also recognize that it is part of the discipline that I chase after this wandering mind and return it to focus on Jesus and to offer such attention and devotion as I can now offer. By God's grace, and in time, each moment of attention will be followed by another moment, and another, until I learn, pray God, before I die, to keep that attention always on the Lord, and learn, at last, to pray without ceasing.
(Please note: That one should always discuss these matters with one's spiritual father or priest. My own unworthy words and sinful example are to be ignored in favor of the pure wisdom of Christ in the Church the and example of the holy saints and elders and fathers the Lord has given us.)
Posted by Clifton at September 26, 2005 10:00 AM | TrackBack