By Mark Kutolowski
Around the time of the 2020 election, I was asked to give a reflection on how we, as a church and society, can move forward in the healing of our world. In my reflection, I suggested that the essential spiritual response to our era of political, social, and environmental decline is twofold. First, we commit more fully to the inner work of spiritual transformation. Then, we allow this work to be expressed in a transformed way of life. Only from this place of grounding in divine life, and then living from a place of love and integrity, can we have any hope of contributing to the healing of our world. Rooted in divine love, we can begin to build the elements of a sane future for our culture.
This approach of responding to social decline and possible collapse through spiritual renewal closely mirrors the fourth century Christian flight to the wildernesses of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. In the fourth century, the ancient Roman world order, which had stood for a thousand years, teetered on the edge of collapse. Imperial Rome was being battered by enemies from without and rotting from corruption and social decay from within. The Roman state had become ‘Christian’ in name, whichonly furthered the resolve of Christian spiritual pioneers who stepped away from the collapsing society and fled to the wilderness. There, they built a new social order founded on radical fidelity to the God of infinite love and mercy.
These pioneers became known as ‘The Desert Fathers and Mothers.’ They developed a system of spiritual practice that I believe has profound significance for our time. Thomas Merton wrote that the desert monastics saw the imperial society around them as a sinking shipwreck. Rather than push for social reform, their calling was to swim away from the sinking ship and find solid ground. Merton writes,
‘They knew that they were helpless to do any good for others as long as they floundered about in the wreckage. But once they got a foothold on solid ground things were different. Then they had not only the power but even the obligation to pull the whole world to safety with them.’[1]
Merton continues, in reflecting on the significance of the desert monastics for our era,
‘We must liberate ourselves, in our own way, from involvement in a world that is plunging to disaster…. We cannot do exactly as they did. But we must be as thorough and as ruthless in our determination to break all spiritual chains, and cast off the domination of alien compulsions, to find our true selves, to discover and develop our inalienable spiritual liberty and use it to build, on earth, the Kingdom of God.’[2]
As we approach the start of Lent,[3]and through the season of Lent, we are going to post a series of reflections based on the teachings of the desert fathers and mothers. The rest of this post will be an overview of one of the great desert teachings about purification of the heart. Each of the following weeks we’ll post a reflection about one of the ‘eight thoughts’ of this desert system of inner transformation. In this series, we’re drawing on a deep well of ancient wisdom from an era and culture very different from our own, so it will take some translating to get started.
What did these desert monastics teach?
1. ‘The Kingdom of God is at hand’ – Mark 1:15 and ’Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God’ – Matthew 5:8
The spiritual masters of the desert, known as ‘Abbas’ and Ammas’, knew from their own experience the truth of Jesus’ teaching that ‘The Kingdom of God is at hand.’ In their lives of simplicity and sacrifice, they directly encountered an infinite Love that dwelled within and among them. They came to know God, to see and abide in God. Some were known to have attained to ceaseless prayer, an unbroken state of spiritual tranquility where they were at all times at peace and intimate with their divine Beloved.
The witness of the desert monks is rooted in a deep conviction that God’s presence (the ‘Kingdom of God’) is eternally available to all that have the spiritual eyes to see it. Yet, they also recognized that the vast majority of humanity was spiritually asleep and unable to perceive this transforming reality. For this reason, the desert monks focused their own spiritual labors on attaining ‘purity of heart.’ That is to say, they came to recognize inner obstacles that could be identified and removed through spiritual disciplines like prayer, fasting, and vigils. Simply removing these inner blockages allowed for the natural radiance of God’s light, life, and light to shine through their hearts and illumine their entire beings.
While the focus on removing vices (the ‘inner blockages’) in the desert teachings may sound negative, it’s actually rooted in an immensely positive view of human nature. It affirms that our natural state is one of intimacy with God and union with our Creator. The spiritual labor of purifying the heart is critical because who we truly are in God is so much more beautiful than the ‘self’ of our superficial personality. The work of purifying the heart is the spiritual journey from who we ‘think’ we are to our deeper self, hidden with Christ in God. It is this deeper self that is capable of both attaining inner peace and of being a gift and a blessing to others.
2. We are not our thoughts
In the solitude of the desert wilderness, the ancient monks learned to observe the rise, persistence, and fall of their thoughts. Through this observation, they understood that ‘our’ thoughts are not really our own. This flies in the face of our modern sense of self. We assume that we are self-contained, psychological beings, and that when we become aware of a thought, it is ‘our thought’ and we are the ones doing the thinking. This gives an illusion of control and self-sufficiency. However, simply try to quiet your thoughts and the illusion vanishes! Even after a single period of silent meditation, almost all of us find we cannot control our thinking mind.
The elders of the desert understood that the relationship between our soul and thought was more like an antennae and radio waves.[4]The thoughts come and go, while our mind and heart can ‘pick up’ or ‘tune in’ to different levels of thoughts. When we habitually tune into and re-engage with thought patterns, they can develop into a sense that we ‘are’ these thoughts. They can become so familiar that we mistake them for our personality. When we blindly consent to thoughts, we become their slaves and are pulled farther and farther from the mystery of our true self.
In contrast, our true self is ‘hidden with Christ in God’ and lies deeper than any thought. Consider these passages by the desert elder Evagrius of Ponticus on prayer:
“If Moses, when he attempted to draw near the burning bush, was prohibited until he should remove the shoes from his feet, how should you not free yourself of every thought that is colored by passion seeing that you wish to see One who is beyond every thought and perception?”
“Strive to render your mind deaf and dumb at the time of prayer and then you will be able to pray.”
“You will not be able to pray purely if you are all involved with material affairs and agitated with unremitting concerns. For prayer is the rejection of concepts.”[5]
By recognizing that our personhood is deeper than our thoughts, the desert elders open up a way to see through the veil of thought to a more direct encounter with God in the depths of our being.
4. Demons, daemons, and the passions
Finally, we get the desert teachings that sound most shocking to our modern ears. The desert elders observed that thoughts (which are, after all, not ‘ours’) can come from three sources – (1) From the ordinary workings of the human psyche, (2) From God or angelic sources, and (3) From the demons. While we moderns easily agree to the first source, and modern Christians might readily agree that thoughts can come from God, we bristle at the idea of thought coming from demons. Its highly controversial to even think they exist!
Our idea of ‘demons’ conjures up images of little red devils, wandering around with pitchforks, perhaps sitting on a person’s shoulders suggesting evil deeds. This caricature obscures the more subtle phenomena the desert monks were trying to describe. It is perhaps more helpful to remember the term ‘demon’ is rooted in the older Greek word ‘daemon’ which simply meant ‘an attendant or inspiring spirit.’[6]The ‘demons’ of the 4thcentury desert are spiritual energies at work – whether or not we choose to ascribe aspects of personality or intention to them is unnecessary to the desert teaching.
The desert monks viewed the demons as particular thought forms that were certain to assail a serious man or woman of prayer and spiritual practice. When they were not met or engaged with, they remained powerless over the monk. When the monk was careless and began to identify with and consent to a ‘demonic’ thought, then the thought could wreak havoc with his spiritual life. Eventually, the thought could develop into a full-fledged ‘passion’ – that is, an emotionally charged, compulsive drive that would keep the monk from resting in the mercy and love of God. A major aspect of the desert monastics’ spiritual practice was inner watchfulness over their hearts, seeking to become free of the influence of the passions. We might think of the ‘demons’ ornegative thoughts and the ‘passions’ as a sort of ‘lock and key.’ The negative thought is unpleasant but powerless to do a person harm unless they consent and engage with it in their heart. But when there is a space in the heart for the negative thought to lodge, immense harm can occur. This inner ’spiritual warfare’ of learning to be free of the negativethoughts was essential to the spirituality of the desert.
There is a sense in the desert teachings that the ‘demons’ exist outside of any one individual, in the sort of spiritual ‘ether’ or atmosphere that afflicts humanity. In this sense, we’re all in this fight together, and the spiritual growth and progress of any one of us is a blessing to the whole of humanity. Our individual battles with the demons and the passions influence not only our own freedom, but that of our brothers and sisters on the journey to freedom in God.
John Cassian, who catalogued the teachings of the desert elders, observed that they acknowledged there was ultimately only one ‘negative thought’, which is the thought or orientation towards building up the private ‘self’ rather than towards God. But this one primal ‘thought’ was then subdivided into eight more particular types of negative thoughts or ‘demons’ that could keep a person from fully sharing in the life of God. They are:
1. Gluttony
2. Lust
3. Avarice (or Greed)
4. Anger
5. Sadness
6. Acedia (or Listlessness)
7. Vainglory
8. Pride
These ‘negative thoughts’ are presented in a deliberate order, as this was the order in which a monk was trained to observe, identify, and labor to gain freedom from the influence of the thoughts. They begin with the most carnal (gluttony, lust, and avarice), move to the emotional (anger and sadness), and continue into the psychospiritual (acedia, vainglory and pride). Thus, the monk in training would labor to become free of increasingly subtle obstacles to the total gift of self to God.
Over the next eight weeks, we’ll dive into an exploration of each of these thought forms, and some of the ways in which someone following the Way of Christ can seek to become free of their influence and enter more fully into the Kingdom of God in this life.
What is the value of this desert system in our time?
I find the insights of the desert can be profoundly helpful in our time. Here are a few reasons:
· In Western Christianity and secular ethics alike, there is an emphasis on not sinning (in religious language) or not doing evil. Yet we seem, as a society, to have a very difficult time restraining violent behavior and crime. In the desert approach, the ‘battle’ is moved to a much earlier stage—to the awareness and engagement with thought as it first emerges in consciousness. This is a much more subtle practice, and I believe it is much more effective in producing just action than ethics and prohibition against bad deeds. It closely echoes Jesus’ teachings about anger and lust in the sermon on the mount (Matthew 5).
· When I take the desert perspective on thought seriously, I am filled with compassion for any and all people who are doing harm to others or to our world. I can see them as fellow children of God who have been captured or ‘possessed’ by the ‘demons,’ rather than as bad people whom I might be tempted to hate. It opens the doorway to universal love. It also helps me to see how I am faced with the same ‘demons’ and temptations as any other person, and it is only by the grace of God that I have not been overcome. It brings to the forefront that we’re all in this together.
· Likewise, the desert perspective aligns me with St. Paul in recognizing that our struggle is ‘not with flesh and blood’ (Eph 6:12) but with evil in the spiritual realms. This frees me of any temptation to hate other people, and also means that my struggle with the deepest source of evil oppressing humanity can take place in prayer in the recesses of my own heart. It also reminds me that positive social or political change, without a corresponding change of heart, will be short lived at best.
· The desert teachings face the problem of evil head-on. While I find there is tremendous value in learning silent prayer practices (like Centering Prayer) and meditation, as a spiritual director I’m amazed at our ability to delude ourselves and to fail to see our own inner blockages. By training the spiritual disciple to examine and cleanse our hearts of each of these thought patterns, the desert teaching can help identify and remove obstacles to spiritual growth than can otherwise remain hidden in the unconscious for years, decades, or a lifetime. In this way, a rigorous practice of self-awareness like the desert teaching on the eight thoughts can be a powerful complement to a simple prayer form like Centering Prayer or Christian meditation.
· The desert approach rightly brings a moral component to spiritual growth. In our modern era when so many of us are pursuing spirituality outside the traditional boundaries of religion, it’s typical to focus on seeking transcendent spiritual experiences while neglecting the gritty work of reforming our way of life. The desert teachings steer clear of both the pitfall of thinking that we are bad (the result of morality without spiritual insight), or that we have no capacity for evil (a common lapse of practicing meditation without a corresponding ethical discipline). It accurately asserts that we are both made in the image of God andafflicted by negative thoughts that have the potential to do great harm to ourselves and others. The desert elders teach us that while the presence of these energies is not our fault, it is our responsibility to choose how we respond, and to consciously align our hearts with God moment by moment.
As we near the beginning of Lent, we invite you to join us on this journey through the passions. May we learn together to enter into ever greater freedom in God!
[1]From ‘The Wisdom of the Desert’ by Thomas Merton -published in 1960.
[2]Ibid.
[3]Yesterday marks the start of ‘Septuagesima’, a three-week period of preparation before the start of Lent that is no longer observed in most liturgical calendars. This liturgical season was, like Lent, a time of spiritual preparation and purification.
[4]Of course, this is a modern analogy, unknown in the 4thcentury, but I find it helpful.
[5]These passages are chapters 4, 11, and 70 in Evagrius’ Chapters on Prayer
[6]This definition is from the New Oxford American Dictionary
The bristly remains of our big garden’s cover crop.