To remedy the thirst for glory Evagrius advises the use of memory. We should remind ourselves where we come from, what passions we had to struggle with, and how it wasn’t thanks to our own merit that we conquered, but to Christ who protected us. Memory will show us that we have no guarantee for success in life, only God’s grace. Evagrius says that the demon of pride and vaingloriousness will continually arise in us precisely when we have made progress in asceticism.
The most effective remedy is contemplation. When we have become one with God through contemplation, then it no longer makes any difference what people think of us. Then we no longer define ourselves by the recognition and confirmation we get; we have reached our foundation in God.
Evagrius’s most systematic presentation tells us how to deal with our thoughts and feelings. But this topic also keeps recurring in the sayings of the fathers, who offer many other counsels about reacting to the passions. The fathers continually advise us to make ourselves familiar with the passions. Dialogue with them can show us the positive energy contained in them and how this force could be integrated into our life. Two sayings from Poimen make this point:
“A brother came to Father Poimen and said: ‘Father, I have all sort of thoughts, and because of them I am in peril.’ Poimen led him outdoors and told him: ‘Spread out your shirt and stop the winds with it!’ He answered: ‘I can’t do that!’ Then the old man said: ‘If you can’t do that, neither can you prevent your thoughts from coming to you. Your responsibility is to resist them.” As this saying makes clear, we cannot hold off our thoughts. We aren’t responsible for the thoughts that pop up in our heads, only for the way we handle them. So we are not bad when thoughts press us hard. We aren’t thinking these thoughts; they come to us from the outside. This distinction between ourselves as persons and the thoughts that flow into us is crucial in enabling us to deal properly with our thoughts. It will prevent us from instantly accusing ourselves when hatred or jealousy, say, enter our minds. Rather we will consider how to react to them and not let them dominate us. The point is not to repress them, but to talk to them, as the second saying shows:
“Father Poimen once asked Father Joseph: ‘What should I do when the passions come upon me? Should I resist them or let them come in?’ The old man said: ‘Let them in and fight with them.’ When he got back to the skete, he sat down. And one of the Thebans came to the skete and told the brothers: ‘I asked Father Joseph: When the passions come near me, should I resist them or let them in? And he said to me: Don’t let them in at all; clear them away on the spot!’ Father Poimen heard that Father Joseph had spoken thus to the Thebans. He got up and went to Panepho to see him and said: ‘Father, I entrusted my thoughts to you, and, look, you spoke one way to me and another to the Thebans.’ The old man replied: ‘Don’t you know that I love you?’ He said, ‘Yes!’ And the old man: ‘Didn’t you say to me: Speak to me as if to yourself?’ He answered: ‘That’s right!’ Then the old man said: ‘When the passions come and you engage in give-and-take with them, they will make you more tried and tested. I spoke to you as if to myself. But there are others for whom the coming of the passions is of no profit. They need to cut them off on the spot.”
Clearly there are two different ways of dealing with the passions. One way is to become familiar with them, to let them enter so as to observe them more carefully. By getting to know the passions I can discover the energy within me. And perhaps the passion can tell me what kind of longing is dwelling within it, where it actually wants to take me. Dialogue with the passions shows me what cannot live in me. For example, if there is great rage in me, this always has some meaning. It makes no sense simply to crush it. Perhaps it shows me that I have given others too much power. Rage might give me the strength to eject the other from myself, to liberate myself from them.
~Anselm Gruen, Heaven Begins Within You: Wisdom from the Desert Fathers
