The monks have always practiced what many psychologists today talk about (for example in autogenous training), namely, finding comfort through expressions of trust.
For the early monks spiritual life also meant the art of healthy living. It was no accident that so many of the monks got to be very old. Their asceticism didn’t deny life, it promoted it. For their spiritual life the monks adopted dietetics, the art of healthy living, which was the most important task of ancient medicine. They understood the spiritual path as the art of healthy living. There is no healthy life without a healthy lifestyle. Hence the monks ordered their lives so clearly and recommended a healthy succession of prayer and work, a combination of waking and sleeping, eating and fasting, isolation and togetherness as the guiding principle of a healthy life. Through external order a person finds internal order. Naturally, this is not a compulsory regimen one subjects oneself to, but a lifestyle that keeps body and soul healthy. This lifestyle involves the budgeting of time, food, work, housing, and a clear relationship to an elder.
Nowadays we could surely never imitate the lifestyle of the old monks. But the basic principle that order outside leads us to order inside, that a healthy way of living also makes the soul healthy, is something we can still live today.
In the history of monasticism it is above all Benedict who described a healthy way of life. For him the dear structuring of life, of work, of community, and of power was crucial for the recovery and maintenance of human health. And although Benedict intended his Rule only for a small community, it became a regulating factor for all of Europe. From the small communities that lived according to this Rule there arose a source of culture for the entire Western world. Culture is structured life. If I shape my own life, if I give it a form that suits me and does me good, then I will take pleasure in life. I have the feeling that I am alive, not that my living is being done for me. My style can be seen in the way I get up in the morning, the way I begin my day, go to work, arrange my mealtimes, and end the day. A healthy lifestyle requires healthy rituals. When we don’t pay attention to healthy rituals, unhealthy rituals creep in that involuntarily make us sick – for example, starting our day with a mad rush, wolfing down breakfast, always arriving late, etc. Healthy rituals put order in my life, and they give me the joy of shaping my life my own way.
Erhart Kastner speaks about the rites he observed on Mount Athos: “Alongside the urge to conquer the world, there lies an innate urge to keep stamping the same thing out of primordial forms. The soul feels good in rites. They are its solid shell. Here one can live … here stand the filled bowls, the sacrificial vessels of the soul. Here it goes out and goes in; the accustomed gifts, the accustomed meal. The head wants novelty; the heart always wants the same thing”.
Healthy rituals give life familiarity, security, clarity. Here we can live, here we can be at home.
~Anselm Gruen, Heaven Begins Within You: Wisdom from the Desert Fathers
