[Desert Father] Evagrius helped lead another student into liberating insight into the nature of her very active mind, especially the connection between her anger and her fear. While she was less revealing of the details of her struggles, she was grappling with the fallout and follow-through of an intervention initiated by concerned friends. She admits it needed to be done but she still struggles with feelings of betrayal and more.
She wrote:
Evagrius seems to know that as much as our mind-tripping on inner videos causes suffering, we somehow find them fascinating and so we have to be careful. He says the demons use vivid images for this combat, “and we run to see them.” Intellectually I understood that my friends were trying to help me. But the thought that they betrayed me gets me mind-tripping on self-pity, and I almost always just go with it. If I can see myself as being a victim, I can more easily stay in denial of the issues that concerned my friends. In a weird sort of way being this victim was more comforting than the fact that my behavior was making me ill and that my friends thought they needed to let someone know. I can see that I do this. This mind-tripping, what Evagrius calls “passions” stirred up by a thought or image, can actually make us sick. Not just spiritually, but mentally and physically as well. If we’re not careful, he says, “under the influence of this part of our soul, we then grow unhealthy while our passions undergo a full-bodied development.”
Anger, resentment, self-pity can even make you completely crazy: “Those who long for true prayer but are given over to anger or resentment will be beside themselves with madness. They are like someone who wants to see clearly but keeps scratching her eyes.” I don’t know if Evagrius came up with the phrase “blind with anger,” but he basically says it: “Resentment blinds the reason of one who prays and casts a cloud over prayer.” Blinded as I may be by my anger, all this mind-tripping seems very real at the time. Evagrius says, “These things are depicted vividly before our eyes.” “The most fierce passion is anger. … It constantly irritates the soul and above all at the time of prayer it seizes the mind and flashes the picture of the offensive person before one’s eyes.” The purpose of all this mind-tripping is to keep us from going deeper within where God dwells, “to cease to pray so that we might not stand in the presence of the Lord our God, not dare to raise our hands in supplication to one against whom we have had such frightful thoughts.”
Another thing that Evagrius has taught me is how closely related are anger, fear, and pain. The more fear, the more anger. Evagrius seems to say this. He defines anger as “a boiling up and stirring up of wrath against one who has given injury.” I found this statement very helpful. ‘I always thought of my anger as a response to something or someone who had offended me. But Evagrius suggests that anger is a response to pain, to being hurt. If I learn how to handle pain better, I might learn how to handle anger better. But what I find most helpful is the link he establishes between anger and fear. I have recently realized that anger and fear are very closely related. In psychology class we learned about the fight/flight response. But Evagrius sees that anger can sow the seeds of fear or can somehow turn into fear: “Images of a frightful kind usually arise from anger’s disturbing influence.” I’ve always known that I struggle a lot with fear but have only recently come to see that when I’m very angry, I will wake up afraid.
In the abstract, “spirituality” may sound especially attractive nowadays, when it is not only quite trendy but can also be supported by over-the-counter supplements that are sure to work synergistically with it. But embarking on any spiritual path will soon involve us in an interior battle, a battle “fought on the field of thought more severe than that which is conducted in the arena of things and events.” The problem is the noise in our heads. This is why the great spiritual masters offer practical advice on how to deal with our reactions to our thoughts and feelings. For reacting to them generates the inner video. This inner video can become our predominant experience of inner life.
~Martin Laird, A Sunlit Absence: Silence, Awareness, and Contemplation
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