The spiritual path of the early monks is, then, not a moral way, but a mystical, a mystagogical way, that leads us into God. That is why the writings of Evagrius breathe, not some sort of dour severity, but love, attentiveness, and joy over our calling, to be allowed to be one with God in prayer. One senses in his words the longing for God. To be able to pray undisturbed, without distraction, is the highest thing a human being can do; that is what the monks yearned for with all their hearts.
“Real prayer makes the monks like angels, for they urgently long to see their Father, who is in heaven.” “Blessed is that mind that, praying without distraction, feels an ever deeper yearning for God.””Do you really want to pray? Then stay far away from the things of this world. Let heaven be your homeland. There you should live not with words alone, but through angelic deeds and ever deeper knowledge of God.”
For the monks the goal of the spiritual path is becoming one with the triune God. Evagrius calls that the contemplation of God. The way to this contemplation passes through the exodus from Egypt – from the dependence on sin – across the sojourn in the wilderness, where the monks struggle with the passions, into the Promised Land. There the monks experience contemplation of things, that is, they see their foundation, they recognize God in all things. Then they head up to Jerusalem, which for Evagrius is a symbol for the contemplation of bodiless, spiritual essences. And the goal of the spiritual way is Zion, an image of the contemplation of the Trinity. In the triune God humans come to themselves; they recognize their true nature.
If we translate Evagrius’s teaching into our language, this means that the true therapy for our problems and wounds is prayer. In prayer, in contemplation we abolish the identification with our thoughts and feelings. Transpersonal psychology, as mentioned, sees in this disidentification true therapy. As long as we are tied down to one feelings, as long as we make ourselves totally dependent on our well-being, as long as we identify with our fear, with our jealousy, with our anger, with our depression, they will become a chronic problem that we can never get rid of.
Not until we sense that the actual reality lies deeper, that God is the profoundest reality, will we be free from our imprisonment in our problems. What transpersonal psychology has discovered as a way of relativizing our problems and liberating us from their power is formulated by Evagrius as a counsel for prayer:
“If you wish to pray in a perfect fashion, drop what has to do with the flesh, so that your glance may not be clouded over while you pray,” and: “If you devote yourself to prayer, you must leave behind everything else that gives you joy. Only then will you come to pure prayer.”
For transpersonal psychology the mystical path is also the path into which all therapy must flow. It’s not enough just to handle our problems better. We aren’t really healed until we have acknowledged our true nature, until we have learned with our hearts that we are not determined by our relationships, our problems, or our fears, that we are in contact with our spiritual selves and with the untouched image that God has of us. And relationships, feelings, and passions have no power over this spiritual self.
In prayer we are allowed to dive into the place of silence, where everything is already whole and complete, where we can sense a deep peace amid all insults and injuries.
~Anselm Gruen, Heaven Begins Within You: Wisdom from the Desert Fathers
