For every therapist distance from the problems of the patient is the prerequisite for being able to really help the other person. So Poimen first has to get some distance from his brother. Then he can freely decide whether he wants to help and intervene in the quarrel, or if he will release him and trust him to resolve the conflict responsibly on his own.
Being dead vis-a -vis the other is even viewed by Poimen as an indispensable condition for getting along well with the other brothers. In another saying it is reported that “Poimen became a monk along with six of his blood brothers. After the seven brothers had to flee from the Maziks, who killed many monks, they settled down in Tenenutis. Anub, one of the brothers, threw stones every morning at a stone idol in the pagan temple. In the evening he would beg the idol for forgiveness. When Poimen took him to task for this, Anub answered him: “I did it for your sake. You saw that I pelted the face of the image with stones. Did it speak or get angry?” When Poimen answered that of course it didn’t answer, Anub explained his behavior: “We are seven brothers. If you want us to stay together, then let us become like this image. Whether it is reviled or revered, it doesn’t move. But if you don’t want to be that way, look, there are four gates in the temple; each one can go out whichever way he wishes.”
All seven brothers stayed together and took Anub’s advice; and so they lived the whole time in peace and quiet. The distance from their own needs and emotions created an atmosphere in which the brothers could live together. This wasn’t an unfeeling atmosphere; this attitude helped to build a space for love and security, for mutual understanding and freedom, where each one could go his own way without the others constantly trying to lecture him.
For us such advice at first sounds rather strange. But in the final analysis it is the fulfillment of Jesus’ words: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (John 12:24-25). We have to let go of ourselves and our ideas; then a space for new possibilities will open up for us. We have to let go of our neighbor; then real relationships will become possible. When one person in a partnership clings to the other, the relationship becomes in the long run impossible. A partnership can last only if each one frees and releases the other. Letting go, psychology tells us, is the prerequisite for a fulfilled life.
~Anselm Gruen, Heaven Begins Within You: Wisdom from the Desert Fathers
