They changed their sky but not their souls. —Horace
O Lord you are my rock, my refuge, Who trains my arms for battle, my fingers for war. —Psalm 144
Each of us has a soul but we forget to value it. —St. Teresa of Avila
Undergraduates always know exactly what I mean by “mind-tripping” and “inner videos.” These terms describe the way a certain thought or train of thoughts quickly steals our attention and sets off a cycle of inner chatter and commentary. This inner chatter is something like a video that constantly plays in the mind only to be rewound and played again and again and again and again. For some it might be a predominantly visual sequence of distractions, for others predominantly aural, or a combination of both. The insidious thing about these videos is that they have a way of cultivating a psychological identification with them. We identify so thoroughly with this chatter that when we attempt to look within, we are actually looking at these videos, and we think “This is my inner life.” This mind-tripping state of awareness is nearly always chewing, chattering, and commenting. Moreover, these tape-loops gain a very subtle yet effective momentum. The more we watch or listen to them, the more we identify with them, the more we live out of them and live them out. This is “mind-tripping.” It can be tepid or it can be a tempest. It can be entertaining, pious, a horror story, or utterly humdrum. It doesn’t really matter. This video, this inner commentary, is nearly always playing, with the result that we are nearly always watching it
When undergraduates read some of the writings of the fourth-century spiritual writers known as the desert fathers and mothers, they are often surprised to see that this chaos within the mind is a major concern for all who embark on the spiritual path. Evagrius, a fourth-century monk living in Egypt, has perhaps the most to say about these inner videos and how they very subtly keep us from ever embarking on the spiritual path. Students initially respond to Evagrius with bewilderment and reserve. Yet year after year it is Evagrius to whom they warm the most.
Undergraduates today often have a remarkable psychological sensitivity and fragility. It doesn’t take them long to see the relevance of distant figures like Evagrius, and they are genuinely intrigued by how, before he became a monk, the life and lifestyle of this immensely talented church careerist suddenly came crashing down as a result of an affair with the wife of a government official.’ Cryptic as some of his sayings may seem, students perceive in Evagrius a person of deep compassion and insight, a person who understands the struggles they themselves go through because Evagrius, too, has lived them. “I feel like he’s been looking inside my journal or something,” said one student.
Students will often take writing assignments on Evagrius in a personal direction, as the following examples reveal. Their own words in the following sections serve better than any summary to reveal how much they learn about their own mind-tripping, as their relationship with God develops. Their comments (with sufficient detail changed to protect privacy) have something to teach us all.
~Martin Laird, A Sunlit Absence: Silence, Awareness, and Contemplation
