By Mark Kutolowski
‘Christ is Risen!’ It was Easter Sunday 2020. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t in church on Easter morning. The Covid pandemic had led to all church doors being shuttered throughout Vermont. Lisa and I sat on the upper knoll at the top of our field, watching the sky lighten. Two neighbors came out to join us, sitting a good 15 feet apart in the field. As we sat in expectant stillness, my heart was as silent as the predawn landscape. A few scattered thoughts arose and fell, none of them gaining any ‘grip’ of my awareness which rested in the present moment. There was only love, stillness, patience, and peace. Before the sun crested the opposite hillside, we saw a beam of bright light shining forth through the still leafless trees. Morning had broken, and light was born again. The land perfectly echoed the story of the Gospel – light shining through the darkness, into a love that never ends.
Through the season of Lent, we’ve explored the teachings of the desert monastics on the ‘eight thoughts’ and purification of the heart. As we continue with the celebration of the Easter season, I’d like to reflect on the gifts of this teaching, what happens when we faithfully practice the discipline of the eight thoughts, and its relationship to the whole journey of transformation in Christ.
The Gifts of Each Thought
A central guiding insight behind the teaching on the eight thoughts is that we are not our thoughts. We are ‘sons and daughters of the Most High.’ By purifying our relationship to thought, we begin to recover access to the divine attributes that are a part of our original human nature. This is another way of saying that, by following the way of Christ, we can open to God re-forming us and become ‘a new creation.’[1]When we heal our relationship with each thought, we are offered a corresponding virtue or spiritual gift:
Transforming our relationship with Gluttony gives access to temperance, and trains us in the ability to notice our relationship with all thought.
Growing freedom from Lust awakens the capacity for affectionate, selfless love.
Letting go of Greed leads to contentment and awareness of the abundance of spiritual riches available to us.
Freedom from Dejection gives access to joy that cannot be shaken by external circumstances.
Releasing thoughts of Anger awakens compassion and the capacity to suffer in solidarity with others.
Enduring through thoughts of Acedia gives rise to equanimity and steadfastness of heart.
Letting go of Vainglory brings the gift of authenticity and freedom from the oppression of social pressures.
Recognizing and releasing Pride frees us from selfishness and opens our capacity for true humility.
Apathea and Purity of Heart – The Goal of the Desert Training
While transforming our relationship with each thought brings a particular gift, there’s a greater gift that comes from changing our relationships with all eight of the thoughts.[2]The desert monastics speak of the state of apathea, or ‘freedom from the passions (or suffering).’ This state is the soul’s restoration to its original state in the Garden of Edenand is the goal of the desert training on the eight thoughts. In apathea, the soul becomes stable, tranquil, still and peaceful. Apathea, in the desert understanding, bears a close connection to Jesus’ Beatitude, ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.’ Purity (or cleanness) of heart means that our heart does not grasp for or attach itself to any thought but remains free as the thoughts rise and fall in consciousness. From this detached freedom, we become able to perceive the presence of God, which is deeper, more subtle, and more profound than any of the thoughts. The ‘density’ of thought obscures the direct perception of spiritual reality. When our minds and hearts are freed from their obscuring influence, we come to see God.
In the desert teaching, apathea and the corresponding purity of heart are the gateway to higher, more intimate spiritual knowledge of God. The goal of working with the eight thoughts is not just to be free of the afflictions of the thoughts. The purpose is to open the possibility of deeper participation in the life of God. Where there is freedom from the thoughts, there is awakened life in God. This, the desert elders teach, is the fully human life we are created to enjoy and that Christ came to restore in us.
This ‘life of apathea’ is a life in which external teachings and the struggle with vices are swallowed up by the freedom of the Spirit. Evagrius writes:
One who is perfect does not practice self-control, and one who has attained apatheia does not practice patient endurance, since patient endurance pertains to one who suffers, and self-control to one who is disturbed. -Praktikos 68
A man who has established the virtues in himself and is entirely permeated with them no longer remembers the law or the commandments or the punishment. Rather, he says and does what this excellent condition suggests. -Praktikos 70
The Four Conversions
The desert elders also spoke of four conversions along the journey to union with God in Christ.[3]The renunciation of the eight thoughts was situated as the second of the four conversions. Let’s briefly look at each of the four:
The first conversion is the conscious choice to live for Christ and God. This choice involves the letting go or renunciation of one’s previous way of life. In the desert tradition, this meant the practical actions of giving up one’s possessions, taking a vow of celibacy, and beginning a life of obedience under an elder. In the modern world, it might mean the decision to follow Christ and re-order one’s entire life around this commitment. The essence of this first conversion is to consciously place God before all else in one’s life. A person can go to church or outwardly profess Christianity for decades without making this first conversion. One can pray or meditate daily, but if one is doing it for self-centered reasons (for health, to de-stress, for self-care, etc.), the first conversion has not yet happened. From the perspective of the desert, the spiritual journey doesn’t really begin until this first conversion. Until we ‘seek first the Kingdom of God,’ the real work of transformation has yet to begin.
Once we’ve opened to the first conversion, the work with the eight thoughts begins. This is because the ‘false self’ or egoic self doesn’t automatically conform with our conscious desire to root our life in God. We can rearrange our outward life and even our beliefs, yet our inner orientation towards self will remain firmly in place. Purifying our relationship with the eight thoughts then becomes the next stage of the spiritual journey. It is the work of conforming our inner/psychic world with our outer commitments and desire to live for God. This stage might be described as the journey ofthe false self’s diminishment.
When we attain a degree of freedom from the eight thoughts, the tranquility of apatheabegins to arise in our heart. This stillness of heart opens the door to a third conversion – the purification of our understanding of God. Prior to this level, we invariably develop images and ideas about God that are, of their very nature, far less than the reality of the Infinite One. In the third conversion, God gradually purifies us of our incomplete, inadequate ideas about God. Our relationship with God deepens and intensifies as we are stripped of the ‘god’ of our imagination and are given greater and greater access to the mystery of God as God really is. We move, as St. Paul writes, ‘from glory to glory’[4]as our experience of God grows ever closer to God’s own true nature. This purification of our relationship with God is the essence of the third conversion. It might also be described as the journey of the true self finding its full identity in God.
Finally, when we increasingly experience God as God is, we enter the threshold of the fourth conversion—the letting go of any sense of a separate self, true or false. We ‘die to self,’ not only our false self, but in any sense of being a unique focus point of our own consciousness. We become self-forgetful, and God becomes ‘all in all.’ We begin to experience that ‘I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me[5].’
These four conversions are not strictly linear. They stack one upon the next, like stories of a building. We never cease needing the earlier conversions, and I’m convinced that the eight thoughts remain present in some form as long as we remain in this world as a mortal body. But increasingly, as we open to the different conversions, the shift of our awareness becomes less and less focused on self, and more and more rooted in God. Along with the third and fourth conversions described above, this means that our relationship with the eight thoughts becomes less personal as well. We may still experience the upwelling of an afflictive thought in prayer, but over time the thoughts become more abstract. We experience the rising of lust, greed, anger, or pride without it being attached to any particular aspect of our own life, and we offer the thoughts back to God in solidarity with all who suffer in the human family. In this way, our silent prayer becomes united with both the infinite goodness of God, and with the suffering and divisions of all humanity.
Ministry, Action and the Eight Thoughts
How does the desert teaching on the eight thoughts inform our relationship to action and ministry? When I take the desert teachings seriously, it becomes clear that evil and injustice dwell within my own heart, as well as within the wider world. Further, my own heart is the only place where I can directly address these afflictions. By struggling with the eight thoughts and repeatedly surrendering my inner self-centeredness to God, I participate in the healing of the world.
Even after studying the eight thoughts, it can be hard to shake off the materialist notion that the only way to help others is by doing things for them in the outer world. It’s possible, of course, to make a materialist argument for the value of doing work with the eight thoughts. If I allow God to purify my heart, I’ll be more effective in my service of others. Yet I am convinced the gift is far deeper – by allowing God to bring healing into my own heart, I have a direct influence on the healing of the collective. If we are truly one, the healing of one affects the healing of all, just as the suffering of one is suffering for all. The reason for focusing on one’s own inner work is not an act of selfishness, but a practical realization that the closest access point for both divine mercy and human selfishness is within my own heart. I have come to believe that each individual’s relationship with thought, and with God, impacts the collective far beyond their actions in the public sphere.
After studying the eight thoughts, it’s also clear to me that it’s only possible to do lasting good in the world after a significant degree of inner purification. Without some level of purification of the heart, our efforts to ‘do good’ will inevitably be coopted by our (usually unconscious) self-centered desires. This is why the ‘battle’ must be won within before we can hope to do any real good in the outer world. This does not mean that we cannot do any outward action or ministry without years of inner work. It does mean that it is dangerous to do outward ministry or service without a parallel commitment to surrendering to God and transforming our relationship with thought through spiritual discipline. This idea has gained significant traction among activists in recent years, yet I’ve mostly seen this manifest as an effort to squeeze in a bit of meditation here and there in order to do the ‘real’ work of social reform better. What I’m suggesting is that action and ministry is best when it is seen as secondary. It can be fruitful as an outflow of a heart seeking first the Kingdom of God. Outward ministry may be a fruitful ‘servant’ or expression of a full life in Christ, but it is typically a very poor ‘master’ when it becomes the focus of one’s life to the detriment of prayer and continual conversion.
Resurrection and Life Without End
God’s great longing is for human beings to share in the fullness of God’s own life. The story of Resurrection is of the Divine-Human One (Christ) triumphing over death to bring us through all evil into an infinite freedom and union of life, light and love. The training of the eight thoughts is a way of participating in God’s self-emptying love. We learn to recognize and let go of our attraction to each of the thoughts as a way of turning our will over to God. It involves moments of painful letting go but is always held in the larger arc of God drawing us to share in infinite freedom as God’s children. The training of the desert may appear as narrow and restrictive at first, but it is a narrow gate that leads to boundless life. By consenting to this journey of transformation, we can allow God to free us of the limits of the eight thoughts, and to lead us to the purity of heart where we see God, both in this life and in life in the age to come.
[1]2 Cor 5:17
[2]The desert elders also taught that it’s impossible to gain lasting freedom from any of the thoughts while we remain enslaved to other thoughts. Therefore, it’s necessary to work with all eight.
[3]I am grateful for Sister Mary Margaret Funk, OSB for highlighting this aspect of the desert teachings in her book Humility Matters. Many of the details of these four conversions are found in John Cassian’s writings. The ‘four conversions’ also correspond closely with the later contemplative model of the Purgative (2ndconversion), Illuminative (3rdconversion), and Unitive (4thconversion) stages of spiritual growth. – The Purgative, Unitive, Illuminative model was articulated by Pseudo-Dionysius in the 6thcentury, and then further developed by many medieval spiritual writers.
[4]2 Cor 3:18
[5]Gal 2:20
The previous steward of our homestead planted thousands of daffodil bulbs. Their sunny blossoms scattered all over the land are one of the first heralds of spring.