I Am Naked, Clothe Me

Archimandrite Aimilianos of Simonopetra Monastery, in the first half of a transcribed (and then translated) speech called “The Progression of the Soul” speaks of stages to the beginning of the spiritual journey.  The beginning point for him is found in rightly negotiating the second stage.  

The first stage of the spiritual journey he calls the feeling of exile, the feeling that we are far from God, that there is a wall between us.  This feeling of exile is the feeling of Adam and Eve expelled from Paradise.  It is the feeling of pain, not necessarily physical pain; in fact, physical pain is not at all what he is speaking about.  The pain he is speaking of is the pain of longing, the pain that induced Adam and Eve to listen to the serpent.  Being lords of the universe, possessing everything, Adam and Eve came to feel they didn’t have enough, that somehow God was holding out on them.  Being very rich, they thought themselves poor and thus were easily deceived by the serpent.  This is the pain Archimandrite Aimilianos seems to be speaking of, the painful feeling that something very important is missing.

And of course, something very important is indeed missing.  We are children of the fall.  We are born in pain and raised among thorns and thistles.  Everywhere we turn we are poked and prodded by needles of want, envy, fear, and desire (just to name a few).  Yet we don’t want to admit it.  We want to explain it, explain it away.  We say, "It is someone else’s fault.  I’m not really that twisted, at least not as badly mangled as some others.  And besides, I could change if I really wanted to, if I only tried harder, if I only got a break."  And so we keep busy.  We keep busy so that our focus can stay outside us, so we don’t have to feel the pain, the inner pain, the pain of exile from God, the pain that Archimandrite Aimilianos says is directly related to nakedness.

The pain that we do not want to feel is the pain of our nakedness.  Having been clothed by God in the Garden of Paradise, clothed with God’s glory the Fathers and hymns of the Church teach us, having been clothed with God’s glory we intensely feel its absence, we feel exposed and unprotected, we feel the cold wind of our existential contingency: having been called into being from the dirt by God,  what are we now that we have lost His glory?  St. Augustine spoke of a God-shaped hole in our hearts.  The experience of the orphan or of a lost sheep are metaphors pointing to this inner feeling of exile, of pain, and of nakedness.  It is this very feeling, the feeling of this pain, this knowing that we are naked, that Archimandrite Aimilianos says the first stage of the spiritual journey.

The second stage of the spiritual journey, according to Archimandrite Aimilianos, comes when we confess that we are sinners, when we know intensely that something is separating us from God, when we no longer deny our nakedness.  This, he says, is the most critical point 

because at that point one of two things will happen: either I’ll get up and get dressed or I’ll remain naked.  In other words, I’ll either present myself to God in my nakedness and say, ‘I have sinned,’ or I’ll try to hide from God like Adam and Eve.  And when God says: ‘Adam where are you?’ I’ll say: ‘Hiding because I am naked.’  And when I emerge from my hiding place, He’ll see my fig leaves.

Then Archimandrite Aimilianos asks why this is.  Why do we hide ourselves?  Why is it so hard for us to present ourselves naked and sinful before God?  The simple reason, he says, is “that it is a terrible thing for us to realize that we are nothing”:

Do you know what it means to go from thinking that you’re special and important, from being respected publicly, from thinking  that you’ve done great things, from being talented, wonderful, good-looking, charming and I don’t know what else besides, to recognizing that, on the contrary, you’re naked and of no consequence whatsoever?  It requires strength to accept that, a lot of strength.  And yet we can’t even accept the slightest blemish that we might have, or any fault, failure, error or sin that we may have committed, without covering it up with a lie, and then  cover up that lie with a second one, and then the second with a third.

A person may conceal his or her nakedness by means of an inferiority complex, by acts of aggression, by self-justification, by donning various masks, or by many other means…. Such strategies of denial also involve concealment from myself.  What does that mean?  It means that, even though I’m naked, I’ll live as though I were not, and thus live a double life.  Or I may refuse to grow and progress, as though I weren’t naked at all.  And this is something much more terrible, for it is the rejection of reality, and such a rejection can only have tragic consequences for me.  

Life is full of people like that  They know they’re sinners, they know they’re naked, and yet they go through life doing the very things which they hate, which disgust them, which they know are beneath them.  And they know that they must somehow silence the terrible cry of their conscience, which torments them.  

The soul’s alternative is to accept its situation and say: ‘I’ll do something about my nakedness.  I will declare my sin.  I will confess my sin and my nakedness.’  And naked though I be, I will nevertheless present myself to God. I’ll tell Him: ‘You clothe me.’  And that takes great strength.  To turn to God as if nothing else in the world exists requires tremendous honesty and authenticity.  

This is the crucial point: will I accept the painful reality of my nakedness or prefer my version of the lie, my version of the fig leaf?  I think many of us are confused about the appropriate role of strength and will in our repentance.  I think many of us invest a great deal of our will power and a great deal of our effort into sewing fig leaves.  We think that is what we are supposed to do, we are supposed to get better, supposed to be better, we are supposed to make ourselves less naked.  But we can’t, so we lie to ourselves; we shift our focus, assign blame, keep busy, and above all never spend much time alone and quiet, never give ourselves an opportunity to see and feel profoundly how naked we really are.  

You know one of the most common things sincere believers confess in confession is the sin of laziness.  However, much of the time I think the person has fallen prey to this confusion of the role of strength and the will in our journey to Christlikeness.  They confess they are lazy because they have not been able to cover their nakedness sufficiently, they have not been able to fast or pray or do good works to the level they think they are supposed to be at.  But I don’t think that is what strength and will power are for.  St. Paul gives us the clue.  He says, “When I am weak, then I am strong” and “I rather glory in my weakness that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”  

Archimandrite Aimilianos tells us that strength really is about standing naked before God and before ourselves.  Faithful application of strength and the power of the will is to deny our self-justifying delusions and unlike our forefathers and foremothers to step naked out of the bushes and to present ourselves to God without excuse, without prettying ourselves up first, embracing all of our weakness, all of our shadows, all of our inability and insignificance.   This is where strength is needed.  This is where the power of the will is redeemed.  

And if, like St. Paul, we can learn to glory in our weaknesses, if we can learn to accept the reality of our brokenness, of our impotence, of our lostness, if we can find the strength to look squarely in the mirror of our conscience and not turn away, then, then we have the possibility of being clothed by God, then we have the possibility of returning in some small ways to the relationship our foreparents had with God in Paradise.  It is a long road, but at least according to Archimandrite Aimilianos, this is the real beginning.  Everything up to this point is preparation.  Preparation is important.  The Holy Spirit is active in this preparation.  But the turning point, the beginning of the actual return to Paradise is here.  It is here in the acceptance of our nakedness, in the forsaking of the various fig leaves we sew and have sewn for ourselves.  This is the beginning.

Strength is called for, “tremendous honesty and authenticity,” as Archimandrite Aimilianos puts it. Strength is called for, but not the strength to change, but the strength to accept yourself and to accept God’s love for us as we are.  That’s the beginning.

Now a final word.  Archimandrite Aimilianos points out that this first step, this beginning, is not like the beginning of a journey in a straight line.  It is a journey of transformation that is circular.  That is, we are continually having to begin, continually having to gather the courage to step out of the bushes of our self delusions to stand naked and broken and sinful before God.  And even though we have experienced God's gracious love in the past, each new beginning has its own new insecurities and fears, shame and disappointment with ourselves.  Each new beginning requires strength, strength to stand before God again and say, "O my heavenly Father, again, I am naked, please clothe me."

Speaking About Spiritual Things

He who is pure of soul and chaste in life always speaks the words of the Spirit discreetly, and in accord with his own measure he speaks of the things of God and of the things that are within him.  But when a man’s heart is crushed by the passions, his tongue is moved by them; and even though he speak of spiritual matters, yet he discourses passionately, to the end that he might be victorious….

St. Isaac the Syrian 

One of the mistakes I have often made in speaking of spiritual things is to speak about them in a worldly way.  St. Isaac points out that how one speaks of spiritual things is perhaps more important than the spiritual matters themselves.  

St. Isaac gives us some guidance to help us discern our actual inner state when we speak of spiritual things.   He is not providing us with a prescription for how we should speak.  Rather he his providing a diagnostic tool to help us understand when we are speaking of spiritual matters inappropriately, or according to our passions.  As a person interested in developing a deeper relationship with God and as one conversant in “spiritual matters”—especially as a priest who is almost constantly speaking about spiritual matters—I am concerned that it is all too easy for me to deceive myself into thinking that I am indeed living by and experiencing in my own inner life the spiritual realities and principles that I talk about, when in reality I am, as St. Isaac says, “crushed by the passions”. 

St. Isaac in the quote above seems to be offering us two pointers to help us discern our inner state.  The first has to do with speaking discreetly, which I will talk about in a moment; and the second has to do with speaking of things that our within ourselves.  This is a point made often by St. Isaac and many other spiritual writers: When we speak of spiritual things, we need to limit ourselves to what we ourselves actually experience.  

It is very tempting to give advice on spiritual matters about experiences, states, conditions and disciplines that I myself have not actually experienced and do not actually practice.  I’ve read a lot.  I have read about holy men and women who have experienced great heights in their relationship with God, men and women who have shone with the Uncreated Light, who have been caught up in prayer, seen visions; who have fasted, prayed and kept vigil with great perseverance; who have born the fruit of a God-filled life.  But I have personally experienced very, very little of this.  

My experience has been basically a continual trying and failing, a never-ending exercise in falling and getting back up again.  I have come to realize that I am a one-talent Christian, doing my best just to keep my one talent in the bank (the Church) where at least it will earn interest (rather than buried in self-pity, by pulling away and not even trying, again and again).  I appreciate—more than appreciate—I am amazed by those who have been given two or even five talents of Grace, who have taken the Grace given to them and “traded” with it, who have earned five talents more through their diligent application and attention to the Grace given them.  

These Holy Ones amaze me.  They inspire me.  But when it comes to my giving advice to others, I need to speak “in accord with my own measure.”  Yes, I can and should speak of what the Saints have achieved, the advice they give based on their actual experience with God.  But I must be very careful not to speak in such a way that might give the impression that I personally know and live and experience what I am talking about.  The passions are tricky things.  It is especially difficult to notice that we are speaking passionately about spiritual things when others are asking us for advice.  We must be very careful.  I must be very careful.  

According to St. Isaac, one way to know that we are speaking passionately about spiritual matters is to notice if we are speaking in accord with our own measure, of things that are actually in ourselves.  Truly, I think we deceive ourselves when we speak beyond ourselves about spiritual things.  We deceive ourselves because we think speaking of spiritual matters is just like speaking of airplanes or philosophical principles.  The spiritual life does not work that way.  When we speak of spiritual things, we communicate much more by who we are than by what we say.  And if these two do not line up relatively well, those to whom we speak will know.  The effect of our words will not be life-giving, but will rather be just more information, and that’s in the best case scenario.  In the worst case scenario, our passionate words on spiritual matters will communicate not life but death, not help but condemnation, and not encouragement but guilt.  When speaking on spiritual matters, less is generally more.

So, one of the ways St. Isaac give us to discern our spiritual state when speaking about spiritual matters has to do with staying within the limits of ourselves: our own actual experience of the spiritual life.  When we find ourselves speaking or tempted to speak beyond ourselves in spiritual matters, then we know it is time to shut up.  We are speaking passionately, and even if the words we speak are true on some level, to speak them with passions is to betray the very words we speak.

The other pointer St. Isaac gives us to discern whether or not we are speaking of speaking passionately of spiritual matters is tied to the word “discreet.”  

discreet |disˈkrēt|

adjective (discreeter, discreetest)

careful and circumspect in one's speech or actions, especially in order to avoid causing offense or to gain an advantage: we made some discreet inquiries.

• intentionally unobtrusive: a discreet cough.

My first serious spiritual conversation with a holy person was with an abbess.  More than any particular thing she said at that time, what has stayed with me over the years has been how she spoke.  She was not only tentative in what she said (This might be, Have you considered this, You could try to…), she was very quick to back down and admit that she might not at all know what the best or right thing to do in this situation was.  As soon as I challenged something she said, she would respond, “Perhaps you are right.”  In order to get anything out of her I had to shut up and just humbly listen.  Mother Abbess was very discreet.  

St. Isaac tells us that a passionate person, one “crushed by the passions,” speaks of spiritual things “to the end that he might be victorious.” It seems to me to be a pretty sure sign that I am speaking passionately about spiritual things when I find myself angling to be right, trying to prove my point, or showing how the other person is wrong.  When I am not speaking discreetly about spiritual things but am intruding where I am not invited, causing offence or gaining advantage, when I am intent on showing that my position, idea, advice or observation is right, then (if I notice it in time) I know it is time for me to stop talking.  Spiritual advice must be given and received in a spiritual, holy, manner.  We are not talking about worldly matters, so we cannot speak in a worldly way.  It just doesn’t work.  You end up communicating many things you never intended to communicate and little of what you intended to communicate.  Here I am speaking from personal experience.  

It seems as though it is always best to say nothing at all.  “Silence,” St. Isaac tells us, “is the language of heaven.”  And yet, love compels us to speak.  With all of the dangers and possibilities for misunderstanding, still we feel we must speak because we love.  And so we speak about spiritual things, we speak in words that which can only be rightly communicated in silence.  We speak in words because in our fallen and broken and not-yet-healed state it is all we have to encourage and instruct, to help and to aid one another.  But we speak carefully, discreetly, and about that which is within us, careful not to imply that we too experience the same spiritual heights as those holy Fathers and Mothers we read of.  

Because, in the end, I know that I cannot help anyone.  God is the One who helps.  “Salvation is of the Lord,” we are told repeatedly in the scriptures and hymns of the Church.  I am merely a helper.  We might even say an unnecessary helper in that God doesn’t need anyone’s help to save.  And yet, God has made us necessary.  God has invited us (each of us in our own little ways) to be helpers in bringing about the salvation of those around us, the salvation that He alone effects.  And God brings us to this work of love even before we are perfected, even while we are still sinners and broken and screwing up every time we open our mouths, God uses even us as we are now.   God has invited us to love with Him, to give what we have (not pretending that we have more), to share what has been giving us, even if what has been given us is much less than what has been given to others.  

It’s OK to be a one-talent Christian—even to be a one-talent priest.  Like the widow who gave her two mites (all that she had to live on), so we too give in love to each other the little that we have.  The power to save lies not in the size or effectiveness of the words or gifts or actions we give to one another, but the power to save lies in the One who has invited us into His labour of love.

Cowardliness In The Spiritual Life

St. Isaac the Syrian says that there are several ways the devil attacks a person.  The goal of these attacks is to make us pull back from our pursuit of godliness.  Transformation into the image of Christ is a synergistic experience.  We labour together with Christ.  On the other hand, it is also all Grace.  There is no love, joy, peace or patience (or any other of the fruit of the Spirit) without God first giving Himself to us, for Grace is nothing less than God coming to us.  

Nevertheless, there is an accepting, or a cooperation on our part.  Part of what it means to be a human being and not a mere animal is that we can choose to cooperate with God’s Grace to raise ourselves above our merely animal (and sometimes sub-animal) lusts, fears and impulses.  This raising ourselves, or better, our cooperation with God’s raising of us, requires effort on our part.  Our nature has been twisted, perverted, by the general fall of mankind and our personal participation in this fall.  Christ, the perfect human being, has come not only showing us what a healthy human being looks like, but also providing us the power of the Holy Spirit to repent: to begin to straighten out our twisted selves.  

St. Isaac advises us, whatever our portion in life should be, that if we want to cooperate with the Grace of God in our lives, we must voluntarily accept, without misgivings, temporary sufferings for the sake of the goodness God offers (Homily 39).  By temporary sufferings, St. Isaac means the sufferings of this life, as opposed to the potential sufferings of the age to come.  

There is a significant irony here.  Suffering in this life is unavoidable.  Everyone suffers—you can lie to yourself and sometimes numb or medicate yourself in various ways to gain some temporary relief from pain, but still everyone suffers.  Fear of this suffering is one of the devil’s most effective weapons to keep us from pursuing repentance and a faithful relationship with God.  Notice that it is not suffering that the devil uses—suffering is ubiquitous in this broken world.  It is the fear of suffering that is the devil’s weapon.  

St. Isaac lists four circumstances under which the devil can attack a person with temptation.  

1. “It is permitted by the bidding of Heaven”
2. “It [might] be that the man himself grows lax and surrenders himself to shameful thoughts and to distraction”
3. [The person] “becomes proud and conceited”
4. “Or [the person] accepts thoughts of doubt and cowardliness.”

I am intrigued by the word, “cowardliness.”  It’s not a word that pops up very often in discussions of the spiritual life.  It’s the cowardly, St. Isaac says, who are driven by the devil as by a hurricane. The cowardly are those who would rather deny God than deny themselves, who let the fear of suffering keep them from cooperating with the Grace of God.

Suffering is a spiritual mystery.  Athletes have known from ancient times that disciplined acceptance of deprivation, suffering and pain is the price one pays to stay in shape.  Once an athlete accepts that, he or she experiences, merely as a matter of routine—often happy routine—a disciplined regimen of life along with the pain and exhaustion of extensive, often boring, repetitive exercise.  Were it not freely chosen, an athlete’s life would be considered worse than the life of a prisoner in a hard labour camp.  Suffering is not the issue—it’s the choosing that’s the issue.  This is one of the spiritual mysteries in suffering.

An athlete chooses temporal suffering for the sake a temporal reward.  Christ calls us to follow Him, to share in His suffering by “voluntarily accepting” (to use St. Isaac’s words) the various sufferings of this temporal life that we encounter in our pursuit of love of God and neighbor.  There is a verse in the Prophet Hosea (7:14 LXX) that says, “Their hearts did not cry out to Me, but they wailed upon their beds.  They slashed themselves for oil and wine.”  Self mutilation, “slashing themselves,” was a common form of sacrifice to the pagan gods.  This verse seems to apply today to all of the ways we are willing to suffer to get a temporal gain: a better job, a better car, a better physical body, a better education, a better social position.  As a culture we think nothing of “slashing” ourselves” in one way or another for temporal gain; but when it comes to spiritual gain, we are suddenly afraid.  We become cowardly.

Voluntary suffering is not the goal of the Christian life.  Christlikeness is the goal.  Earlier in Hosea’s prophecy we are told that sacrifice is not what God looks from in His people: “For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than whole burnt offerings” (6:6 LXX).  God wants us to love Him with our whole heart, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.  This is how we cooperate with the Grace of God and experience the transforming power of God in our lives.  The devil uses fear of suffering and deprivation to keep us from giving our whole lives to God.  However, we can, if we are willing, become athletes of Christ.  We can voluntarily accept the asceticism (from the Greek word meaning ‘athletic training’) the Church teaches us to follow and we can voluntarily accept the various pains and disappointments life throws our way because, like athletes, we have a goal.  Our goal is Christlikeness.

Our reward is not in this life, it is in the Life to Come.  But even in this life, we begin to experience the Life that is to Come.  Even now we experience some of the joy, some of the peace, some of the consolation and comfort of Age to Come.  Our path through this world is a painful one—nothing can be done to change that. It is the path mankind has chosen.  But our God is generous, helping us along the way and granting us a foretaste of the eternal banquet to come.  Only let us be courageous.  Let us not fear what must be endured anyway.  Rather, let us look with hope and joyful anticipation to the prize: the healing of our broken lives by participation in the very Life of God.

Take Heed

Several times in the Gospels, Jesus warns us to take heed of or beware of something. It's a little tricky finding all of the instances of Jesus's warnings because there are three Greek words that are often, but not always, translated into English as 'take heed of' or 'beware of.' Following the New King James translation, there are seven things Jesus specifically tells us to beware of:

1. Doing righteous works in front of others in order to be seen by them (Matt. 6:1).
2. The leaven [teaching] of the Pharisees and of Herod (Matt. 16:6 and Mk. 8:15).
3. Despising or offending the little ones (Matt. 18:10 and Lk. 17:3).
4. That the light inside us not really be darkness (Lk. 11:35).
5. Of covetousness (Lk. 12:15).
6. Of what or how we hear (Mk. 4:24 and Lk. 8:18).
7. Regarding the End (Matt. 24:4; Mk. 13: 5, 23, 33; Lk. 21: 8, 34).

I'd like to look at Jesus' warning concerning the End.  

I got my start as a conscious follower of Christ in the 70s under the influence of a Charismatic Christian ministry in California called "Melodyland." At Melodyland, they talked a lot about the Second Coming of Christ. In fact, for the next twenty-five years in the various Charismatic churches I attended, I heard hundreds of sermons on the end times.  I knew the first half of Matthew 24 by heart. I knew all of the signs. I read the newspaper with the Bible in my hand seeing everywhere confirmation that Jesus' return was just around the corner.  

I was aware that Jesus warned against setting an exact date for his return, but I was certain that rough guesses were encouraged (at least that was implicit in my church culture). I knew from Matthew 24 that Jesus warned us to beware of those who claimed to be the Christ or who claimed to know where on earth one could find the already returned Christ (in the deserts or in the inner rooms). But somehow in all those years and in all of the fervour, I never noticed these lines from Luke's account of Jesus' warning regarding the last times:

"And He said: 'Take heed that you not be deceived.  For many will come in My name, saying "I am He,"  and, "The time has drawn near." Therefore, do not go after them.'"

How could I have missed that? The warning was not only to avoid those claiming to be Christ, but was also not to "go after" those who claim "the time has drawn near." Oops. I missed that one. 

Submitting myself to endless preaching that the End was near did significant damage to my spiritual life. End times preaching (at least as I experienced it) stirred up emotions ranging from fear to excitement, and from confident self-assurance that I was "saved" to anxious concern for those who were damned. (Although I must confess, that this anxious concern was not very altruistic because the version of end times preaching I was exposed to also posited that the sooner everyone "hears" the Gospel, the sooner Jesus would return and pull us saved ones out of this mess). For years I associated these feelings of fear, excitement, confident self-assurance, and anxious concern for others with the nearness of God.

Part of the spiritual damage caused by "going after" those who stir up emotion preaching that "the time has drawn near" is that it makes it difficult to learn how to be with God in silence. I'm not talking about mere outer silence, although that is often where the journey to inner silence begins. I am talking about the inner silence of a meek and gentle heart, the silence of a heart that does not think on things too high for herself, the silence of a heart that is both broken and contrite while remaining secure in the love of God.

At the end of the warnings about the last days in the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus tells his disciples that the way they can be ready for the End is to watch, watch and pray. The word, 'watch,' literally means, 'stay awake' or 'stay alert' or 'pay attention.' In the Orthodox spiritual tradition, this watchfulness is specifically understood as guarding our mind/heart, or our nous. That is, the house that we are to watch so that it is not robbed (Matt. 24:43 ff) and the house that we are to manage until the Master returns (c.f. Mk. 13:34 ff) is our nous. 

We prepare for the Second Coming of Christ (and our own death—which is functionally the same thing) not by watching what is going on outside us. Jesus told us that these outer signs mean that "the end is not yet." We prepare for Christ's coming by attending to our nous. But learning to attend to the nous requires quiet, inner quiet; it requires that we learn to hear the voice of silence and to notice the movements of stillness. These are paradoxes, I know. But only by means of paradox can we talk about that which is beyond words.  

In the Divine Liturgy, we speak of the Second Coming of Christ as something to be remembered. All eternal realities exist right now, even those that have not yet taken place in time and space. Those who are ready for the Second Coming are those who have already come to remember it, not emotionally, but quietly in their nous. Getting ready for the coming of Christ has nothing to do with reading newspapers, but has everything to do with stilling our minds, watching and praying.

Closing The Door To Tormenting Demons

"Beware of idleness," St. Isaac the Syrian warns the hermits, for "without it a monk cannot fall into the hands of those who strive to enslave him." St. Isaac warns hermits not to neglect psalmody nor prayer because in abandoning them, the solitary opens a door to the demons. The judgement of God comes upon us not because we have neglected spiritual discipline, as though God punishes us for legal omissions, failing to accomplish our duty, or incorrect use of our resources; but rather the judgement of God comes upon us through the torment of demons because we ourselves have opened the door to them. The spiritual disciplines help us shut the door; without spiritual disciplines, our wandering mind, roaming lusts, hidden fears, and latent self-importance emerge, prying open the door for the tormenting demons to enter.

"It is written," St. Isaac says, "He who is not subject to the will of God, is subject to his adversary." Spiritual disciplines are the primary way we subject ourselves to the will of God. For those in the monastic life, and especially for solitaries, those disciplines are all-consuming activities of prayer, reading, and work. But for us in the world, the spiritual disciples relate to our neighbor: love your neighbor, don't kill, don't commit adultery, be kind, be content with what you have, be generous to others, don't judge, weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice.  

I imagine some of my readers are wondering: "Are these spiritual disciplines?" Yes. These are par excellence spiritual disciplines. When we struggle to be kind or generous or content, we are struggling to be like Christ, and the door through which tormenting demons enter is pressed firmly shut. Of course what we find out right away when we seriously embark on the spiritual life in the world is that we fail miserably at keeping the spiritual disciplines that Christ and the Apostles commanded. We find out right away that we cannot easily be kind, even when we want to be kind--and then there are the many times we don't want to be kind! We find out right away that within ourselves, within the resources of our own will and desire, we do not have what it takes to practice the spiritual disciplines. And because we fail to practice the disciplines, the tormenting demons attack us--the door of our mind being left wide open for them.

Yet, it is the very suffering caused by the demons, the guilt, the confusion, the anger, the lustful passion, it is this very suffering that drives us to God in prayer. It is our awareness of our great need that turns us to God again and again for help. But how do we pray?  

Certainly, "Help, God!" is a good start. However, in the same way that one might use home remedies for a minor cold or to mend a scratched knee, yet will go to an expert in medicine for a serious condition; so also in our spiritual life we go to the doctors, the men and women who have spent a lifetime learning prayer. We go to the monastics, and particularly to those monastics (or monastic writings) that have proven over time to be reliable and helpful in producing the fruit of the Holy Spirit in those who have heeded their advice.  

Remember, the goal is not to pray like a monk while living in the world. The goal is to love our neighbor as Christ while we live in the world. Prayer rules and techniques are the means, the means to transformation so that we will be filled with the Holy Spirit and show forth the love and life of Christ.

We shut the door to the demons and avoid God's judgement by actively pursuing the spiritual life. This pursuit requires repentance and our own healing and manifests itself in love of God and neighbor. Prayer is a part of this, an essential part--I might even say an integral part of our pursuit of God and of our shutting the door to the demons that torment us. But he who says the most prayers is not necessarily (and not probably in my experience) the one who is experiencing the most success in the spiritual life in the world. The one who is succeeding in the spiritual life is the one who is learning love the unlovely, who is looking for opportunities to be generous to those who ask, who tries to shut down judgemental thoughts, and who is practicing kindness and mercy even when he or she doesn't feel like it.  

Such a one will be heeding the advice of St. Isaac, avoiding spiritual idleness and therefore not becoming the prey of his spiritual adversary.