The intellect joined to God for long periods through prayer and love become wise, good, powerful, compassionate, merciful and long-suffering; in short it includes within itself almost all the divine qualities. But when the intellect withdraws from God and attaches itself to material things, either it becomes self-indulgent like some domestic animal, or like a wild beast it fights with men for the sake of these things. (Maximos the Confessor)

Until undertaking this "conversation" with Maximos I did not realize what a materialist I am.

I recognize the potential dichotomy between the material and spiritual. Most of those I know seem to be loyal citizens of the material world and suspicious or worse of the spiritual.

Maximos has recognized a symptom of profound spiritual deficiency, but I am not confident his is the only therapy.

I do not perceive God intends for us to reject the material or that such rejection is the only path to the spiritual.

Rather there is a need to heal that which has fractured the material and spiritual, reuniting and restoring what was meant to be joined.

When you find your intellect occupied pleasurably with material things and becoming fondly attached to its conceptual images of them, you may be sure that you love these things more than God. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. (Maximos the Confessor)

Maximos is quoting from the sermon on the mount. A bit more context:

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." (Matthew 6:19-21)

It is a matter of priority and proportionality. I do not hear Jesus rejecting worldly pleasures (Maximos is more rigorous in this regard). But there is a clear injunction to put God and neighbor first.

God does not honor hoarding. When the gathering and keeping of stuff -- money, property, and more -- is motivated by conceptual images rooted in either fear or desire for control we are distracted from reality

God does not honor obsessions or compulsions. These are empty idols. God will help free us from unhelpful conceptual images and restore us to meaningful relationships.

God is calling us to fulfillment. We are fulfilled in relationship with what is real and present.

If a man does not love someone, it does not necessarily mean that he hates him; and conversely, if he does not hate him, it does not necessarily mean that he loves him, since he can be neutral towards him, that is, neither love him nor hate him. For the disposition to love is created only the five ways listed in the ninth text of the Century, one commendable, one of an intermediate kind, and three reprehensible. (Maximos the Confessor)

The nine ways previously identified are for the sake of God, by nature, by self-esteem, by avarice, and by self-indulgence.

I have defined love as recognizing an other as an expression of God. Maximos equates love as something closer to friendly affection and warm attraction.

Over the years I have sought to cultivate the ability to "love" those who may repulse me. The good and the beautiful do not always travel together.

Maximos challenges the comfortable distance allowed by my emotion-free definition of love. Love does not merely honor the other, love draws us to the other.

If I truly believe my most repulsive neighbor is an expression of God, I am called - quite reluctantly, I will admit - to open myself to him or her until the repulsion is replaced by some authentic aspect of appreciation.

If a man is not envious or angry, and does not bear a grudge against someone who has offended him, that does not necessarily mean that he loves him. For, while still lacking love, he may be capable of not repaying evil with evil, in accordance with the commandment, and yet by no means be capable of rendering good for evil without forcing himself. To be spontaneously disposed to do good to those who hate you belongs to perfect spiritual love alone. (Maximos the Confessor)

To render good for evil as a matter of conscious will is not sufficient. Love is not only a discipline, it is a spontaneous expression.

This is not the spontaneity, however laudatory, that prompts a stranger to plunge into icy water to save a child. This love is self-sacrifice on behalf of those who have ignored, abused, and hated you. It is an expression of the same love with which Jesus forgave and transfigured those who crucified him.

I am a reasonable master of the stoic disciplines. I am not typically consumed by anger or envy. But I lack love and can be a clanging cymbal.

When a man's intellect is constantly with God, his desire grows beyond all measure into an intense longing for God and his incensiveness is completely transformed into divine love. For by continual participation in the divine radiance his intellect becomes totally filled with light; and when it has reintegrated its passible aspect, it redirects this aspect towards God, as we have said, filling it with an incomprehensible and intense longing for Him and with unceasing love, thus drawing it entirely away from worldly things to the divine. (Maximos the Confessor)

Through continual participation with one another our hearts are opened. Once opened, the concerns and capacities of our hearts can grow.

To participate is to be in relationship. The Latin root - participatus - means to share, to take part, and to partner. We are to participate with God. We are to participate with our neighbors.

Jesus urges us to be whole-hearted, to be fully engaged, to be completely committed. We are to be active partners with God and neighbor.

My failure to be whole-hearted is most often the result of fear or distraction. I restrain my present participation to reduce my vulnerability or because I am preoccupied with some abstraction.

Help me gracious God to continually participate in your divine radiance.

Certain things stop the movement of the passions and do not allow them to grow; others subdue them and make them diminish. For instance, where desire is concerned, fasting, labour, and vigils do not allow it to grow, while withdrawal, contemplation, prayer, and intense longing for God subdue it and make it disappear. The same is true with regard to anger. Forbearance, freedom from rancour, gentleness, for example, all arrest it and prevent it from growing, while love, acts of charity, kindness and compassion make it diminish. (Maximos the Confessor)

What Maximos perceives as stopping the passions, I perceive as giving direction to the passions.

What is the source of our most intense desire? It is usually some sense of separation or need. But when we claim what we desire, it often does not satisfy and, indeed, seems to spur more intense desire.

Quite often we have projected our need for God as a need for something else. We have mistaken our separation from God as separation from some other.

God is so multi-faceted and expansive that we can engage God through a variety of sacraments. But for sacramental potential to be realized we must bring to it an awareness of the sacred.

While ultimately self-satisfying, the sacred almost always begins with self-sacrifice.

The sensible man, taking into account the remedial effect of the divine prescriptions, gladly bears the sufferings which they bring upon him, since he is aware that they have no cause other than his own sin. But when the fool, ignorant of the supreme wisdom of God's providence, sins and is corrected, he regards either God or men as responsible for the hardships he suffers. (Maximos the Confessor)

I am my own worst enemy. In my desires, doubts and dithering are the origins of many hardships.

But difficulty also emerges from my effort - however faulty - to live in a manner consistent with God's intention.

Within God's soaring architecture human society has constructed a warren of low rooms and a veritable maze of tight passageways.

When trying to break out of these tacky additions, I have been disdained or worse. It is also true that, too often, where I thought tearing down an old wall would open into a great hall, it has, instead, merely opened into another part of the maze.

There are, I expect, boundaries to God's architecture. There are surely consequences to living inconsistently with the divine architecture.

But the distress I have experienced has not, so far, been the result of God's design or intervention, but the consequence of choices made by me and my neighbors.

The good news - celebrated with particular joy on this day - is that God walks and works with us in clearing away the slums and tenements to restore and build-anew a beautiful city.

Trials are sent to some so as to take away past sins, to others so as to eradicate sins now being committed, and to yet others so as to forestall sins which may be committed in the future. These are distinct from the trials that arise in order to test me in the way that Job was tested. (Maximos the Confessor).

If Maximos had chosen a passive verb - perhaps "trials can serve so as to take away..." - I would have very little to say.

The middle English source of trial means to sort, to sift, or to separate. The choices we make to resolve (or not) our struggles are fundamental to the discovery and crafting of self. The relationships forged in the midst of struggle are often the strongest and deepest of all. In our individual lives, in our families, communities, and beyond we encounter gaps between what is and what might be. We can endeavor to narrow the gap, bridge it, or fill it. Or we can widen the gap into a chasm.

God's architecture does engage the tension between objects, between options, and between free creatures. But God does not send trials and tests. God has demonstrated, again and again, how the architecture is optimized through mindful and mutually supportive relationship. The architect's clear intention is for us to make choices whereby each of us, all of us, and the architecture is able to thrive. Fortunately the architecture is sufficiently resilient to survive neglect and abuse.

As long as you have bad habits do not reject hardship, so that through it you may be humbled and eject your pride. Sometimes men are tested by pleasure, sometime by distress or by physical suffering. But means of His prescriptions the Physician of souls administers the remedy according to the cause of the passions lying hidden in the soul. (Maximos the Confessor)

Tough times can be very good for character-building, cultivating wisdom, and soul-making. God is ready to help with all this and more.

Surely pleasure can test and try us as much as distress. Every encounter with another - good or ill - is an opportunity to make and find meaning.

God is a great physician. I have found God's remedies remarkable. I depend on God's concern and care.

With God's help I can discern and give direction to the passions lying hidden in my soul. In every case I have found these passions to be God's gift.

We are not called is dispassion but passion for God's purposes, wherein we will find our soul's fulfillment.

When a trial comes upon you unexpectedly, do not blame the person through whom it came but try to discover the reason why it came, and then you will find a way of dealing with it. For whether through this person or through someone else you had in any case to trink the wormwood of God's judgments. (Maximos the Confessor).

I agree with the first sentence. I fundamentally disagree with the second.

If we regularly behave in a manner inconsistent with God's architecture there will be consequences. Floors will crack. The roof might even fall in.

There can be benefit in reflection and self-criticism, whatever the context. But if every time we lose a job, suffer a disease, or are caught up in tragedy we perceive the hand of God, we unnecessarily complicate our relationship with God.

In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus we can learn much. Certainly we can see that evil is done even to the innocent. We can also see that evil does not have the final say.

God is with us. Whether the source of suffering is evil or error or accident, God is with us.

Almost every sin is committed for the sake of sensual pleasure; and sensual pleasure is overcome by hardship and distress arising either voluntarily from repentance, or else involuntarily as a result of some salutary and providential reversal. "For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged; but when we are judged, we are chastened for the Lord, so that we should not be condemned with the world." (Maximos the Confessor)

In my own experience and in observation of others, most sensual sins pale in contrast to the sins of pride and fear. And too often, confronting the sensual sins inflame pride or fear.

Is sensual pleasure overcome or redirected? What is more sensual than the Eucharist? Or Chartres? Or almost anything by Bach? Or any mindful walk in nature? Jesus welcomed the woman with the alabaster jar and her care.

Certainly, let us judge ourselves. But let us judge rightly. We were not given the senses to tempt us, but to assist us in knowing God.

We grow proud when the passions cease to be active in us, and this whether they are inactive because their causes have been eradicated or because the demons have deliberately withdrawn in order to deceive us. (Maximos the Confessor)

I am bi-polar. The symptoms and consequences have been active since my early teens. There were especially difficult and extended episodes of depression in my twenties.

For most of the last thirty years with counseling, diet, exercise, self-awareness and self-discipline, my experience of depression has been comparatively benign.

The cause has not, however, been eradicated. The symptoms still flare. But given my experience, I can usually perceive an on-set sufficiently early to mitigate the impact.

This ailment has bred attention, cultivated moderation, and encouraged empathy. I give God thanks for it as a great gift, an angelic protector, a tool for mindful living.

I am fully aware the cause is beyond my power to eradicate and the demons are always trying to deceive us.

The person who has come to know the weakness of human nature has gained experience of divine power. Such a man, having achieved some things and eager to achieve others through this divine power, never belittles anyone. For he know that just as God has helped him and freed him from many passions and difficulties, so, when God wishes, He is able to help all men, especially those pursuing the spiritual way for His sake. And if in His providence He does not deliver all men together from their passions, yet like a good and loving physician He heals with individual treatment each of those who are trying to make progress. (Maximos the Confessor)

Each of us is an expression of God. Each of us is worthy of honor.

Even at our worst, even when trapped in error, banality, and depravity, we do not forsake our essential nature.

I am less certain than Maximos seems to be regarding the alchemy of grace. I am not sure if it requires God's active intervention or our active acceptance or some other action, interaction, reaction, or ceasing of action.

I have found grace most present when I have stopped trying to make progress and have, instead, been attentive to my current place and condition.

Our creator God certainly honors our desire to create, to grow, and to change. But God's grace is present in regression as well as progress, in loss as well as gain.

The malice of the demon of pride takes two forms. Either he persuades the monk to ascribe his achievements to himself and not to God, the Giver of all goodness and helper in every achievement; or, if this fails, he suggests that he should belittle those of his brethern who are as yet less perfect than himself. Influenced in this way, he does not realize that the demon is persuading him to deny God's help. For if he belittles his brethern for their lack of achievement, he clearly infers that he has achieved something through his own powers. But this is impossible, since, as our Lord has said, "Without Me you can do nothing." For even when impelled towards what is good, our weakness cannot bring anything to fruition with the Giver of all goodness. (Maximos the Confessor)

This insight is applicable far beyond the monastery. There is nothing we can do to earn spiritual achievement. We accept grace and live in accordance with grace or we do not.

I wonder how Maximos squares this insight with his prior instructions on self-organized spiritual discipline.

In my critique of Maximos, I am not advocating license. But meaningful spiritual achievement is the result of being in loving relationship with God and neighbor.

If and when I focus on my sinful separation from God and what I must do to climb closer; or in differentiating myself from those who I perceive are sinning, I seek to separate from them, I have been tricked by the demon of pride.

I am a sinner. I will be a sinner. But I can accept God's grace and I can live in loving relationship with God and my neighbor.

In everything that we do God searches out our purpose to see whether we do it from Him or for some other motive. When you hear the words of Scripture, "Thou shalt render to every man according to his work," do not think that God bestows blessings when something is done for the wrong purpose, even though it seems to be good. Quite clearly He bestows blessings only when something is done for right purpose. For God's judgment looks not at the actions but at the purpose behind them. (Maximos the Confessor)

In creating the universe I perceive God applies an architecture. When we make choices consistent with that architecture the outcomes are more likely to be as anticipated.

Quite clearly this architecture includes considerable randomness. Outcomes can be unpredictable, even when we attempt to calibrate our choices to the architecture.

But in shaping our intention to God's intention, matching our purpose to God's purpose, and working to extend the weave that God has begun we are more likely to achieve fulfillment.

Many human activities, good in themselves, are not good because of the motive for which they are done. For example, fasting and vigils, prayer and psalmody, acts of charity and hospitality are by nature good, but when performed for the sake of self-esteem they are not good. (Maximos the Confessor)

When I began daily meditations on the web I hoped to attract others. This motivation was partly a matter of serving others, partly the hope for dialogue, but had some significant element of what Maximos would call self-esteem.

I love singing in Church. I don't want to "perform" in the choir and I don't like being noticed for my singing. Singing has become just about as close as I get to pure praise and worship of God.

My approach to hospitality is usually overdone. There is too much projection of self, rather than serving the guest. I used to be better at it, but we are so seldom visited that hospitality requires -- or I think it requires -- self-conscious effort.

Acts of worship and acts of service -- the principal means of being in relationship with God and neighbor -- are opportunities to step outside the self, to lose the burden of self, and discover the joy of being in relationship with an other.

Since September 17, 2005 I have authored a morning meditation. In that first blog post I wrote, "We are called to praise not for the sake of God, but for our own sake. Too often we are preoccupied by worry regarding the future. Too often we are in mourning for that which is past. Too seldom do we recognize the blessing of the here and now."

I am glad only one or two others read these writings. In the silence my self is focused only on my relationship with the text and, on the best days, through the text to my relationship with God and neighbor.

The rewards for the toils of virtue are dispassion and spiritual knowledge. For these are mediators of the kingdom of heaven, just as passions and ignorance are mediators of eternal punishment. It is because of this that he who seeks these rewards for the sake of human glory and not for their intrinsic goodness is rebuked by the words of Scripture, "You ask, and do not receive, because you ask wrongly." (Maximos the Confessor)

Maximos and James seem intent on explaining the Gospel of Luke, where Jesus is quoted as saying,

"So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened." (Luke 11, 9-10)

When we do not win the lottery, when we lose our job, when the cancer wins, or when our child is killed in war, how do we explain the failure of prayer? Have we, somehow, asked wrongly?

I wonder if the problem is not in how we ask, but in our expectations of what we will receive. In the next two verses, Jesus continues,

"Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"

In response we will receive the Holy Spirit. Do we recognize how this gift is responsive to our prayers?

There are also three things that impel us towards evil: passions, demons and sinfulness of intention. Passions impel us when, for example, we desire something beyond what is reasonable, such as food which is unnecessary or untimely, or a woman who is not our wife or for a purpose other than procreation, or else when we are excessively angered or irritated by, for instance, someone who has dishonored or injured us. Demons impel us when, for example, they catch us off our guard and suddenly launch a violent attack upon us, stirring up the passions already mentioned and others of a similar nature. We are impelled by sinfulness of intention when, know the good, we choose evil instead. (Maximos the Confessor)

I understand evil to be, at least in part, a self-interested manipulation of reality to purposefully mislead another.

The three things that are most likely to impel me towards evil are misperception of reality, lack of honest self-awareness, and the absence of authentic concern for an other.

God is the ultimate reality. I am to love God and neighbor as myself. Nurturing the trinity of God-neighbor-self is a strong counter to evil.

There are three things that impel us toward what is holy: natural instincts, angelic powers and probity of intention. Natural instincts impel us when, for example, we do to others what we wish them to do to us, or when we see someone suffering deprivation or in need and naturally feel compassion. Angelic powers impel us when, being ourselves impelled to something worthwhile, we find we are providentially helped and guided. We are impelled by probity of intention when discriminating between good and evil, we choose good. (Maximos the Confessor)

I am impelled, but do I go?

Do I combine my compassion with action? Only on occasion.

Do I give thanks for providential help and guidance? Sometimes.

Do I choose good and reject evil? Yes, but too often I may not even recognize the difference.

If I more often act with compassion and give thanks to God, such experiences will almost certainly teach me greater discrimination.

The passions lying hidden in the soul provide the demons with the means of arousing impassioned thoughts in us. Then, fighting the intellect through these thoughts, they force it to its assent to sin. When it has been overcome, they lead it to sin in the mind; and when this has been done they induce it, captive as it is, to commit the sin in action. Having thus desolated the soul by means of these thoughts, the demons then retreat, taking the thoughts with them, and only the spectre or idol of sin remains in the intellect. Referring to this our Lord says, "When you see the abominable idol of desoloation standing in the holy place (let him who reads understand) ..." For man's intellect is a holy place and a temple of God in which the demons, having desolated the soul by means of impassioned thoughts, set up the idol of sin. That these things have already taken place in history no one, I think, who has read Josephus will doubt; though some say that they will also come to pass in the time of the Antichrist. (Maximos the Confessor)

In The Screwtape Letters and other writings, C.S. Lewis describes how we can be incrementally undone. A modest pride, just a bit of fear, only a touch of avarice is a sufficient start.

Thought is powerful. Words are powerful. The distance between conceiving and doing need not be far, regardless of the conception or consequence, good or bad. Demons exploit the possibilities.

Maximos prescribes a life where the ascetic's inner world is focused tightly on the direct experience of God. For some, such discipline and purpose is surely a good prescription. I am not - yet - convinced it is right for me.

In the ninth letter of Screwtape to his nephew it is explained, "The attack has a much better chance of success when the man's whole inner world is drab and cold and empty."

In my own life the demons seem to be dissuaded by beauty. This morning's rising crescent moon, a Bach cantata, a wonderful meal, a sparkling dialogue, a shared effort to create...

These sensualities are, at least it seems to me, how I move closer to God. Maximos seeks an inner world filled with the transendent light of God-in-God. I find something very close to transcendence when my inner world is filled with the natural light that God has made and the man-made illumination that God empowers.

For him who is perfect in love and has reached the summit of dispassion there is no difference between his own or another's, or between Christians and unbelievers, or between slave and free, or even between male and female. But because he has risen above the tyranny of the passions and has fixed his attention on the single nature of man, he looks on all in the same way and shows the same disposition to all. For in him there is neither Greek nor Jew, male nor female, bond nor free, but Christ who "is all, and in all." (Maximos the Confessor)

I have sometimes found Maximos to be too much a Greek and not sufficiently a Jew. I am sure he would find me to be entirely too tied to sensuality and passion.

The conversation has nonetheless been worthwhile. Maximos has aggravated and challenged me. His otherness has encouraged me to greater clarity regarding what I perceive and why.

We have also found common ground. The words above were written nearly 1500 years ago. To many, even to many Christians, they are still startling. These words capture the core of my personal creed.

The differences between Maximos and I, between most of us, can be very helpful. The differences remind us of the breadth and depth of God, far beyond our comprehension.

Honoring the freedom and creativity God has bequeathed to each and all, motivated by love for God and neighbor, the clash of difference can be a beautiful song.

He who combines the practice of the virtues with spiritual knowledge is a man of power. For with the first he withers his desire and tames his incensiveness, and with the second he gives wings to his intellect and goes out of himself to God. (Maximos the Confessor)

I needed to check the definitions of wither and incensive. Maximos means to prune our desire and tame our tendency for excitement or being inflamed.

Another definition - enthusiasm - derived from LL enthūsiasmus and Greek enthousiasmós, equiv. to enthousí(a) possession by a god (énthous, var. of éntheos having a god within, equiv. to en- en- 2 + -thous, -theos god-possessing + -ia y3 ) + -asmos, var., after vowel stems, of -ismos -ism

The best pruning and taming increases our awareness of entheos, God within.

If you are about to enter the realm of theology, do not seek to descry God's inmost nature, for neither the human intellect nor that of any other being under God can experience this; but try to discern as far as possible the qualities that appertain to His nature - qualities of eternity, infinity, indeterminateness, goodness, wisdom, and the power of creating, preserving and judging creatures, and so on. For he who discovers these qualities, to however small an extent, is a great theologian. (Maximos the Confessor)

That God is creative and free, seems to me beyond doubt. God also grants each of these qualities to you, me, and all of creation. In this way we are partners with God.

How we create and what we do with our freedom either extends or diminishes God's intention. A theologian - or any of us - ought give close attention to divine intention.

Is beauty an intention or a by-product? Is the interplay of order and randomness intentional or just a secondary feature of the system? Is love an input or an output?

The answers may be beyond human certainty. But such questions - and the struggle to answer - can focus our attention and shape our own intention.

What will you create today? How will you invest your freedom? How do your choices reflect your relationship with God and neighbor?

When the intellect practices the virtues correctly, it advances in moral understanding. When it practices contemplation it advances in spiritual knowledge. The first leads the spiritual contestant to discriminate between virtue and vice; the second leads the participant to the inner qualities of incorporeal and corporeal things. Finally, the intellect is granted the grace of theology when, carried on wings of love beyond these two former stages, it is taken up into God and with the help of the Holy Spirit discerns - as far as this is possible for the human intellect - the qualities of God. (Maximos the Confessor)

When we are in virtuous relationship with others, when we engage others as expressions of God, we advance in moral understanding. When we listen regularly to God we advance in spiritual knowledge.

For some the abstraction Maximos describes is the ecstatic outcome. For others this daily discipline will motivate increasing service to others and God.

I am not sure if either is better than the other. The most grounded may experience the ecstatic. Very abstract theologians have empowered and exemplified courage and care. God invites us to find our way from wherever we must begin.

The reward of self-control is dispassion, and the reward of faith is spiritual knowledge.  Dispassion engenders discrimination, and spiritual knowledge engenders love for God. (Maximos the Confessor)

Those who know me best would probably agree (complain?) that I have considerable self-control.  This has not always resulted in dispassion.  By itself, self-control can inflame the passions as much as quiet them.

Maximos is almost certainly advocating apatheia (ἀπάθεια).  For the Stoics, writing five centuries before Maximos, apatheia is freedom from emotional disturbance.  It is a rational and ego-free reaction to external events.

Five centuries after Maximos, the great theologian of the Eastern Church Symeon wrote,

I affirm that dispassion (apatheia) consists not only in abstaining from the prompting of the passions, but in abandoning all desire for them, and even more, in divesting our mind from their fantasies.  Thus, if we so desire, we rise above the heavans, beyond all the visible and sensory, as if our senses were closed and our mind hand entered the super-sensible world, lifting the senses forcibly with it, like an eagle lifts its wings.

But the most finely tuned apatheia is insufficient and can be misleading. On my own, even at my most rational and courageous - perhaps especially then - I will choose poorly.  Dispassion must be wedded to love of God and neighbor.

Maximos tells us that spiritual knowledge is the reward of faith.  Is it also the essential substance of faith?

All the discourses of our Lord contain these four elements: commandments, doctrines, threats and promises.  With the help of these we patiently accept every kind of hardship, such as fasting, vigils, sleeping on the ground, toil and labour in acts of service, insults, dishonour, torture, death, and so on.  "Helped by the words of thy lips," says the psalmist, "I have kept to difficult paths." (Maximos the Confessor)

The interstates are easy and, usually, quick.  They are also crowded and boring.  It is more meaningful to find paths less taken.

Where am I going?  How should I get there? Joseph Campbell noticed that in the quest for the holy grail, each of the archetypal heroes must find their own entrance into the enchanted forest, their own beginning, their own path.

Campbell was famous for perceiving similar stages in the journey of most heroes.  But our particular path will be, needs to be, unique.

Some men abstain from the passions because of human fear, others because of self-esteem, and others through self-control. Some, however, are delivered from the passions by divine providence. (Maximos the Confessor)

If Maximos had begun his second sentence with "All" rather than "Some" I might simply agree. 

The most likely Greek verb for abstain is some form of apecho.  This is an innately paradoxical term.  Depending on context it can mean either to hold back or to have in full.

We can and should abstain from those feelings, motivations, and intentions than separate us from God and neighbor.  But if we try to depend on our own strength and will, such resistance will only inflame the epipothe'sis.

All are delivered from the passions by the divine providence.  Only by giving ourselves wholly to God and neighbor are we freed.

It is certainly an issue of apecho, but the context calls for giving rather than resisting.

The demons are weakened when the passions in us decrease through our keeping the commandments; and they are defeated totally when they are routed by dispassion, for then they no longer find anything through which they can enter the soul and fight against it. This is what is meant by "they will be weakened and defeated before thy face." (Maximos the Confessor)

Maximos is almost certainly quoting from the third verse of the ninth psalm.  Here is a contemporary translation:

I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart;
I will recount all of your wonderful deeds.
I will be glad and exult in you;
I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.

When my enemies turn back,
they stumble and perish before your presence.

For you have maintained my just cause;
you have sat on the throne, giving righteous judgment.
You have rebuked the nations; you have made the wicked perish;

It is God who maintains, God who gives judgment.  It is our role to give thanks, recount, be glad, and sing praise.

He who anoints his intellect for spiritual contest and drives all impassioned thoughts out of it has the quality of a deacon. He who illuminates his intellect with the knowledge of created being and utterly destroys false knowledge has the quality of a priest. And he who perfects his intellect with the holy myrrh of the knowledge and worship of the Holy Trinity has the quality of a bishop. (Maximos the Confessor)

Who anoints? Who illuminates? Who perfects?

We have an essential role, but we are not alone. On our own we would struggle to qualify for sexton.

The garden of our soul benefits from cutting back epipothe'sis.  It can be fertlized and watered.  The blossoms of the soul are more likely to flourish under the care of a knowledgable gardener.

But the gardener depends on God for soil and rain and sun and much more.

We are not - ought not be - engaged in lonely self-perfecting.

Those who are always trying to lay hold of our soul do so by means of impassioned thoughts, so that they may drive it to sin either in the mind or in action.  Consequently, when they find the intellect unreceptive, they will be disgraced  and put to shame; and when they find the intellect occupied with spiritual contemplation, they will be turned back and suddenly ashamed. (Maximos the Confessor)

I am not called to the monastic life.  I do not perceive this is God's purpose for me. Maximos is not writing for me. 

But impassioned thoughts - epipothe'sis - are relevant.  Plato suggests we are motivated by goodness, truth, and beauty. We might capitalize each.  He argues that we will not be be satisfied until we experience the ideal of each.

Such ideals are not, typically, immediately accessible.  We encounter shadows of each.  We may even - usually do - confuse a shadow for its ultimate form.

Plato - perhaps in tension with Maximos - perceives that by fully engaging a shadow, coming to know its limits, we can eventually move closer to its source.

I understand Jesus to say that in fully engaging our neighbors and our selves, shadows of God, we can eventually move closer to God.

The demon of unchastity is powerful and violently attacks those who struggle against passion, particulary if they are lax about matters of diet and often meet women. With the lubricity of sensual pleasure he imperceptively steals into the intellect and thereafter persecutes the hesychast by means of memory, setting his body on fire and presenting various forms to the intellect.  In this way he evokes his assent to sin.  If you do not want these forms to linger in you, turn again to fasting, labour, vigils and blessed stillness with intense prayer. (Maximos the Confessor)

A vow of chastity has been undertaken. The purpose of the hesychast (Greek hesychos = quiet) in undertaking the vow is more ambitious than most.  Through ascetic detachment from the world, profound prayer, and a perfect repose of mind and body he seeks to see the uncreated light of God.

Temptation arises from memory, abstract conceptualization, sensuality, and opportunity.  It has, apparently, almost nothing to do with the woman presently at hand.  The encounter with the other is sufficiently fraught and so brief, that it is almost certainly nothing more than an expression of lust.

I am tempted by the example of the hesychast. This tradition explicitly seeks the light of the Transfiguration.  Yet following his Transfiguration, while Peter sought to preserve the mystic moment, Jesus left the mountain to heal, teach, and fulfill his purpose in relationship with God and his neighbors.