Some thoughts are simple, others are composite. Thoughts which are not impassioned are simple. Passion-charged thoughts are composite, consisting as they do of a conceptual image combined with passion. This being so, when composite thoughts begin to provide a sinful idea in the mind, many simple thoughts may be seen to follow them. For instance, an impassioned thought about gold rises in someone's mind. He has the urge mentally to steal the gold and commits the sin in his intellect. Then thoughts of the purse, the chest, the room and so on follow hard on the thought of the gold. The thought of the gold was composite - for it was combined with passion - but those of the purse, the chest, and so on were simple; for the intellect had no passion in relation to these things. And the same is true for every thought - thoughts of self-esteem, women, and so on. For not all thoughts which follow impassioned thought are themselves impassioned, as our example has shown. From this then we may know which conceptual images are impassioned and which are not. (Maximos the Confessor)

Sometimes - probably more than I realize - I do not have sufficient understanding of the psychological and spiritual doctrines of his age to fully hear Maximos. This is surely one of those moments.

What I can recognize is a concern for misdirected passion. In this I am reminded of an insight of St. John Climacus, a contemporary of Maxmos:

I have seen impure souls crazed for physical love; but when these same souls have made this grounds for repentance, as a result of their experience of sexual love they have transferred the same eros to the Lord, They have immediately gone beyond all fear and been spurred to insatiable love for God. This is why the Lord said to the chaste harlot not that she had feared, but that she had loved much, and was readily able to repel eros through eros.

Eros is not innately evil. The erotic can, if directed by divine purpose, draw us closer to one another and to God. Again, from John Climacus:

Let them take courage who are humbled by their passions. For even if they fall into every pit and are caught in every snare, when they attain health they will become healers, luminaries, beacons and guides to all, teaching about the forms of every sickness and through their own experience saving those who are about to fall.