In the Desert of the Heart, Let the Healing Fountain Start

In the desert of the heart, where words dry up and thought scatters like dust in the wind, silence becomes the only spring that does not fail. It is there, stripped of the noise of self, that the soul begins to taste the sweetness of stillness. The mind exhausts itself in its own designs, turning endlessly upon questions of what must be done, what must be spoken, how to be justified before men. Yet when all these sounds have faded into fatigue, a deeper voice begins to breathe within the heart—Be still and know that I am God. It is not command but invitation, not restraint but release.

Silence is the fountain hidden in the desert. Beneath the cracked earth of restlessness lies the cool depth where God dwells unseen. The Fathers tell us that the one who abides in silence dwells already in the kingdom, for he has found the still point where creation listens to its Maker. “Sit in your cell,” said Abba Moses, “and your cell will teach you everything.” To remain where one is, to yield every argument to the quiet of trust, is to stand at the threshold of eternity.

The desert saints knew that the demons fear silence more than any prayer. In words they can twist meanings and sow pride, but in silence the heart slips beyond their grasp. Saint Isaac the Syrian called silence “the mystery of the age to come,” the place where the Word rests after speaking the world into being. There the soul no longer needs to understand or defend; it simply is, as the child resting in the arms of its mother.

Even Scripture bows before this mystery. The psalmist, having poured out lament and praise, ends in stillness: I have calmed and quieted my soul. For in the end, to know God is to be silent before Him. The world was created by a word, but it is redeemed in silence—the silence of Nazareth, of Gethsemane, of the tomb. Out of that silence, life flows again like water from the rock.

So let the heart fall silent, not in despair but in wonder. Let the hands be still, the tongue at rest, the thoughts cease their endless motion. In the desert of the heart, the healing fountain begins to rise unseen. It is there, in that quiet and hidden place, that the soul drinks the living water and becomes whole.

Becoming Desert: A Journal of Hesychastic Struggle in the West - Part VI: "Bearing the Absurd Commandments" Entry 35

Introduction

I did not go into the wilderness. I was not tonsured on a holy mountain. I live in the West, where noise seeps into the bones and the air is thick with restlessness. Yet something in me aches for the desert, for that place where men and women once wrestled with God and were broken open until mercy filled them.

This is not a manual, not a polished theology, not a record of visions. It is simply a journal of one who seeks hesychasm in hiddenness. I am not a monk in the desert but a struggler in a room. Yet the Fathers said: “Go to your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.” So I go.

What follows are fragments from that cell: noise, failure, temptation, tears, glimpses of grace. The desert is not far away. The desert is within.

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Part VI: Bearing the Absurd Commandments

Entry 35: Hesychia as Fire

Stillness is not emptiness. It is fire. Beneath the silence burns a presence that is fierce and tender at once. The more I sit in stillness, the more I feel consumed; not destroyed, but purified. This is not passive quiet; it is the fire of God dwelling in a fragile heart.

The Desert within . . .

I have heard people say that one cannot achieve a persistent state of virtue without retreating far into the desert, and I was amazed that they should think the unconfinable could be confined to a particular locality…. Such a state is not achieved adventitiously, by external influences; it is implanted within us at our creation by virtue of our endemic divine and spiritual consciousness. And when we are impelled by this inner consciousness in accordance with our true nature we are led into the kingdom of heaven, which in our Lord’s words, is “within us” (Luke 17:21). Thus the desert is in fact superfluous, since we can enter the kingdom simply through repentance and the strict keeping of God’s commandments. Entry into the kingdom can occur, as David states, “in all places of His dominion”; for he says, “In all places of His dominion bless the Lord, O my soul” (Psalm 103:22).

Nikitas Stithatos”

"In the Deserts of the Heart, Let the Healing Fountain Start": From the Desert Sands of Egypt to the Desert Within

In one of the comments on a previous post, a reader asks: “How do you think those of us living in this world with our many and various responsibilities can access/simulate the experience of the hermits?”  Certainly, the question can be approached in a number of ways and I tried to address it in some measure in my initial response to the comment.  But I have continued to think about this question throughout the past few days and in my own studies I came across what I think is a good starting point for further discussion on the matter.  I am currently reading John Chryssavgis’ book “In the Heart of the Desert”.  The question he asks is “Why the desert?”  Why did the elders choose to go there in the first place and what significance does it have in its own right and for those of us who live in the city?

Please forgive the long series of quotes, but in them Chryssavgis captures so beautifully how the desert suggests something both deeply spiritual and personal.  Each paragraph is worthy of our reflection as we begin our approach to the Fathers.  Chryssavgis writes: 

“‘Desert’ (eremos) literally means ‘abandonment’; it is the term from which we derive ‘hermit’.  The areas of desertedness were where the demons bred. . .There is no water in the desert, and in the mind of the Jews that was the ultimate curse.  No water also meant no life.  The desert signified death; nothing grows in the desert.  Your very existence is, therefore, threatened.  In the desert you will find no one and no thing.  In the desert you can only face up to yourself and to every aspect of your self, to your temptations, and to your reality.  You confront your own heart, and your heart’s deepest desires, without any scapegoat, without any hiding place.”

“Yet the desert was also endowed with sacred significance for Jews and Christians alike.  The Israelites had wandered in the desert for forty years.  It was there that Moses saw God.  It was there that John the Baptist preached the coming of the Messiah.  Indeed, it was in the desert that Jesus Himself began His ministry; it was in the wilderness that He was first tempted by the demons. . .  .”  

“So the desert, while accursed, was never seen as an empty region.  It was a place that was full of action.  It was a space that provided an opportunity, and even a calling, for divine vision.  In the desert, you were invited to shake off all forms of idolatry, all kinds of earthly limitations, in order to behold - or rather, to be held before - an image of the heavenly God.  There, you were confronted with another reality, with the presence of a boundless God, whose grace was without any limits at all.”

“The desert is an attraction beyond oneself; it is an invitation to transfiguration.  It was neither a better way, nor an easier way.  The desert elders were not out to prove a point; they were there to prove themselves. . . Nothing should be held back in this surrender.  It is all or nothing.  The abandonment to God is absolute.”  

“The desert is a place of spiritual revolution, not of personal retreat.  It is a place of inner protest, not outward peace.  It is a place of deep encounter, not of superficial escape.  It is a place of repentance, not recuperation.  Living in the desert does not mean living without people; it means living for God.  Anthony and the other desert dwellers never forgot this.  They never sought to cut off their connections to other people instantly.  They rather sought to refine these relationships increasingly.”  

However, Chrssavgis is quick to point out that the meaning of the desert extends far beyond the sands of Egypt.  It speaks of a personal way applicable to each of our lives.  It is a “spiritual way that was present everywhere, including the large and busy cities.  ‘It was revealed to Abba Anthony in his desert that there was someone who was his equal in the city.  He was a doctor by profession.  Whatever he had beyond his needs, he would give to the poor; and every day he sang hymns with the angels.’ 

“It is the clear understanding of these elders that one does not have to move to the geographical location of the wilderness in order to find God.  Yet, if you do not have to go to the desert, you do have to go through the desert. . . Everyone does go through the desert in one shape or another.  it may be in the form of suffering or emptiness, or breakdown or any other kind of trauma that occurs in our life.  Dressing this desert up through our addictions or attachments . . . will delay the utter loneliness and inner fearfulness of the desert experience.  If we go through this experience involuntarily, then it can be both overwhelming and crushing.  If, however, we accept to undergo this experience voluntarily, then it can prove both constructive and liberating.  The physical setting of the desert is a symbol, a powerful reminder of a spiritual space that is within us all.”

The deserts of Egypt and the experiences of the elders may seem far removed from those who live many centuries later, but in reality they speak of that which is closest to us - to the desert within the human heart, the place where we too must make the ultimate surrender to God and abandon ourselves to Him, the place where we must fight the good fight of faith, struggle with our own inner demons and wait for God in the silence of prayer.

****All quotes taken from “In the Heart of the Desert” by John Chryssavgis, World Wisdom, Inc. 2003,  pp. 33-36

"We Entreat You to be Fully Alive!: The personal appeal of the desert fathers as witnesses to a fullness and freedom to which we all aspire

The writings of the Desert Fathers have always had a special hold on me.  Although I have been exposed to many other great writings in the spiritual tradition, I have found myself returning again and again to their works.  It is, I believe, their focus on the practical that speaks to me - their focus on the lived faith.  Paradoxically, while they removed themselves from all contact with others and retreated to the barrenness of the desert, they also seemed to enter more fully into the depths of the human heart to discover not only the hidden mysteries therein, but the mysteries of the kingdom.  Their writings, or most often simple sayings, speak with the clarity that only the silence of the desert could produce.  Having stripped themselves of so many of the things that clutter our lives and hide the truth from our view, they came to see with utmost clarity the truth of their own poverty and the mercy of God.  Naked, as it were, they came to know the naked Christ - the richness of crucified Love. In this their lives speak to us about who we are and who God is.

John Chryssagis in his book “In the Heart of the Desert” speaks of this special and very personal appeal of the Fathers:

“There is a fourth century Eucharistic prayer of Sarapion of Thmusis that expresses the center of the experience for the early Christians and of what their faith means for them.  The prayer addresses God: ‘We entreat you, make us truly alive.‘  All of us know about the deeper longing to be truly alive. We have all felt the need to be more than ‘mere survivors‘ or ‘mere observers‘ in our world.  Through the centuries people have had the same hope, the same dream. . .” 

“One place, where men and women sought aggressively to understand the deeper meaning and the fuller measure of human existence, was the desert of early Christian Egypt.  That dry desert . . . became the laboratory for exploring the truths about Heaven and earth and a forging ground for drawing connections between the two.  The hermits who lived in that desert tested and studied what it means to be human - with all the tensions and temptations, all of the struggle beyond survival, all the contacts with good and the conflicts with evil.  And in the process, some of them made many mistakes; others made fewer mistakes.  Whoever said that there is a clear and simple answer to the questions of life?  Yet, these men and women dared to push the limits, to challenge the norms. . .”   

“The stories from the Egyptian desert are more than just a part of the Christian past.  They are a part of our human heritage: they communicate eternal values, spiritual truths.  Theirs is a silence of the deep heart and of intense prayer, a silence that cuts through the centuries and cultures.  We should stop to hear that heartbeat.  Sometimes, in fact, we shall need to stoop low in order to hear the sounds of their past.  For, while they present us with models of the spiritual way, they do so in peculiar ways and with strange examples.  In fact, these stories and sayings offer not simply models for imitation, but witnesses of a fullness and freedom to which we all aspire. . .” 

“The words of these Egyptian hermits resemble flashes of light; they are sparks of fire.  And the reader should neither be overly impressed nor even be greatly distressed by their comments.  Instead, the reader is supposed to catch alight, to catch afire.  It is critical to remain open enough, to be sufficiently vulnerable to their austere yet suggestive counsel. . .”

“The words of these elders smash the structures of complexity and rationalization with which we often clutter and confuse our lives.  Their lives somehow seem to locate pockets of deadness in our lives, enabling us to become truly alive  What they are in fact saying to us most of the time is quite simply: be what you are called to be!”

****All quotes taken from “In the Heart of the Desert” by John Chryssavgis, pp. 1-13.

The Asceticism of the Desert Fathers and the Unconscious: the projection of the enemy within and the cleansing of the heart

I have always thought of the desert Fathers as the first depth psychologists.  From experience, they came to know and understand the dark underground of the human heart and the obscure workings of the unconscious.  As one who has had the opportunity to study psychoanalysis, I have become even more convinced of the Fathers great psychotherapeutic shrewdness and their ability to see and understand what lies beneath.  

Paul Evdokimov in his work The Struggle with God captures beautifully not only this shrewdness but what the Fathers struggle has brought and continues to bring to us today.  He writes:

“The ascesis of the desert is a vast psychoanalysis followed by a psychosynthesis of the universal human soul.  Origen, the brilliant commentator, compares the desert to Plato’s cave.  The desert with all its arsenal of phantasmagoria was a theater of shadows, a spectacle for men and angels; only the shadows did not reflect the reality outside the cave.  They were the projection of the world inside man.

The Gospel speaks of the possessed, of disturbing elements and of the perversity of the human heart.  The abysses we discover are haunted; there are secret places where evil powers are crouching and they rule us if we are ignorant or heedless.  Ascesis cultivates our attention and begins by an experimental phenomenology of our human interior.  It was necessary to materialize and personalize the perverted elements of a being, the hateful ego with its self-love, the doubter and demoniacal counterpart.  Above all, it was necessary to extirpate them, to vomit them, and to objectify them, in order to look them in the face as detached and exteriorized.  This objectification creates a distance, permits the projection of all interior elements as on a screen (Plato’s cave of shadows) under the form of monsters, wild beast and demons.  This operation requires a very precise conviction of the reality of the enemy, in order to cut every bond and communion with him.

The Fathers of the desert have carried out this operation once for all and in the place of all.  ‘He who has seen himself such as he is and has seen his sin is greater than he who raises the dead.’  They have shown man naked, and they have put a face and name on every obscure element of evil.  The hidden play, both human and demoniacal, is demonstrated and brought to light.  After this demonstration, the man going to confession knows what he has to do and what is going to happen.  Each time he reproduces the experience of the desert Fathers.  He can look within himself, but now without being troubled by the unknown.  In order not to remain in a stifling tete-a-tete with his sins and with himself, he can discern their elements and exteriorize them by confession.  Here only Christ, the absolute innocent and the absolute victim, can bring about the unique living transference, ‘by canceling the decree against us.’

. . . humanity was different before the incarnation from what it is now.  One can say also that human consciousness was different before the ascesis of the desert from what it was after.  Just like the event of pentecost, this ascesis has modified the dominant energies of the psyche and has renewed the human spirit.

The therapeutic effect formed by ‘the desert’ in the profoundest depths of the human spirit is universal.  It represents the collective vomit, the objectification and the projection on the outside of the original and the accumulated impurity.  This is perhaps the meaning of the words of St. Paul, ‘to add to the suffering of Christ’, something that the innocent Christ could not do in the place of man; only the sinner, the man of the desert, could do it in the place of all and with a universal significance.  From a positive point of view, it was the formation of the ascetic archetype of man.  It pre-formed ‘the violent’ in order to fight evil and the evil one inside and outside of man.’ (pp. 103-104)

This is perhaps the most compelling understanding of the nature of desert asceticism that I have ever read.  More later . . .