Thoughts, Heart and the Holy Name
The Heart
For the heart directs and governs all the other organs of the body. And when grace pastures the heart, it rules over all the members and the thoughts. This is so because the heart is the place where the mind and thoughts are found.- St Macarius the Great
Within the heart there are unfathomable depths. There are reception rooms and bedchambers in it, doors and porches, and many offices and passages. In it is the workshop of righteousness and wickedness. In it is death; in it is life… The heart is Christ’s palace: there Christ the King comes to take rest, with angles and the spirit of the saints, and he dwells there, walking within it and placing His kingdom there.- St Macarius the Great
Find the door of the inner chamber of your soul and you will discover that this is the door into the kingdom of Heaven. St John Chrysostom
God, when He created man, put in the deepest part of him all the kingdom, and the problem (task) of human life is to dig deep enough to come upon the hidden treasure.- St Ephraim the Syrian
The hearts decision is the root of the body’s actives. This is so because adultery first lights like a fire in the heart of a sensual man and then creates a sinful corruption of the body- by committing adultery- St Basil the Great
The receptacle of grace, the “place” of the presence of divine life, is where we encounter God and in union with God become integrated and transfigured beings. The art of the spiritual life is therefore to become conscious of the “treasure hidden in the heart”—to become conscious of the real but unapprehended presence of God in the heart; and this art is effectuated by inducing the intellect, freed from extraneous thoughts and images, to “descend” into the heart and so to become conscious of the divine presence hidden there. - Phillip Sherrard
Thoughts
The devil usually hides his gall under an appearance of sweetness, so as to avoid detection; and he fabricates illusions, beautiful to look at, which in reality are not at all what they seem—to seduce your heart by a cunning imitation of truth and goodness, which is rightly attractive.- St Anthony the Great
Having sinned, blame your mind and not your body. For if the mind had not run on ahead into sin, the body would not have followed- St Mark the Ascetic
[Thoughts] continue to jostle in your heard like mosquitoes. To stop this jostling, you must bind the mind with one thought, or the thought of God only. An aid to this is a short prayer, which helps the mind to become simple and united: it develops feeling towards God and is engrafted with it. When this feeling arises within us, the consciousness of the soul becomes established in God, and the soul begins to do everything according to His will. Together with the short prayer, you must keep your thought and attention toward God.- St Theophan the Recluse
Although the devil is a formidable spiritual power, the sphere of his activity against man is quite limited. He cannot approach anyone except through the mind, the only part of our nature that his susceptible to doing battle with him- the mind is the target of his attacks.- Fr Matthew the Poor.
What condemns us is not that thoughts enter into us but that we use them badly; indeed, through our thoughts we can be shipwrecked, and though our thoughts we can be crowned.- A Desert Father
Do not tempt your mind, for the sake of experience, by looking at base, seductive thoughts, while supposing that you are invincible. Even wise men have been troubled in this situation and gone wrong. St Isaac the Syrian
The mind of man…has the advantage over its enemy in one most important aspect: namely … the devil has been completely and eternally forbidden any divine help. But man, on the other hand, has been from the very beginning God’s beloved who was never once deprived of the all-powerful divine mercy.- Fr Matthew the Poor
What injures and corrupts a person is from within. Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, as the Lord said (Mt. 15:19) since the things that corrupt a person are within. So, from within is the spirit of evil, creeping and progressing in the soul. It appears to reason. It incites. It is as the veil of darkness, the “old man” (2 Cor. 5:17) whom those who have recourse to God must put off, to don the heavenly and new man that is Christ (Eph. 4:22; col. 3:8). So nothing of the things that are outside can harm a person except the spirit of darkness that dwells in the heart, alive and active. Each person, then, in their thoughts, must engage in the struggle so that Christ may shine in the heart.
Thoughts and watchfulness
Taken (with minor adaptations) from ‘Christ the Eternal Tao’ by Hieromonk Damascene
Above all, says St. Theophan, our inward attention should be directed at thoughts, for “the passions and desires rarely attack by themselves – they are most often born of thoughts. From this we can make a rule: cut off thoughts and you will cut off everything”
When thoughts come, we should not attempt to get involved or argue with them, for such struggle only binds us to them.
St Silouan: “The experience of the Holy Fathers shows various ways of combating intrusive thoughts but it is best of all not to argue with them. The spirit that debates with such a thought will be faced with its steady development, and, bemused by the exchange, will be distracted from remembrance of God, which is exactly what the demons are after – having diverted the spirit from God, they confuse it, and it will not emerge ‘clean’”.
Struggle against thoughts is vain and futile. It is enough simply to observe the thoughts as they arise, as St. John Climacus teaches, then let them go without reacting to them or following them.
Each time we catch ourselves in a thought, we just return our attention to what is above it: to our spirit and to God. We do not validate the thought by giving it any more attention. This is already to repulse or cut off the thought without directly struggling against it. It is active, not passive; but the action does not involve movement towards the distracting thought. Rather, it is like a train that has been switched to a sidetrack and must simply be switched back to the main track, which alone leads to one’s destination.
If, in struggling with thoughts and emotions, we rely on our own power rather than God’s power, then we will have to take our power from the very emotions that we should be conquering. In other words, the emotional energy that we employ in the struggle against negative thoughts and emotions will connect us to the very things that we are trying to struggle against. We will only wear ourselves out.
Thus, if we have the wrong idea of struggle, we will be struggling in vain against thoughts, until at last we give up. With the right idea of struggle, we struggle in a constructive rather than a destructive way, and this gives us strength and incentive to persevere.
To raise our attention to the Creator is simply to humbly yearn for Him: to look not to our false wisdom but to what is above it. It is as if we are looking up towards Him with the eye of our soul, even as we are yearning for Him with our hearts. “Never allow your mind to be dragged down”, says St. Macarius of Egypt († A.D. 390), “but always raise it on high, and God will help you”.
Raising our minds to God does not mean rolling up the pupils of our eyes in our heads and trying to «see» something. Neither does it mean thinking about or imagining God, for that is already a descent to the level of the active consciousness. To deliberately create images in the mind is only to create more distraction.
Throughout the life of our ego, we have become habituated to trusting our problem-solver and its thoughts and feelings. To practice watchfulness is essentially to practice distrusting them.
Elder Paisius of Mount Athos, a beautiful, innocent soul and a much-loved spiritual father of our times, gives this advice: “The devil does not hunt after those who are lost; he hunts after those who are aware, those who are close to God. He takes from them trust in God and begins to afflict them with self-assurance, logic, thinking, criticism. Therefore we should not trust our logical minds. Never believe your thoughts.”
“Live simply and without thinking too much, like a child with his father. Faith without too much thinking works wonders. The logical mind hinders the Grace of God and miracles. Practice patience without judging with the logical mind”.
Often the logical mind will say, “If I just think about this problem long enough, or think enough about what I should say to that person, eventually the answer will come and the problem will be re solved». Thus untold mental energy is wasted on compulsive thinking. If an answer does come, it cannot be a true answer, for it comes from a false self and a false god – the ego – laboring under the illusion of its self-sufficiency.”
“Thoughts are like airplanes flying in the air. If you ignore them, there is no problem. If you pay attention to them, you create an airport inside your head and permit them to land!”
Mulling over the past and future, imagining scenarios of what might have been or what could be – all this is illusion. The truth is in the present moment. There alone do we meet our Maker, Who is Himself Truth, and lies outside our vain imaginings
We take refuge in our thoughts, fantasies and emotions because they give us a deceptive sense of security. But Christ tells us to abandon that security and make ourselves vulnerable, relying wholly on our Creator. The Way likened this state of self-abandonment to the mind of a little child who has not yet developed a mature ego, who has not yet become accustomed to trusting his problem-solver. “Become as little children”, He said. A child, although also touched by the primordial fall, is closer to the true Source of knowing than an adult. Simple and spontaneous, he knows without knowing how he knows. He can be happy without knowing he is happy. What adults often consider happiness is in reality the emotional excitement of the ego; while a little child’s happiness consists in the simple, selfless joy of being alive.
ST MACARIUS THE GREAT ON THE NAME OF JESUS
St. Macarius said , “Call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ with a humbled heart and let it flow from your lips, then ruminate on it. Don’t let it only be in your mind, but be alert when you call on Him saying, my Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me.When you do this, in silence, you will find that His Divinity rests in you”.
A brother sinned and went crying to St. Macarius and told him, “Abba pray for me because I have committed a grave sin. St. Macarius told him, “Be of good courage my son and hold to Him who is above all ages, who has no beginning, remains forever and has no end. He is the help of those who have no hope except in Him. He is the sweet name in the mouth of everyone, the only real sweetness, the absolute life, the owner of the many treasures of mercy, our Lord Jesus Christ our true God. May He be your strength and your help and may He forgive you my son”.
St. Evagrius said, “One day I went to St. Macarius as I was in anguish from the evil thoughts and fleshly lusts and told him, “Abba give me a word that I may live”. This is the traditional question that a brethren asks his spiritual father. “Abba give me a word that I may live”. So, he told me, “ Tie the rope to the anchor and by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ your ship will overcome the satanic waves and the darkness of this vain world”. Then I told him, “What is the ship, what is the rope and what is the anchor?” St. Macarius told me, “The ship is your heart, guard it. The rope is your thoughts, bind it to our Lord Jesus Christ who is the anchor that is stronger than any of the satanic waves that fight the saints. Isn’t it easy to say with every breath we breathe, my Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me, I bless you. My Lord Jesus Christ help me”.
St. Macarius said, “One day I went to visit an elder who was sick. This elder loved the name of salvation and the blessed name of our Lord Jesus Christ. When I asked him about the economy of his salvation, he said with joy as I was continually meditating on this sweet bread of life. The elder told St. Macarius, “as I was continually meditating on this sweet bread of life, which I mean the Holy name of our Lord Jesus Christ. One day I fell into a sweet trance and saw in a vision the King Jesus Christ and He told me three times, “Look, look, I Am, (The Lord your God); there is no other.” Then I woke up very joyful and I forgot about my pains.The elder in his last days before he departed was nourished by the sweet bread of life, i.e. the Holy name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that made him joyful”.