Talking Back

Saturday evening. I just finished a workout of more than an hour. I was thinking about how I might have stepped on someone's toes on the internet. As the big book of AA tells me, they retaliate. And we don't always know why.

But, on another track, I see situations like this where I am bothered as a distraction from the spiritual realm towards the world of illusion. Distractions cause me to stop looking towards spirit and start paying attention only to my emotional thoughts. Talking back is a concept from the Desert Fathers (and in particular Evagrius), early Christians who went to the desert to fight demons. I believe the demons were upsetting thoughts. The Desert Fathers used Biblical phrases to talk back to the demons.

I need to talk back to upsetting thoughts. I can use an ACIM lesson like "these thoughts don't mean anything." If I habitually talk back, I will more easily return to the realm of the spirit and happiness.

I have habitual upsetting thoughts. I am sometimes hopelessly distracted by them:
- How I was denied God because I was denied monastic profession.
- How I am stupid because I live like an athlete even though I am slow and old.
- How my life of solitude and spiritual study must be boring and stupid and I should get a life.
- My foot hurts.

This is not a complete list of distractions. these are just the ones frequently on my mind. In a way, these are attack thoughts. Another ACIM lesson that works is to say, "I can escape from the world I see by giving up my attack thoughts." I use my ACIM lessons to talk back to thoughts.

Today, 3.3 months after surgery, I jogged 6.3 miles. It was wonderful. It wasn't fast but it was long enough to become meditative. I got to be outside on a nice day in the Texas winter. Nothing better.

Monastic Intellect

This idea comes from the introduction, "Talking Back" Brakke's translation of Evagrius.

The goal of the Evagrian monk is not simply to avoid evil deeds, remarkably he seeks not to experience the first movements (initial thought impressions) that incite to sin at all...a "monastic intellect" is someone who is free even from the thoughts...The ultimate goal is to eliminate the thoughts themselves and to pray and contemplate God purely....A persistent representation of a corporeal object can 'imprint' the intellect, distorting the intellect in a way that prevents the clarity of vision required for knowledge of God and pure prayer."... Persistent bad thoughts causing impassioned representations to persist in the intellect damage the intellect, preventing the monk from becoming the 'monastic intellect' ...Talking Back applies also to the more advanced stage of the monastic gnostic, in which the monk contemplates the material world and rational beings on his path to knowledge of God. ... practices of biblical refutation and short prayers to God help to clear his intellect of evil thoughts and distorting representations and thus prepare him for the vision of the Trinity's light..."

So really, I do want to know God. But I need something simple in my head that can be playing all the time or grasped habitually and quickly. If yes, proceed to 'monastic intellect.' I can.

Today I drove to work in relative calm. The radio off and a hokey prayer: In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

The monastery was invented to take the place of the desert; where people were more urban and living in the desert no longer feasible. But from my monastic experience, I'd say that it is not really much more of a desert than the life I have chosen as a 'monk in the world.'

This morning, I also read in A Course in Miracles about my choice: "It is impossible the Son of God be merely driven by events outside of him. It is impossible that happenings that come to him were not his choice. His power of decision is the determiner of every situation in which he seems to find himself by chance or accident. No accident nor chance is possible within the universe as God created it, outside of which is nothing. Suffer, and you decided sin was your goal. Be happy, and you gave the power of decision to Him Who must decide for God for you." (21.II)

I choose to the the Holy Spirit decide for me. I don't decide I want to find sin. I don't decide what I see is sin. I merely talk back.

3 days since my left foot became free of the boot worn for 5 weeks. Today, I can almost walk normally and the incision area is not tremendously painful. Wow!

On the Psalms

Why do monks recite the Psalms? Because of the Lord. The Lord Himself is in the words of the scripture.

It started with Anthony of the Desert, whose life was written by Athanasius, whose book was read by Evagrius and others. Cassian read Evagrius. Benedict read Cassian.

From the book "Talking Back" by Brakke: "Reciting the Psalms becomes a means of both therapeutic recognition of the soul's condition and ethical formation of the soul after the pattern of Christ...that the melody that is applied to the Psalms alters the condition of the body may indicate knowledge of the Epistle's teaching (Athanasius' letter to Marsellinus) that the melody effect's the soul which can then bring harmony to the body's members."

This matters to me because I am a spiritual seeker. I want the Lord to be in my consciousness.

Today I said, "Spirit, I need you now." and then I thought:

The light in my soul burns quietly.

I need not fret.

It is the Lord.

Believe.

I keep forgetting happiness. I do better remembering I am a worm and no man (Benedict). The urge to sign up for a race returns. The episode of my foot surgery is over. Silence returns but I can't let it be. I have been riding the ex-bike with the boot for about 3 weeks. Today I rode it without the boot. Shortly there after, my left lower leg started quivering.