With regard to acedia Evagrius gives two pieces of advice. One concerns steadfastness. We are to make up our minds and stay in our cell, simply enduring whatever is going on within us: “Just accept what the temptation brings on you. Above all, look this temptation of acedia in the eye, for it is the worst of all. But it also leads to the greatest purification of the soul. To flee or avoid such conflicts makes the spirit clumsy, cowardly, and fearful.”
When I endure my inner unrest and take a closer look at it, then perhaps I can discover what is stirring in it. Then I sense that it has a meaning. Unrest might free me from the illusion of being able to better myself through discipline and taking myself in hand. Unrest shows me how powerless I am. When I become reconciled with it, this cleanses the soul and gives new inner clarity. Amid my unrest I sense a deep peace. So the unrest is allowed to be. In the end it is designed to prod me on to God: Augustine found that restlessness prompted him to find rest in God.
The second counsel relates to prayer: “When we are tempted by acedia, it is good, amid the tears of our soul, to divide it, so to speak, into two parts: into one part that encourages and another that is encouraged. We sow seeds of an unshakable hope in ourselves when we sing with King David: ‘Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God for I shall again praise him, my help and redeemer, to whom I look'” (Ps. 42:5).
What Evagrius is recommending here is the “antirrhetic method” (that is, flowing in the opposite direction), which he elaborates primarily in his book Antirrhetikon. There it is not just a help in times of acedia but in all situations. In the face of every thought that might make us sick, that bars the way to freedom, love, and life, Evagrius collects a saying from the Bible to oppose it.
Thus, persons who constantly reproach themselves for the sins of their youth and tell themselves that everything has gone wrong with them should continually recite 2 Corinthians 5: 17: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.” Such a saying gradually transforms our feelings of sadness and self-pity. It brings us into contact with the positive force in us, with the Holy Spirit, who is already at work in us, who pours forth like a wellspring, ready to let us draw from it.
~Anselm Gruen, Heaven Begins Within You: Wisdom from the Desert Fathers
