In reading the description of these nine logismoi we sense how much psychological experience Evagrius gathered in his kellion. But he thought there was something still more important than knowing about the logismoi: handling thoughts and feelings. Evagrius advises a different method for every passion. The three basic drives – eating, sex, and greed – are transformed through fasting, asceticism, and almsgiving. Here discipline is a good way not to suppress the drives, but to shape them, so that they can serve us as a power source. We overcome sadness by fleeing dependency on the world, by letting go of what we are clinging to, and by setting ourselves free.
Most of the advice Evagrius gives is about dealing with anger. Irritation, anger, and resentment keep us continuously occupied in everyday life.
One helpful suggestion is, before going to sleep, to look at our annoyances and lay them aside, so that they don’t become lodged in our unconscious during dreams and then express themselves the next day in a diffuse discontent. When we take our irritations with us into the night, we lose control over ourselves; we continue to be driven by the anger and resentment in our unconscious. “Don’t let the sun go down on your anger, otherwise while you rest at night the demons will come and make you anxious, rendering you all the more cowardly for the next day’s battle. For the delusions of the night usually arise through the exciting influence of anger. And nothing makes people so ready to give up their struggle as when they cannot control its stirrings.”
When anger has infected our unconscious, we lose all control over ourselves, and we are at the mercy of our anger. But that tears us apart. Thus, the notion of looking over our anger once more and laying it aside in prayer to God is not primarily a moral demand, but a psychological imperative that serves the health of body and soul.
At conferences of priests one often hears complaints that in the evening they come back from some sessions frustrated and angry, and then they can find no pleasure in meditation or reading. Instead they stuff their frustration with food, drink, and TV. But then the unassimilated feelings collect in them and come out the next day in a vague sense of discontent and emptiness. Distancing ourselves from our negative feelings through prayer in the evening opens us up in our dreams to God’s healing comfort.
Above all Evagrius warns against playing mind games with anger: “And do not abandon yourself to anger in such a way that you dispute in your thoughts with the one who has vexed you.” For that casts a dark shadow over our soul and disturbs our mind. But we may also use anger as a positive force, by turning it against the demons, temptations, and thoughts that hold us back from life: “We may be angry if we turn against the demons and if we do battle with pleasures.”
Rage is often an important force that liberates us from negative memories and drives from our mind the people who have injured us. So long as we circle round the injury, we give power over us to those who have wounded us. Some people wallow continually in their own wounds. Rage, then, is a very important force. If I can feel rage toward those who have injured me, I can distance myself, I can draw a line between other people’s problems and my own. Rage is the first step to freedom and healing.
I have observed several times how women who were sexually abused as children still feel guilty but detect no rage at all. Only when they get in touch with their rage can they work out their traumatic experience. Rage is the power to distance ourselves from traumatic experience and to get rid of those who have injured us so that we can be free again, so that God’s healing spirit can once again penetrate us.
~Anselm Gruen, Heaven Begins Within You: Wisdom from the Desert Fathers
