The insight of Father Narciso Irala concerning the concentration of attention in the present moment continues a long tradition in the Church. The best known author to our contemporary Church is the 18th century French priest Father Jean-Pierre de Caussade, who wrote a book called Abandonment to Divine Providence. De Caussade's book expresses the necessity of working out one's salvation in the present moment by fullfilling the obligations and duties of the present moment without reference to the past or to the future. The argument is very simple and straightforward. The past does not exist any longer (it belongs to the Mercy of God), and the future does not exist yet (it belongs to the Providence of God). Only the present moment actually exists. It is for Caussade "the acceptable time...the day of salvation" since its duties and obligations are given to us as the means to salvation. The present could perhaps be termed "the theophantic moment" since it is the present that reveals God to us, and it is in our present that He dwells. It is our moment of contact with Him.
Yet, in order to take advantage of the advantages that the present offers to us in our relationship with God, we need to be free from thought's tyranny. Why would this be so essential? Because thought has us constantly living outside the present in the bitterness of the past, or in the uncertainty of the future. The world of thought is an illusory world in which we can plan the future in every detail and we can change the past by entering into discourse with it in the present. According to the universal teaching of the Fathers of the Church, this same world of thought is also extremely dangerous to human beings on account of the fact that the demons have free access to it. They are able to actually send us thoughts. It is true that we have the ability to either accept or reject those thoughts, but there is no such thing as a wall that will not collapse under constant and unremitting bombardment. The world of thought is the perfect playground of the demons, since they take such an interest in distracting us from what actually exists, in order to convince us to focus our attention on what does not exist.
Under the constant bombardment of thought after thought, the wall of the mind will eventually collapse. In fact, many of us live from day to day an existence that is permanently supine. We perform our duties with little attention, as our thoughts wander in the hurts and injuries of the past, or we plan our successes and the fulfillment of our desires in the future. As the researches of Father Irala showed, when life is passed with this kind of inattention, the world becomes a very dark place that is filled with resentment (on account of attention to the past) and attachment and grasping (on account of attention to the future). This combination of resentment and dissatisfaction in effect makes the world a hellish place, because although we are living in the world, the mind is continuously elsewhere, trapped in its own imaginings.
According to Our Holy Father Isaias the Solitary, what is needed in order to solve the problem, and cure the tyranny of thought is the virtue that is called nepsis. Nepsis means "watchfulness." Isaias uses the image of the man, whose vineyard is under attack, so he withdraws into the tower. The tower is raised above the level of the attackers, and provides the man a view of 360 degrees, so that he can observe and note the movements of all his enemies. Nepsis is the virtue that in other traditions is referred to as "mindfulness," that is, attention upon the present moment. For St. Isaias, as for many others in the Christian tradition, this attention upon the present moment is effected by concentration of the mind upon the prayer "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me, the sinner." In other words, St. Isaias strives to replace his thoughts with the prayer. The result is that thoughts still continue to arise, but attachment to them is broken. From his position "above his thoughts," Isaias is able to observe the thought dispassionately, and dismiss it. If he were not in the tower, in a position above his thoughts, but in the midst of them (and in the midst of the various passions they carry), those thoughts and their attendant passions would actually form his reality.
The various ways that thought serves to form and determine reality, as is evident from various researches in modern psychology, deserve their own consideration...
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