The Tyranny of Thought

Every priest, and perhaps every person on the spiritual path is bound to have a certain emphasis in their thinking and teaching, simply because the realities with which we are in constant conversation in the spiritual life are too great to express in words.  My spiritual father, the Archpriest Robert Anderson, who departed this life nearly a year ago on 26 December 2010, centered all of his meditations, homilies and catecheses on the Resurrection of Christ.  The reality of the Resurrection had profoundly altered all of existence.  It abrogated every fear and every evil.  We simply had to live with faith in the Resurrection, which meant recognizing that there is no reason to fear.  I do not think that there was ever a homily that Fr. Bob gave that did not return again and again to “Christ is risen from the dead!” as a refrain. 

     Our individual emphases are, no doubt, related to our experience.  My own emphasis in the spiritual life is more in the Church’s ascetical tradition.  I received Fr. Bob’s emphasis with joy, but, over time, I have come to realize that in order to live in the Resurrection as he described and taught, we have to overcome some obstacles in our current cultural context.  I have seen the widespread devastation in every quarter of our contemporary world that, I believe, is traceable to our slavery to thought.

     The tyranny of thought in our cultural context is everywhere apparent.  Most of us have, since our very earliest days, been taught to identify ourselves with our thoughts.  We are our thoughts, rather than our thoughts being among our possessions.  As a result of this erroneous belief, we see the epidemic of psychic difficulties in the world around us, as people suffer from depression, addictions and compulsive disorders. 

     It is interesting to note that in the Christian spiritual life we are constantly talking about detachment from material possessions, from persons and relationships, even detachment from certain desires, but we never talk about detachment from thought.  The sad fact is that if we began to discuss the necessity of detachment from our thoughts, it is not clear to us in what sense we would continue to exist.  If this is not tyranny and slavery, I do not know what is.

     Detachment from thought is the forgotten necessity of the spiritual life.  It is so much forgotten from the Christian Tradition that the people who raise the issue are routinely denounced as “tainted by the New Age.” Nevertheless, it is demonstrably an essential part of the Christian Tradition, and its exponents are present in the ascetical tradition both East and West. 

     One of the primary reasons why freedom from the tyranny of thought is so essential to the Christian spiritual life is because people begin to experience temptation as irresistible.  The counterargument that temptation is irresistible without grace is, in this context, needless and ridiculous. The people who are experiencing their temptations as irresistible are looking for commonsense strategies that will help them to retake control of their lives. That desire is surely impelled by grace.

     The goal is not to not have thoughts, but to become detached from thought.  One’s thoughts could be compared to the clouds in the sky.  The clouds float across the sky, but they are not the sky.  It is within our power, with some training, to form the habit of looking at the sky.  If a cloud appears, we recognize it, then we let it go.  If a thought arises, we advert to it, then we let it go.   

     Over the years, I have put together a reading list of books, which deal with the issue of detachment from thought.  One of the most recent of these books, and one of the most salient is Achieving Peace of Heart by the Jesuit priest Narciso Irala.  Father Irala was both a priest and a psychologist, who was sent by the Society of Jesus as missionary to China during the years before the Communist Revolution.  In China, he studied Oriental psychology.  With the onset of the unrest leading up to the Revolution, the Society of Jesus moved him to Argentina, where he taught psychology on the University level.  It was in this context that Father Irala endured the greatest hardship of his life.  Due to the strain of his extraordinarily heavy workload, he suffered a nervous breakdown.  In the months that followed, he used what he had learned of Oriental psychology in order to recover.  After this experience, teaching the methods that had been so profitable for him became his life’s work.  He found that he was able to cure countless cases of depression, chronic fatigue and addiction through instructing his patients to sit daily in a form of mindfulness meditation that he referred to as “conscious sensations.” He found that the key to the recovery of mental health for many people was the application of the ancient maxim “Age quod agis,” “Do what you are doing,” that is, let whatever task you are working on be the only focus of your attention.  In this way, Father Irala connected his teaching securely with the age old teaching in the Christian Tradition regarding living deliberately in the present moment, and fulfilling the duties of the present moment.  And it is with this thought that we should continue…