Dispassion of the Soul,   St. Peter of Damaskos

(Philokalia Vol. III, G.E.H Palmer, Philip Sherrard, Kallistos Ware)

So here we are. St. Peter has taken us to the upper rungs of the ladder that leads to union with God or theosis: dispassion.  

Dispassion is quintessential to theosis.

We simply cannot experience the presence of God within us if our hearts and minds are weighed down by passions—jealousy, revenge, recurrent thoughts, preoccupation with self, pursuit of other’s admiration, control or power and all other passions.

What are passions?  “They are intense emotions that attract and hold attention,” Mitchell B. Liester writes in “Hesychasm – A Christian Path of Transcendence.” https://www.scribd.com/document/136038409/Hesychasm-A-Christian-Path-of-Transcendence

An emotion or thought becomes a passion when it turns obsessive and veers out of control. When it is it and not we who direct our lives under God’s guidance.  

When we are driven by our whims and passions, we are not free.

Hesychasm is a mystical, contemplative monastic practice of the Eastern Orthodox Church, rooted in early Christianity whose goal is to excise passions and achieve inner stillness and union with God. Hesychast monks, through practice and contemplation, are on a perpetual quest for a state of dispassion.

“Hesychia” (state of dispassion), Liester says, “is a state of detached awareness experienced during regular spiritual practice.”  

Dispassion is not a single virtue, we are told by St. Peter. Neither is it an isolated, ecstatic moment.

Dispassion is not a single virtue but is a name for all the virtues. A man is not merely one limb, for it is the many limbs of the body that constitute a man; and not merely the limbs, but the limbs together with the soul.”

The cooperation and synchronicity of God’s universe are important here. Everything is connected and interdependent.

A true state of dispassion and inner stillness cannot be simply willed by solitary acts, such as intoxication or special exercises. It requires the intervention of the Holy spirit and immersion in a virtuous way of life and thinking.

It is, St. Peter tells us, not only “the union of many virtues,” but when “the place of the soul is taken by the Holy Spirit.”

Dispassion is not the same as indifference or contempt. On the contrary, dispassion nurtures and enables love since it is no longer subsumed by our own self-interests, passions, and preoccupations.

“Soulless” dispassion, driven by our ego rather than the Holy Spirit, is empty.

For all activities described as ‘spiritual’ are soul-less without the Holy Spirit,” we are told. In fact, “unless the Holy Spirit is present can one properly speak of the all-embracing virtue of dispassion.

Without love, inspired by the Holy Spirit, dispassion could become mere indifference, coldness, isolation and even pride.

And if someone were to become dispassionate without the Holy Spirit, he would really be, not dispassionate, but in a state of insensitivity.

Dispassion, in fact, “is a strange and paradoxical thing.” We are detached in that we are not driven by the whim of passions, but we still suffer, empathize with others’ pain and experience deep love. Through our dispassion we become connected because no passion is clouding our discernment and love of others.

St. Peter contributes his own depiction of passions as slavery and dispassion as freedom – a recurrent theme in patristic writers.

For they say that because of his amity with passions the highly impassioned person becomes like a prisoner and as one who is insensate. Sometimes because of his desire for something he rushes forward thoughtlessly like some mindless thing; The man who has attained dispassion becomes impassible out of his perfect love for God.

How does dispassion bring us freedom?

Which one of us doesn’t get inflated by praise and become depressed when we don’t have the success and recognition we imagined? St. Peter describes the passion-driven man as a leaf in the wind, inflating or deflating on the basis of others’ perception of him.

The person who has achieved dispassion, however, can experience passions without allowing them to drive and overwhelm him

 Dispassion does not mean that a man feels no passions, but that he does not accept any of them. Owing to the many and various virtues, both evident and hidden, acquired by the saints, the passions have grown feeble in them and cannot easily rise up against their soul. Nor does the mind need to keep constant watch on them, because its concepts are at all times filled with study and intercourse with most excellent subjects, which are stirred n the intellect by the activity of insight. As soon as the passions begin to arise, the mind is suddenly ravished away from them by a certain insight that penetrates into the intellect, and the passions recede from it as being inactive. St. Isaac, the Syrian

Imagine for a second, if we were simply impervious’ “to attacks from demons and vicious men.” Imagine if we could experience perceived insults, demotions, loss, misfortune, disdain from others etc. as if they “were happening to someone else, as was the case with the holy apostles and martyrs” rather than as profound disappointments, and triggers for anger, revenge and despair.

This is the true freedom dispassion brings about.

When he is praised he is not filled with self-elation, nor when he is insulted is he afflicted.