On the Inner Nature of Things and on the
Purification of the Intellect:
One Hundred Texts
Love for God begins with detachment from things human and visible. Purification of heart and intellect marks the intermediate stage, for through such purification the eye of the intellect is spiritually unveiled and we attain knowledge of the kingdom of heaven hidden within us (cf. Luke 1 7 : 2 1 ).
Nikitas Stithatos
If I read this paragraph to my non-believing family members and friends, they would laugh it off and consider terms such as “detachment” and “purification” as irrelevant to our age and fit only for medieval monks.
Yet slavery of the soul, despair, emptiness and the secret longing for inner peace are especially relevant to us today, though the terms we use may sound different. Our attachment to praise, success, prestige, and material goods that drives us results in exhaustion, disappointment and a sense of emptiness. We can only achieve contentment and inner peace by detaching ourselves from this treadmill that keeps running in place.
Arthur C. Brooks, in his book From Strength to Strength: Finding success, happiness and deep purpose in the second half of life, demonstrates just how relevant the need for detachment and purification is for our age. He believes that most of us are success addicts, relentlessly pursuing prestige, admiration, achievements, recognition, material goods and the like, at the expense of connections with family and friends and personal satisfaction.
On the basis of many interviews, he concludes that, despite our exhaustion and the high price we pay for success, we cannot give up its pursuit for fear of succumbing to a dull, boring, undistinguished life.
“…People who choose being special rather than happy are addicts,” he concludes. What workaholics truly crave is not work itself; it is success. They kill themselves working for money, power and prestige because they are forms of approval, power, applause and compliments. The success addict is never “successful enough.” The “high only lasts a day or two, and then it’s on to the next success hit.”
Nikitas Stithatos calls a life in pursuit of material things “carnal life:”
The carnal mode of life is one wholly devoted to the pleasures and enjoyments of this present life and has nothing to do with the psychic and spiritual modes of life and does not even have any wish to acquire them.
He describes those caught in vain, material pursuits as striving:
…only for what is visible and corruptible, on this account fighting among themselves and even sacrificing their lives for such things, avid for wealth, glory and the pleasures of the flesh, and regarding the lack of any of these things as a disaster.
Unless we detach ourselves from the carnal way of life, we will be unable to see the true essence of things in the light of God and unite with Him.
Both Stithatos and Brooks point to pride as the culprit. Here Brooks quotes St. Augustine:
Every other kind of sin has to do with the commission of evil deeds, whereas pride lurks even in good works in order to destroy them.”
Brooks concludes:
So true-work, which is a source of meaning and purpose, becomes workaholism, which hurts our relationships. Success, the fruit of excellence, becomes an addiction. All because of pride.
This addiction becomes especially painful as we age, Arthus C.Brooks concludes. This is the time when our abilities decline, our “wins” decrease and we are increasingly marginal to those we admire and emulate. Yet, unless we detach from the pursuit of “things human and visible,” and radically change our value compass, we will continue running in place on a treadmill.
This is when many of us realize that we have created a trap for ourselves, he continues, which makes it difficult to reframe ourselves in the second half of our life and find contentment…The point is that the symbols of your specialness have encrusted you like a ton of barnacles.
Many of us are fearful when trying to envision the future.
“A cousin of pride is fear,” Brooks observes– fear of normal life with its struggles, humiliations, boredom and obscurity.
So who are we and who will we become when deprived of titles, workplace routines, affiliations, recognition, habits, or continuing praise? Both Brooks and Stithatos point to detachment—chipping away of your attachments—as the most decisive step to finding your true self, as God intended it.
Brooks advises:
If you want to be happy, you have to state your honest aspiration to be happy, to be willing to be a little less special in worldly terms. You must state your desire to lighten your load with pride’s opposite virtue: humility.
Stithatos goes beyond contentment to show the incomprehensive happiness of the union with God that your detachment has enabled.
Instead of longing for success and material goods, our souls are now consumed by “an irrepressible longing for the supranatural gifts of God and in a natural desire for union with God and for finding one’s abode in Him…. Where there is intense longing for God, noetic labour, and participation in the unapproachable light, there too the soul’s powers will be at peace, the intellect will be purified, and the Holy Trinity will dwell within us; for it is written, ‘He who loves Me will fulfil My teaching, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and take up Our abode in him’ (John 14 : 23).”
Readings in Philokalia 