Facing Listlessness

For today's blog post, I was inspired by a friend's simple comment of experience of listlessness.  This is a difficult position to be in, and if you are aware of your spiritual life even slightly, it will affect you greatly.  It's a weird sort of boredom and aimlessness.  It borders on despair.  In the early Christianity, it gained a name: acedia (sometimes spelled akkedia).  The word itself has roots in ancient Greek, and it usually translates as negligence or without care.

Early Christian monastic writings are filled with descriptions of this strange condition, and no monk was immune to it.  Desert Fathers, such as Evagrius of Pontus and John Cassian isolated the condition and, in their spiritual instructions, provided ways of dealing with it.  They are worth reading!  But in this instance, let me focus on one of the Desert Mothers - Blessed Syncletica.

There is a lot of mystery that surrounds Syncletica: for a long time, there was a suspicion whether she even existed, which by now (given historical evidence) has gone.  We do know that she lived in the 4th century, and the story goes that she was wealthy, and gave it all up for poverty.  Apparently, she was beautiful as well.

In the only work we have of her, most likely compiled by Pseudo-Athanasius, titled The Life of Blessed Syncletica, we see a mind concerned with a spiritual purgation of the soul.  She wants us cleanse ourselves in every possible way.
She also mentions akedia which attacks the soul and causes incredible sadness within the deep, deep paths of the soul.  She writes:

"There is sadness that is helpful and a sadness that is destructive.  It is a function of the useful sorrow, then, to lament about one's own sins as well as the ignorance of one's neighbors, but also to avoid falling away from one's purpose and to achieve the goal of goodness.  These concerns therefore, are the signs of a sorrow that is legitimate and good.  There is also another kind of sorrow, prompted by the Enemy, which knows how to merge with the first kind.  For he himself imposes a sorrow, completely irrational, which has also been called by some akedia.  This spirit, therefore, must be driven off especially by prayer and psalmody."  (Life of Blessed Synclectica, #40).

It's important that she distinguishes between two forms of sadness.  Sometimes, goodness will arise from something, which either appears or indeed is evil.  This other form of sadness, this aimlessness, and lack of one's mission is what is worrisome.  You may believe that there is some outside evil force, which attacks.  This is most certainly a Christian spiritual perspective.  Whatever the belief and understand of this strange, alienating condition may be, one thing we can say for sure: it exists.  But it exists in its vacuousness and emptiness.  This is the paradox of acedia: it "attaches" itself to the soul and, like a parasite, slowly eats away, like a mouse chewing on a piece of string.

And so, what do you do?  Everyone has to find that answer for him or herself.  Everything depends upon person's circumstances of either his or her daily life (taking care of the family, jobs, etc.) or a larger view of one's future.  But remember: it is never only about one's own future.  Everything is interrelated, everything depends upon an encounter, and whatever future we are creating for ourselves, that very same future impacts others.  Therefore, while spiritually cleansing ourselves from this "noonday demon" (as acedia was called, because it seemed to "attack" monks around that time of the day), it is important to remember that we are part of the community and that community is part of us.

And so, you must make that effort every day, or rather, every hour to move your body, to move your soul towards goodness and virtue, and away from anything else, which distracts from your purpose.  And there is no formula, despite the fact how much we want it sometimes.  Mindfulness, something Syncletica knew a lot about, is not a floating feeling or some overly metaphysical soup. Rather, it comes through act: through  an individual relating to the community and all of creation.


No, we don't live in the 4th century, but I do think that the reason we keep failing in our spiritual progress is because we are looking for quick fixes.  Life is much more complex and far more beautiful and richer than that.  I simply have to make an effort to move my body and mind and soul from the path of bad habits into the path of good habits. If good habits increase by time, so will the possibility of becoming a virtuous person.  Of course, we are always in the process of becoming.  The process is perpetually dynamic, or at least it should be.

Here is voice of Syncletica, again:

"Consequently, the mind must become painstakingly diligent with respect its thoughts.  For when the Enemy wants to destroy the soul as he would building, he engineers its collapse from the foundations, or begins from the roof and topples the whole structure; or, he goes in through the windows, ties up the master of the house first and thus wins control of everything.  'Foundation', then signifies good works, 'roof' faith, and 'windows' senses.  And through all of them the Enemy wages war.  And so the person wishing to be saved must be very watchful."  (The Life of Blessed Syncletica, #46)

So, we see a three-fold structure of personhood and individual personality in Syncletica's advice: good works are our ethics in action, our relationality to the other, and what we do day to day for ourselves and others.  Faith is our obedience to our Creator.  And senses are our bodily structure, a way of relating to the world in our embodiment, which also imply a sense of gaining knowledge and experiencing a possibility of change. But of course, epistemological reflections are not on top of the hierarchy. Rather, it is our foundation (which is both top and bottom in many ways): the way of relating to one another and the human, deeply individual works.