Demonic and Intrusive Thoughts

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Sometimes we get these thoughts that don’t go away in my tradition we call them "logismoi". We don’t know where they come from. Most of them come from demonic forces. Sometimes they implant our minds with patterns that trigger these things. Kind of like a computer virus, the kind where you realize that something shouldn’t be on your screen, so you get on your keyboard to find ways to fight it, but it only gets stronger. That’s how we approach these things sometimes and when we do it gets worse. I have experienced this many times in my life. Sometimes it will be a dark or evil thought that I don’t want to have and this thought would cause me to think bad about myself and would lead me into despair. Sometimes it would be a thought about something I did or did not do and there would be a memory of guilt that would make me feel terrible, or it would be a thought of something I would fear even though there was no need to be afraid and I would fall into paranoia. Maybe some of you know what I am talking about. For that reason, I wanted to share some things that come from my tradition, the tradition of Hesychasm that you might find helpful.

First, St. Isaac the Syrian said that each of us needs to learn to be at peace with our souls. In that, we need a little humility and acceptance of how God sees each of our minds. The mind is in a state of healing and that’s how it will remain until the resurrection, even after death the mind remains in this state. The mind is not yet what it was meant to be and for some of us they are severely damaged. Every experience we have had, good and bad, affects it, along with our own body chemistry. In regard to that chemistry demons love to take advantage of these people but none of us are without hope. Our Lord Jesus came to heal our minds all of them. That’s what he did in scripture, it says he healed the body and minds of those who came to him and that’s what he is doing now to our body and mind.

St. Maximus the Confessor taught that the mind is the eye of the soul, and its purity is essential, it is essential because we use it to see God in saying that we do have work to do in purifying it, in healing it. This is a lifelong work because, for most of us, our minds become like toilets. They keep getting filled with things that are floating around that we know we need to flush down the drain. However, the plumbing is broken so we often don’t know how to deal with our own thoughts and that is where we need to focus our attention. We need to look at how we are doing the plumbing and not necessarily the mind. The mind really is neutral ground. We can’t help what gets in there but we can do something about how we respond to it.

 

St. Gregory of Sinai recognized that we do in fact suffer from how we deal with intrusive thoughts not necessarily the thoughts themselves. In saying that we need to learn to put a distance from ourselves and what comes in our minds. We can start to do that when we see ourselves the way God sees us. He knows that we are not our thoughts or our feelings. These things do not define us in his eyes. These things belong to us but they do not determine who we are. What are persons made in the image of God. That’s what defines us, not how we feel or think. That’s not what we are always taught in our culture. For instance, people are taught to define themselves based on their sexual feelings or thoughts. You really can see the demons at work in this,  in our society. There are people who end up on quests of acceptance, like horses chasing the carrot, the carrot is the thoughts in their minds, they end up always chasing the carrot and never really find it and end up always blaming others, especially people of God who tell them what really defines us.

St. Peter of Damascus taught that remembering who we are to God is what brings people peace. In that, you have to see these thoughts as only annoying visitors. We have all experienced people like that. We might have had people like that come into our homes and be rude but for whatever reason we can’t tell them to leave. When we do ask them to leave they dig their heels in and become more rude. That’s what we do with these thoughts sometimes. We try to fight them and that is not what we should do because that’s what they want. They want us to give them that attention. They love that kind of attention. Imagine you have done all you can to get them to leave so now you turn your stereo on high to get them to leave or drown their voice out but when the song is over they are still there. This happens when we try to focus or keep busy in order to avoid the thought. We will find that it is still there when the song is over.

St. Hesychius of Jerusalem taught when we learn to focus the mind we will find peace. This is where we need to learn to use that thought. We need to use it as a means to focus on God. To do the opposite of what it seeks. The only way to get an annoying visitor to leave is to make them feel uncomfortable. They become uncomfortable when they realize that we are using them to get what we want. When they realize that they have no power over us and the key to use that thought in a way that it drives us closer to God. God uses bad stuff all the time to drive us to the good. The enemy makes bad things in order to destroy us but God, if we let him, can turn the bad into a good. This is what happened on the cross. The cross was the worst thing to happen in the world but it became the best thing. That’s what you need to learn in dealing with that thought. It’s a terrible thing but you can make it into a good thing but letting it drive you into the arms of God. Learn to redirect your mind to God.

St. John Climacus taught that the beginning of prayer is when you learn to use these thoughts to direct you to God and the fathers in hesychasm gave many ways for doing this. The first is to invoke the name of Jesus every time you have that thought. This is something we need to be vigilant about. We need to learn to continually invoke his name, that is what the apostle Paul taught, he said to pray without ceasing and this enemy in the mind can help you to do that. We need to learn to do that with all our thoughts good and bad. Sometimes the mind runs wild. Our good thoughts can become bad ones. Sometimes we think about things all day long when we shouldn’t. The mind acts like it’s our friend sometimes in trying to get us what we want but it really becomes our worst enemy when it dictates to us how we should be happy

St. Basil the Great said that a mind that is not distracted is a temple of the Holy Spirit. That is what we need to make it into. God gives us the Spirit freely, but we need to make ourselves the temple. Our bodies and minds were meant to become a dwelling place for God and that brings me back to the topic. When you continually learn to turn you mind to God, it begins to only see one thing. We need to train it to be what it was meant to be, we should always return to what the fathers call the memory of God and to make our minds deaf and dumb to everything else.

St. Hesychius of Jerusalem said "Hesychia” stillness of mind is the beginning of purity of heart. It is the foundation of all virtues and the gateway to the kingdom of heaven. When you learn to still the mind, when you learn to appropriately deal with what comes into  it, you will find peace unlike any other. That’s what Hesychia is  it’s the state you enter into that makes you receptive to the experience of God and it's something we can have if learn to deal appropriately with all our thoughts not just the ones we hate but even the good ones. Treat all your thoughts the same and use them as a springboard to God.