Two monks, abba Isaiah and abba Joseph, asked abba Pimen in different contexts the same question: what happens with the evil thoughts? Abba Pimen answered using two analogies. First he said: what happens with a box full of clothes? If we leave them there, they decay. It is the same with the evil thoughts, if we don`t put them into practice, in time they are destroyed or decay. The second time when he was asked, he said: `If someone puts a snake or a scorpion in a vessel and covers it in time the animals will die. It is the same with the evil thoughts, inspired by the demons. They disappear with patience.
The dirty thoughts are a reality everybody faces. An essential part of the spiritual war is led exactly against these dirty thoughts which proliferate in the underground of our heart. Those who imagine they don`t have dirty thoughts, don`t look carefully enough inside their hearts. Exactly because they exist, the monks of the desert used the confession of their thoughts, meaning that they confessed in detail to an experienced monk. In this process of opening it is thrown a strong light towards the inner underground which stops being an unknown space, unmapped and here and there wild.
At first sight the confession of the thoughts goes against the advice abba Pimen gives, to leave these thoughts as if they were some clothes in a chest or like some poisonous beasts from a jar. The revealing detail is found in the first answer when it says that to shut them up it implies not to materialize them, not to follow them. Thoughts have their own reality and consistency. Their force consists exactly in their capacity to materialize. Thoughts have consequences, even if they don`t materialize, but their power in absolute in the moment they turn into shape and weight. Thoughts must be known to be defused
Their repression in ignorance increases their power. The dirty thoughts must be confessed to someone with experience because they are the faithful expression of our inner abyss. They say something about us, about our potential and wishes. But they must not be put into practice. If we succeed to know them but not to apply them, it is as if we closed a scorpion in a pitcher where he would slowly die.
For being able not to give substance to the dirty thoughts it is necessary to know them, for not being taken by surprise. Only when we see them clearly we can identify their harmful potential and we can start step by step to defuse them.
Pr. Paul Siladi Source: http://ziarullumina.ro
