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The Enemy Within
(continued)
From the beginning of our research for this issue, the idea of
speaking with an Orthodox elder about the ego had been an intriguing
one. For although it is a tradition in which none of us could claim
expertise, we were aware that when it comes to defining the enemy
of the spiritual path, the Orthodox Christians are perhaps in a
class by themselves. To this ancient mystical branch of Christianity,
which split from the Catholic Church in 1054, the total purification
of the human personality from egotism, selfishness and anything
else that obstructs its capacity to reflect the light of God is
and always has been the first and final aim of spiritual life. In
sacred books with names like The Ladder of Divine Ascent and The
Philokalia (literally "love of the beautiful and good"),
Orthodox elders from as early as the third century write with passion
and precision about the fullblooded "spiritual combat"
the sincere aspirant must be willing to engage in if he or she is
to have any hope of defeating the "demons" within that
relentlessly attack with ever new and creative tactics. In one of
countless such passages in The Philokalia, the fourth-century desert
monk St. John Cassian writes, "[The ego] is difficult to fight
against, because it has many forms and appears in all our activities
. . . When it cannot seduce a man with extravagant clothes, it tries
to tempt him by means of shabby ones. When it cannot flatter him
with honor, it inflates him by causing him to endure what seems
to be dishonor. When it cannot persuade him to feel proud of his
display of eloquence, it entices him through silence into thinking
he has achieved stillness. . . . In short, every task, every activity,
gives this malicious demon a chance for battle."
While the word "ego" itself only appears in more contemporary
translations and commentaries, throughout even the most ancient
Orthodox texts, there are countless references to the hazards of
self-love, self-esteem and the "most sinister of demons"-pride.
Considered by Christians to be the sin that not only brought Lucifer,
God's highest angel, tumbling to a fiery fate but that also led
Adam and Eve to be exiled from paradise on earth, pride is referred
to variously as "the mother of all woes" and "the
first offspring of the devil." It is also universally regarded
as the most destructive and powerful adversary on the spiritual
path. As St. John Cassian writes, "Just as a deadly plague
destroys not just one member of the body, but the whole of it, so
pride corrupts the whole soul, not just part of it… when the
vice of pride has become master of our wretched soul, it acts like
some harsh tyrant who has gained control of a great city, and destroys
it completely, razing it to its foundations."
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