Back
The Enemy Within
(1) (continued)
ARCHIMANDRITE DIONYSIOS: It is such a powerful enemy because it
is the enemy within us. We are enemies to ourselves, like Adam and
Eve in paradise. Of course, the snake talked to Eve. But she could
have avoided him. The snake said to her, "The Lord lied to
you," but if she would have trusted the Lord, she would not
have started to talk to the snake. And Adam, too, lost his communication
with the Lord and stayed with his ego. And the two egos worked together,
Adam and Eve.
The real enemy is the ego. It is the enemy because it is against
love. When I look at myself, I don't love others. When I want to
occupy for myself what is yours, I become the killer of my brother,
like Cain killed Abel. When I want to satisfy myself, this satisfaction
is gained through sacrificing the freedom of the other. Then my
ego becomes my lord, my god, and there is no stronger temptation
than this. Because to us, this ego may seem like a diamond. It has
a shine like gold. But whatever is shining is not gold. The ego
is just like a fire without light, a fire without warmth, a fire
without life. It seems that it has many sides and many possibilities-but
what is this possibility? What is ego? Only the means by which I
protect myself as if I were in a battle, as if every other person
is my enemy, and the only thing I care about is winning the victory.
INTERVIEWER: It has been said by some of the greatest spiritual
luminaries that when one takes up the spiritual path in earnest,
one often comes face-to-face with the ego in a way that one never
could have imagined previously. In describing their encounters with
the ego, many saints have characterized it as an almost diabolical
force within that does not want the spiritual life, that does not
want God, but that wants to do everything it can to obstruct our
illumination, to undermine our firm resolve to stay on the path.
ARCHIMANDRITE DIONYSIOS: Saint Paul writes beautifully about this
event, this struggle inside the human heart. He says, "There
is another law inside me telling me to refuse the will of God, to
do things against Him, to refuse the grace. It tries to keep me
in my past, in my old life, to take me far away from the Lord, to
prevent me from following the Lord." This is why I said that
the biggest problem in mankind is in each person, not outside of
him. For this we need spiritual fathers. For this we need spiritual
doctors. We need surgery; we need an operation; we need something
to be cut in our heart.
We don't understand that this enemy that we have inside us is not
our self; it's not our personality. It's only a temptation. This
is the seed of the problem of the ego. We unite our personality,
which is a priceless event, with our faults. We confuse our personality
with our sin; we marry these two things, and we have a wrong impression
of what we are. We don't know what we are, and we need someone to
show us who we are; we need someone to open our eyes so that we
can at least see our darkness.
There's a mystic, the greatest of the mystics, Saint Gregory Palamas.
For thirty years, he was praying only this prayer: "Enlighten
my darkness. Enlighten my darkness." He did not name the Lord
because he did not feel worthy to name him. He did not address it
to anyone, but he said this prayer day and night, more than he was
breathing. Because all he knew in himself was his darkness. And
he was talking to someone-to whom else?-to Christ, who said, "I
am the Light." But he said only, "Enlighten my darkness."
|
