Do not imagine that you will be delivered from your passions, or escape the defilement of the passion-charged thoughts which these generate, while your mind is still swollen with pride because of your virtues. You will not see the courts of peace, your thoughts full of lovingkindness, nor, generous and calm in heart, will you joyfully enter the temple of love, so long as you presume on yourself and on your own works.
~Nikitas Stithatos
If we want to look more concretely at the matter of the fall we will say that, as St John of Damaskos teaches, the fall in reality is darkness of the image, loss of the divine life and putting on coats of skin. The darkness of the image is nothing else but the darkening of the nous. The nous was darkened and could not have communion and unity with God….according to the anthropology of the Fathers, man’s soul is rational and noetic. This means that man has two centers of functioning. One is the reasoning mind, which is connected with his nervous system, and the other his nous, which is connected with his heart.
Adam’s fall, then, is the darkening of his nous, the loss of its noetic function, confusion of the nous with the functions of reason and its enslavement to the passions and to the environment. Instead of moving according to nature and above nature, instead of moving towards God and being mindful of God, man’s nous is turned towards the created things and the passions.
That is why in the Church we speak of repentance, which is not simply a change in the head, as some theologians say, but a change of the nous. The nous must break away from the created and the passions and turn towards God.
~Metropolitan Hierotheos
God deserts those engaged in spiritual warfare for three reasons: because of their arrogance, because they censure others, and because they are so cock-a-hoop about their own virtue. The presence of any of these vices in the soul prompts God to withdraw; and until they are expelled and replaced by radical humility, the soul will not escape just punishment.
It is not only passion-charged thoughts that sully the heart and defile the soul. To be elated about one’s many achievements, to be puffed up about one’s virtue, to have a high idea of one’s wisdom and spiritual knowledge, and to criticize those who are lazy and negligent–all this has the same effect, as is clear from the parable of the publican and the pharisee (Luke 18:10-14).
~Nikitas Stithatos
He who wholeheartedly hates and renounces ‘the desire of the fallen self, the desire of the eyes, and the false pretensions of this life’ (1 John 2:16)–that whole ‘world of iniquity’ (James 4:4)–has crucified the world to himself and himself to the world: he has destroyed in his flesh the enmity between God and his soul, and has made peace between the two (Ephesians 2:15). For he who has died to these things through effacing the will of the flesh has reconciled himself to God.
He has eradicated the enmity of this world by obliterating sensual pleasure through a life crucified to the world, and has embraced friendship with Jesus. He is no longer God’s enemy because of his love for the world, but is a friend of God, crucified to the world and able to say, ‘The world is crucified to me, and I to the world’ (Galatians 6:14).
~Nikitas Stithatos
The three most general passions are self-indulgence, avarice and love of praise; and three are the ranks of men that fight against them and overcome them: those newly embarked on the spiritual path, those in mid-course, and those who have attained its goal.
The battle waged by those in the three stages of the spiritual path against these three principles and powers of the prince of this world is not one and the same, but at each stage the battle is different. At each stage there is a different way of fighting against these passions, and each way makes lawful and natural use of the power of righteous indignation.
~Nikitas Stithatos
For those newly engaged in spiritual warfare the swift path to the recovery of virtue consists in the silencing of the lips, the closure of the eyes and the stopping of the ears; for once the intellect has achieved this kind of intermission and has sealed off the external entrances to itself, it begins to understand itself and its own activities.
It immediately sets about interrogating the ideas swimming in the noetic sea of its thought, trying to discern whether the concepts that erupt into the mind’s crucible are pure, alloyed with no bitter seed, and conferred by an angel of light, of whether they are tares, hybridized, trashy, emanating from the devil.
Standing thus like a masterful sovereign in the midst of its thoughts, judging them and separating the better from the worse, the intellect accepts those that are well-tested in the fire of the Spirit and saturated with divine water, absorbing them into its actions and practice and storing them up in its spiritual treasure-house; for by these thoughts it is nourished, strengthened and filled with light.
The other thoughts it casts into the depths of oblivion, eradicating their bitterness. This is the work only of someone who has spiritually embarked upon the path that leads unerringly to the heavens and to God, and who has stripped off the lugubrious cloak of the dark passions.
~Nikitas Stithatos
Ascetic toil is initially painful for all those newly engaged in spiritual warfare; but for those exercised in the growth of virtue and who have reached the mid-point of their path, such toil is pleasurable and produces a strange sense of relief. When the mortal will of the flesh is swallowed up by the immortal life (2 Corinthians 5:4) conferred through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in those truly striving towards the perfection of virtue, they are filled with unspeakable joy and gladness, for a pure spring of tears has opened within them, and streams of sweet compunction flow down on them from above.
~Nikitas Stithatos
Spiritual struggles and labors generate gladness in the soul, so long, that is, as the passions have been stilled; for what is difficult for those who are still dominated by the senses, is easy and even delightful for an aspiring soul that through its holy exertions has acquired a longing for God and is smitten with desire for divine knowledge.
For the sense-dominated, the labors and struggles for virtue, opposed as they are to bodily ease and indulgence in sensual pleasure, are difficult and seem very harsh, for in such people the brackish taste of pleasure has not yet been washed away by the flow of tears. But the soul that abominates pain-inducing pleasure, and has rejected comfort along with the self-love of the body, feels the need for and embraces such labor and struggles. One thing alone distresses it: slackness in its labors and indolence in its struggles.
Thus what for those still dominated by the senses is the source of bodily content, is for the soul that aspires to what is divine a cause of distress. And what for the aspiring soul is a cause of spiritual gladness, is for the sense-dominated the cause of pain and anguish.
~Nikitas Stithatos
Unless through the labor of repentance and assiduous ascetic practice we first restore the soul’s powers to the state in which they were when God originally formed Adam and breathed into him the breath of life (Genesis 2:7), we will never be able to know ourselves; nor will we be able to acquire a disposition that is master of the passions, free from arrogance, not over-curious, guileless, simple, humble, without jealously or malice, and that takes every thought captive and makes it obey Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5).
Nor will our soul be enkindled with God’s love, never transgressing the bounds of self-control, but content with what is given to it and longing for the serenity of the saints. And if we do not achieve such a state we can never acquire a heart that is gentle, peaceful, free from anger, kind, uncontentious and filled with mercy and joy; for our soul will be divided against itself and because of the turbulence of its powers will remain impervious to the rays of the Spirit.
~Nikitas Stithatos
To master the mundane will of the fallen self you have to fulfill three conditions. First, you have to overcome avarice by embracing the law of righteousness, which consists in merciful compassion for one’s fellow beings; second, you have to conquer self-indulgence through prudent self-restraint, that is to say, through all-inclusive self-control; and third, you have to prevail over your love of praise through sagacity and sound understanding, in other words through exact discrimination in things human and divine, trampling such love underfoot as something cloddish and worthless.
All this you have to do until the mundane will is converted into the law of the spirit of life and liberated from domination by the law of the outer fallen self. Then you can say, “I thank God that the law of the spirit of life has freed me from the law and dominion of death” (Romans 8:2).
~Nikitas Stithatos
Prayerful Life 