Guarding the Sanctity of Thought

50. When the intellect associates with evil and sordid thoughts it loses its intimate communion with God..

St. Maximus the Confessor Four Hundred Centuries on Love: #50

Take a contemplative journey through a soul's landscape: thoughts as travelers treading across paths of consciousness. The soul, in its pure state, would be the holy of holies of such Divine communion, into which the intellect should go like the pious pilgrim with unwearied steps in the perpetual presence of God, and each thought should be a step of approach to the Holy of Holies.

But the journey of the intellect is fraught with divergent paths; alongside the sunlit trails that lead towards the divine embrace, there are shadowed alleys, lined with the beckoning of evil and sordid thoughts. These are not mere idle wanderings but treacherous detours that entice the intellect away from its holy pilgrimage.

Maximus the Confessor sheds light on the danger of such connection: if an intellect should indulge in thoughts that are base or corrupt, it hence turns into the dark alleys, away from the light of the presence of God. It is like a traveller who, from illusion, is taken away in the desert, from the way of the stars, where he cannot find his way. And so the humanity of the relation of a man with God lies between fine threads, like a tapestry made of pure intention and virtues of meditation. Should the intellect become entangled in thoughts that debase or defile, this tapestry unravels and the connection with the divine becomes obscured. As if a mist comes down over the sanctuary of the soul and makes the clear vision of God's proximity behind it become clouded.

This loss of communion is a spiritual exile, a self-imposed isolation where the soul, once a temple filled with the light of divine discourse, becomes a cloister shadowed by dissonance. The chill of separation replaces the warmth of the nearness of God, and the intellect, understanding its predicament, longs for the return.

What then will protect this intimate communion? Where the intellect of the man begins with the guardianship of the intellect: watch what kind of thoughts are allowed to penetrate the innermost sanctuary of the soul. The intellect will have to choose the kind of sentinels of old that watched over sacred grounds, which kind of visitors are allowed to come within the walls.

The intellect must go backward, reversing its passage out of the wasteland and into the land of pure communion with God, through repentance and the steady compass of faith. The mist will blow away and the soul's sanctuary will again be flooded with the divine presence at every pure thought.

Let the sanctity of thought be in our thoughts, for it is through that innocence of interior dialogue that in our own spiritual journey we foster habitation with God. And let not our mind now be led astray to the shadows and to the twilit, ever to the light; so that, dwelling in the blessedness of His company, unscathed and profoundly we may persist.