The Different Stages in the Development of a Passion: Passionate Thoughts, Feelings, Desires, and Actions. Struggling Against Them

That the passionate shows itself in us is not yet an unavoidable disaster. It means that we are impure, but it does not make us guilty. Our guilt begins from the moment we respond to the noticed passionate thing with benevolence—that is, when we do not hasten to recognize in it an enemy and do not arm ourselves against it with anger, but instead receive it and begin to take pleasure in it, enjoying the movement in which it appeared. This will already show that we are not averse to being on friendly terms with the passionate, and consequently at enmity with God. For every ”carnal mind” — every passionate thing — ”is enmity against God” (Rom. 8:7).

Where free choice begins, there guilt begins as well, growing in proportion to how far one sinks into the passionate. Let me describe to you how this all happens. Our usual state is this: thoughts wander here and there, feelings and desires are stirred but without a definite direction. This happens constantly and regularly. Sometimes entire days pass like this. These thoughts are for the most part vain, clinging to the current affairs of life and to the tasks at hand. Among them idle thinking often breaks through—daydreaming about nothing in particular. Both idle and vain thoughts crowd mostly on the surface of the soul. How to calm and bring order to this confusion of thoughts, which hinders remembrance of God and divine things, has been explained to you more than once.

But now look: one particular object has in some distinct way set itself apart from the others and is demanding attention. Notice this little moment: it has set itself apart and is demanding attention. And never let it pass without attention. At once conduct an inquiry: who is this, where has it come from, and what does it want? You will find the answers yourself immediately, simply by glancing at what has presented itself. Suppose it is the face of a person who once offended you. It is obvious that someone wishes, by occupying your attention with this person and his deed, to lead you to indignation, anger, and even a desire for revenge. That is exactly what will happen if you do not take the proper measures. What measures should be taken to drive away this image? What it wants to lead you to—that is the bad state. Consequently, it is your enemy. Treat it accordingly—that is, send it away not with honor, but with that response that was spoken of last time—namely, with angry rejection.

If you do this, you will completely foil the trap or snare of the enemy. But if you allow your attention to rest on the image that has appeared, it will, at first bare and isolated, surround itself with a multitude of other thoughts and images that will paint in your imagination a very vivid picture of how this person offended you, with all the details of that occasion. Along with this, the former feeling of offense, indignation, and anger will arise in the heart. The passionate object, or the thought about it, has given birth to a passionate feeling. The passionate has gone deeper. If you come to your senses and realize that you are doing wrong by allowing yourself to be kindled by passion, then of course you will see an enemy in this too, and treat it accordingly—driving the bad feeling from your heart and banishing from your thoughts the very object that gave rise to it. The agitation will pass, and inner peace will be restored.

But if you do not do this, other thoughts will join the passionate feeling already aroused and will inflame it further. They will begin to urge: “How did he dare? And who does he think he is, anyway? I am no worse than he is. No, this cannot be left as it is. I don’t even know how I let it go at the time. If you let everyone get away with things like this, life becomes impossible. I simply must show him that he cannot act this way without consequences.” And so the desire for revenge—whether great or small, it makes no difference—is ready in you. The passionate has gone still deeper. This is already the third stage. If you come to your senses even here, you can still drive away the desire. For a desire does not yet mean a decision. It came in one moment and can leave in another. If you do so—well done; if not—your enslavement to passion will go further.

Note: thought gave birth to feeling, thought together with feeling gave birth to desire. The soul is full of passion. But all of this is still mental impurity and sinfulness. The deed is still far off. Between desire and deed there always stands a resolution to act, along with the deliberation of how to carry it out. How a resolution forms is not always visible. In weak form it is already present in the desire; then it grows together with the deliberation of the deed—that is, with the selection of means and the settling of methods and circumstances. When everything has been thought through, the resolution is also complete. At that point the act has already been accomplished within. Before God and conscience the sin has already been committed: the commandments have been despised, conscience trampled underfoot. From desire to resolution with deliberation of the deed, sometimes a fair amount of time passes. The fear of God comes upon one, the commandments are recalled, and conscience does not remain silent. But all their saving urgings are rejected with contempt. Therefore in the resolution there is already transgression and sin. Thought, feeling, and desire, though they have already occupied the whole soul, still seem somehow to occur on the soul’s surface. There is not yet an inclination toward sin—only an impulse toward it. The inclination begins from the moment the soul begins to deliberate whether and how it can obtain satisfaction of the passion. There the soul is already setting out on the path of sin.

When the resolution has been formed, freedom is bound; the soul feels itself as though under necessity to carry out what has been decided. But there is no such necessity at all. What occurs is a kind of inner self-deception. What has been resolved can remain unexecuted due to suddenly encountered obstacles. It can also be abandoned because the person himself thinks better of carrying it out, for whatever reason—or by reason of conscience and the fear of God, if these succeed in rising up with their full strength.

Finally everything has come together—and the deed is done. You have taken revenge as you planned. The passion is satisfied, the sin is finally committed. What then has been added to the mature resolution that went before? It seems like nothing, for here one merely carries out the plan already thought through. So it seems—but in the substance of the matter, the culpability here grows to the utmost degree. First: the fear of God and conscience until now were only being set aside and disregarded, but now they have been trampled underfoot. Until now the affair resembled a mother urging her son not to do something bad, while he pushes her hand aside or runs away from her; but now it resembles a son who, in response to his mother’s urging, strikes her in the chest or in the face. Second: the inner deed has now been introduced into the flow of external events and must be accompanied by its own consequences—likewise external and belonging to everyday life. It cannot be erased with a pen or a negative word from the circle of events. It will remain there forever and will always be attached to the person who committed it, making that person taste its fruits. Third: God’s grace departs, and the person passes from God’s domain into the domain of the enemy of God and of himself. He is bowed down, burdened, feels himself oppressed by a certain weight. The parable is fulfilled in him: the demon returns with seven others (Mt. 12:45). Darkness, anxiety, heaviness—this is the reward of a satisfied passion, of any passion. And behold the wonder! While the passion is not yet satisfied through deed, its satisfaction seems to promise paradise: ”you will be like gods” (Gen. 3:5). But as soon as it is satisfied, the enchantment falls from one’s eyes, the phantom disperses and leaves behind nothing but emptiness, anguish, disarray, and heaviness—one sees that one is naked. You have taken revenge on your enemy and expected to rejoice—but it turns out quite the opposite.

Do you see what the road of enslavement to some passion and of falling into sin through it looks like? Let us now turn to you. What from all that has been said is possible in your case? If your resolution to serve the Lord is sincere, if having made that resolution you follow the counsel given you—always to remember God with fear and reverence, if you keep strict watch over yourself—then in you an inclination toward satisfying a passionate desire, and all that follows from it, is impossible. But passionate thoughts, feelings, and desires are possible. And these are the objects of your inner struggle.

Passionate thought, feeling, and desire sometimes flash through the soul in a single moment, not giving one time to recover. In that case they do not make us guilty, so long as we come to our senses at least by the time desire has arisen and drive them away with hostile indignation against them. Our guilt in thought, feeling, and desire depends on our lingering over them after we have noticed them—not driving them away but stopping over them. Drive away the thought—and there will be no feeling or sympathy. Drive away the feeling along with the thought—and there will be no desire. Drive away the desire—and there will be no danger of beginning the inclination toward the passionate. If, noticing a passionate thought, you voluntarily stop your attention upon it, you are guilty: why did you occupy yourself with one whom you know to be an enemy of God and of yourself? But if attention clings to the thought involuntarily, you are not guilty, provided you immediately begin to avert your attention from it and to drive it away. If a passionate feeling is born in you as a result of your voluntary attention to a passionate thought, your guilt increases a little. But if, having noticed the birth of the passionate feeling, you continue to occupy yourself with the passionate thought and consequently deliberately fan the feeling, your guilt is doubled over what it was before. If, having noticed the passionate feeling, you rouse yourself and drive it away along with the thought, you are guilty only of having voluntarily occupied yourself with the passionate thought; in the feeling you are not guilty, since feelings are born involuntarily under the influence of thoughts. If under the influence of a passionate thought and feeling, voluntarily admitted, a desire for a passionate act arises in you (for example, to take revenge), your guilt also increases a little by this, since desire is born involuntarily from thought and feeling. The guilt remaining upon you is the former one—why did you occupy yourself with the passionate object and, when passionate feeling was born of it, why did you allow the feeling and the thought that gave rise to it to continue in you—that is, a twofold guilt. But if, noticing the passionate desire, you allow it to linger in you rather than immediately arming yourself against it, your guilt increases by one more degree—it becomes threefold.

I will not go further than this, for I assume that only so far can your enslavement go.

You can see for yourself that if you drive away the passionate thought at once, you put an end to the entire struggle. There will be no feeling, and still less any desire. Resolve to act in this way. Why bring upon yourself the extra labor of struggle, and sometimes even danger, when you have already resolved not to admit anything passionate as being contrary to God? If involuntarily a feeling stirs along with the thought, drive away the feeling together with the thought at once. If involuntarily a desire also attaches itself to them, drive away the desire along with them at once. Wherever you catch the passionate movement in yourself, drive it away from that point. Make it a rule never to indulge a passionate thought, feeling, or desire voluntarily, but to drive them away with complete hatred the moment you notice them. And you will always be blameless before God and before your own conscience. There will be impurity of the passions in you, but also blamelessness. You will be doing the work of a laundress—laboring diligently to whiten your soul.

God bless you!