The Life of Stillness
The Life of Stillness – 2 –
By Mar Isaac, Bishop of Nineveh
The Purpose of Stillness
The importance of having a purpose:
Listen, beloved brother: if you wish that your labors not be empty, and your days not vain and devoid of the benefit hoped for by those who possess discernment in stillness:
(let your entry into stillness be with discernment and knowledge, not haphazardly, nor according to the course of habit, lest you be like many).
Rather, let your mind have a purpose and an aim, toward which you direct every deed of your conduct. And ask those who know this by experience in themselves, not from reading only. And do not rest until you are trained in all the paths of your works.
(And with every step you place, search and examine whether you are walking on the path, or have deviated into some of the ways that lead to perdition).
Search and examine what the work of stillness is. Do not run after the name only. Rather, plunge in and be constrained, and care with persistence, that you may comprehend with the saints what is the height of this work and the depth of this way of life.
He who, from the beginning of his stillness, does not set for himself this aim and this purpose, and toward it direct the use of his work, but rather works haphazardly, is like one who shepherds the wind, and he will never be freed from the spirit of weariness all the days of his life.
One of two things will happen to him: either he will not be able to endure the heavy burden of the difficulty of enclosure, and he will depart from stillness altogether; or if he endures and remains in it, his cell will be for him like a prison, and he will be consumed within it.
Before everything, he who sits in solitude and enclosure and stillness—especially the beginner brother—has need of these three things:
of a straight purpose, of the fulfillment of the service of the hours, and of a guide. Of these three the brother is necessarily in need.
As for the straight intention, the solitary is compelled to have it, for without it all the work of virtue is vain and has no reward.
Many perform many works without a straight intention, though the true fruits do not come forth from the work itself, but from the intention for the sake of which the work was done.
Saint Anthony said to Paul the Simple, his disciple:
Without the discipline of stillness, a person cannot behold himself and understand his sufferings. For the soul, because of the disturbance it encounters from outside, is unable to contemplate itself amid the wars that secretly move against it. But in stillness and quiet, it is able to strike down what moves within.
Blessed is the person who knows this and abides in stillness and quiet.
(Sit in your cell, that you may gain experience of the wars of the demons.)
Thus spiritual understandings and divine consolations that are given to you by the grace of God are distinguished, according to what befits the order of the small work of stillness, which is the keeping of the weeks.
One of the fathers said: This is my benefit from stillness: when I withdraw from the camp in which I am sitting, my mind is freed from readiness for battle and returns to its work.
Another said: By perseverance in stillness, my heart began to find rest from encounters and the disturbance of memories, and suddenly waves of casting-down came upon it from the meanings of the inner movements.
Another said: Stillness cuts off the causes that renew thoughts, and within its fortress it destroys them, and it forgets the old memories. And when the old matters are worn out and forgotten, then the mind returns to its natural order.
Another said: If a person sees many faces and hears many diverse voices that are foreign to this spiritual state, and if he speaks and converses with these people, his mind cannot be free to behold itself in secret, remember his sins, demolish his thoughts, watch what comes upon him, and converse in prayer secretly.
And a person cannot, without stillness, subdue his senses.
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