Spiritual Difficulties. Part 2: “Akedia” and Vanity

     These “tempting thoughts” as Evagrius the Solitary calls them, are 6th and 7th on his list of all 8 of the fundamental tempting passions, or emotional and spiritual disorders. I will do these two together, because for so many of us they are interrelated.

   Akedia, sometimes spelled “accidie,” literally means something like “carelessness.” It ranges over several more specific negative things: distraction, cynicism, impatience, and even hopelessness. All these things come to us because of a lack of vigilance and vigor in reminding ourselves of the grace and mercy we have received. We become thankless. We turn our gaze from the source of meaning, life and love: God. We lose our sense of thanks. We cannot endure to continue to be tied to the spiritual work we are to keep doing which seems dry and to stretch off to an unbearable distance. We are impatient. Certainly even raised in faith recognizes their own distraction with the services and prayers and counting down the time that it will last until we are released from this place of focus… Anyone who has converted recognizes that the zeal with which one comes into the faith seems to flag, when it seems that God does not reward us quickly, frequently, and openly for our good efforts. Of course, we see, on the one hand, laziness, and on the other, a certain willfulness, as if we were saying: “God you will meet my needs as I see fit, in the time I expect these good things to happen..” This temptation is also named from the psalm verse: “the noon-day demon,” (Psalm 90/91:6) because, for the monk, like for the school-child or office worker, one starts to drift off from focus around mid-day, and all the impulses mentioned above, wash over us.

   This distraction and carelessness is a particular focus of Lent. It is why we are supposed to do more labor in fasting and become more diligent in prayer. It is why we fight our boredom with services by DOING MORE. Learning to focus on and desire Christ, and to be risen from our sense of emptiness and dryness of spirit.

   Vanity, or literally, “vainglory,” is about our social neediness. It is desire for praise and social acclaim, on the positive end, and fear of blame or shame, on the darker end. When we imagine ourselves in a social situation, we are almost always engaging in vanity. Vanity is really fundamentally about our imaginations—it is not really, in a practical sense, trying to do something with other people, but rather trying to look good in front of others, as if they were just mirrors of or for our selves. Vanity can even be a potent reason to do virtuous things. It can be a reason to thank God, as the Pharisee did while disdaining the Publican. It can be a reason why we like to sing, to perform, even to fast and pray. This is why Christ tells us not to let anyone know that we are doing these things:

“But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (Matthew 6:3-6)

Christ tells us that a social reward is a reward that is done. God no longer has to reward us for that. We received the reward, it is a virtue stolen from us, because it no longer justifies us in heaven. This is why traditionally the Church does not teach us to compliment people, except very, very lightly. Otherwise, it becomes the negative, virtue-stealing form of praise called, “flattery.” It is particularly a problem for anyone in authority, especially within the Church. This is why the early monks heavily discouraged anyone from seeking to be ordained: all the social interaction, and the necessary use of authority was considered bad for spiritual progress. But it is also a problem for us in that we feel we must categorize ourselves as the “good.” If someone were to challenge this, we might become downcast and disconsolate, because of the darker side of vanity: shame. The reality is that if someone—rightly—tells us how we are being bad or doing something badly, they help us in the most potent way possible. They are driving off vanity and showing us an obstacle to overcome, something that we need to see properly and work on. We actually have to recognize ourselves as “bad” in a shameless and constructive light: we have failed, and need to go a long way to reaching God, but are eager and do not become “careless” or disheartened. This is like children that know that they are wrong, yet are glad that the loving parent has caught them and ended the nightmare of the charade to hide the bad deeds or failures. A new start comes from failures, when they are recognized!

   Vanity is confronted in Lent (and always) by repenting. Asking forgiveness. Tiring out our imaginative self-exaltation and anxieties about shame, we are to come to a place where we stop imagining the social life to lift us up and weigh us down, but rather to stand before God and our fellow human being. We recognize that God alone has the power to give us the liberty and the exaltation to be exactly what only He knows we are supposed to be. So it is that we stop worrying about our constant social checking of all the social comparisons and competitions, from those about wealth, status, and beauty, to the even more vapid and adolescent notion of “cool.” God alone can make us what our imagination is not even able to see, but only humility, emptiness of social need and comparison and complete recognition of God’s power and will for our life can show us.