Tilling The Soil of Peace and Happiness

What soil are you tilling?

From Ilias the Presbyter in the Philokalia, he quit his job as a lawyer to join the clergy and did so around the year 1100:

“You will not be able to cut down the passions attacking you unless you first leave untilled the soil from which they are fed.”

What are the passions you fight: gluttony, greed, lust, and other unclean thoughts and activities? What is the soil of these thoughts and activities – TV, internet, movies, music, magazines, media, the wrong people?

How do we till the right soil? It starts with the right mindset for gardening our soul.

From Ilias:

“Many may be stripped of the coat of self-love, but few of the coat of worldly display; while only the dispassionate are free from self-esteem, the last coat of all.”

What is the soil that must be tilled for the dispassionate, those free of the passions that attack us? It is the soil of prayer, the soil of fasting, it is the soil of love of others.

I’ve spent a lot of time meeting and working with those in recovery from drugs. One key point, if you return to the same environment where you used, you will most certainly use again. In many ways, finding a new environment is one of the hardest, if not the hardest battles an addict faces. This is exactly what Ilias is talking about, eventually, the soil we grow from is what we become.