147 Sin as Disorder and Asceticism as Healing, pt 2 (Voices from the Kellia—with David Clayton)

Geoff continues talking with regular guest David Clayton about how the Desert Fathers and Mothers understood sin as discorder (of all kinds) and how asceticism was a path toward freedom to love God and others. 

They discuss sin not merely as rule-breaking but as patterns that impair clear seeing, free choosing, and loving well. Asceticism is presented as training that frees the heart by reshaping habits, while emphasizing grace, mercy, and the hope to “begin again” each day. They particularly focus on the concept of "watchfulness" and the neuroscience of "paying attention." 

Dive deeper in our new book, Landscapes of the Soul: How the Science and Spirituality of Attachment Can Move You into Confident Faith, Courage, and Connection, and learn about our trainings and other resources at embodiedfaith.life.

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Transcript

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Geoff Holsclaw: What if we are less free than we think? And also, what if the desert asceticism and, or monasticism isn't all about hating the body? What if early Christians were looking for more freedom? But if they're looking for freedom, then that means maybe sin is a kind of unfreedom. So that's what we're talking about today.

We're continuing our conversation from last time with David Clayton. We're talking about sin, attention. We're also gonna talk about maybe monsters and heroes, a little bit. again, we are joined with our regular guest, David Clayton. He's our field reporter of monasticism, or who we like to call the voice from the kyllia, which is the monastic cells in the deserts.

He's a spiritual director and s- supervisor of directors, as well as a trained behavior analyst. David, thank you for jumping in with us, and I'm excited to keep going on this conversation about what is sin from the perspective of the desert. Could you give us a quick synopsis, and I say that hesitantly because, no offense, but you're not always super quick about synopsisizing.

But could you give a synopsis of where we, of how sin, how we defined sin last time, and then we're gonna move forward?

David Clayton: Oh, gosh. Okay. I think one of the key things we, looked at last night, last time, I was gonna say last night, goodness me, was sin as, a social construct, so therefore relevant to the society, but also from a neuroscience point of view as a limiting factor. integrative, non-integrative, sin being towards the non-integrative, and also, Less actualized, more actualized as a whole person. can't remember all of it exactly, but I think those were some of the things that we, picked up on. But, where we got to or, the thing I think we were gonna dive into was about attention. obviously from our take, attention, we could use prayer as that, so prayer as part of focus. But modern neuroscience increasingly shows that attention controls behavior, controls emotion and experience. So this puts it back into the point we mentioned last time about nepsis, the desert tradition of watchfulness and interiority. So self-awareness, know, thyself. Aristotle and all that lot. But I think there is, there's meditation, and attention research by people like Richard Davidson, Amishi Jha, and Ju- Judson Brewer that shows that attention training improves emotional regulation, reduces rumination, improves cognitive control, reduces stress, and changes brain connectivity. So we have this neuroplasticity, which I think we'll, get onto at some point potentially.

but the Desert Fathers simply used to call that

watchfulness, 

Geoff Holsclaw: we jump into the d- 'cause I love... I wanna talk about the Desert Fathers so bad. But the neuroscience research on a- attention. and if you don't know the answer, just say so. But how is that similar or different than to what is another big buzzword, which is, mindfulness? So let's learn how to be mindful.

Let's have non-judgmental kind of, perceptions of our awareness. So is there... Is, this similar or is this different than mindfulness? I know. I, know there's a whole, there's a whole...

David Clayton: I didn't know you were going to ask me this.

Geoff Holsclaw: now. But you said before we hit record, you were like, "We'll just see where it goes." So this is where it's going. I don't wanna spend too much time on mindfulness. I just wanna know if there's a similarity or a

David Clayton: Yeah. no. No, I think 'cause I have... I hold a perspective on that, which is, which it disagrees with many people's perspective on it, because it's a much misused and misunderstood term, I believe.

So, what one person says is mindfulness and another person says is mindfulness is, it becomes a, bit confusing. The original term or sense is from part of the Buddhistic practice, which is a specific type of deep practice, being mindful, and to the point of, I think some of the advanced mindfulness exercises involve slow walking to the degree where you can watch somebody take one step over five minutes. I think, if I remember rightly, 'cause I'm off the cuff. Jap- maybe Japanese, think. Okay. So maybe wrong on that, That's was the, image is somebody walking really slowly, and I think that was... So I don't know if

Geoff Holsclaw: So is that a kind of focused attention that you were talking about, or is that different? Okay.

David Clayton: It's a prayer. It's prayer. So all of this is focused attention.

s- Simone Weil, picks up on, on focus and attention really well, but, we decided not to dip into that pool at this conjecture, even though we're very close

Geoff Holsclaw: Okay. So there's...

David Clayton: there is the humanistic

Geoff Holsclaw: there's some similarities. I just wanted to, we're talking about attention and the psychological science,

David Clayton: Yeah. but

Geoff Holsclaw: mindfulness, which is similar-ish 

David Clayton: is- 

Geoff Holsclaw: yeah.

David Clayton: Humanism is the thing that I'd throw out there. There's, this broad aspect of being nice, being calm, being gentle, being pleasant, being nice. That's, that's the apathy to psychological safety, all this being nice, 'cause you just put nice forward and forget truth, which we'll come onto with the monster and the hero aspect.

so I think, yeah, the ... It is too broad a thing. if we wanna do a

Geoff Holsclaw: We'll put a pin in it

David Clayton: do a comparative.

Geoff Holsclaw: So let's get back to the...

David Clayton: and contrast mindfulness to the historic Christian, meditative and mental prayer aspect towards contemplation. Th- there is a, lot of vagaries and blurredness out there a- around when people use this sort of language, and it

and to me, it's too confusing, but similarities, yes, because, the aim is for good, to be a better person in a way. But, the Christian aspect is to focus on allowing God to change the individual, and therefore putting oneself in a place where oneself has to reduce. The desert re- causes the small deaths. whereas from a Buddhistic point of view, it would be complete nihilism and self-emptying. So there's a focus towards God and an infilling of God within the Christian practice, whereas within the Buddhistic practice of mindfulness, it's completely nil, complete empty vessel. Nothing. To be nothing. that's one of the key

Geoff Holsclaw: Yes. All right.

David Clayton: Does that help?

Geoff Holsclaw: So let's get into nepsis or ancient watchfulness in the desert.

David Clayton: Evra- Evagrius wrote, "A monk must be like a watchman, always watching the thoughts." Abba Anthony wrote, "A man who knows himself knows God." And I think that's one of the key points here. So knowing yourself means watching your thoughts, your desires, your reactions, which I think is, part of the modern behavioral analysis culture and emotional intelligence culture, and obviously the neuroscience that, that kind of works in parallel to that.

so both, both these traditions, neuroscience and desert, agree that freedom begins with attention, and if you cannot control your attention, you cannot control your thoughts. If you cannot control your behavior and you cannot control your life, this, kind of, disorderedness. So if we're looking at Moving towards some of the stuff we talked about earlier. Sin is not the first... Sorry, sin is not first a moral infraction, but a disordered, a disordering of perception, of desires and of responses. In classical terms, it's a failure of right seeing, so noetic distortion of right desiring, an appetite misalignment or of right acting, a, volitional disintegration. We see in Matthew 6:22-23, the eye as an organ of perception when disordered, the whole person is darkened. so in a way, what we're saying here is this attentiveness, cognition pre- precedes behavior, which I think is something to do with appraisal, theory. Attention gates interpretation, so that's a selective attention process.

Interpretation conditions action, so we have a cognitive behavioral loop aspect there. So this sin, this falling short, that we mentioned before, emerges alongside a pipeline of stimulus, appraisal, affect, impulse, consent, act, habit, and character, which puts us clearly into the neuroscience and behavior.

So if we are able to dip into that at a point and bring about change, we become better. So if we were to look at, say, I think you asked last time about, a bit more about the desert aspect of sin and nature of sin. So a quick synopsis or a, sequence of kind of Evagrian, Cassian, the Gizmoid dynamic, just the use of the Gizmoid passions.

in, in Praktikos, Cassian in his conferences talks about the stages of engaging with sin. Initially, provocation, which is an involuntary presentation of thought or image. we, see something, we sense something. Our senses are impacted or our mind is impacted. Through that is, is coupling, so that's an intentional engagement or rumination.

So this is where we need to be attentive to our thoughts. So point three, the assent, where the, there is a violati- volition, volitional agreement and the will inclines. So we think, "Oh, that's a good idea." Without going, "Is it?" captivity, a loss of freedom, a compulsion or habit. So this could be So this is deformation in a way described, but it could be utilized as formation if moved as yet contra, moved against, if recognizing what's happening within. Point three, then the passions, they disposition. So this gives us a vice or a structuring of formal thought. Habit starts to become formed. James, 1:14-15 maps this desire, conception, birth of sin, death. And we have, a contemporary kind of behavioral stuff which we started to dip in earlier, where we have like cognitive fusioning, treating thought as literal truth.

the brain, if it perceives something, it treats it as truth, if I remember rightly. There is, cognitive science around that. And then automaticity, which is behavior driven by cue, driven habit, and prediction error minimalization, so predicted processing, where perception is model driven, bias persists unless it is interrupted.

So that's if once you get into a habit, stuck in that habit. So f-for that, the nepsis attitude, and I suppose with the neuroscience aspect is, there's the, kind of viewpoint is diagnostic, and we could see that through look utilizing, on noticing attentional deficit, so lo-low metacognitive awareness, where there is, identity fusion, how the self is perceived or thought about, and response inflexibility, where there is reactivity over executive control, and that's the key point that I think is, shown.

a lot of the Desert Fathers teaching is, facing that reality where we... Where are we really at? How, do I really respond? Because a lot of people will respond nicely, but then they're internally not actually being nice. it's a presentation. That's a cultural thing, in different degrees and measures.

but I suppose me coming from the psychological safety aspect of things, going, "What's actually happening here? How are these people actually engaging? Are they able to face failure?" I've just been published in The Way, another, article on failure. I seem to write a lot on failure. So sin is not the initial, I suppose what we're saying, sin is not the initial cognitive event It's the ascent under diminished awareness leading to a patterned behavior. So these guys went to the desert to face

Geoff Holsclaw: Okay. So to step back, 

David Clayton: reality. 

Yeah, there's a lot there.

Geoff Holsclaw: defining sin as, an action that is morally transgressive of God's law, the Desert Fathers, which is more of our kind of r-rough and ready definition, usually it's like it's the action. The Desert Fathers would say, that's sin," which is need to back up things a lot more.

So you were saying, freedom, but also sin begins with what are you paying attention to, and what you pay attention to then shapes your thoughts, and then your sh- your thoughts start shaping your desires, and your desires start, becoming actions, and regular actions then become behavior. And then a certain strand of kind of the moral kind of theology there is that sinful behaviors then enslave us, and we need grace in order to untangle ourselves from that sin.

But instead of starting with the actions, they wanna go further back. So it's don't just pull drowning people out of the stream. Why don't we find out why they're falling into the stream in the first place? And so they're wanting to go back to the front, which aligns with how Jesus taught in, the Sermon on the Mount, where he places these things in the thoughts and the intentions, not just the actual actions.

Is that-- I think, is that a kind of a fair kind of statement there? I'm getting the thumbs up, 

David Clayton: Yeah. 

Geoff Holsclaw: style there. Excellent. All right. So but all of this then becomes... Sorry to smash my, my, my microphone 'cause I'm so gesturing. S- All of this then kinda sets up the idea that, going into the desert is to enter a battlefield.

It's to engage in a kind of a rigorous war of the thoughts, of which the body plays a role. But again, part of what I'm always, wanting to bring up is, the early monasticism and asceticism wasn't hatred of the body or fear of the world, but they were actually going into the desert to, seek the freedom and love of God, and they were f-focusing on their thoughts, which is what you're getting at.

So should we bring up monsters now, or should we keep teasing people?

David Clayton: No, I was just gonna... I just wanna follow structure a little what you said just from, the, kind of, So, you talked about a systematic training, which is asceticism basically to, to order the self going into desert. And we see in Romans 12, I think it's Romans 12:2, the, we talk about the renewal of the mind, as a transformation pathway which Cassian would define down as a purity of heart, with that, Hebraic principle of head, heart being the same thing.

But this kind of, I s- I suppose of that as a telos. But if we were looking at that construct that you've described, so nepsis, watchfulness, so vi- vigilant attention, continuing monitoring of thoughts would go on to what we would call hesychia, an inner stillness and enabling a fine grain perception.

'Cause the slower you get, there's that old adage about, the desert fathers of the three brothers, going out to see one of the brothers who's i- in the desert, and he, asks them to get a bucket of water, and they wait for it to settle, and he says, "What can you see?" And they went, "I see myself." the more we allow it to settle.

So this whole neurological process of slowing, stilling, of attention-focused, what I'd call, mental prayer, moving towards contemplation or meditation, towards contemplation. And then we have the, outcome, which is the apatheia, the stripping away, which, the Stoics would describe as, that state of numb.

But not numbness in this case, but a freedom from disordered passions, which is exactly what we are looking for. So the neuroco- cognitive translation would be top-down regulation into a prefor- frontal cortex modulating limbic reactivity, point one. Attentional control, which is sustained attention reducing distractor salience. And point three, inhibitory control, delay between impulse and action, increasing choice. So that's that pause. That's very Ignatian. I love that bit. So the, practical is cue detection, label thought, de-centering, this is a thought, value consistent responsing. So it is that this, y- what they're doing now on the high level, behavioral side of things and neuroscience side of things, it, is that nepsis, is that being able to pause, being able to slow down, being able, Abba Moses would talk about the cell, go to your cell and let your cell teach you which trains perception over time. This ascetic practice, this discipline, this Christian way of living as a m- white martyr, dying to self daily to live to God, produces these results. Who would've thought?

Geoff Holsclaw: So attention, focusing on our attention helps you to see yourself. Apathea is that stripping away of the disordered, passions or desires in order to gain more freedom. What I was hearing is, this is the language I use, so I'm just reframing it a little bit, is instead of, being, bound to sin that leads us into a kind of reactivity, a compulsiveness, impulsiveness, we are hoping to have that pause so that we can respond in freedom and sin.

So it's a movement from reacting out of sin to responding, hopefully in love, right? That's the goal of the desert, the goal of the kingdom, God's love, purity of heart. and that watchfulness is the beginning of this m- of this training. is that right? So again, to use the language I kind of use is watchfulness, the, It's like the fountainhead of the training to move from reacting to responding.

David Clayton: Beautiful. Enables us to choose not to

Geoff Holsclaw: There we go, and I think that's... And that's the pause, that's the gap, that's the, being able to, yeah, to choose not to choose. I like that. I figured.

David Clayton: Assignation again. all... Yeah, it would

be with me. So

Geoff Holsclaw: as a, pause on this conversation, I just... The reason why I'm so drawn to Ignatian spirituality is because I think he is very much a culmination f- kind of as at the cusp of the modern world of all these ancient traditions and trends. He's just bringing all this stuff up. And he talks about consolation and desolation.

He talks about the discernment of spirits, right? These are all things that are still in the tradition as watchfulness or attention and apathea and, So these are all... This is why I love his work. But let's go back to the desert. Now can we talk about monsters?

David Clayton: I'd, agree.

Geoff Holsclaw: Okay,

David Clayton: I was just about to go onto it, but I just wanna, Ignatius' compilation, he took the medieval processes and compiled them, and I, again, I could do a talk on, which bits came from where and how and which. Origen was one of his main influences from the desert.

but then moving towards the Enlightenment and stuff like that, he, put it all together and consolidated clear form in an exercise. It's, and it's not right for everybody. but, it's very good, and the discernment process, I think is one of the most beautiful things any, Christian can learn, to be honest. It's very good. Anyway, so monsters. So this all came from, me catching a reel by Harry Miller, who I believe was an football player who used to play for Ohio, if I remember rightly, I'm not so You know, American people I don't, not that familiar, but I was quite impacted on what he was talking.

He was talking about, heroes must first be monsters. And I was like, "Yeah, that's, right." And then he began to, expand it and, debate clearly. Are you, dragging it up there on your screen to

Geoff Holsclaw: I'll let you out a little

David Clayton: up to something. so we've, come onto a, into a place where we see these terms monster and hero in certain ways, framed by our cultural understanding. Whereas, you so monsters are described as aggressive, status-seeking, controlling power, and yeah,

d- in a negative sense.

Whereas, and, I think we've talked about Gavin de Becker's work on "The Gift of Fear", and he, states in that work that we're, have all got the capacity to be monsters, and that, that's the point I want to make. and this is why we all need desert-like processes, nepsis, to understand how we're really operating, 'cause if push comes to shove, people can operate, if someone's influenced... I think there's that, psychological experiment where the authority tells people to do things, and they just go and do them because the authority told them to do them, yet it's, causing someone to scream on the other side of a scr- screen, there are... People will do strange things.

We have capacity. So if we look at etymology again, and this is something that this chap brought up, he said monsterum, originally means divine sign or omen, which comes from monere, to warn or instruct. So the monster is the warning, is the challenge, And if we look at, contemporary literature, and I think he does on that, and he uses "Star Wars" and Luke Skywalker and the battle with his father and going through a dark cave and things like that to bring about, a movement from monster to hero. But the monster has to be challenged. The monster has to be faced in the dark place. So we're right into Jungian shadow work, basically, and integration. the point of hero, the hero aspect is, they were seen as semi-divine beings and all that sort of thing previously, particularly within the Greek tradition But, it comes from a roots, from sir, which means to watch over. So we go from a warning to becoming a wa- Overwatch. So there's this process of integration. So how can I put it? let's, dive into it. So Psalm 4, verse 4. So ang- affect, anger is permitted. Sin concerns its ordering. This particularly shows in Jungian shadow integration as a prerequisite for individuation, which is what we're talking about in the gray.

I wouldn't necessarily use the term individuation regularly, but the psychodynamic behavior and synthesis here is, suppression rebound. I think that's Wagner, where thought suppression increases reoccurrence, where we have defense mechanisms and, repression under kind of Freudian thinking, which moves to displacement projection.

We have affect regulation. so unlabeled affect escalates to behavioral leakage. we talked about this noticing, recognizing before, the habit increments, taking... If you don't notice that you've got these thoughts going on, da, It's if somebody sits and watches a message on, Facebook or some, or other media, shall we say, or television, the news, and is told something, and told something, they will believe that.

They will effectively respond to that, and that will change their thinking, and therefore that will change their behavior. So if one can separate oneself from external stimulus and actually get to the root of the truth of one's being and context of what one's living within, then that brings a sense of freedom and control, self-control, individuation, I think.

So if we look at functional remapping, if we look at anger, then a person needs to develop their, boundary reinforce- enforcement, so justice orientation. Often people who are angry have got big hearts. They care. It means something to them, so they're reacting. So these sort of p- people that need that, they probably need to explode. But that, how? prophets, the, you look at the prophets, so those prophets that pulled beards out and those that got their beards pulled out, it's So if we look at here's what it is. So desire, y- this is a desire principle. sorry, devotional principle. it's a, it's attachment.

It's attachment to the... Is it attachment to the good or not? fear, vigilance, and risk calibration. for people like me, who operate on high awareness a lot of the time, that can be a good thing 'cause we can spot things that are going off, spot patterns. and power, responsible agency.

Abba Poemen says, " Do not attach the heart to what cannot satisfy." This is a reordering of desire. so this is the conquest of self. And again, this is the other point that this chap mentioned, the, Harry Miller. to conquer self, to know the self as monster, to become the hero, to integrate the power, the dunamis, the capacity towards choice and control.

Because humans are naturally, I would say from my neurological, biological, behavioral, and theological understanding, humans are violent creatures. They have that bias. They have sin away from. They're made to survive, and they survive by integrating into groups and form different thinking processes and agreements to make that happen. But they can also respond if something mo- makes them feel unsafe, that can affect their thinking, their emotions, their behavior. So if we w- we as people, humans, conquer self through understanding that we, have the capacity to be monsters, not going, "Oh, I'm nice." it takes away a degree of humanism and the, assumption that we are naturally good, which I think in this day and age may be necessary.

So I think, the desert teaches us that we're weak, frail, grumpy. if you don't have enough water for a bit, y- you don't have enough food for a bit, you, get a bit hangry, and it's that kind of aspect, that ascetic challenge. What, are you attached to? What are you secure with? integration is not elimination. it converts raw drives into stable virtues, and that's where we're heading, virtues. I wrote to somebody the other day on, on, a matter of analyzing some psychological safety behavior that they weren't operating or that people weren't operating in an honor culture, and therefore they, were disseminating the group they were trying to form because they weren't honorable, they weren't integral.

And I was like, "How do you expect to develop a group while people are lying, deceiving each other, backbiting, and ladder climbing?"

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah.

David Clayton: you can't form a healthy group off that, So, there we go. What do you th- what do you think to that? I've spoken for quite a lot, Geoff.

Geoff Holsclaw: I wanna go back to the monsters. last piece. Okay. in that,

in the sense that,

David Clayton: about the

Geoff Holsclaw: were talking earlier about paying attention and then having space to have a pause or to sense the pause. and so I wanna kinda add that idea of the monster to that pause in the sense that, if we're so busy defending ourselves or convincing ourselves that we're good people or that what we're doing is justified or, that it's not that bad, right?

We have all these defense mechanisms, minimizations, 

David Clayton: space

Geoff Holsclaw: that a lot of time is basically just to defend against "I'm a good person." but when you do that and you get stuck in those, then that's where the monstrous behavior then can perpetuate, the small infractions of, "It's not that bad, I'm a good person," or, "They should have known better," or whatever, right?

and so this idea, it just comes from like Joseph Campbell, "The Hero's Journey," kinda confronting your demons, facing your monsters. certainly the, desert tradition didn't use that language, but they were Do you think that they were operating out of the same idea, right? Because there's o- these other kind of values, which is humility.

So we've gone over humility a couple episodes ago, which creates space in yourself for loving others, and gets you off of the ladder climbing process, that maybe perpetuates this monstrous behavior. or another way that I think of it is like becoming like a beast. and so scripture, especially like in the Book of Daniel, and, a lot of prophecies, kind of evil is symbolized as beasts, and becoming more beast-like in that we are supposed to not be beasts.

We're more than beasts, but, we become the monster if we just become, human. So those are some of the things that were bouncing around my, brain. and maybe we could circle back to the shadow work and Carl Jung too on... You mentioned like harness- harnessing the shadow and s-

David Clayton: where do the beasts live? Where do the beasts live, Geoff? That's what I'm sat with. Where do the beasts live according to scripture?

Geoff Holsclaw: in the wilderness. 

David Clayton: In the

desert. 

Geoff Holsclaw: in the ocean. you get the leviathan.

David Clayton: we... Yeah, but there is that if they're describing... Oh, they... What Tiamat? Ooh.

Geoff Holsclaw: leviathan and,

David Clayton: Getting to the Babylonian sneaking in there. no, we'll not, go down

Geoff Holsclaw: the desert and the beasts.

David Clayton: The desert, 'cause the deserts are func- functions as a controlled environment that strips, exogenous stimuli, amplifying endogenous

Geoff Holsclaw: are big words. What was this exo and endo? What do you

David Clayton: Yes. Yes. And I'd, I have, I had them written down in front of me so that I got them right for our listeners. So the, what we're looking at is... And I'm not f- off the cuff, I'm not that familiar with the hero journey, the Joseph Campbell stuff. However, if it is that, integrative, individuating, actualizing, becoming the better person by becoming less, if it is the becoming less, this is the difference.

The self-improvement programs are not the desert. The desert is to die to self as small deaths, the white martyr rather than the red martyr, which would be, "I'm a Christian, I'm going to heaven." This is the hope of the future. this is the part of the difference that we seem to have lost, and we're going, "Oh, we need incarnational spirituality."

And I'm going, we need incarnational spirituality, but we need to understand our transcendent, eschatological ending." That's the point of Christianity. There is an eschatological reality to it. We will be the hope of eternal life, which we have our faith in Jesus to move into hope, to move into love. These are the virtues. These are the cardinal virtues. That's the point of it. so one has to... The desert gives that, space, to, increase in things like silence. DMN, so default mode network would show that, processes work better Self-referential content surfaces more.

there's less reduced sensory overload, and I think, they're even using terms around DMN that like empathetic net work. Is that, the new kind of thing at the moment?

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah, we were talking about that before. I'm trying to look up the, references, but Cyd has had some coaching training

David Clayton: Yeah. But it...

Geoff Holsclaw: instead of the default mode network, that it's more of a, really it's how do we connect with those, the world and those around us.

David Clayton: Yeah. but it takes us out of that. It forces us to face the beast, the wildness. It allows the s- the stuff to surface. having spent time out in deserts, they terrified me, and if I didn't have, Bedouin guides with me, in, in, in one area or my fixers in another area, I would be like, "I don't know where the next well is."

I'd be dead. I know that. I would just be dead. It's as simple as. it's just it's big. It's bigger than, and it helps one come into that awe and terror of base religious, anthropological, and psychological understanding. so I think, if we were to look at the desert, I th- and what it does, I think it gives that opportunity to allow or force even the, deeper stuff to

 surface, to, to realize the monster. I like to use, Mother Teresa of Calcutta as an example because having read some stuff around her, people go, "Oh, she was fantastic. She worked with the poor. She did this, she did that." And an awesome, human individual. there's, challenging, points of view, but hey, I'll not enter into that.

But one of the things I have come to understand is that she was grumpy for about 20-odd years when she hit a dark night. Though she was, so she was quite difficult to be around, like some of the mystics can be because they're facing... They're like that close to nothing, despair, and if, they haven't got their tiny little glimmer of hope of eternity with God, then they break.

If they don't understand that they're loved and they love God, they break. So it gives us that opportunity to go into that deeper towards the mystic ascent, I think, to go beyond and need to be drawn into a passive state more than an active state because you can't do anything in the desert. You can't You know, what can you...

if I run really far in one direction, it will solve things. no, it won't, 'cause you might go in the wrong direction. Not really the best example, but does that, fit in with what you were, where you were going?

Geoff Holsclaw: Definitely. so in just

the little bit with the time remaining, if we kinda shifted, like what-- And I don't know if I'll catch you off guard off your notes. But in a sense, what does this matter, for us? in our, most of us are not out in the desert. We don't have our cell. we're not, I forget which story.

we're not watering a stick for two years and hoping it'll bloom, as a test of our obedience and things like that. but this idea of sin as disordered perception, and the desert kind of offering the remedy of watchfulness, how might that start working into, our busy lives, our, modes of s- American and/or British spirituality and things like that?

David Clayton: Yeah. Yeah. No, I hear you. I think it is a multicultural, reality in this day and age, since the pace of life has become, distorted. we're not designed to be doing what we're doing, and that's part of the... we'll get into geopolitical problems. what can we do?

as a spiritual director, I'm gonna say, get a good spiritual director if you can find one of them. There aren't many of them. They're quite rare. because if you're gonna go into, a journey into the self, into the desert, we could class the self as the desert, then one would need accompaniment to that. so that would be one practical if you are wanting to go deeper into, not self-improvement, but to becoming more like Christ, to go into the process of being transformed into, towards being like. and things like, I don't think you can knock a millimeter change. I don't... I think Father Lazarus, I probably mentioned this last time, Father Lazarus talking about, he's a, Coptic hermit, talking about falling forward, 'cause we fall down, we pick ourselves up, we fall down, we pick ourselves up.

Part of the rationale of humility is to understand that we are, we fail It's as simple as that, and that's okay. It's okay, we're human, I often say, "Pinch yourself. If you feel a pinch, then you're still human, and that's okay. You're one of us." Part of the same compost heap of humanity, as is quoted by Tyler Durden.

So I think just doing little things like five minutes of silence and internal watchfulness a day, and that could be through simple silence or doing a daily examen at the end of the day. Again, we can pick upon some of these sort of terms in another thing, because that's an Ignatian prayer. To, y- that's gonna make a difference.

if, we look at that process, so if you took five minutes silence at the end of the day to review your life and note... do the e- an examen type prayer, an examination of the day, and held on to the positive, neurologically, you would be slowing yourself down, putting yourself towards a theta state, not necessarily entering into theta state, but slowing down towards it, which would be helpful for your rest.

You would be putting your cognitive bias into a positive, because you'd be examining and looking at a positive. So you'd be holding on to that as you go to sleep, so that you'd be waking on a positive. So if you are slowing down, staying positive, waking on a positive, your sleep will be better. I d- I, worked with a quite burnt-out priest a while back, and within three months of just doing a simple examen prayer like that, their sleep pattern was restored.

They were g- self-governing much better. it's not, a major... It's not about, oh, we need to go to the desert and sit and stare at our navels until the sun rises and see a beautiful... it's not. If you... Th- there's enough aridity around in, in, in, reality. But it's about moving away from the distractions. That would be the key point I would put across. That it is moving away from that. So what can... What is not observed cannot be ordered. What is not ordered will dominate behavior, and what dominates behavior will define character. So we're looking at a work of moving away distraction to develop attention, discernment, integration, and stability.

Now, if we all did that, or

Geoff Holsclaw: Could you say that again? What is not observed cannot be ordered. Yeah, I

David Clayton: Could I say that little... Ah, you liked that. I thought you'd like that. That was one of my little notes. It's all right, innit? So it's about, it's or- order Aramis, shall we say. So it's calibrating the mind's perception, affecting the will, its flexibility, its values, and its responses, and then purifying the heart's desires.

Again, we need training for this. We need good spiritual direction and things like this. It's not something to be plasticized

Geoff Holsclaw: but what did you say? You said...

David Clayton: The point I said, the con- the line was, I'm just coming onto that, just adding a little bit in there, what is not obser- served cannot be ordered. What is n- not ordered will dominate behavior.

What dominates behavior will define character. So the work is attention, discernment, integration, and stability.

Geoff Holsclaw: That's g-- that's good, that you should copyright that. That's really good. 

David Clayton: but, this is y- this is why we're doing this, Geoff, to be honest, so that people will hopefully understand that it's, it's simple, but it's not simple, and that there has been a praxy for pre-Reformation, funnily enough, back into, Patristics, Desert Fathers, et cetera, w- within the church that expresses this kind of solution.

Not an absolute solution, but a solution towards looking at many of the behavioral issues that have come up within, society, within ecclesia, and with- within leadership, in, in, society, in, in various different settings. It's, it starts with us. So, in a way, if someone were to go, I'm just gonna go and sit outside for five minutes on a bench and be quiet and reflect and self... internalize, have a little, how am I feel- how am I actually feeling? How am I actually responding?" And to develop that.

Geoff Holsclaw: I was just thinking, one of the... I don't know if this is a foundational text, but I just came across this a little bit ago, is Jesus in Matthew 26 talking about, "Watch and pray so that you do not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak," and that comes in, response to the disciples falling asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane.

But that's, the watching and the praying. and the reason I'm so excited about this watchfulness, just to kinda tie it all up for, listeners, is just that I think, those in the desert almost 2,000 years ago were doing these practices and focusing on things that even now contemporary neuroscience is just proving to have been very effective in helping us be less monsters and more humans.

And so I just find it, so, exciting but also challenging. So five minutes of silence or the examine. Review your life. Focus on the positive. Slow down. Move away from distractions. These are the small things so that we can start getting, a handle on what we're paying attention to. I know part of the challenge for me, and I go back and forth, I fail at this too, this, is part of my own personal practice, is to do less things while listening to music or podcasts.

So when I'm doing yard work, when I'm making myself a cup of coffee, when I'm having lunch, I'll often, pop the earbuds in and listen to something. But I'm trying sometimes. Sometimes trying. This is, for a benefit of others. Some- sometimes trying to listen to less of that. to drive in my car or to run errands with the radio off.

Just sit in silence. Just do these things in silence and kinda hear what is in the heart. that's just some of, what I do to make this practical. David, last thoughts, challenge, or retractions that you wanna throw out there before we wrap up?

David Clayton: Oh, I retract

Geoff Holsclaw: I re- I retract all that is of, not of the Lord and was couched in

David Clayton: No, absolutely. Absolutely. I think you said a beautiful thing there and thank you for sharing that, 'cause we don't really get into the practical of it. and I think one has to... we're all unique, so you have to be at where you're at. So if for someone switching the radio off or switching the worship music off or s- you turning, distractions off might be too much for them. so I think And again, this comes down to having a good spiritual director and listening to who the person is and what's the ground under their feet. so yeah, you have, you are you, so you have to enter into this awareness from w- where you're at, Ignatian pattern for discernments for now, for good, for God.

So- In entering into where am I at, where, is, where am I at from as a monster with my sin, and how do I change that is by obviously scripture, discerning with the spirit, accountability. and we're all in this together, so there, there shouldn't be any judgment, And when we come into this...

the thing about Desert Fathers is humility and putting the other above self, Someone may sin against them, but they would turn round and go, I've done that sin 1,000 times, so I can't judge that person. I can only love them and forgive them." To keep that kind of moderation and realism, I think that's one of the things that I tend to bring to things, is this realism, when being spiritual.

So yeah, I h- hope that kind of backs up what you, were saying there, Geoff, that, the making the choices. But ma- don't just make the choices because, oh, that's a good idea, or that seems the right thing to do or the nice thing to do. M- make the choices from your heart, from where you, you are at, as you wonderfully, beautifully created, unique creature you are, 

Geoff Holsclaw: as you, all you listeners, if you were to practice a five, five minutes of silence or something, or an examine, I know for me, I still struggle with the, "Oh, I'm so distracted," and then it's like, "I'm, bad." I slap my hand for being distracted. But really, you sh- it should just be, what?"

Pay attention to what I'm, distracted by, because that is part of it, part of the work. David, thank you so much. I did take a note here about maybe what we need to do at some point soon is do a whole episode on the desert sources of Ig- of Ignatius. I'm sure people would be interested in that, but we'll, keep going slowly and surely.

David Clayton: Oh, my word. yeah. Yeah, there's a really good

Geoff Holsclaw: Is there a book on that? I have no idea. All right. Yeah, there is.

us. thank you, David, for your time. thank you everybody for listening. Please, share this episode with those who might be interested. and, subscribe on Substack or wherever you get these, podcasts.

David, until next time, be blessed.

David Clayton: Thank you, Geoff, and you. And to all the wonderful listeners out there, God be with you all. God bless.