Eight Deadly Thoughts
The "Eight Deadly Thoughts" from Evagrius, one of the Desert Fathers, a student of Gregory of Nissa, St.Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus [school just doesn't get any better than this!]. The "Eight Deadly Thoughts" later got transformed into the "seven deadly sins" (and perhaps lost something in the process!).
My reading is that each of these temptations represents a wrong attitude to God:
1. Gluttony:
Trying to get satisfaction from things [not from His presence]; food or sports cars...2. Lust:
Trying to get satisfaction from people and their bodies.3. Avarice:
Self-provision for the future, e.g., "I can only give $500 to the church instead of $2000; I may need the rest for nursing care someday." [This is a sort of defensive greed, as opposed to the offensive, grabby type -- I never knew the name for this all too common and contemporary sin!] This way of thinking kills generosity.4. Sadness:
"If only I were a different gender or race, then...; If only God had made me different..." [disrespect for what God has provided in your person.]5. Anger:
Unrestrained, cumulative anger destroys. What if God forgives the one I hate with a "perfect hate"?6. Acedia:
[Here's another one I see everywhere in the church and had no name for!] Sometimes called sloth, acedia is from Greek roots meaning "don't care." Not laziness, it is more of boredom and indifference to the action of God in your life. Instead of the excitement of He who is "new every morning," one could succumb to this deadening thought.7. Vainglory:
You want everybody to know your progress. Dr. Johnson said it is "the vain desire to fill the minds of others with yourself."8. Pride:
"God is not my helper." This could be said haughtily or pitifully. Either way it's pride, and it's a mortal danger any way you look at it. In Catholic theology, despair [and its ultimately outworking, suicide] is a mortal sin, because in despair, you have lost trust in God.Well, this is really heavy stuff. The other things the mystics teach: I have seen so much of it and experienced it so directly in the renewal.
Love, Ari