Non-Dogmatic Desert Father Exploration

[Dimmesdale]

Restrain your tongue from cursing, because with it you adore the Lord. - Commodianus

By every word we say, we do it in praise of the Lord. And with every praise of the Lord, that praise redounds to us as Life. The source of our speech may therefore be likened to the spring of a clean and crystalline stream. We do not want to pollute it or to treat it cheaply -- even if the desire to eat cheap and unworthy things is there, and we make our habitus there unworthily. So we don't litter it with our garbage, or delve too deeply such that we pierce an oil reserve and blacken the very fountainhead and well-spring of our own life.... Our long-term life will be the eventual fruit of our chastened tongue here-and-now.

[Dimmesdale]

Men who charm the popular ear by the polish of their style suppose every word they say to be a law of God. - St. Jerome

To be beholden to your own speech is like being a willing prisoner of a padded cell. Only someone suffering from some degree of lunacy would consent to live in such a way.

[Dimmesdale]

Beware of surrendering yourself to the tyranny of sorrow. You can command yourself; the tempest is not beyond your skill. - St. John Chrysostom

To be lost in the maelstrom of your thoughts is just that. To be Lost. Not simply confused, but removed from your very own source of life -- your soul and the Soul of your soul.... To be a slave to any external thoughts, whether in the form of griefs, insecurities, or hang-ups, is to betray your own Solid and rational nature, which is Strong.

[Dimmesdale]

No structure of virtue can possibly be raised in our soul unless, first, the foundations of true humility are laid in our heart. - St. John Cassian

Spiritual life is a Paradox the enormity of which we cannot even begin to Fathom from the neophyte stage. We don't fall into illusion, we fall OUT of illusion. Our state is such that we are blind at all levels of our very Being. Only by admitting our utter Ignorance of truth can we possibly realize our true deprivation, what to speak of eventually making true progress.

[Dimmesdale]

Flee the regions where enmity, ambition, and contention have their dwelling. - St. Ambrose of Milan

Gambling is similarly an enjoyable utter waste of time.

[Dimmesdale]

The soul cannot proceed without someone to guide it. - Origen

If you don't believe in any One, you'll Fall for any Thing.

[Dimmesdale]

The proud one does not know himself. If he knew himself and his own stupidity, he would not be conceited. - St. Mark the Hermit

Greatness cannot be got by by going through hoops, or pretense. Rather, greatness in and of itself is nothing -- except it be the Lord Himself. All other greatness, is a matter of courtesy and a matter of course.... Beyond that, it is futile to assign any significance to greatness, it is superfluous. Work is superfluous, vapid, and vain. If you were in any other position, you would achieve a different sort of position. We may praise glorious personalities. And we may pat our backs that we have worked hard and thus gone through a type of tribulation. But, this is all process. If we have the wherewithal to endeavor, what use is endeavor as a marker of distinction? The intellectual who is proud is really fool number one.

[Dimmesdale]

There is a plentiful multitude of words, but there is no profit from random and foolish talk. - St. Gregory the Wonderworker

Trying to find meaningful discourse on the empty waves of social media is like combing through a desert of prickly cacti which only serve to similarly bleed you dry. It is far more fruitful to stay in your lowly hermitage and learn from books, with the occasional excursion into the desert for salutary reminders of what it is, and is not.

[Dimmesdale]

If your thought is without any alloy of evil, free from passion, and alien from stain, you are blessed because you are clear of sight. - St. Gregory of Nyssa

When your soul has dominion over you, in the form of extending its wholesome symptom of consciousness all over your body, then you are rightly a temple of the Supersoul. Then you are that many-pillared hall that extends its corridors to eternal infinity, and passes over mundane matters with a benighted eye. You see, touch, taste, feel, nothing but truth. Even factual reality, cannot enter that fold when all is love-life and wholesomeness through.... You then truly are an alien to all stain, to all mess, to all fault.... Then in that beingness you touch, as like to like, with the truth of that which can only be. Your perception remains undimmed by the mundane, while living in the midst of the mundane, the lotus.

[Dimmesdale]

Silence is indeed the friend and helpmate of thought and invention. - St. Gregory the Wonderworker