Acedia is sometimes simplistically referred to as spiritual laziness. It is usually considered a vice; something we have more control over than, say, an illness like depression. Its origins in the Christian monastic communities of the 3rd Century identified it as one of eight "bad thoughts", or obstacles to intensive contemplative practice. It later got thrown in with Sloth, one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Is it just a vice? Or is it part of the process of deepening spiritual practice?
Here are the "different ways in which acedia overcomes a monk" and takes him off the path, by John Cassian, one of the Desert Fathers:
"AND so the wretched soul, embarrassed by such contrivances of the enemy, is disturbed, until, worn out by the spirit of acedia, as by some strong battering ram, it either learns to sink into slumber, or, driven out from the confinement of its cell, accustoms itself to seek for consolation under these attacks in visiting some brother, only to be afterwards weakened the more by this remedy which it seeks for the present. For more frequently and more severely will the enemy attack one who, when the battle is joined, will as he well knows immediately turn his back, and whom he sees to look for safety neither in victory nor in fighting but in flight: until little by little he is drawn away from his cell, and begins to forget the object of his profession, which is nothing but meditation and contemplation of that divine purity which excels all things, and which can only be gained by silence and continually remaining in the cell, and by meditation, and so the soldier of Christ becomes a runaway from His service, and a deserter, and "entangles himself in secular business," without at all pleasing Him to whom he engaged himself."John Cassian shows us that acedia appears differently in different people. It could look like a total retreat from activity, or it could look like an increase in activity or distraction. One way or another, it pulls the practitioner away from meditation.
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| St John of the Cross |
It is a weaning process, in which God titrates a practitioner from dependency on pleasurable experiences in spiritual practice, burning away the more selfish motives for practice, leaving the practice of virtue for its own sake.
From the translation by Mirabai Starr:
"Beginners may become bored with the very things that are the most deeply spiritual, which are the things that belie sensory satisfaction. These souls are lazy. They are addicted to sweetness in spiritual practice, impatient when they cannot find it. For their own great good, God may withhold this gratification, to test and prove them. Yet if even one time they reach out in prayer and do not come away with the delights they crave, they may not want to return to it. They may abandon prayer altogether or go about it with serious reluctance...
It is clear how urgent the need beginners have for God to place them in the state of the adepts. And he does this. He leads them into the dark night. Here is where he weans them from the breasts of personal pleasure, through pure aridity and inner darkness. He removes all the gratuities and childish attachments and helps them acquire the virtues by very different means."He goes on to more clearly differentiate laziness / acedia from the Dark Night:
"Internal aridities may not always be the result of the dark night of the soul. Sometimes they arise from transgressions and imperfections, or from laziness and apathy, or from some other kind of bad humor or bodily weakness."
On the path of deepening practice, there is also a pain and sadness for the loss of her former abilities. This "purifying dryness holds within itself a longing, a passionate concern, and grief about not serving God."
This is caring about not caring. In acedia, all caring is absent.
