Dr. Albert Rossi: Once again, this is Dr. Albert Rossi on this podcast, today with a very fascinating topic. I’m going to do an interview with Fr. Alexis Trader who is an Orthodox priest, was on Mount Athos for quite a while, Greece, and just a little background: Fr. Alexis was born in the United States, northern; educated here, Franklin and Marshall University as a chemist. Then he searched upon: Where would he go? Harvard, Yale, University of Chicago for a master’s degree? He went to the University of Chicago, and then went to St. Tikhon’s Monastery and became a monk, and Mt. Athos, and wrote a wonderful book called Ancient Christian Wisdom, and he has a webpage by the same title: www.ancientchristianwisdom[.com], so any of you who are interested in following up can go there. Again: Ancient Christian Wisdom.

The topic of today is overcoming impulse through relaxation and prayer. So we’ll talk about impulsivity and temptation and related topics. That said, Fr. Alexis, take off, please.

Fr. Alexis Trader: The issue of impulses is really the issue of control: wanting to control the world around us. So the antidote for this problem is simply to let go of control and to let God be in control. That’s why I’ll often advise simply stepping back, taking a breath, if possible getting on one’s knees and simply turning to Christ, turning to the Mother of God, turning to the saints, and asking for help in doing what seems so impossible at the moment.

I think two things are necessary. One is to let go, and one is to take action. One is to ask God for help, and the other part is to do our part in what we can to help and simply… I know there are times myself when I’ve found myself becoming angry with someone who’s done something which at the time I think is wrong, and just going away, taking a breath, getting on my knees before the icon, begging God for help. By the time I’m standing up, I’m already a different person, because I’m not trying to do it on my own. And when I’m not trying to do it on my own, the impulse already has decreased.

Dr. Rossi: “When I’m not trying to do it on my own, the impulse already has decreased.” We might say, from our limited human minds, however it all works, that’s God’s handiwork in our lives, God’s transformative energy redirecting, reformatting our impulses, and redirecting them in a different direction.

Fr. Alexis: Yeah, it’s also the sense of, all of a sudden, not being alone. It’s no longer me and my impulses, but it is my impulse and God with me. That automatically changes you. We all know that impulses come from the survival part of the brain, the center part of the brain. That’s not where we connect with God. Once we connect with God, once we ask for his help, once we touch his garment, a change takes place, and we can dare to really believe.

It’s daring to believe, but to believe that a miracle can take place. I don’t have to react in the way I’ve reacted a thousand times, because I’m not going to be the only one reacting. I will be working with God, seeking his help, and he can carry me at this point. It doesn’t take long. The impulse, of course, comes in a second—I want this cake, I want this thing, or I want to react in this way to this person.

We have to make some space, I feel, for ourselves. And that’s temporal, physical, physiological. And that space is so that God can act. It’s an opening; it’s an opening up instead of a kind of closing off. Whenever I want to do what this impulse is telling me I have to do, there’s already a limitation. The moment God comes into the equation, of course, it’s not a limitation but it’s an opening of a possibility, and a possibility of another end other than what we expected.

Dr. Rossi: For me, all of this is so, so vital, and I would submit for our listeners, Orthodox and non-Orthodox, I am, as the listeners know, a recovering alcoholic. I have a chip in my pocket for 27 years of sobriety. I go to my two meetings a week and love it, because I get support. But the essence of that 12-Step program—programs—is: God will do for me what I can’t do for myself. I can’t do this. I can’t. I’ve made so many resolutions—“I’m no longer going to drink!”—boom. “What am I doing drinking?” Well, I just… I’m powerless. I’m powerless, but not helpless. There was a lovely little distinction you made between letting go and then taking the action so we can. We would even say that taking those actions are directed by God in order that he can work through us and help us with our impulse control.

We were talking at lunch about St. Irenaeus’ sentence, “Relax in God’s hands.” And you have said that three or four different ways: Pause. Give space. We relax in his hands.

Fr. Alexis: Yeah, relax in his hands. Trust God. That sounds so very simple, but it really takes a faith, and that’s why, of course, when we hear “By your faith, you have been healed” so many times in the Gospel, it’s to trust that even though we feel that we’re going to fall straight down, fall on our faces, when we’re not the one being in control, the moment we decide to let God control, the moment we decide to let him take the reins, everything, everything just changes. One issue, however, that we have with impulses: right now, when there’s no impulse, we know exactly what to do. But when the impulse comes, how can we actually remember to do what we need to do.

Dr. Rossi: How can we remember when it comes? Foom! And it comes often when we’re at our morally weakest: blue with cold, tired at night, middle of the night—whew!

Fr. Alexis: And that is why the Fathers, I think, recommend again and again remembrance of God as really essential to the Christian life. I remember once I spoke with a monk on Athos, and he said, “You know, monks should never sin.” Never sin! And he said, “But we forget.”

Dr. Rossi: But we forget!

Fr. Alexis: But we forget, and so forgetfulness is the issue. Remembrance of God is the antidote. That’s why, at least as often as we can, we need to of course be praying, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me,” but not, I would suggest, not so much as a question, because many people say that and wonder, “Is he going to have mercy?”—

Dr. Rossi: Is he really going to do this?

Fr. Alexis: —“Will he have mercy on me?” but as a confession of faith: “Lord Jesus Christ has mercy on me.”

Dr. Rossi: “Thank you for having mercy on me.”

Fr. Alexis: “Thank you for having mercy on me. I believe you have mercy on me.” And when just hearing that, I think a certain kind of relaxation already takes place in the soul, when we feel that, yeah, I’m safe; I’m all right; I don’t need to react that way. Because in Christ’s presence, all of a sudden the need to fight back in anger, the need to grab that chocolate cake, the need to look at this inappropriate image—when we really feel his presence, all those things are “scevalized,” as the Apostle Paul says, just of no use. So obviously keeping one’s spiritual life up by the remembrance of God as much as possible. When one stumbles—because we all stumble—simply getting up as quickly as we can, getting back, seeing what we did wrong, looking at it, repenting of it, and asking God for help a second time. And just keep on doing that until eventually we’ll learn it. Sometimes I think it helps to actually even analyze back when we have slipped.

I had a person who would come to confession with me, and he had the issue of anger control problems. Just writing out, every time there was an anger issue, what took place before, what took place after, the whole episode. This person would get angry many, many times a day. After… I said, “Just write it all out for me. I don’t care how often it is.” Of course, the person said, “I’ll be writing sheets on sheets of paper to no one!” I said, “Write it out.” After a week, he went to having six, seven episodes a day to twice a week.

Dr. Rossi: Isn’t that interesting.

Fr. Alexis: What was the difference? “I didn’t want to have to write you.”

Dr. Rossi: Mm-hmm. There it is: “I didn’t want to have to write you.”

Fr. Alexis: He didn’t want to have to write me, but he said he always thought it was impossible to control that. So there is also in impulse control, a certain issue: how much do we really want to stop the impulse, as well. If that’s not present…

Dr. Rossi: It’s all about desire. Thank you for that.

Getting back to a point you made earlier, about the center of our brain—God is everywhere, but there’s a real obstruction there. We are all children of Adam and Eve. Scientists call that center part of our brain the reptilian brain. We all have it. It’s our darkness inside of us, and it’s going to implode, explode, leak when we expect it and when we don’t expect it. But the one expectation we need to keep in mind is we’re going to get impulses. We’re going to get dark temptations, and Satan is real. He is not in us, but he attacks us, and he attacks us through our center brain, our reptilian brain, through our darkness, through our weakness. So in the expectation, I don’t care how I feel or how many times I go to communion or how many times I pray, I’m still going to feel these impulses to do what I want to do, when I want to do it. I don’t give beans about anybody else. Then that’s the time to remember. We have to be remembering God when we’re not tempted so that when we are tempted we sort of have that habit set in place so we can click into that and do that.

Well, Fr. Alexis, I think we’ll wrap up. Any last words you want to say?

Fr. Alexis: Well, I think at the close there’s an impulse issue that we want to deal with. Firstly to be honest with ourselves, that we really do want to deal with it. And we want to be honest if we’re going to actually let God help us, let God into this problem. If we’re honest that we want to deal with our problem, and if we honestly let God into it, we have the solution. Christ is always the solution for every problem and every ill. We simply need to turn to him with all our heart, with all our mind, and wait for him.

Dr. Rossi: Thank you, Fr. Alexis. These moments have been very inspiring and energizing for me, and no doubt for you who are listening. I know that you on your end would thank him, though you don’t have the opportunity. And then life goes on. So for Ancient Faith Radio, this Dr. Albert Rossi. And I’ll remind me and you, the listener, that, hey, Ancient Faith exists around the globe by our prayers and by our financial support. It doesn’t have diocesan or institutional support; we support it. So I would ask me and you to give as we can and pray as we can.