I hope I find better...
this comes from
http://www.pravmir.com/printer_56.html ... I found it interesting..
The Holy Scriptures tell us that the source of all the maladies of mankind was the "fall." Adam and Eve (Zoe) were created and placed in a Garden of Delight. They were created in the image and the likeness of the God that created them. Adam and Eve lived in a near perfect relationship with each other and all the universe. When they contemplated each other, they saw God himself. They each saw a heart and a soul that were holy, pure and grace-filled; a will fixed on God's purposes; and a mind that shone with a brilliance, and an illumination that was surpassed only by God himself - and unencumbered by the intellect and the reasoning power. It was "the light of the knowledge and the glory of God."
When God breathed into Adam the breath of life, the energy of the Holy Spirit, Adam became a living soul. He was made of much more that the dust of the ground (which constituted his body
he was also made of the Image and Likeness of God (without having any "divine spark" whatsoever) - he therefore possessed a spirit aspect. Living on the earth, he also lived in heaven, walking and communing with God. Then came the fall.
At this point it is important to know that the soul contains the body - the body does not contain or imprison the soul. The body is within the soul. The soul acts through the body. The fathers say that it is the soul that needs to be cured because of Adam and Eve's disobedience and self - ish act. To understand why this is so, we have to take a closer look at the soul's makeup.
The soul, according the Fathers, has essence and energy (created by God). The essence of the soul is the heart. The energy of the soul is the mind (or the nous). The mind, or the nous, is also the "eye of the heart;" the mind's natural "resting place" is in the heart, at its very core. The nous operates through the thoughts.
Unfortunately, the word "nous" can be very confusing. In the biblical/patristic tradition the nous can define the heart, the soul, or the mind. However, men like Metropolitan Herotheos Vlachos, are doing much to unravel the confusion and the sometimes-cloudy definitions that one encounters when trying to understand the true nature of man according to the Fathers.
So, to avoid confusion, the soul is defined as the spiritual element of man's existence; the heart as the essence of the soul; and the nous (mind) as the energy of the soul which operates through the thoughts, and exists at the heart's very center as the "eye of the heart." The Fathers teach that man is an "unconfused union" of body and soul. They also teach that the center of this union is the heart.
The natural state of man then, when first created by God, was that he enjoyed the vision of God (theoria); his mind (nous) was illumined with the unceasing knowledge of God; and his mind was also united to his heart - at its very center. It was the heart's "eye." Separated from reason, it could concern itself with the thing of God.
At the fall, the nous became darkened and separated from Adam's heart. The mind became identified with the reason and the intellect. Since the mind operates through the thoughts(it is not the thoughts) they began to act in the reason. Because of this, bodily corruption; enslavement to the passions; confused thinking and thoughts resulting from imaginings, fantasies, stimulation of the senses, and a malfunctioning reason, caused a frightening disease - separation from God and physical and spiritual death. The soul needs to be cured. When our savior, Jesus Christ, came, conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the ever-virgin theotokos, He brought the cure - the Church as hospital, and the sacraments and the true ascetic life as remedies.
It can now be easily understood why man suffers from such maladies as depression and also how these maladies can be cured. Man must remove the nous from its unnatural association with the reason and bring it back to its first love, the heart, where it can once again be the center, the "eye."
The nous must be illumined and thereby healed. The reason for this is found in an Old Testament Hebrew word that is translated "mind." The word is KALYAW and it is used for "interior self," "mind," "kidney," "reins." In other words, the nous, like a kidney, is a filter. It guards the heart from any outward pollution that may come into it; and it guards the thoughts and actions from the defilements that arise from within the heart. And like the reins on a horse, the nous directs the human condition to conform to the things of God.
) Especially about our mind being like a young child that we need to protect.......several years back, I decided not to read the newspaper or watch the news unless I had a specific intention to intercede for whatever I read. I sort of came to feel that I had no business "feeding" on that stuff, it debilitated me so, unless I was on a mission, so to speak, to change it--otherwise I stayed all away. I don't think I can bear the burdens of the world on my shoulders, I have to leave that to God.
