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I’m gratified to hear that you’ve been able to extract from your academic studies some useful spiritual guidance. What’s the point otherwise of a religion major? You should be thankful that there are professors at your university who, even if they do not encourage this extraction, at least do not seek to prevent it.
The most important of the “operational commonalities” among the several masters you mention, who are otherwise so widely divided in time, place, and tradition, is the stress they place on attention—what the Hesychast teachers call nepsis. Practically speaking, this is the key to your finding a lasting solution to your personal battles with concupiscence. It is attention, and attention alone, that will allow you to “go behind” the now-unconscious, image-making forces of your mind. And it is there, and there alone, that you will find the power to dispel the elements of fantasy before they cohere and are projected upon the mirror of your soul. As the neptic Fathers stress repeatedly, a resolve put in place only after you have begun to “couple” with the images is much too “late” and will always be defeated, leading hence to a vicious circle of guilt and weakened resolve in the future.
All these latter efforts and reactions are but the surface of a pool into which you must eventually dive, and into which we can very readily dive, if we will, each time the Name is pronounced with awareness.