SO GOOD QUOTES

Sadness (lupe) appears to be a state of soul which, beside the simple meaning of the word, involves discouragement, debility, psychic heaviness and sorrow, dejection, distress, oppression, and depression most often accompanied by anxiety and even with anguish.

This condition can have many causes, but it always involves a pathological reaction of the soul’s irascible (thumos) and/or despairing faculty (epithumia), and as such is essentially tied to concupiscence or anger. ‘Sadness,’ Evagrius tells us, ‘tends to come up at times because of the deprivation of one’s desires (steresis ton epithumion). On other occasions, it accompanies anger. But it can also be a result of the direct action of demons on the soul, or it may even arise for no apparent reason.

First Cause—The Frustration of Desires

Evagrius tells us ‘Sadness is formed from an unsatisfied carnal desire.’ St. John Cassian likewise notes that sadness ‘sometimes results when we see ourselves deceived with regard to some hope,’ and that one of its chief kinds follows from ‘a desire that has been thwarted.’ In that ‘every desire is tied to a passion,’ every passion is prone to produce sadness. According to Evagrius: ‘whoever loves the world will often be sad.’

Mental Disorders & Spiritual Healing: Teachings from the Early Christian East
Jean-Claude Larchet