I have another story close to what you have told us here:
Once there was a young woman standing on the bank of the river, and tow monks had to do the same. But she could not avoid without help.
Their vow strictly prohibited them to approach or touch women, and the young monk demonstratively turned away from her. The old monk meanwhile approached the woman, lifted her & carried her through the river & left her there. The two monks proceeded the whole remaining way in silence, but very close to their monastery which they almost reached by that time, the young monk lost control of himself: “How could you touch a woman?! You have given a vow!” To which the old monk answered quitely: “It’s strange, I carried her through the river & left her there, but you are still carrying her…”

It makes sense: Just as vultures are attracted to the corruption and smell of death in an ordinary dead body, so are the righteous drawn to the incorrupt body of our Lord.

As for being tempted and being impure, I think we are always tempted, no matter how pure we are. The pure deflect temptations without effort. This even happend with us regular folk. When you go to a store, you CAN steal, but most of us so not even consider it, or feel any desire to do so. We were presented with a temptation, but did not “feel” it.

With sexual temptation, many of us feel different degrees of desire and must repeall the temptation with differing degrees of effort. I remember a story about this.

Two monks were walking back to their cells after selling basckets. A prostitute was walking towards them. The younger monk hid his face in his cowl, so as not to see her, and be tempted. The older monk, his spiritual father, greeted the woman as he passed by. The younger one inwardly judged his father, thinking that he had lusted. The older one, knowing this, asked his son what he had just seen. The younger one stammered an answer, and the old man replied that as for himself, he dod not know if the person who had just passed was a man or a woman!

Both monks stayed free from sin, but the older one was free from the passion which leads to sin.

Our dead, rotting flesh clings to us (“Who will save me from this body of death?!” cries St. Paul) It must either be amputated or healed and restored to life, because the stench of rotting flesh attracts scavenging and predatory birds. In other words, our spiritual weaknesses attract temptation, demons, and other destructive things into our lives.

What is dead is fit only to be picked apart by the eagles or cast into the fire and burned.

“For wherever the carcass is, there the eagles will be gathered together.” Matthew 24:28

I think I may now understand what Father Seraphim was saying (and I hope he corrects me if I have missed something). Returning to my analogy of birds flying overhead as temptations: If the birds are not allowed to land in our tree they do not become sins, but simply something to be guarded against. If however it is not a single bird that occasionally flies over the tree, but a whole flock that is continuously gathering and circling overhead, then that is an indication that there is something in the tree, itself, that is attracting them. Whatever it is, whether it be rot within the branches or some unholy fruit that the branch is bearing, the branches that are attracting the birds must be pruned.

So it is not that the temptations themselves are sin and unrighteousness but the fact that continuous and constant distraction and harassment by particular temptations indicates a sinful weakness and lack of righteousness in ourselves that must be acknowledged and eliminated.

This is not something that we can really understand just by being told about it or applying rational categories. The fathers speak from the real experience of attention to themselves, and they can only be really understood by being similarly attentive, so the rest of us to some extent simply have to trust them, and try not to sin…

But what I would next ask about the quote is at which point are we talking temptation and which point sin? My guess is that the provocation is temptation and our responses of coupling and assent are the sin. “Captivity and passion grown habitual and continuous” are the results of sin and the road to death.

First there is provocation; then a coupling with the provocation; then assent to it; then captivity to it; then passion,grown habitual and continuous. This is how the holy fathers describe the stages through which the devil gets the better of us.”

St. Philotheos of Sinai, Forty Texts on Watchfulness #34

http://www.orthodox.net/gleanings/temptation.html

Father, Bless,
I have a couple of questions about this:

1)I know you are not saying that to have any temptation is a sign of unrighteousness, since our Lord was tempted—so what would make a temptation to sexual lust more of a sign of unrighteousness than other type of temptation? Or are you saying that to be *persistently* tempted by these types of sins is the sign of a lack of righteousness?

2)I have heard it said “You cannot help having birds fly over your head but you can keep them from building nests in your hair” So is a thought always a sin or is it the dwelling on a thought that makes a temptation become a sin?

Thank You,
Deborah