61. Блюдение слуха и зрения. Как уничтожать худые впечатления видимого и слышимого

Last time I told you about the reasons for arousing passionate thoughts, feelings and desires, that you should not blame them. I will now tell you a few words about them. Passionate thoughts, and behind them the same feelings and wishes, sometimes by themselves, you don’t know how, arise in the soul. But for the most part they are generated under the influence of external impressions. The things, persons and events encountered, by their nature, excite thoughts in the person who meets them. Good thoughts give birth to good thoughts, bad thoughts give birth to bad ones. But the opposite can also happen: good thoughts will give rise to bad thoughts, and bad thoughts will give rise to good ones. It all depends on the constant or random mood of the greeter. Consequently, the answer lies entirely with him. How can this be? First: do not give free rein to your senses, especially your eyes and ears. Don’t allow yourself to see everything, hear everything, and touch everything indiscriminately. Our feelings are like windows or doors, and more like a scoop. Whoever opens the windows and lets in bad air does something bad. Whoever opens the doors and allows all kinds of livestock to enter his home cannot be free from reproach. But what would you say about someone who, taking a scoop - a cup or mug - would walk through dirty and unclean puddles, scoop into them and drench himself with it? What can be more stupid than this? But isn’t this what someone does who stops with curiosity before the bad and listens to unkind speeches?! Through this he will pick up unkind thoughts, from them he will move on to unkind feelings and wishes - and he will walk around all frightened, as if in some kind of fog. So, prudence and the duty of self-preservation (inner peace) require not to look at everything, not to listen to everything, and not to touch everything that one involuntarily encounters. Little by little it will seem that those who can stir up passions must turn their eyes away from it, close their ears, or see without seeing and hearing without hearing. Second: it happens that something gives rise to a bad impression and gives rise to bad thoughts - we must immediately rush to erase the impression and stop thoughts in the way shown before, of course, by stopping the influx of impressions in advance. Remaining under a bad impression or leaving it to be erased and the restoration of spiritual peace until another time is unreasonable. Remaining under the impression, we will willingly contribute to the disposition of bad thoughts and feelings, and by leaving this bad thing in ourselves for a long time, we give it the opportunity to take deeper roots and then resist expulsion and purification longer, if not completely take over the soul. Third: having once experienced a bad impression from something, you should not arbitrarily allow yourself to encounter again the objects that produced it. This will mean that the one who does this loves to enjoy evil and, therefore, is unclean to the depths of his heart. If any need forces you to meet him, you must arm yourself in advance and prepare your heart to resist the bad impression and not allow it to reach you. Attention, increased self-resistance and prayer will make this possible. Fourth: I have already written to you that you should reinterpret everything that you encounter and may encounter in a spiritual sense. This must also be done in relation to objects of evil significance. After this, when you meet them, you will perceive not bad, but good thoughts, just as Saint Ephraim the Syrian, having met an immodest, dressed-up beauty, said to his disciples: “Do you see how she cares to decorate her body, which will soon be dust? How can we not take care of decorating the immortal soul?” These rules are enough. It would be necessary to indicate such accidents that are unfavorable for your inner life in your everyday life. But I believe that there are none in your family or in your kinship. You can meet them only outside the home, for example, in the society in which you happened to be not too recently, as you wrote. Regarding such accidents, please adhere to what is said in the third paragraph. Then bring all the similar ones that you encounter later under it. And in general, make it a law to measure what is permissible by the effect it produces inside. What creates, allow yourself, and what upsets, do not allow under any circumstances. Who, being in his right mind, would stretch out his hand to a glass of drink that, as he knows, has been infused with poison?! I don’t have the idea that you need to constrain yourself so much that you will look like a recluse. But I just want to make you determined not to draw anything harmful to your spirit after you have become convinced that only life in the spirit is real life, and have not only been convinced of this, but also experienced it. You might be interested in: