Блудная брань

Just as from the seed of the sweat of fasting the ear of chastity grows, so from satiety - debauchery, and from satiety - uncleanness. With a hungry and humble belly, shameful thoughts cannot penetrate into the soul. Every food we consume adds moisture and becomes a natural strength within us. And when the instrumental members, due to the tension of the whole body occurring in them, become full, and at the same time you happen to see something bodily or something is involuntarily aroused in the heart along with a thought, then from the thought something pleasant suddenly begins to move and spreads throughout the whole body. Although the mind of a chaste and immaculate person is strong in his thoughts, yet by this sensation that occurs in his members, his mind is immediately indignant, and, as if from some high place, he descends from the place on which he stands; and the holiness of his thoughts wavers, and his bright chastity is desecrated by the rebellion of passions that entered the heart when the members were inflamed. Then half of his strength is exhausted, which is why it can be said that he forgets the first goal of his hope, and, before entering into the struggle, without a struggle he turns out to be a captive, without the efforts of his enemies he becomes subject to the lust of the weak flesh. The will of a good person is forced to do all this by a strong desire for constant satiation. Even though he remained firmly in the haven of chastity, satiety inclines him to indulge in what he would never want to allow into his heart. And as soon as one thought falls asleep, it is surrounded by a gathering of thoughts containing empty and shameful dreams, and this pure bed makes it a den of fornication and a disgrace of visions. When, in the rapture of his thoughts, he joins in conversation with them, he will defile his venerable members even without the approach of his wife. What kind of sea is agitated and boils as much from a storm as the mind, subjected to the force of the waves, is troubled by the satiation of the belly stirred up against it by the sea of ​​its flesh? And the emptiness of our belly and thoughts makes us a deserted country, undisturbed by thoughts and silent from all rebellious thoughts. The belly filled with satiety is the realm of ghosts; and satiety makes him the four gates for absurd dreams, although we will be alone in the desert. For they say that satiety desires many things. When you are honored with Divine grace and spiritual dispassion, then understand that it is not due to the non-appearance of ugly thoughts in you, or the non-excitation of carnal thoughts (it is impossible for anyone to live without them), nor due to thoughts that are conveniently overcome by you (because, of course, the thought is not defiled or disturbed by them, no matter how extremely lofty it may be), but because of the thoughts of better mental activity, the mind is not left in the need to carry on with them abuse and destroy them; but, as soon as a thought penetrates, the mind rapaciously admires the approach to them by some force, outside the will, which, by skill and grace, holds the leaven inside the heart, which is the abode of the mind. When your body is tamed by abstinence, vigilance and attentiveness of silence (i.e., attentive (diligent) silence), but you feel that your body, without natural movement, is in the acuteness of lustful passion, then know that you are tempted by the thought of pride. Therefore, mix ashes into your food, stick your belly to the ground and examine what you have been thinking about, understand the change in your nature and your unnatural deeds, and then, perhaps, God will have mercy on you, send you light so that you can learn humility and your evil will not grow in you. Therefore, we will not stop striving and making efforts until we see repentance in ourselves, we gain humility and our heart rests in God. Movement in the lower members of the body, which occurs without intensified thoughts of senseless voluptuousness, which is excited with inflammation and involuntarily drags the soul into disaster, is, without a doubt, a consequence of the satiety of the belly. If the belly observes, perhaps, moderation in food, but the members involuntarily, in any way, begin to move, then know that the source of passion is in the body itself. And in this struggle, consider for yourself a strong and insurmountable weapon - to move away from the sight of women, because the enemy cannot produce in us what nature is able to do with its strength. For do not think that nature forgets what was naturally sown into it by God for the birth of children and for the testing of those who are in this feat. But moving away from objects of desire mortifies lust in the members, produces oblivion about it and destroys it. Thoughts about objects that are distant are different, they come only in thoughts and produce a slight and barely perceptible movement. The thoughts that, by the vision of an object, plunge the mind into self-forgetfulness, excite passions by the proximity (of the object), feed lust in a person, like oil fuels the burning of a lamp, ignite a passion that is already dead and extinguished, and disturb the abyss of the body with the movement of the ship of thought. That natural movement that lives in us strictly for the sake of childbearing, without the addition of anything from the outside, cannot confuse our will and distract it from purity and disturb chastity, because God did not give nature the power to overcome the good will rushing towards Him. But when someone is excited either by irritability or lust, then it is not a natural force that forces him to go beyond the limits of nature and step out of his duties, but what we add to nature at our own discretion. Whatever God created, He created everything beautifully and proportionately. And as long as the measure of natural proportionality is correctly preserved in us, natural movements cannot force us to deviate from the path (of chastity); on the contrary, only decorous movements are aroused in the body, which only let us know that there is a natural passion in us, but do not provoke passion and confusion, thereby preventing the flow of chastity, and do not darken the mind with irritability and do not lead from a peaceful state to an angry state. If we sometimes get carried away by the sensual (from which irritability usually takes on an unnatural desire) and indulge in either eating or drinking in excess of measure, or getting close to women and looking at them, or talking about them, which ignites and quickly spreads the fire of lust in the body, then we change our natural meekness into ferocity, or because of the abundance of moisture in the body, or because visions of different things. Sometimes there is a movement in the members due to God’s permission for our conceit, and it is no longer the same as the one indicated above. For we call those battles free, and in them the path of common nature is visible. We know about this battle, which happens as a result of being allowed to do so because of our conceit, that when we have been attentive to ourselves for a long time and have worked, even considering ourselves to be somewhat successful, we are allowed to endure this battle in order to learn humility. Other battles, which are beyond our strength without this reason, come from our laziness. For nature, when through gluttony it accepts into itself some addition to the sensual, no longer agrees to maintain the order that was established at its creation. Whoever voluntarily rejected sorrows (asceticism) and the endless stay in the cell is forced to love sins. For without sorrows we cannot free ourselves from the deceptions of wisdom. To the extent that these labors increase, the battles decrease, because sorrows and troubles kill voluptuousness in passions, and peace nourishes and increases them.