САМООТВЕРЖЕНИЕ

1. The whole day should consist of a chain of acts of selflessness Please write down in your memory that from the minute you wake up to the minute you close your eyes to sleep, you must conduct your affairs all the time in such a way that the whole day represents a continuous chain of acts of self-sacrifice, and all for the sake of the Lord, before His face, for His glory. Acts of self-sacrifice are not a huge thing, but go among the ordinary affairs of everyday life and consist of internal decisions and turns of will. They can be under every word, look, movement and under every little thing. Their distinctive feature is not to allow self-indulgence in either big or small things, but to go against themselves in everything. I don’t know how to explain this to you from your everyday life with examples. If you please, arrange this yourself. Sit down, for example, on the sofa, the desire to lounge around and have fun comes - refuse and bring your limbs into tension, into line. It’s like this in everything. This is a small thing, but a ruble is made up of half rubles. By the end of the day, you will see how your conscience will tell you that you stood guard well. And consolation. And most importantly, once you get used to this on small things, you will be more willing to do the same on big things (1, p. 121). 2. About the narrow path of self-sacrifice Then you talk about your shortcomings, which all stem from the fact that you lack the determination to deny yourself anything... and that self-indulgence reigns in you. Meanwhile, in words you express the desire for salvation and ask for advice on how to lead life in order to be saved... You yourself see that for your salvation you need to overcome self-indulgence, just as the Savior commanded: If anyone wants to follow Me, let him deny himself 189... When you do this, then you will not have a question about how to live in order to be saved! For it will be clear and realized that you cannot be saved except by following the path of self-sacrifice... This is the narrow path leading to the stomach (3, p. 4). 3. About the attitude towards your “I” Your question is: what to do with “I”? – is very natural in a soul that has embarked on the path to self-knowledge. What should I do? Rub it and grind it into powder... Take the stone... the one that, having been torn away from the mountain, ground the idols into powder. The whole life is assigned to this... The method for this is simple: do not listen to “I” and go against it. His deeds are to trust his mind, follow his will, sympathize with his feelings. The most tangible manifestation of his life is self-pity... Renouncing all manifestations of the “I” and doing things contrary to him is his erasure... We heard the commandment about this from the lips of the Lord Himself: let him deny himself. Start observing yourself... and notice the manifestation of your “I”... and then - go against... in everything - both big and small (6, p. 66). 4. About self-indulgence and self-pity And the self-pity that you complain about is already dangerous and harmful. If you have to indulge yourself due to illness, then that’s okay. And if under the pretext of illness, then this is bad. Here you can see deceit in front of yourself - the most evil of all deceits. You seem to look at self-pity very lightly... considering cases of yielding to it as unimportant actions. You have a big mistake here. Cases of self-pity, of course, are insignificant, but the presence of this self-pity in the soul is not insignificant. Because what does it mean? This means that self-pleasure in you and I is stronger than pleasing God. We decided to do this and that, realizing that it was necessary in the matter of establishing a saving life and therefore pleasing to God, and then we refuse this for no other reason than because this refusal is more pleasant to us, body or soul. This means that this time we are moving from pleasing God to self-pleasing. Conscience sees our wrongness - and worries. She's right. I shouldn’t have tied myself down: I’ll do this and that in forms of asceticism, when I didn’t have the confidence to overcome myself every time (8, pp. 188–189). ...if anyone wants to follow Me, he must deny himself (Matthew 16:24). You might be interested in: