ДЕЛА ЖИТЕЙСКИЕ

1. Everyday affairs in a being of an unearthly nature You ask: are you not sinning by continuing to bear the yoke of authority? No. You are obliged to carry it until your superiors say enough is enough. Since it not only does not say this, but, on the contrary, imposes a new task on you, knowing your bodily infirmities, then it is not at all on your mind to consider the question: should you give up work (1, p. 5)? There is no price for internal work, and nothing should be preferred to it, but for the sake of it, it would be possible to leave the labors that are lying and imposed on you in such a case when these labors would interfere with him and ruin him. But this cannot be said. You have an unceasing prayer to the Lord. Didn't current affairs interfere with her formation? One must assume that they will not interfere if a small fraction is added to them. These things are only seemingly mundane, but in essence they are of an unearthly nature. Therefore, by working on them, it seems that one can avoid being separated from the Lord. Moreover, the soul’s being with the Lord, which is the whole essence of internal activity, does not depend on us. The Lord visits the soul, it is with Him, and plays before Him, and is warmed by Him. As soon as the Lord departs, the soul becomes empty and it is not at all in its power to bring back the Good Visitor of souls to itself. But the Lord departs, torturing the soul; but it happens that he leaves, punishing not for external deeds, but for something accepted by the soul inside. When the Lord departs, torturing the soul, then when it screams, He soon turns back. And when he departs, punishing, it is not soon, until the soul recognizes the sin, and repents, and mourns, and suffers penance. Now, if you leave the matter and thereby go against the will of the Lord, do you think that He will remain with your soul? If it is a sin against Him and He becomes angry, He will go away and not return. And it will happen that what is done for the benefit of internal work will turn to its detriment and even to its complete destruction. So, in my opinion, it’s better to pull the yoke until the owner unharnesses it against your will (1, pp. 5–6). 2. It is necessary to avoid judgment, which is not deeds, but the manner of doing them. We need to take care of one thing so that all this becomes less of a hassle... I believe that it is possible, despite all the troubles, to keep your soul not fussy. For the great saints also stood in line and were busy? Afanasy of Athos died on the building. It became possible to combine construction chores with inner life. How? If you please, manage it yourself. I think we need to adjust ourselves in such a way that, without fuss, we do what is possible... and, while doing one thing, don’t get ahead of ourselves and take dozens of other things into our heads. When the matter is determined, then you can take your attention away from it and keep it where it should be while the matter is in progress and comes to an end. When it ends and you need to start something else, then think about it... and, having thought it over and put it into action, again distract attention from it and keep it at home. And so on. Matins has begun... Well, let your soul be at Matins, don’t let it outside the church. After Matins, you need to order lunch!.. Ordered - and that’s the end... And that’s it. It is not the deeds that constitute mastery, but the manner in which they are performed. When one thing is being done, and hundreds are crowding in your head... You need to get rid of everything, and do one thing, and, moreover, do it with your hands, but keep your mind in its proper place. We need to learn all this and, it seems, we can learn it (1, p. 20). 3. Do ordinary things with your body, but always be with the Lord in spirit Try to sort out your thoughts in life. Look for such a mood that you can do ordinary things with your body, but always be with the Lord in spirit. The merciful Lord gives care, according to which everything is done in due time, but nothing bothers or languishes. Seek, ask, and it will be given (1, p. 155). 4. Needs and worries that are destructive to the spiritual order can be overcome by surrendering oneself to the will of God; by separating vanity, you can do the will of God every minute Needs and worries are truly destructive to the spiritual order, but this destructive power of them can be cut off by surrendering oneself to the will of God. This does not mean that you sit with folded hands and wait for what God will give, but come up with ways and put them into action, and leave the success of everything to God’s dispensation, without predetermining or building castles in the air and standing ready to graciously accept whatever God pleases to send. You must have care, but to be tormented and tormented by the heart until it is torn apart is a sin, for there is no faith, and hope, and obedience to God (1, pp. 244–245). The affairs of the service are not vanity, they are God’s affairs. Just always do them for God, and not for anything else. Likewise, in your family life you have a duty... Fulfilling it is not vanity. Just do such things with the consciousness that you are doing the will of God. Vanity – activities to satisfy passions, also unnecessary and useless. Calculate and separate the vanity from the non-vanity in your life - and you will see that among them you can do the will of God every minute. Add: create them for the glory of God. So you will be a saint or one seeking holiness (1, pp. 247–248). 5. Troubles don’t get in the way of pleasing God. Writing to you or someone else is a pleasant rest for me during my always monotonous activities (1, p. 154). 6. How to treat guests Sh...ka did well that she did not cancel her rule when visiting. He will learn to pray and will successfully resist all temptations throughout his life. This immobility, despite changes in the external situation, in the rules of prayer is a great treasure for those who are zealous for spiritual life (2, p. 160). The guests scattered you. I feel sorry for you. But try to accept them as messengers of God and concern for their contentment and pleasure in being with you [so lead. – Ed.], as if you personally served the Lord Himself, and you will always be with the Lord. One can acquire the skill of performing everything required by the flow of affairs as a service of God, for God sees everything everywhere and everything and does not let any turning of thought to Him go unnoticed (2, p. 160). 7. How to deal with troubles with others The science is simple, but difficult to learn. It is precisely in unpleasant cases that have given rise to unpleasant feelings against others that one should neither speak nor act. You need to calm down first and completely remove the trouble from your heart so that there is no trace of it. Nothing more is required. Then both speech and business will go well. You can then speak sternly and strictly, even scoldingly, and the speech will not produce a bad effect; for the spirit in her will not be irritable, but peaceful and loving. Let me now take a lesson from that incident. Sit down and look at what you should think about in order to erase the unpleasant feeling... and then act accordingly (2, p. 178). You think badly of those fathers. This is the source of unpleasant feelings towards them. Learn to think well of them and arouse in yourself feelings of respect for them. Be sure to do this, bring yourself to the level of feeling for them that you have for any respected person, and keep this feeling... and walk with it. Then there will be no troubles. That’s how you should be disposed. What do you care about their behavior?! There are bosses - and read them (2, p. 179). 8. How to approach everyday affairs so that they do not distract, but are combined with serving God What to do without anything? There will be sinful idleness. And you need to work something, and do some chores around the house. This is your duty. And external relations cannot be stopped. We must hold them, and hold them properly. This is the duty of human coexistence. But all such matters and activities can and should be done in such a way that they do not discourage thoughts of God (9, pp. 178–179). We have a belief, and it is almost universal, that as soon as you do anything around the house or outside it, you are already stepping out of the realm of divine affairs and pleasing to God. That’s why when a desire to live pleasing to God arises or the conversation comes up about it, they usually couple it with the thought that if this is the case, then run away from society, run away from home - into the desert, into the forest. Meanwhile, both of these are wrong. Everyday and social affairs, on which the standing of houses and societies depends, are matters determined by God, and their fulfillment is not running away into an area unpleasing, but is walking in divine affairs. Having such an incorrect belief, everyone does so that in everyday and social matters they have no concern whatsoever about thinking about God. I see that this belief has a hold on you too. Please, throw it away and become convinced that everything you do at home and outside, in community affairs, as a daughter, as a sister, as a Muscovite now, is Divine and pleasing to God. For everything related to this has special commandments. How will fulfilling the commandments be displeasing to God? By your belief, you definitely make them displeasing to God, because you do not fulfill them with the disposition with which God wants them to be fulfilled. Divine things are not done in God's way. They go to waste and also take the mind away from God. Correct this and from now on begin to do all such things with the consciousness that to do so is a commandment, and do them as if you are fulfilling the commandments of God. When you tune in this way, not a single thing in life will distance your thoughts from God, but, on the contrary, will bring you closer to Him. We are all servants of God. He has assigned to each his own place and task and watches how everyone fulfills it. He is everywhere. And He is watching over you. Keep this in mind and do every task as if it were entrusted to you directly from God, no matter what it is. So do things around the house. And when someone comes from outside or you yourself go outside, keep in mind in the first case that God sent you that person and is seeing whether you will accept him in God’s way and treat him, and in the second - that God has entrusted you with a task outside the house and is seeing whether you will do it the way He wants you to do it. If you set yourself up this way, then nothing at home or outside the home will distract your mind from God, but, on the contrary, will keep you close to Him, with the consideration of how to do something pleasing to God. You will do everything with the fear of God, and this fear will support relentless attention to God (9, pp. 179–180). And what kind of affairs, within the family and outside it, are pleasing to God, please understand this thoroughly by taking for your guidance the books in which the affairs that must be done here are set out. Understand thoroughly in order to separate from the worthy in the current everyday and social order everything that is brought here by vanity, passions, man-pleasing and world-pleasing (9, p. 180). That every work recognized as worthy must be done with all diligence - this is a duty protected by a terrible punishment: cursed is everyone who does the work of God with negligence. But care or over-concern, which wears out the heart and does not give it peace, is the disease of the fallen, who has taken upon himself to arrange his own destiny and rushes about in all directions. She breaks up her thoughts and doesn’t allow them to concentrate even on the matter she’s busy about. So, if you please, delve into it, and if you find that you are sometimes overcome by this concern, take the trouble to drive it away and not let it go. Have zeal for your deeds and, doing them with all diligence, expect success from God, dedicating the work itself to Him, no matter how small it may be, and suppress worries. Do this - and your activities and everyday affairs will not distract you from God (9, p. 181). 9. How to turn everyday affairs and things into spiritual benefit You have not mentioned one more thing that can and does distract the mind from God. This is that every external thing that affects the senses attracts our attention and attempts to tear it away from God. But there is also a certain technique here, in which visible things will not distract, but will attract to God. How is this possible? You need to reinterpret all the things that happen before your eyes in a spiritual sense, and fill this reinterpretation into your mind in such a way that when you look at a thing, the eye sees a sensual thing, and the mind contemplates spiritual truth. For example, you see stains on a white dress and feel how unpleasant and pathetic it is to encounter it. Interpret this to mean how pitiful and unpleasant it must be for the Lord, the Angels and the saints to see the stains of sin on our soul, whitened by creation in the image of God, by rebirth in the font of Baptism or by washing in the tears of Repentance. Do you hear that small children, left alone, make a fuss, noise and uproar? Interpret this to mean what noise and uproar arises in our soul when attention is turned away from it towards God with the fear of God. You smell the scent of a rose or something else - and you are pleased, but when you encounter a bad smell, you turn away and hold your nose. Interpret it this way: every soul emits its own smell 34: good - good, passionate - bad. Angels of God and saints, and often earthly righteous people smell this smell and rejoice over good things, but mourn about bad things. I am telling you this only as an example, but every thing can give rise to different spiritual thoughts, one has one, another has another. As you find something more suitable for yourself, reinterpret everything that surrounds you and that you might encounter in addition. Start with the house and reinterpret everything in it: the house itself, the walls, the roof, the foundation, windows, stoves, tables, mirrors, chairs and other things. Go to the residents and reinterpret parents, children, brothers and sisters, relatives, servants, visitors, etc. Reinterpret the usual course of life - getting up, health, lunch, work, absences, returns, tea drinking, treats, singing, day, night, sleep, etc., etc. Take St. Tikhon again as an aid. He has as many as four books of such reinterpretations written under the name: Spiritual Treasure, Gathered from the World. Take it and read it. After reading and seeing how he does it, you will learn to do the same yourself. Or even directly assimilate his interpretations (9, pp. 184–186). If, perhaps, reading those books seems too long to you, then he also has an abbreviated reinterpretation under the title: Chance and spiritual reasoning from that (Vol. 2). Here he reinterpreted 176 cases, each briefly. And it will cost you little effort to review them with attention, but they cover everything that you need to reinterpret. However, as you know, just be sure to do as you are asked. When you do this, then every thing will be for you like a holy book or like an article in a book. Then every thing will lead you to the thought of God, like every activity and deed. And you will walk among the sensory world as in the spiritual realm. Everything will talk to you about God and maintain your attention to Him. If every time you add to this reminder the fear of God and reverence for His greatness, then what other teachers and educators do you need?! But, of course, it takes work and tension, both mental and heartfelt. And don't feel sorry for yourself. If you feel sorry for yourself, you will destroy yourself. If you don’t regret it, you will save it. Give up that wrongful practice that often attacks almost everyone - that we do not spare labor for any task, but we spare it for the work of salvation. We think that all we have to do is think and want - and everything is ready. But in reality this is not the case. The work of salvation is the first work. Therefore, it is also the most difficult. According to the importance of business and work. Work hard, for the Lord's sake! You are about to see the fruit. If you don’t work, you’ll be left with nothing and will be worthless. Deliver you, Lord, from this (9, pp. 186–187)! 10. How to combine everyday affairs with serving God The holidays are over. Now let's get down to business. To those who are worldly - for worldly things, and to those who have renounced worldly things - for heavenly things. You and Blueberry are half worldly and half worldly. How to walk along this middle?! A friend of the world is an enemy of God. There is no middle ground. Meanwhile, it is impossible to live without everyday and worldly affairs. How can this be? It is necessary to touch one side only apparently without the heart. Which side should I choose for this? Of course, everyday and worldly. And then she will cease to be like that in spirit (8, pp. 131–132). 11. While doing ordinary things with the body, one must always be with the Lord in spirit Try to sort out your thoughts in life. Look for such a mood to do ordinary things with your body, but always be with the Lord in spirit. The merciful Lord gives care, according to which everything is done in due time, but nothing bothers or languishes. Seek, ask, and it will be given (8, p. 217). 12. About the improvement of everyday affairs and troubles, which are not destructive for spiritual life And it’s good that you decide to humble yourself a little in external life. A good cause! Add to this the conduct of your affairs from now on, so that you have time for prayer and edifying reading. The best time is morning and evening hours... If you want, you can arrange this. Also, try to worry about things externally, without internal fussiness and seething thoughts and feelings. When you settle in this way, your troubles will build you up and not ruin you (5, p. 81). The Apostle says: We are the fragrance of Christ (2 Cor. 2:15) (9, p. 185). You might be interested in: