Of this spirit of jealousy the Lord says: "Fire has come to bring in" (Luke 12:49). The Apostle commands not to quench the spirit (1 Thess. 5:19) and testifies of himself: "With zeal I persecute" (Phil. 3:14). And the Holy Fathers call it variously: seeking, offering, diligence, diligence, warmth of spirit and burning, and simply zeal.

Judging by this great importance and great significance of zeal, the first task of a Christian ascetic should be to preserve this zeal and zeal as the source of a God-pleasing life. To preserve, therefore, to use a special kind of methods and exercises that contribute to this. Which ones? Zeal must be preserved in the same way as it was born, and it was born of an inner change of heart, under the invisible action of God's grace.

The inner, invisible ascent of our spirit to zeal began with a grace-filled awakening and ended with a resolute vow to walk unswervingly in the will of God. In this ascent, the strictest gradualness was observed. The sinful man, who lives entirely outside and is therefore called external, is squeezed within himself by the grace that has come, and here, as if awakened from a dream, he beholds a completely new world, hitherto unknown to him. This is the first impulse, after which, with the help of God, through various thoughts and feelings, he is gradually freed from the first world, passes into the next, and prostrates himself before his King and Lord, offering Him an oath to be His servant forever. Thus, he who wishes to keep his zeal unquenchable must: a) dwell within, b) behold the new world, and c) stand in those feelings and thoughts through which, as it were, he ascended to the foot of the Throne of the Lord, as if on the steps of a ladder.

This is what should be the unceasing exercise, podvig and work of a Christian ascetic!

A. Inward-abiding

When a hen, having found grain, lets her cubs know about it, then they all, wherever they are, fly to her and gather with their beaks to the point where the beak is. In the same way, when Divine grace acts upon a person in his heart, then his spirit penetrates there with its consciousness, and after it all the powers of the soul and body. Hence the law for inward-dwelling: keep your consciousness in your heart and gather there by exertion all the forces of soul and body. Inward-dwelling, in fact, is the confinement of consciousness in the heart, and the intense gathering of the forces of the soul and body there is an essential means, or work, podvig. However, they mutually generate and presuppose each other, so that one does not exist without the other. He who is imprisoned in the heart is gathered; and he who is gathered is in the heart.

Around the consciousness in the heart one must gather with all one's strength—the mind, the will, and the feelings. The gathering of the mind in the heart is attention, the gathering of the will is alertness, the gathering of feeling is sobriety. Attention, alertness, and sobriety are the three inner deeds by which self-assembly is accomplished and inward-abiding acts. Whoever has them, and moreover all of them, is within; Whoever does not have one, and moreover at least one, is outside.

Such bodily deeds, acting inseparably from spiritual ones, are the most powerful, helping those spiritual means, without which they cannot exist.

Thus, all work inward-abiding through self-assembly consists of the following. In the first minute after waking up from sleep, as soon as you are conscious of yourself, descend inward to your heart, into these bodily forces: after that, summon, attract, strain all your spiritual and bodily forces there, with the attention of your mind, with the turning of your eyes there, with cheerfulness of the will, with the tension of the muscles and sobriety of feeling, with the suppression of the pleasure and peace of the flesh, and do this until until the consciousness is established there, as in its place - the seat, does not stick, does not bind like something sticky to a strong wall; and then remain there without the beginning, as long as you use your consciousness, often repeating the same practice of self-assembly both for its renewal and for its strengthening, because it is now relaxed and now disturbed.

It is necessary to know that this inward-abiding and gathering is not the same as deepening in meditation, or thought (from the word "to think"), although it is much like it. The latter stands only at the source of the mind, leaving other forces unoccupied, and is kept in the head, or else it stands in the heart, at the source of all movements, lower and deeper than everything that is and happens in us, or it happens in such a way that all this is done already above it, before its eyes, and now it is allowed, now it is forbidden. From this it is self-evident that inward-abiding is, in its true form, the condition of man's true domination over himself, and consequently of true freedom and rationality, and therefore of a truly spiritual life. This is similar to how in the outside world the owner of the city is the one who occupies the fortress. Therefore, any spiritual work and any podvig in general must be accomplished from here, otherwise it is not spiritual, below asceticism, and must be rejected. The Kingdom of God is within you, says the Lord (Luke 17:21), and then for one spiritual activity He commanded: "Enter into thy cell, and shut the doors..." (Matt. 6:6). This is the cage of the heart, according to the understanding of all the Holy Fathers. For this reason, the spiritual man, the one who is saved, the one who struggles, is called the inner man.

That the gathering within is the most suitable means for the preservation of jealousy, this is now seen:

(1) The one who is gathered must burn, for he gathers all the forces into one, just as the scattered rays, when gathered in one point, reveal intense heat and kindle. And indeed, warmth is always connected with the assembly: the spirit here sees itself, as Nicephorus says, and plays with joy.

2) The gathered one is strong, like an army arranged or a bundle of weak reeds bound. Like the girdling of the loins, it signifies readiness and strength to act. The undisciplined is always weak and either falls or does not do.

3) The collected one sees everything in himself. Whoever is in the center sees in all radii, sees everything in the circle evenly and as if at once, and he who comes out of the center sees in the direction of only one radius; In the same way, he who is gathered within sees all the movements of his forces - he sees and can control. The burning of the spirit is strength and sight, and constitute the true spirit of zeal, which is composed of them. Therefore, it should be said: only be within, and you will not cease to be jealous.