3) Know that, according to St. Maximus, the great theologian, even the first-created Adam was not created by God imaginary. His mind, pure and seeless, being also in its activity by the mind, did not itself take on a form or image from the influence of the senses or from the images of sensible things; but, not using this lower power of imagination, and not imagining either the outline, or the appearance, or the size, or the color of these things, he contemplated with the higher power of the soul, i.e., thought, purely, immaterially, and spiritually, only the pure ideas of things, or their mental meanings. But the murderer of man, the devil, just as he himself fell from the dream of equality with God, so he brought Adam to the point where he began to dream with his mind of equality with God and fell from such a dream of his; and for this reason he was thrown from that mental life, equal to the angels, pure, rational and without distinction, into this sensual, multi-component, multi-form, immersed in images and dreams, into the state of irrational animals. For to be immersed in images or to live in them and under the influence of them is the property of irrational animals, and not of rational beings.

And after man has fallen into such a state, who can say into what passions, into what ill-temper, and into what delusions he has been led by his imaginary dreams? He filled moral teaching with various deceptions, physics with many false teachings, theology with obscene and absurd dogmas and fables. And not only the ancients, but also the modern thinkers, wishing to be curious and to speak about God and about the divine, simple and inaccessible to imagination and fantasy mysteries (for in this work the higher power of the soul, the mind, should work), and having begun this work before purifying their minds of passionate views and imaginary images of sensible things, they found falsehood instead of truth. And, what is especially miserable, they have embraced their lies in the arms of their souls and hearts and hold them tightly, as the truth expressing reality. And thus, instead of theologians, they appeared with fabulous words, betraying, according to the Apostle, into an unskilled mind (Romans 1:28). (See Isaac the Syrian at the end of the Epistle to St. Simeon, fol. 55).

And so, my brother, if you wish to be easily and conveniently freed from such errors and passions, if you seek to avoid the various snares and snares of the devil, if you desire to unite with God and to obtain the divine light and truth, courageously enter into battle with your imagination and fight it with all your strength, in order to expose your mind from all forms, colors and outlines, and in general from all imagination and memory of sensual things, both good and bad. For all this is a stain and obscuration of the purity and brightness of the mind, a whitening of its immateriality, and a guide to the passion of the mind, since almost no passion of the soul and body can approach the mind except through the imagination of the sensual things corresponding to them. Strive to keep your mind colorless, without image, without form, and pure, as God created it.

But you cannot attain this otherwise than by returning your mind to yourself, enclosing it in the narrow place of your heart and of the entire inner man, and teaching it to remain there inwardly, now in secret prayer, exclaiming with an inner word: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, now paying attention to yourself and reasoning with yourself, and above all contemplating God and resting in Him. For just as a serpent, when it is necessary for it to throw off its old skin, goes and with effort squeezes itself through some narrow passage, as the natural scientists say, so the mind, squeezing through the narrowness of the heart and prayer of the mind, casts off the garments of the imagination of sensual things and evil sensual impressions, and becomes pure, bright and fit for union with God, for the sake of likeness to Him, which he perceives through this. Again, just as water, the more it is crowded in narrow passages, the more strongly it presses and rushes upward, so the mind, the more constrained it is by the innermost instruction in the heart and by the attention it receives, the more refined and stronger it becomes, and, rushing to grief, the more inaccessible it is to every passion and every pretext of thoughts, and to every image of things, not only sensual, but also mental. since in this case they remain outside and cannot enter inside. I will offer another comparison, even more appropriate. Just as the rays of the sun, being scattered in the air and separated from each other, are not so bright and calorous, but being concentrated in one point by means of certain glasses, they give dazzling light and incendiary warmth, so the mind, being gathered in the center of the heart by attention and secret teaching, becomes luminous and scorching, dispersing material and passionate darkness, and scorching and destroying all similar images and movements.

This is the first and foremost way of dealing with imagination and memory, which you, my beloved, must keep continuously. With it you will not only correct these spiritual powers, but you will erase in them all traces and remnants of previously perceived impressions and images of sensual things that excite and nourish the passions. But the more effective and fruitful this method is, the more difficult it is, and the more difficult, the less willing it is now to use it, not to say – the fewer who believe in its power, especially among the sages and teachers, not only secular, but also spiritual, who, not wishing to believe the teaching of the Holy Spirit and so many holy fathers, who indicate this method in the most precious book of every honorable stone, "Philokalia", they are righteously deprived of the fruits of the Spirit, which many unlearned and even illiterate are vouchsafed to receive. For, according to the word of the Saviour, God hid them from the wise and prudent, and revealed them unto babes (Luke 10:21); for those who do not believe in the power of this mental work and do not take it up, they cannot understand how beneficial it is, according to the words of the prophet: "If ye do not believe, you will understand less" (Isaiah 7:9).

When you see that your mind is tired and can no longer stay inside your heart in prayer of the mind and heart, then use the second method to do this, namely, allow it to go outside and have room in divine and spiritual reflections and contemplations, both those taught by the Holy Scriptures and those to which God's creation gives occasion and inspires. Such spiritual reflections, being akin to the mind in their subtlety and immateriality, do not cause it to become numb and do not shackle it in the external, but on the contrary, having satisfied to the extent of its thirst for free movement in its sphere, their content disposes it again to return more quickly within the heart, to unity with God through immersion in the mental memory of Him alone. That is why the divine Maximus says that "one deed cannot make the mind impassible, if it does not enter into various spiritual contemplations." Beware, however, in God's creations, in material objects and in animals, to dwell on one physical side of them while you are still passionate. For in such a case, the mind, not yet being free from passionate gazing at sensible things, instead of being transferred from them to the spiritual and immaterial thoughts hidden in them, will be carried away by their outward beauty and ostentation alone, and, enjoying it, may accept false teachings about them and passionate dispositions towards them, according to the words of St. Maximus. how so many and so many natural philosophers have suffered.

Or use the third method to bring rest and repose to your mind, namely, undertake to meditate on the mysteries of the Lord's life and sufferings, i.e. on His birth in the cave, circumcision, the ordination before God to meet Him, the baptism in the Jordan, the forty-day fast in the wilderness, His preaching of the Gospel, the manifold miracles performed by Him, the Transfiguration on Tabor, the washing of the disciples' feet and the giving them the sacraments at the Supper, about His betrayal, about His suffering, His cross, burial, resurrection and ascension to heaven, about the manifold tortures of the martyrs and the many years of strict feats of the venerable fathers.

In the same way, in order to break your heart and arouse feelings of repentance, you can also think about the mystery of the terrible hour of death, about the tremendous day of Judgment, about various kinds of eternal torment, such as: about the oceans of unquenchable fire, about the gloomy locks in hell, about gloomy Tartars, about worms that never sleep, about cohabitation with demons; think also about the repose and ineffable joys of the righteous, about the Kingdom of Heaven, eternal glory and unceasing bliss, about the voice of those who celebrate, about the most complete unity there with God, about the eternal coexistence and cohabitation with the angels and all the saints.

If you, brother, draw such thoughts and ideas on the charter of your imagination, then you will not only get rid of obscene memories and evil thoughts, but you will also gain great praise on that day of Judgment for such a feat, as St. Basil the Great foretells you in his sermon on virginity, saying that "Every person who lives in this body is like a painter who draws some image in a hidden place. As this painter, when he finishes a picture and brings it out of secrecy to an exhibition, is praised by the audience if he has chosen a good object for it and painted it well, and, on the contrary, is blamed if he has chosen a bad object and painted it badly, so every person, when he comes before the judgment of God after death, has to be praised and blessed by God, angels and saints, if he has adorned his mind and his imagination with bright, divine and spiritual images and ideas, and, on the contrary, has to be shamed and condemned if he has filled his imagination with passionate, shameful and base pictures." And St. Gregory of Thessalonica expresses amazement at how, through the influence of sensual things, either the intellectual light, the provider of eternally blessed life, or the mental darkness leading to hellish darkness (Greek, Philokalia, p. 969) is established in the soul.

Know, however, that I do not mean to tell you that you should always be occupied with these thoughts alone, no, but use them only occasionally, until your mind, tired of keeping itself in the straits of the heart, rests. When he rests, return him again to your heart and force him to keep himself without dreams and images in the heart's memory of God. For just as all shelled and cranioderm animals find peace for themselves nowhere but in their shells, in which they take refuge, as in the house, so the mind, naturally, nowhere rests so much as in the temple of the heart and in the inner man, where, taking refuge as in a fortress, he successfully wages war with thoughts, enemies and passions, where he hides within, Although most people do not know this.

That passions and thoughts are hidden within us, in the heart, and from there they come and fight us, this is not my thought. Listen to what the Lord says: out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, perjury, blasphemy. This is the defilement of man (Matt. 15:19-20). And the fact that our enemies, demons, take refuge near the heart is not my invention. This is what the Holy Fathers teach. Of these, St. Diadochos explains this with greater certainty, saying that before Holy Baptism, Divine grace moves a person to do good outwardly, and Satan is hidden in the depths of the soul and heart; after a person receives Holy Baptism, the demon hovers outside the heart, and grace dwells inside (Philokalia, Part 4, Ch. 76). However, even after Baptism, he says further (ibid., ch. 82), our enemies are allowed to be in the depths of our body, as if on the surface of the heart, in order to test our willfulness, and from here they smoke on their minds with the phlegm of carnal sweets. St. Gregory the Theologian teaches in agreement with this, interpreting that what the Lord said about how an unclean spirit proceeds from a person and returns to him again for the greatest evil (cf. Matt. 12:43-45) happens to the baptized when they neglect to abide in the heart. "Expelled by Baptism, the unclean spirit, he says, not liking to be homeless, seeks peace, wandering here and there, and, not finding it, returns to the house from which he came, because he is shameless. If he finds that Christ, held by the attention and love of the baptized, has settled and remains in the place from which he was expelled, i.e. in the heart, then, again reflected, he departs without success. But if he finds his former place in someone empty, unoccupied by anyone, because of the lack of attention to the Lord and the remembrance of Him, then he hurriedly enters, with greater malice against the former. And for that man the last is more bitter than the first" (Verse 40). I have deliberately dwelt on this in order to dispose you more strongly to abide within your heart with the remembrance of the Lord the Savior and prayer to Him, if you wish always to be victorious in the confusion of thoughts and passionate movements that are brought upon your heart. When you are there with the Lord, the enemy will not dare to approach.

Over all this, I tell you, watch over yourself and do not allow your imagination and memory to remember what you have previously seen, heard, eaten, tasted, and touched, especially what was shameful and useless in it. This is what our warfare consists primarily in, and it is more difficult and unrelenting than the battle with feelings or the use of them. Each of those who struggle knows this from experience. In order not to perceive something seductive by some feeling, it is easy to cope with it; but it is very difficult to control the imagination and memory of this by perception. For example, to see or not to see a face, or to look at it passionately or impassively, is not so difficult and does not represent a great battle; but after you have seen and looked at him passionately, it is no longer easy, but it takes a great battle and no small feat to banish the imagination of this person from your memory. And the enemy can play with your soul like a ball, throwing attention from one memory to another and stirring desires and passions under them, thus keeping you in a passionate mood. Wherefore I say unto thee, Watch, and above all watch thy imagination and memory.

A soldier of Christ must do everything possible

avoid anxieties and turmoil of the heart,