Your Eminence, Most Reverend Fr. Archimandrite,

Yes, everything is going well for you. And what to fix, I am perplexed. I even wonder where you got the idea of. Pull as you started and got used to it. If sometimes you do not dare to hold out (from the rule) because of the infirmity of old age, reproach yourself a little, complain before the Lord, and calm down. If again, do the same, and so always.

It seems to me that you don't give yourself enough sleep (from 10 a.m. to 1 a.m. on the moon). It would be possible to fulfill the night rule in the evening, and then sleep until matins. But as you write that you are used to (getting up at 1 o'clock and doing the rule), it is difficult for you to break the rules.

As for the rule, I think so: whatever rule one chooses for himself, it is good, as long as he keeps his soul in reverence before God. Again: to read prayers and psalms until the soul is stirred, and then to pray yourself, setting forth your needs, or without anything. "God be merciful." Again: sometimes all the time appointed for the rule can be spent in reading one psalm from memory, composing your own prayer from each verse. Also, sometimes you can say the whole rule in the Jesus Prayer with prostrations. Otherwise, you can take a little from this, the other and the third. God needs the heart (Proverbs 23:26), and as long as it stands reverently before Him, then it is enough. Unceasing prayer consists in this, in order to always stand reverently before God. And at the same time, the rule is only stoking, or throwing wood into the stove.

I am writing all this to you in a bookish way. You have so many experiments! Choose from them what you find useful.

I ask for your holy prayers for my sinfulness.

Your worshiper, Bishop Feofan. February 21, 1881

3. A recipe for infirmities in the fulfillment of the rule

God's mercy be with you, Most Reverend Fr. Archimandrite.

As for your infirmities, as you call them, as I have already written, I do not know how to make a prescription for them. - Endure, fight and reproach yourself when you do not get tired, and that's it. When sleep comes, get up and walk around.

When even here it becomes annoying, begin to discuss with the reader (the rule the novice) about what you are reading.

In the books it is written that when the Jesus Prayer takes strength and penetrates into the heart, then it gives cheerfulness, and drives away sleep. Try this recipe. God is everywhere. If you are vividly aware of this, then there will be no place for sleep, as it cannot be: "The king stands before his eyes." The essence of the Jesus Prayer is to stand before God with the mind in the heart. In the book that is being sent (a collection on prayer and sobriety), much is said about this.