Intellect. My answer will be disappointing. And I, together with you, soul, am stricken with sin. I know quite well what you have been talking about. How can I help you when I myself have been dealt murderous blows, when I am deprived of the power to act autocratically? In my continuous activity, granted to me by the Creator and constituting my attribute (Kallistos Katafigiota, ch. 3, Philokalia, part 4), I am constantly subject to outside influence. This influence is the influence of sin, with which I am damaged and upset. This influence constantly distracts me from God, from eternity, draws me into the deception of the vain and transitory world, into the deception of myself, into the deception of thee, O soul, into the deception of sin, into the deception of the fallen angels. My essential fault lies in the incessantly violent amusement. Overwhelmed by amusement, I soar, wander about the universe without need or use, like other outcast spirits. I would like to stop, but I cannot: entertainment plunders me, carries me away. Plundered by amusement, I cannot look as I should, either at you, soul, or at myself. From amusement I cannot heed the Word of God as I should: outwardly I appear to be attentive, but while I am trying to pay attention, involuntarily deviating into all countries, I am carried very far, to completely extraneous objects, the examination of which is not only unnecessary for me, but also extremely harmful. From the murderous amusement I cannot offer God a strong, real prayer and be sealed with the fear of God, which would destroy my absent-mindedness and make my thoughts obedient to me, to which my soul would communicate to you, soul, heartfelt contrition and tenderness. From my amusement you are in a state of bitterness; with your bitterness and insensibility, I amuse myself even more. Entertainment is the reason for my weakness in the struggle against sinful thoughts. From amusement I feel darkness and heaviness: when a sinful thought appears, I do not suddenly and not soon recognize it, if it is covered by justification. If he is manifest, then I, arming myself against him, do not show a resolute and irreconcilable hatred for him, enter into conversation with my murderer, delight in the deadly poison that he slyly puts into me. I am seldom victorious, often defeated. Because of my amusement, forgetfulness overwhelms me: I forget God, I forget eternity, I forget the vicissitudes and deceptiveness of the world, I am drawn to it, I carry you with me, my soul. I forget my sins. I forget my fall, I forget my miserable situation: in my darkness and self-deception I begin to find dignity in myself and in you. I begin to seek, to demand recognition of these virtues from the deceitful world, ready to agree for a moment, in order to laugh more viciously afterwards. There are no virtues in us: the dignity of man is completely defiled by the fall, and he will think justly of himself if, as some great ascetic advises, he considers himself an abomination. If not an abomination, a feeble, the smallest creature, called by the Almighty Creator of all things visible and invisible into existence from nothingness and armed against its Creator? Is it not an abomination that has nothing of its own, who has received everything from God and rebelled against God? Is it not an abomination to be a creature who was not ashamed of paradise, who allowed himself in the midst of heavenly bliss to willingly listen to the terrible slander and blasphemy against God, who proved his immediate consent to slander and blasphemy by actively trampling on the commandment of God! As if not an abomination to the mind,

But we are not only damaged by sin, we are divided by it, as it were, into two separate beings, acting almost always in opposition to each other. We are separated, opposed to each other, we are separated from God! To the sin that dwells in us, we are opposed to the All-Holy and All-Perfect God Himself!

Soul. Your answer is regrettable, but it is fair. This serves as a kind of consolation that our miserable condition is in mutual correlation and we can share our sorrow, we can help each other. Give us advice on how to get out of our common disorder? I have noticed that my feelings always correspond to your thoughts. The heart cannot struggle with thought for long: it always submits to it, and when it resists, it resists only for a short time. My mind! Be a guide to our common salvation.

Intellect. I agree that the heart does not resist thought for long. But it, having shown submission for a moment, again rebels against the most correct, against the most God-pleasing thought, rises up with such force and bitterness that it almost always destroys and carries me away. Having deposed me, it begins to breed in me the most absurd thoughts, which serve as an expression and revelation of the innermost passions. What can I say about my thoughts? Because of the disorder and damage to my sin, my thoughts are extremely fickle. In the morning, for example, certain thoughts were born in me about our spiritual life, about the invisible laborious podvig, about our earthly situation, relationships, circumstances, about our fate in eternity; These thoughts seemed sound. Suddenly, by noon, or earlier, they disappear of their own accord from some unexpected meeting, and are replaced by others, which, in turn, are recognized as worthy of attention. In the evening, new thoughts with new justifications appear.

At night I am troubled by other thoughts, which during the day have been hiding somewhere, as if in ambush, so that suddenly appear to me during the silence of the night, to disturb me with the charming and murderous painting of sin.

In vain is this knowledge! In vain is this sure sign, which decisively separates good from evil in the world of spirits! Because of the incomprehensible illness that lives in me, comprehended only by experience, I cannot tear myself away from the murderous thoughts engendered in me by sin. I can neither suppress them nor expel them when they begin to boil in me like worms; I can neither drive them away nor push them away from me when they attack me from without, like robbers, like fierce, bloodthirsty beasts. They hold me captive, in hard work, torment, torment, hourly ready to tear me to pieces, to strike me with eternal death. I involuntarily communicate the torment they inflict on you, O soul, — I communicate it to our very body, which is sickly and weak because it is wounded by innumerable ulcers, pierced by arrows and swords of sin. Poisoned by the poison of eternal death, you, the soul, grieve unbearably — you seek consolation, you find it nowhere else. In vain do you think to find this consolation in me: I am killed with you; together with you I am buried in the narrow and gloomy tomb of not seeing and not knowing God. Our attitude towards the living God, as if to the non-existent and dead, is a sure testimony to our own mortification.

Soul. My guide! My eye! My highest spiritual power! My mind! You are driving me into hopelessness. If thou, being my light, acknowledge thyself to be darkness, what shall I expect from my other powers, which I have in common with the dumb beasts? What can I expect from my will, or the power of desire, from jealousy or natural anger, which can only then act differently from what they do in cattle, beasts, and demons, when they are under your guidance? Thou hast told me that, with all thy weakness, with all thy darkness, with all thy deadness, the Word of God still works upon thee, and has given thee at least a sign of distinguishing good from evil, wherein lies the greatest difficulty. And I became a partaker of this knowledge! I, too, when I begin to feel embarrassment and frustration, at the same time feel the wrongness of my condition, I feel distrust and hatred towards this state, I try to throw off a state that is unnatural and hostile to me. On the contrary, when you stop, even for a short time, as if in your own embrace, in thoughts drawn from the Word of God, what consolation I feel! What a praise to God begins from the depths of my heart, from the most heartfelt treasures! What reverence I have for the majesty of God, Who then reveals Himself to me! What an insignificant speck of dust I seem to myself in the midst of a vast and varied universe! What a grace-filled silence, as if brought by the breath of the heavenly wind, begins to blow in me and cool me, exhausted by the heat and lack of rain! What a sweet and healing tear, born in the heart, ascends to the head and flows out of the humble and meek eye that looks at everyone and everything so peacefully, so lovingly! Then I feel the healing of my nature! Then the inner struggle is destroyed! Then my powers, dissected and fragmented by sin, are united into one. Having become one with you and with my other powers, having drawn my very body to this unity, I feel the mercy of the Creator towards His fallen creation, I come to know actively the significance and power of the Redeemer, Who heals me by His all-powerful and life-giving commandment. I confess Him! I see the action of the All-Holy Spirit, worshipped, proceeding from the Father and sent by the Son! I see the action of God the Spirit, introduced by God the Word, manifesting His Divinity by His creative power, by means of which the broken vessel appears as if it had never been broken, in primeval wholeness and beauty. My mind! Turn to the Word of God, from which we have already borrowed innumerable blessings, but have lost them through our negligence, our coldness towards the gifts of God. We exchanged priceless, spiritual gifts for the deceptive phantom of gifts, under the guise of which sin and the world offered us their poison. My mind! Turn to the Word of God! Seek there consolation for me: at the present moment my sorrow is unbearable, and I fear lest I fall into final destruction, into despair.

Intellect. The Word of God, the soul, solves our perplexity with the most satisfactory definition. But many of the people, having heard the Word of the Spirit and interpreted it to themselves with their carnal understanding, said of the life-giving Word of God: "This Word is cruel, and who can hear it?" (John 6:60) Hear, O soul, what the Lord has said: "He who gains his life shall destroy it: but whosoever destroys his life for my sake shall find it" (Matt. 10:39). He that loveth thy soul shall destroy it: and thou shalt hate thy soul in this world, and shall preserve it unto eternal life (John 12:25).

Soul. I am ready to die if God commands. But how can I, an immortal, die? I don't know the weapon that could take my life. Intellect. Do not think, soul, that the commandment of Christ commands you to die alone, that I am excluded from the sentence. No! I must share the cup of death with you and be the first to drink it, as the main culprit of our common fall, rejection, calamity, temporal and eternal death. Death and destruction, which God demands of us, do not consist in the destruction of our existence: they consist in the destruction of self-love, which has become, as it were, our life. Self-love is the distorted love of fallen man for himself. Self-love idolizes its fallen, falsely named mind, and tries to satisfy its fallen, falsely directed will in everything and constantly. Self-love is expressed in relation to one's neighbors either through hatred, or through man-pleasing, that is, by pleasing human passions, and towards the objects of the world, which it always abuses, through partiality. Just as holy Love is the bond of perfection (Col. 3:14) and is composed of the fullness of all virtues, so self-love is that sinful passion which is composed of the fullness of all other various sinful passions. In order to destroy self-love in us, I must reject all my understandings, even though I be very rich in understandings provided by the teaching of the world and according to the elements of the world (Col. 2:8). I must sink into poverty of spirit, and, stripped naked by this poverty, washed by weeping, stained, softened by meekness, purity, and mercy, accept the mind which the right hand of my Redeemer deigns to inscribe upon me. That right hand is the Gospel. And you, the soul, must renounce your will, no matter how painful it may be for the heart, even though the feelings and inclinations of your heart seem to you both the most righteous and the most elegant. Instead of your own will, you must fulfill the will of Christ our God and Savior, no matter how disgusting and cruel it may be for a self-loving heart. This is the death which God requires of us, so that by our voluntary death we may destroy the death that lives within us violently, and receive as a gift the resurrection and life that flow from the Lord Jesus.

Soul. I decide on self-denial: from the very words you uttered about self-denial, I have already begun to feel joy and consolation. Let us abandon life, which gives birth to hopelessness, and accept death, which is the pledge of salvation. Lead me, my mind, following the commandments of God, and yourself abide unswervingly in that Word which has proclaimed itself: "Whosoever abides in Me, and I in him, he shall bring forth much fruit: for without Me he can do nothing" (John 15:5). Amen.

SEEING YOUR SIN

That terrible time will come, that terrible hour will come, in which all my sins will appear naked before God the Judge, before His Angels, before all mankind. Sensing the state of my soul in this terrible hour, I am filled with horror. Under the influence of a vivid and strong premonition, with trembling I hasten to immerse myself in the examination of myself, I hasten to believe in the book of my conscience the sins noted by deed, word, and thought.

Books that have not been read for a long time, stagnant in the cabinets, are soaked in dust, moth-eaten. Whoever takes such a book encounters great difficulty in reading it. Such is my conscience. Not reviewed for a long time, it could hardly be opened. When I open it, I do not find the expected satisfaction. Only major sins are listed quite clearly; the small writings, of which there are many, have almost been erased, and now it is impossible to make out what was depicted by them.