Please advise how to deal with self-doubt. And how to combine self-confidence with humility and hope in God?

A believer should be confident not in himself, but in God. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time. Cast all your cares on Him, for He cares for you (1 Pet. 5:6-7)," the Apostle Peter instructs us. However, the well-known saying is also true: "Water does not flow under a lying stone." How to combine this, how to understand it correctly? When a person with faith and hope in God does what he should do, the Lord Himself helps him and does what only He can do. And if a person performs any deed as if in the face of God, surrenders himself, his whole life into the hands of God, fear disappears, the feeling of his own inadequacy disappears, a feeling of peace, confidence (and not self-confidence) comes, which is based on humility and hope in God.

For many years now, terrible thoughts have crept into my head: either I wish death to someone, or I call them something bad, especially close and beloved people. I don't want that! If this is from the evil one, then how to deal with it?

What you write about can be called an invasion of thoughts. Man is constantly exposed to this invasion. A variety of thoughts and wishes come into people's heads, or rather, are brought into the head of the enemy of the human race, including those that he cannot sympathize with in any way, with which he fights.

There is no need to be tormented about this and fall into despair: "How does this come to my mind?" In such cases, the Holy Fathers recommend saying to yourself: "This is not mine," because it is really not yours. Such demonic temptations should be ignored in the sense that we should treat them in the same way as we treat some external noise, for example, obsessive music coming from someone else's window. After all, if we cannot stop this unpleasant influence at once or get away from it, we simply try not to pay attention to it.

Thoughts should be treated in the same way. Pray to God that He would help, that He Himself would protect you from this enemy force. Well, our main weapon in spiritual warfare is, of course, the sacraments of Confession and Communion.

Why, within the framework of our Orthodox religion, one of the signs of the salvation of the soul after death has a directly opposite characteristic in different countries? I mean that we revere the incorrupt relics of the saints as a clear indication of their pleasing to God, and, for example, on Athos they learn about the salvation of the soul by the color of the bones, which can be seen during the decay of the body.

The word "Athos" itself is translated as "silent". For monastics, silence is not so much silence in the usual sense of the word, as an expression of inner non-distraction, distance from vanity. There is a legend that the founder of the Great Lavra, Athanasius of Athos, in his prayers asked the Lord that no one living on the Holy Mountain would be worthy of bodily incorruption. This would have attracted a mass of pilgrims here to venerate the incorrupt relics and would have destroyed the solitude of Athos.

Therefore, what we have before us are not at all "opposite characteristics," as you write, but a sign of special spiritual humility. We find similar examples in the lives of several saints. The Monk Nilus of Sorsky commanded his disciples after his death to throw his body away to be devoured by wild beasts, without giving him any honors. Such humility can be considered the completion of the deep repentance brought by man, the full realization of his sinfulness.

Apparently, for this reason, on Mount Athos, by the will of God, the bodies of deceased monks decompose into bone remains. After the established time, the graves are opened. An undecayed body (which means not at all incorruptible, but half-decayed, not completely decayed) body is considered a testimony to the sinful life of a person, so a special prayer of absolution is read over it by the bishop.

What is your attitude to the canon "On the Unauthorized Death of the Dead"? Is it not too impertinent to read it? How can one pray for suicides?