When pride can’t get people to expect extravagant things of themselves, it does something that may be even worse. It makes them feel they ought to be doing certain fine and marvelous things, and makes them feel hopeless and guilty because they aren’t doing any of them. Like a cruel man overburdening a horse, pride piles heavy false obligations on us until we are nearly crumpled beneath the load. These false obligations are our “shoulds”—the things we have become convinced we “should” do by ourselves. We should avoid offending any other human being. We should make something of ourselves in the world. We should be tolerant and understanding. We should be considerate, generous, kind, and sacrificing. We should love and take care of everybody. We should accept full responsibility for everyone who’s unhappy. And so it goes, one devastating obligation after another. Pride makes people condemn and punish themselves unmercifully when they can’t meet such obligations. Many of the things pride may suggest to you are all right in themselves, but they’re things which are impossible for you to do with your particular personality, or impossible for you to do without growing a great deal spiritually, or impossible for you to do because God has something different in mind for you. And of course every one of them is impossible for you to do by yourself, without God. That’s the real catch with false obligations.
Sometimes pride will let a person think he’s meeting these false obligations well for quite a long time, let him bask in a feeling of personal success, and only then will pull the rug out from under him and point out what a lousy job he’s really been doing. Then a feeling of worthlessness, and often a feeling of being hopelessly doomed to failure, will start building up in a person. Catching false obligations early is a big help. Any time you have even a small feeling of guilt or failure or worthlessness that you can’t seem to get out from under, pray to be delivered from pride and false obligations—and keep praying, no matter how long it takes, until the false obligation that has caused your guilt or failure feeling becomes revealed to you so you can dump it. Praying for deliverance from pride always finally exposes any false obligations you may have and shatters your tyrannical fake conscience.
Who is God? Who Am I? Who Are You?
Dee Pennock
Category: KNOWLEDGE
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He who shows off great learnedness shall be put to shame.
—St. Theophan the Recluse, The Path to Salvation: A Manual of Spiritual Transformation -
Thus, the inner ascent from zeal to zealous dedication to God is nothing other than the revelation and appearance to our consciousness of God’s work in us, or the working of our salvation and purification. The zealot becomes enlightened about this reality through frequent failures met in spite of all his efforts, and unexpected and great successes met without particularly trying. Mistakes and falls are especially enlightening as they bereave us of grace. All of these bring a man to the thought and belief that he is nothing, while God and His all-mighty grace are everything.
St. Theophan the Recluse, The Path to Salvation: A Manual of Spiritual Transformation
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One of the great obstacles to preserving inner peace, my brother, is binding yourself as by some immutable law, by a set rule, to read so many Psalms and so many chapters from the Gospels and Epistles. Those who set such rules to themselves, are usually in a hurry to complete the reading, not concerning themselves as to whether the heart is touched by it or not, or whether spiritual thoughts and contemplations arise in the mind; and when they fail to finish the reading, they are agitated and worried, not because they were deprived of the spiritual fruit of reading, which they need in order to create a new man in themselves, but simply because not everything was read. Listen to what St. Isaac has to say about this (ch. 30): ‘ If you wish to gain delight in reading texts and understand the words of the Spirit you utter, brush aside the quantity and number of verses, so that your mind could be absorbed in studying the words of the Spirit, until, filled with wonder at the Divine dispensation, your soul is incited to a lofty understanding of them and is thus moved to praise of God or to sorrow that profits the soul. Slavish work brings no peace to the mind; and anxiety usually deprives the reason and understanding of the power of taste, and robs the thoughts like a leech, which sucks life from the body along with the blood of its members.’
Unseen Warfare
Lorenzo Scupoli -
“A bit of philosophizing leads to a wonderment of life. A lot of philosophizing leads to a contempt of it.”
—Eugene Thacker, Infinite Resignation: On Pessimism -
I used to feel that so many great things had already been produced in the world and that there was nothing I could add. I was so worried about what other people would think, that I developed an oversized fear of making mistakes. If I came up with a great idea, I’d reject it because it came from me.
Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism
Fumio Sasaki -
God has created all people spiritually equal. Every person has the same propensity for good and evil. Every person has the same choice, as to whether to obey God or to defy him. Yet in other ways, we are very unequal. Some people are highly intelligent, while others have feeble intellects. Some people are physically strong and healthy, while others are weak and prone to illness. Some people are handsome and attractive, while others are plain. Those who are gifted in some way should not despise those less gifted. On the contrary, God has distributed gifts and blessings in such a way that every person has a particular place and purpose within a society—and thus everyone is equally necessary for a society to function well. So do not resent the fact that someone is more intelligent or stronger than you are. Instead give thanks for their intelligence and strength, from which you benefit. And then ask yourself: “What is my gift, and thence what is my place in society?” When you have answered this question, and you act according to your answer, all contempt and all resentment will melt away.
—St. John Chrysostom, On Living Simply: The Golden Voice of John Chrysostom -
“Don’t believe you have any virtue if it hasn’t caused you pain to acquire it. That’s a false virtue, since it was born out of comfort.”
—Saint Mark the Ascetic -
The way to succeed in any good work. When you are praying at home, at evening, or at morning prayer, or in the church during Divine service, be solicitous in your heart to accomplish this particular good work, and heartily desire to fulfill it to the glory of God. The Lord and His Most-pure Mother will unfailingly teach you, will instill in your heart some bright idea how to accomplish it. If you wish to write a discourse or a sermon, and do not know what to write about, if there is no living water in your heart, you have only to be solicitous of this during your prayer. The Lord and His Most-pure Mother will unfailingly and clearly show you the subject for your sermon and its parts, and your mind and heart will be enlightened by a clear knowledge of all sides of the subject.
—St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ -
Conversations are the basis of relationships, and relationships are built on trust. You will find that the more open you are about the limitations of your knowledge, the more weight people will give to your opinion when you offer it. If you don’t know something, just say “I don’t know.” Those three words can strengthen the bond between you and another person. And just as important, they are a gateway to further exploration and growth. You can’t learn unless you admit that you have something to learn.
SO GOOD QUOTES 