Invisible struggle. Chapter 2. Never should trust themselves and to trust themselves.

Not to trust ourselves beloved is to me brother, so necessary in our battle, that without this, be sure, not only will not be able to win the desired victory will not stand even in the most minor attack on you and the enemy. Capture it deep in your mind and heart.

From the time of the crime of our ancestor, despite the relaxation of our spiritual and moral forces, we usually think very highly of ourselves. Although everyday experience is very impressionable confirms us in the falseness of such an opinion about ourselves, we do not cease to believe in incomprehensible self-realization that we are something, and something important. This, however, our spiritual weakness, is very difficult, moreover, to notice and aware, above all, in us contrary to God, as the first offspring of our self and pride and the source, root and cause of all passions and of all our downfalls and lewdness. It closes the door in the mind or spirit, through which the grace of God usually enters us, not allowing this grace to enter inside and to revive in man. She moves away from him. For how can grace for enlightenment and help enter into that person who thinks of himself that he is something great, that he knows everything and does not need any outside help? May God save us from such Lucifer disease and passion! Having this passion of self-conceit and self-worth, God strictly reproaches through the prophet, saying: "Woe, wise men in themselves and before them are wise" (Is. 5, 21). That is why the Apostle Paul inspires us: "do not be wise about yourself" (ROM. 12, 16).

Hating this evil in us the conceit that God will do nothing, on the contrary, does not like and does not want to see us as sincere consciousness of his own insignificance and full of conviction and a sense that anything good in us, in our nature and in our lives comes from Him as the single Source of all that is good and we can not be anything truly good; nor good thought nor a good thing. Why He Himself providentially cares to spread this heavenly germ in the hearts of Their beloved friends, raising them in neznanie itself, and claiming nandanie themselves, sometimes through the beneficial effects and internal inspiration, sometimes external blows and tribulations, sometimes unexpected and almost irresistible temptations, and sometimes in other ways, for us not always clear.

With all that, however, well, although this lack of self-interest is nothing good and the lack of self-interest is God's business in us, we, on our part, must make every effort to gain such a location, to do everything that we can and that in our power. And I, brother of mine, outline for you four doing here, which you with God's help, can seize, finally, unbelief itself, or the fact that never in anything not to hope.

a) Know your nothingness and constantly keep in mind that you yourself can not do any good for which it would be worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven. What people say divinely wise fathers: Peter of Damascus assures us that "there is nothing better than to know his impotence and ignorance, and there is nothing worse, as to be unaware of this" (gr. "Kindness", p. 611). St. Maxim the Confessor teaches that "the Foundation of all virtue is the knowledge of human weakness" (Greek. "Kindness", p. 403). St. John Chrysostom says that "he only knows himself in the best way, who thinks of himself, that he is nothing".

b) Seek help in these things from God in warm and humble prayers, for this is His gift. And if you wish to receive it, then you must first establish in yourself the conviction that you not only do not have such a consciousness about yourself, but that you can not acquire it at all by yourself; then, boldly standing before the Majesty of God and firmly believing that by his immeasurable goodness he will give you such a knowledge of himself, when and as he knows, do not allow the slightest doubt that you will really get it.

C) get Used to always fear for myself and fear of innumerable enemies, which you can not resist and a little time, their fear long of skill to wrestle with us, their selyanstva and ambushes, their transformation into angels of light, their countless machinations and networks that they secretly put in the way of your virtuous life.

d) If you fall into any sin, turn as much as possible to the sight of your infirmity and to her consciousness. In case God forbid you fall, so you better know the weakness and thus not only taught himself to despise himself, but desired to be despised and from the other because a little bit of his weakness. Know that without such a desire it is impossible to be reborn in you and to take root in the beneficent unbelief in yourself, in which the Foundation and the beginning of true humility and which itself has the basis in the said experimental knowledge of your powerlessness and your unreliability.

From this everyone sees how necessary it is for the one who wants to become a partaker of the light of Heaven to know himself and as such the knowledge of the goodness of God of the proud and arrogant usually leads through their falls, justly letting them fall into the very sin from which to protect themselves they consider themselves quite strong, but know their infirmity and do not dare to rely more on themselves both in this and in all other.

However, rail is a means, although very effective, but not safe, God don't always drink, but when all other tools, lighter and more loose, which we commemorated not lead to self-knowledge. Then at last, He allows man to fall into sins, large or small, according to the greatness or smallness of his pride, conceit and arrogance, so where there is no such conceit and arrogance, there is no intelligible and downs. Therefore, when it happens to you to fall, hastily run thoughts to humble self-knowledge and humiliated about yourself opinion and feeling and annoying prayer seek from God the gift of true light to you for the knowledge of your insignificance and the assertion of your heart in the lack of self, so that again not to fall into the same or even more serious and ruinous sin.

I will add to this that not only when someone falls into any sin, but also when he falls into some misfortune, disaster and sorrow, especially bodily illness, difficult and long-term, he must understand that this is suffering, so that he came to self-knowledge, namely, in the consciousness of his infirmity, and humbled himself. In this case, and for this purpose, God allows us to find all kinds of temptations on us from the devil, from people and from our damaged nature. And St. Paul, the purpose of seeing the temptations which he was subjected in Asia, said: "in themselves the condemnation of death imenom, but not nadeyusya going to camping, but on God, vozstavlyayuschaya Mertvye" (2Cor. 1, 9).

And I will add: who wants to know his weakness from the most real of his life, let him not say many days, but at least one day, observe his thoughts, words and deeds – what he thought, what he said and did. Undoubtedly, he will find that most of his thoughts, words and deeds were erroneous, wrong, unreasonable and thin. Such an experience impressionably will give him to understand how he is not built in himself and is weak; and from such a concept, if he sincerely wants good for himself, he will reach the point of feeling how ridiculous it is to expect any good from himself alone and hope for himself.