On Stability and the Order of Senses

Not an abandonment, but the substantiation of better things in the hope of endurance and the love of life. When you renounce all external matters, pay attention to the dark thoughts reproaching you for poverty, lack, insufficiency, and ignominy, bringing these to you so that the murderers might work deceitfully to undermine such bright virtue.

If, therefore, you attend to the discernment of the struggle, you will rather find that through those things by which they reproach you, the crown is being woven for you; for indeed, in renouncing, you renounce through them those very things of struggle by which they reproach you. Do not, therefore, give in to the struggle of the internal thoughts, for it is not at the beginning of the renunciation that the end is promised, but in the perfection of endurance the beginnings are crowned; nor are the contests composed in bodily gymnastics alone, but in the struggle of the thoughts, the crown is also sought.

Chapter 12. Judge the thoughts in the arena of the heart, so that the chief robber may be terrified when the robbers are being stripped away; for he who is a precise examiner of thoughts is also a lover of the truth of the commandments. Therefore, if a difficult thought comes to your heart, then kindle upon it more intense pains; for either it will flee, not being able to bear the heat as an opposite, or it will remain, being as one at home on the straight path.

And it happens when the demons, having presented a thought appearing good to the heart, and immediately transforming, oppose it, they do so so that from the opposition, you might think that they and the impulses of your heart are known; and not only that, but so that they might judge your conscience, as if the good had been defeated by the opposition of the evil; and it happens again when they flatter your own craftiness to you, so that you might seem wise to yourself. When thoughts turn me toward the place where they have cast us, they make us repent again so that they might make us unstable from every side, and un-

Therefore let us not throw ourselves from place to place, but rather let us bend ourselves toward stillness and labors, because from our idleness the thoughts derive their power. But he who knows the experience of the thought in which he was called, let him remain in that place before God; but he who does not know, still walks in struggle. Let the changing of places be toward spiritual things, and not toward things of rest; for endurance, and patience, and love, give thanks in tribulations; but acedia, and lightness, and self-love, rejoice in rests. The restless one, through the sensory perceptions regarding appearances, fights against the soul, but the lover of stillness, guarding the senses, fights the thoughts.

Chapter 13. Therefore, by the command of the law, let your leader gather the order of the senses together, so that you may not disturb your soul with the lashes of evils through sight and hearing; existing in two states, let him distribute the order, guarding each, so that one may excel and the other not fall behind, and let him not give the commands to the tyrant, because, once this is given to the fire, he will even surrender the last account. When you have turned the causes of the passions to counter-war, let no evil thought magnify you, lest, believing a spirit of error, you be struck out of your wits; but seek to reason about the excesses on which you labor, so that the ends of those things accomplished may not be stolen from within. Some, having been praised for accomplishments, grew indifferent to their labors over time, and the praise drove them away, and the labors were loosened. Some, being hardened by the weight of good things, were thought to be great, and the conscience of the soul was wounded, and the disease of praise was enlarged, while the thoughts of the wounds, wandering the soul, turned the labors away during the praises. How often the most wicked become rich through the honors of men; the demons, having prepared such things and infamies, bring them, so that, being from the honors, they may not bear the infamies.