Self distrust

[R.J.G.]

Monastics aren't supposed to trust themselves, right? But to some extent you always have to trust yourself, or you'll be lost. No one is infallible. You're not supposed to follow blindly. If you don't trust yourself at all, you could say even, "How can I trust my fallen judgment and reasoning that Orthodoxy is the true faith?" So what should monastics do to remain obedient, yet retain their sense of self? One could go crazy, doubting everything about himself, then wondering, are we really supposed to just check our brains at the door? Didn't God give us reasoning and a conscience for a reason?

[guest]

Yes, there is no such thing as blind obedience. If we are truly using what God has given to us, (our intellect, will and body) as God intended, then we should retain our true sense of self. The blessing of obedience is that (in addition to following God's commandments) we knowing and willfully entrust these gifts to one who has battled in life to guide us, thus returning to what God intended for His creation and serving as a creature endowed with intellect, will and a body to serve.

[katya the nurse-aid]

I had born and I didn’t know why…
It is existence beyond my mind…
Without logic and not by my will,
He gave me life in order to fulfill His Will!
And step by step, from crying of so little me..
I’m growing into knowledge of who I’m and why
HE called me into live…to be…
By opening that cover of His Mystery in me…
For me to able to become aware of His presents inside me…
And I become those two of me in me…
The soul and body, they support each other
and they fight each other…What a misery!
But both sustained and both in war of me become new me…
But Lord! How hard this is! It is two worlds in me!
You in my soul, You are who’s leading me….
You are my eyes, You are my heart and You are
cost of suffer of my second me…
The body which is born and goes into dust…
I’m in pain and agony of knowing death,
that cold, that blast!
And soul is endless and its free,
But locked in body, for sometimes to grow in
Your love, to able to become one day Eternal and with Thee!
And knows that is why You called me into life to be…
To share existence, endless knowledge of Eternal Mystery!
But locked on earth, to serve my time!
I walked like blind one, until I got my sight!
My sight of You so Free and natural to dwell in me,
Leading my life in channel of Your river, or Your Will for me..
And until I become to able swim in Will of Yours
or in the endless peace of Thee…
I’m still so helpless and so lost in agony…
But this is time for me to grow and to want Your harmony!
To growing up, day after day and new and fresh become in flesh!
But knowing now, by Your call in me,
that I was born for the purpose of become
Eternal Soul and in the likeness of THEE!

[Kosmas Damianides]

Hi,

I like your poems Katya the nurse-aid; they are very thoughtful. It makes me think, just how much are we in harmony with God and His will?? Is "freedom" and separtation from obedience to God in harmony with who we realy are and who God made us to be? How does being a bond-servant of God equate to being truly free? How is having an elder and confessor to instruct us making us free? The answer is that only when we are in harmony with ourselves will we ever be able to be in harmony with God. Only by returning to obedience may we be able to live in the kingdom of God, and "paradise of our soul".

The kingdom of God which is inside all of us, is also in heaven and it is this union wih God and His kingdom in heaven which is the truest and sweetest freedom one can ever taste. This is what the Saints have written who have tasted and experinced what it is like to be a citizen of heaven through a life of obedience to God.

In Christ

KD

[Hieromonk Michael]

Trust. Trusting oneself. The only trust that a monk can have is in his spiritual director which is truly though, his trust in God.

We say that we trust God, but we rarely do. It is interesting, living the eremitic life, where every obedience is one’s own obedience, where every moment is fraught with the sin of pride, the literal selfishness of having no other human to consider, one is tempted to trust oneself. One is also brought to the slow recognition of the true dependence upon God in every tiny detail of life. There is no trust but that in God. It must become automatic, a given that trust is only in God for there is no other.
We trust God implicitly in the Divine Liturgy, for who, other than God can truly feed us with the Body and Blood of Christ? It is no action of man, we trust in God.
Trust no man, especially trust not oneself, for trust in oneself is pride and pride is the most dangerous of sins.

Even the poorest beggar on the street, whom we would think had nothing to be proud of, may be tempted into pride, pride that he survives, pride that he yet has a spirit of independence. As children we are exhorted to take pride in our appearance and not to attend school or work looking untidily dressed. Take pride! It is built in to us it would seem. Trust in ourselves is pride, and ought to be eschewed by the monastic. Did not Christ list pride immediately before foolishness as He talked to the Pharisee? Indeed pride is foolishness.

“For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.”

Does not Saint Luke, referring to the parable of the publican and the Pharisee praying in the Temple, say that Christ addressed the parable to those who trusted in themselves that they were righteous.

You see how one may link these two so closely: pride and self-trust.

Self-trust ought to be an alarm bell, for it is a dangereous place to be.

Especially is it dangerous for the monk to think that he has acquired wisdom or that he has anything of worth to teach anyone, for there is pride and self-trust. He ought always to pray before he speaks and to speak in the knowledge that he will not faithfully reproduce the words that he has prayed to be given. So think not well of the monk who manages to speak something approaching wisdom, but think well of Christ and praise God only if perchance the experience of the monk should be useful.

Hieromonk Michael