Spiritual emptiness what to take in pills. Spiritual emptiness

We are tormented by spiritual thirst
In the sultry desert, I dragged myself.
Pushkin

What follows from all this? Or, rather, since we are not concerned with reasoning and theories here, what have we actually arrived at? What do we have left and how can we live?

All the idols, whom we previously enthusiastically served and whose service made sense of our life, have lost their charm, cannot attract our souls, no matter how many people around us would give them their strength. We have only a thirst for life - a life full, alive and deep, some last, deepest demands and desires of our spirit, about which we not only do not know how to satisfy them, but do not even know how to express them.

For the negative result of our survey of spiritual wanderings cannot satisfy us in any way. There was an era in our spiritual past when this negative result seemed to many of us a great positive revelation. This is perhaps the last, most imperfect

and a lifeless idol that the soul meets on these paths. This is the specter of complete, perfect personal freedom. We have already met with him and pointed out that, compared with the tyranny of moral norms; he seduces us with a hint of some vital truth. But this temptation is brief and too easily exposed as a lie; only the most naive, inexperienced souls can succumb to it for a while. Not looking for anything, not serving anything, enjoying life, taking from it everything that it can give, satisfying every desire, every passion, being strong and daring, dominating life - it sometimes seems tempting; and, kick indicated, was brief era- it can be called the era of Nietzsche - when to many it seemed the highest wisdom of life.

We do not need any abstract arguments to refute this supposed wisdom. I think about most of us we can say that we are no longer the same and this temptation does not work on us. Freedom from everything in the world - what is it for us if we do not know why we are free? Will she give us much, are all the pleasures and raptures that the simple unbridledness of elemental desires gives us already so great? We have grown mentally old and we are skeptical not only at "ideals", but at all the so-called "blessings of life." We know very well that every moment of happiness is redeemed in abundance by suffering or the melancholy of satiety; we know that grief in life is immeasurably greater than happiness and joys, we have experienced poverty, we clearly see the inevitable end of all life - death, in the face of which everything becomes equally ghostly. In a word, we feel too vivid meaninglessness

life , to get carried away by the very naked process of life. And the word "freedom" in this sense seems to us even offensively inappropriate. Is he free who, without meaning and purpose, staggers from side to side, wandering without a path, driven only by the desires of the present moment, the senselessness of which he is well aware of? Is he free who does not know where to go from spiritual idleness and spiritual poverty? In the face of such "temptations", one involuntarily recalls with bitterness the old stupid, but symbolically significant acuity: "Driver, free?" - "Free". - "Well, so shout: long live freedom!"

A joyful enthusiasm for life, transcending the usual boundaries and the usual order, genuine - always temporary - rapture with a rampant passions, arising not from despair, but from an excess of strength, perhaps, apparently, only when, in the depths of the soul, faith in some kind of last is alive strength and inviolability of life. Just as a child rages and rages, proceeding at the same time from a feeling of the unshakable firmness of parental authority, the calm comfort of his own home, and becomes childishly serious and quiet in a strange environment, when his soul is full of anxiety and ambiguity, so all of us, experiencing swaying spiritual ground underfoot, have lost the ability to childish carelessness, to the daring of exuberant fun - to what the Germans call the untranslatable beautiful word "Uebermut". To enjoy the joyful intoxication, you need to have a home and be sure that you can peacefully sober up in it. Otherwise, only rampant despair is possible, that bitter, heavy drunkenness, to which Marmeladov indulges, because he has "nowhere to go."

What we are looking for and what we yearn for is not freedom, but strength and stability, not a chaotic wandering through endless distances, but peace in our own home. We are carried to the sides by stormy waves of life, and we dream of setting foot on an unshakably firm shore. Or, even more accurately, we are hanging in the air above the abyss, because we have lost the inner connection of our spirit, our personality with being, and we want to restore this connection, rely on solid spiritual ground. We do not suffer from excess, but from a lack of spiritual strength. We are exhausted in the wilderness, our soul is not looking for a meaningless space of detachment from everything, but, on the contrary, for a close, final fusion with something unknown, which can once and for all fill, strengthen, saturate it.

Our soul became impoverished and hungry. The loss of faith is not an easy matter, the overthrow of the idols whom we and our fathers worshiped for so long and passionately is not child's play. Probably, our ancestors, the ancient Slavs, were just as eerie, deserted and dreary when Perun plunged into the Dnieper along with the rest of the idols, and they did not know who now needed to serve and who to ask for help in troubles. For the renunciation of idols is not an impudent betrayal, it is not a rejection of faith and falling into a rampage of impiety: it is a sign of a change of faith, and if a new faith has not yet been found, then the fall of the old is itself a sign of its passionate search, painful yearning for it.

It is good for him who, in this anguish, in these torments of spiritual hunger and thirst, has a close, kindred soul - no matter whether a friend, a mother or a wife - before which he can pour out his anguish, or with which he can at least

take a break from it - for often we, not only to the closest person, but even to ourselves, cannot fully express what torments us. And woe to the lonely!

However, we all have one dear creature: this is the homeland. The more unhappy we are, the more empty our souls are, the more acutely, painfully we love her and yearn for her. Here we at least clearly feel: the homeland is not an "idol", and love for it is not an attraction to a ghost; homeland is a living, real being. We love her not because of the "principle of patriotism", we do not worship her glory, nor her power, nor any abstract signs and principles of her being. We love her very, our dear, ancient, primordial mother; she herself is now unhappy, dishonored, sick with a grave illness, devoid of any greatness, of any perceptible, indisputable to outsiders' virtues and virtues; she is spiritually sick along with all of us, her children. We can love her now only with that “strange love” in which the great, so spiritually close to us, yearning Russian poet, “the world-persecuted wanderer with a Russian soul” was recognized. This " strange Love"There is now the only genuine, simple love for us - that all-forgiving love for which" is not good for good, but good for good. " In the heat of political passions - those now imaginary, ostentatious passions for most of us, which we ourselves inflate in ourselves in order to drown out spiritual emptiness with them, and about which the same poet almost a hundred years ago said so bitterly: “and reigns in there is some kind of secret coldness in the soul, when the fire burns in the blood "- in this foggy child, we often forget our

true love and unwittingly we renounce the unhappy mother - the only treasure left on earth.

We flaunt her shame, we gleefully grin at her suffering, we even try to exaggerate both her grief and the depth of her moral decline because we cannot come to terms with the wrong path she went. We charge others and her the very responsibility for her sins and misfortunes, which lies equally on all of us, her children, we are often ready to identify her soul so dear and dear to us, which - we know this - is everlasting, with outrage and abomination her vicious rapist children now bullying her. But all this takes place in a superficial, ostentatious layer. our soul. Our genuine attitude is revealed not in words, not in conscious reasoning and evaluations, but in that melancholy, in those tears of affection with which we think about our native fields and forests, about our native customs and listen to the sounds of our native song. Then we know that there is no country in the world sweeter, more beautiful than the homeland.

What sorcerer do you want
Give back the robber beauty -
Let it lure and deceive
You will not be lost, you will not perish,
And only care will cloud
Your beautiful features.

Yes, we know:

You are still the same - a forest, but a field,
Yes, the boards are patterned up to the eyebrows.

If only we could help our homeland to resurrect, renew, appear to the world in all its beauty

social and spiritual strength - it seems that we would find a way out for our melancholy, at least for this we had to give our lives!

But it is here that we feel the hopelessness of our situation, the hopelessness of our dreams. And not at all because "the Bolsheviks are still holding out", that we do not know the means for overthrowing them, and that the end of their dominion is not foreseen. Who else believes that the salvation of the homeland lies in the simple "overthrow of the Bolsheviks", that the "Bolsheviks" are some kind of superficial, accidental evil, which it is enough to remove outwardly for truth and happiness to reign in Russia - who else lives by faith in this political idol, still intoxicated by the revolutionary dope with reverse content — he does not know our melancholy and this is not why these lines are written. But we, unfortunately, know very well that you cannot help anyone, including your homeland, if you yourself are helpless, that a beggar cannot enrich anyone and a sick person cannot become anyone's healer. We know that we ourselves are sick with the same disease with our homeland, no matter how different the symptoms of this disease may be, and that we will be healed only together - if we are healed! We will direct her on a new, correct path no earlier than we find it for ourselves. And because love for loved ones does not save us, which only softens but does not quench our spiritual longing, so neither does the most sincere, most ardent and selfless love for the motherland save us. The very faith in her, without which love is unthinkable, is rooted - we clearly feel it - in some other, deeper and more all-embracing faith, in which we must still be strengthened, which we must with indisputable and. to find in your soul with unshakable evidence,

but which we still do not have. Although love in itself does not need any justification, but without this faith it still lacks some ultimate strength, some deepest justification. Were there few peoples who perished from external misfortunes or from spiritual decay? Why are we Russians better than others, and why can't we disappear in this world earthquake? Maybe Russia is the same mirage as everything else around us? In our spiritual emptiness, we cannot find a convincing refutation of this nightmare fantasy.

No - we feel it - without faith in something primary, basic, unshakable, without the last, deepest stronghold on which our spirit could rely, no earthly attractions and hobbies, no love and affection can save us.

On these paths, in this hopeless and hopeless wandering of the soul through the vast, endless desert, when longing and spiritual thirst reach the utmost acuteness and become as if unbearable, the soul meets with the living God.

This meeting is inexplicable and everyone has their own way. It either shocks the soul unexpectedly, or is prepared in it by a slow process of enlightenment. It cannot be "necessarily" substantiated in any way for someone who has not yet experienced it himself, whose soul is not prepared for it, it cannot even be described. But somehow tell

to tell about what is in it common for all people, about the forces of the soul that push to it, and, most importantly, about its great consequences for the fate of the soul - this is still possible.

Perhaps the easiest thing to do is to understand how and why this meeting takes place if we try to understand for ourselves what we are actually looking for, what we need and what we yearn for.

We feel in ourselves some kind of ineradicable, powerful spiritual impulses that remain unsatisfied. What do they actually consist of? What we need?

It should not be said that we are looking for “shrines” that we can worship, genuine “ideals” that we can serve. These sublime words sound cold and unconvincing to us, and after all our experience we are suspicious of them. For us, in our current state, they have something inauthentic for us, some kind of falsity cutting the ear: they remind us of that idiot of Ostrovsky's characters, who liked to repeat: "everything is high and everything is beautiful, Anfisa Pavlovna ...".

What we are looking for is, on the contrary, something very real and simple - if you will, even something very crude and imperfect - but genuine. We are looking for real life, vitality and strength. It is not clear to us whether we should serve anyone or anything at all, and in any case we do not know what we should serve. But that we want to live and that we must live - we understand this well enough and there is no need to prove it. And yet we do not live; the sources of life are running out, the food reserves with which we have hitherto supported life are over or are running out, we are barely

We are weaning ourselves from death by swallowing dry crusts left over from the past. We are dying. And therefore we are not looking for "service", not for "ideals", not for morality - we are simply looking for salvation, personal salvation. Let moralists see in this only selfishness, let them preach anything to us, we know that this deepest thirst for self-preservation does not need any justification, for it has for us the self-evidence of the last, decisive instance. We know that a drowning man has the right to demand help and that at the sight of him it is impossible to start talking about serving ideals, but you just need to get him out of the water.

We are drowning because the soil on which we tried to stand turned out to be a shaky, sucking swamp, and we are looking for solid ground under our feet. We cannot rely on any "ideals" because they turned out to be ghosts; instead of supporting our spirit, they take it captive, demanding from us suicide, belittling and perverting our life in their name. And we cannot rely on ourselves, on only one lust for life or on inner strength life in us, for this is exactly what it means to hang in the air. No, we need a genuine ground - a spiritual reality that would be something other than our own “I”, and that is why it could support it, and at the same time something deeply related to it, close, identical in content that therefore would not take anything away from him, would not be hostile to him, but only everything would give and help in everything. We need to snuggle, forever cling to someone's friendly chest, hold on to someone's mighty and beneficent hand. We can not be saved by an "ideal", not by any moral

judgment and not words and reasoning. Only love can save us - but the love of such a creature and for such a creature that would not be as weak, helpless and poor as we ourselves, which itself would already stand firmly on its feet and would be rich enough to drink and feed our spirit. We are powerless children lost in an alien environment, and we are looking for a father or mother. Our spirit has broken away from its roots and is now withering away; and he frantically seeks to re-connect with these roots and deeply bury them in the original mother's bosom of the native spiritual soil, in order to bloom again and begin to bear fruit. In order not to feel the deadly emptiness in the depths, so to speak, at the last end of our spirit, it is necessary that it does not have this end, it is necessary that it be directly connected with the infinite spirit. So that our life does not dry out, it is necessary that it feeds on the eternal source of life from within.

You just need to fully understand the meaning and subject of your searches in order to find what you are looking for. And here it easily happens to us what the modern English writer Chesterton tells about himself with complacent irony:

“All my life I have been looking for the truth, and I thought that no one knew it, and tried to be at least a few years ahead of my century; but one day I realized that I was behind the truth for exactly nineteen centuries. "

Indeed, in fact, already nineteen centuries ago, the truth was proclaimed to the world - moreover, the Living Truth itself was revealed to the world, and precisely the very thing that we are now so painfully and seemingly hopelessly looking for was revealed to people. We are tired of all reasoning and ideas, have believed in them and spiritually impoverished. And Christ said: “blessed

the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. " We are not looking for moral judgment, but simply salvation from spiritual destruction. And He said: "I did not come to judge, but to save the world." We yearn for love that could support us, and He announced that God is love, that we have a Father - an eternal and almighty Father who loves his children and will not refuse anything to the one who asks. We are looking for the truth that could illuminate us spiritually, the true path in life, which would not destroy our life, but would be an expression of the true, deepest power of life, lurking in us and painfully not finding a way out. And He said: “I am path, truth and life» - and in these three words he expressed, gave us that inexpressible, authentic, the last thing we strive for. We are tired, weary both with the heaviness and emptiness of life, and He answers us: "Come to Me, all who are toiling and burdened, and I will give you rest." We are looking for a ministry that would not kill our souls, but would give us joy and peace, and He gives us a "good yoke and a light burden."

It is amazing how these familiar, old words that we are used to hearing from childhood and which, for this very reason, usually sound to us without much meaning - how these words precisely, simply and not in a humanly expressive way meet our need, contain exactly what we cry and that we ourselves are often unable to express not only to others, but also to ourselves. Who once felt it with the last clarity, with a force corresponding to the significance of the content, who perceived it as in hopeless trouble, when we consider ourselves already lost, we perceive the voice of a friend, encouraging us and proclaiming salvation to us - who absorbed

into himself this image of God, fully aware of all human need. God, who himself took upon himself all the sins and sufferings of the world, will not be confused by any doubts, he is simply not interested in abstract, spiritually blind philosophical discourses about religion, or historical guesses about the "true" person of Christ, or about the origin of faith in Him ... If there was a person who, with complete, final clarity, would reveal to us our own soul - without asking us about anything, would explain to us everything that we ourselves do not understand in her, and would find words of consolation and healing that give us both once what we need, we would know with perfect evidence that we have a true, infinitely rich in spirit friend and mentor. And if he did this not in words only, but with his whole life, with all his being, showing the world in his personality the embodiment of the highest, absolute truth - so that this truth, once expressed and fully manifested in a living personal form, lives in our own soul, as its eternal beginning, as an unshakable support and inexhaustible source of life - we would know for sure that our mentor and savior is the Eternal, divine Spirit itself, that He is always with us and with us, that He did not die and cannot die. And we know it .

Now that this has been revealed to us, we understand the very meaning of our searches, our longing. We are looking for salvation, we are looking for true and eternal life, that last, deepest source of life, which at the same time is light, joy and peace. And - repeating the words of blessed Augustine: how could we seek Him if we did not have Him? After all, a search that does not find satisfaction for itself

in what blessings and values of the world, suggests a vague vision and aspiration of something else, a perfect, all-embracing and eternal life. But where could such a search come from in our spirit, if it itself were entirely of an earthly, mundane origin, if beyond the bounds of the sensibly known to us there would be nothing else, no mysterious depths and transcendences? What is that force that drives us from one striving to another, not allowing us to dwell on one thing, what makes us renounce idols and expose their emptiness and evil, what hits us with indomitable waves, breaking all chains and flooding everything limited forms, all the shores with which earthly life constrains our spirit? Where does this power come from in us, where does this senseless belief in the infinity and the supreme value of our spirit come from, if it is only a small helpless human soul, a product of heredity, environment and upbringing?

You just need, as Plato said, to be able to "turn the eyes of the soul", you just need to carefully look into your own soul and be able to feel even only my own longing and dissatisfaction as discovering a new deepest ontological reality in the last depths of our own spirit, to directly make sure that the object of our search is not a ghost, but a true reality, and not something distant and unattainable, but something infinitely close to us, forever with us: for that eternal source of life and light that we are looking for, - he himself is the force that drives us in search of him. About these vague, foggy, powerless searches you can

to say already what the great mystics knew and said about prayer: that it itself is grace sent by God, that God hears us before we turn to him, and Himself draws us to cry to Himself. In these searches, it is revealed that in our soul already lives - vaguely and unknown to ourselves - the image of the true God, as the God of life, the God of truth and love. We feel emptiness in the depths of our souls, we painfully experience the isolation of our spirit, as if the nakedness of its inner end - like how the bare end of a nerve reacts with excruciating pain to every external touch. But why is that? Because we know that our spirit must be firmly and closely rooted deep in spiritual soil; we, therefore, know or foresee that this soil, this infinite reality of spiritual life is . And the very moment that we deliberately enlightened, that we know this, - at this very moment and by the power of this knowledge itself, we already feel a real contact with her, we already live in her and with her.

Now we also clearly understand why all the idols whom we previously worshiped had to fall and what their fall means. We experience it so painfully, as if it were the devastation of the soul, the death of all vital forces and impulses in it. We see now that in reality it is only liberation, the cleansing of the soul from ghostly and dead likeness of life, - a purification that is absolutely necessary for the immersion of the soul in the eternal and all-embracing source of true life and at the same time, unknown to ourselves, carried out by the waters of this source that have already seeped into our soul.

All our dreams aimed at the future and its self-made human creation, all the "ideals" and "norms" that, as such, we ourselves oppose reality - all these are ghosts, shadows and deceitful likenesses of being, devoid of roots in Being, in true life. Truly existing is not a dream that is born out of nothing in a solitary human soul and is still subject to fulfillment in the future; the truly existing is also not - to paraphrase Hegel's words here - only one "idea", which is so weak that it is not, but only "should be." Being is true, infinitely complete, eternal Being, it is living infinite life and truly real, omnipotent, creative power of love. She creates new life, it improves us and the whole world not from wretchedness, not from the emptiness of nothingness, yearning for fulfillment, but from the endless excess of reality, pouring out on all the weak rudiments of being and making them flourish and bear fruit. And Being is not a dead scheme, a formula that pretends to be life, an abstractly dissected part of the living flesh of being, which wants to exhaust it by itself and therefore fatally gives birth to only death and hatred, which destroys all living things. Being, being true life, is infinite love, healing all the ailments of our limited existence, making up for all its shortcomings, even raising the dead - calling and prompting all the dead to plunge into living water and be reborn in it, to become alive.

In the end, only that which should have perished perished, because it had no life in itself, but was only a dead and ghostly semblance of life - a mirage and wandering that attracted us.

giving a spark. From now on, this death is no longer anything terrible for us, it cannot bring despondency to us. - And in general, nothing from now on can inspire us with despondency. Through the depths of our hitherto devastated spirit, we finally reached solid, unshakable ground, on which we now firmly stand with both feet. Through the endless darkness, a light flashed to us, which from now on internally illuminates us.

At the first moment, this meeting with God, this groping for the ground under our feet and the discovery of the inner light does not change anything for us in everything else, in the outer world, in our relations to people and to earthly life. We have just found in our souls a source of inexhaustible joy, a sense of strength and peace. We found eternal friend and Father, we are not alone and forsaken no more; in silence, alone with ourselves and God, we enjoy the joy of love, in comparison with which all the failures, disappointments and sorrows of outer life are already insignificant, insignificant.

Amid the random vanity,
In a stream of muddy life worries
You own the all-joyful secret
Powerlessly evil; we are eternal; God is with us.

We listen to the usual human conversations, interests and passions, the usual beggarly concerns of human life with the complacently ironic smile of a man who knows a great secret about himself that completely changes life and gives it new meaning and direction. We know: people consider themselves beggars, they are full of heavy worries, gloomy, exhausting and fierce struggle for existence and do not know that they are the owners

a huge inheritance, immeasurable wealth, which will forever provide them with a joyful and calm life. But we know about this treasure, we have already come across it and therefore well understand how ridiculous and empty their worries and worries are.

This inner treasure, this gift of immeasurable love initially only opposes, as inner being and inner wealth, all outer life and environment... Moreover, this inner light is often so dazzlingly bright that everything else dims in front of it. Everything seems to us insignificant, uninteresting, insignificant in comparison with our inner wealth. We may be like selfish lovers who, for the sake of the happiness of their love, forget everything else and become indifferent to all people and to all life's interests.

But this is only a temporary, transient violation of spiritual balance from too much strength and brightness of the impression. The event that happened to us leads to further enlightenment and development; the power to which we have joined must reveal its true creative nature. This event is - the inner opening of the soul , the cessation of her isolation, her cold and weakening being in herself, And this power is the power of endless love, the power of true life. And therefore, the soul must continue to open further and gradually, through its primordial connection with God, feel the same close, inner connection with all people and the whole world. And the living discovery of eternal and endless love as last base and being our and all existence should

lead to the same: through God, we gradually learn to love everything, since it is the discovery of true being; the power of eternal love, which at first only aroused in us the love of ourselves, must continue to give birth to love in us for everything and everyone. In "Philosophy" there is a beautiful image of Abba Dorotheos: just as points of different radii - the farther from the center, the further away from each other, and the closer to the center, the closer - and to each other - so people gradually come closer to each other. to the extent of their general approach to the absolute focus of being and life - to God. Another image is recalled, remembered by many religiously enlightened thinkers: just as the leaves of a tree are separated and, as it were, separate from each other, without directly touching each other, but in reality they live and turn green only by the power of the juices passing through them from one common trunk and root, and feed on the moisture of the common soil, so people, being outside, isolated beings, closed from each other, internally, through their common connection with the all-embracing Source of life, are merged into an integral single life.

So, instead of the whole multitude of "ideals", principles and norms that led our soul to false paths, which led to dead ends, and tortured it, we are faced with only two commandments, sufficient to comprehend, enrich, strengthen and revitalize our life: immeasurable, boundless love for God as the source of love and life and love for people, which grows from the feeling of the all-unity of human life, rooted in God, from the consciousness of brotherhood, grounded in our common filial relationship to the Father. And these two commands

Leads are expressible and were expressed as one: we have been commanded to strive for perfection, to assimilate, as far as possible, to our Heavenly Father as the Perfect source of love and life. And these two - or one - commandments do not appear before us from the outside, with the cold and incomprehensible authority of moral "norms" or prescriptions. We internally understand them as necessary ways of our salvation, preservation of our life. We are not judged as criminals, over whom an indifferent judge pronounces a sentence in the name of a cold legal law that does not delve into our mental need. We are judged by the voice of our Father, who loves us and guides us on the path of salvation; from this inner judgment, we simply learn on which path we go to life and on which - to death, where is our salvation and where is destruction.

And from now on, much of what previously seemed to us to be a dead idol and was really exposed by us as an idol - in a different form and with a completely different meaning, begins to resurrect in our soul, as a living force and as a reasonable way and rule of life. First of all, the whole area of morality. We did not understand why we were obliged to break and maim our lives for the sake of some abstract principles, and our spirit, thirsting for freedom and life, protested against this oppression. Indeed, we are sufficiently convinced that the irreligious morality of principles, the morality of duty and the categorical imperative is an idol that only destroys, not improves life. But now we are discovering in ourselves a new living source of meaningful and understandable morality. To the question: why are we obliged to do this and that that we do not want, and should suppress the natural desires of our soul,

we can now answer ourselves internally. We can give the example of a patient who, for the sake of recovery, must indeed take bitter medicines and condemn himself to limiting the strongest desires of his body; or an example of a drowning man who, in order to get out of the sucking depths to the shore and thereby save his life, must exert all his strength, try, no matter how difficult it is, to keep his head above the water and swim not with the current that carries him into the abyss, but against the current ...

All morality - we understand this well - is nothing but such hygiene or a technique of salvation, preservation of one's life - self-evidently reasonable rules for protecting that "treasure in heaven", which is the only source, the only means of our existence and about which we natural blindness and frivolity are so often forgotten. This task is not to lose the treasure, once acquired by us, not to be separated from it again, not to bury the given talent in the ground, but to grow it and use its benefits - this task is not always easy for us: it requires from us constant vigilance, struggle with our blind lusts, courageous willpower, often cruel tenacity. And yet it is a joyful and meaningful undertaking, whose efforts are immediately rewarded a hundredfold and which, for all its difficulty, is therefore easy to accomplish.

In the light of the knowledge we have acquired of true being, we are now gradually discovering, or at least, we foresee a whole new world - the sphere of the spiritual foundations of life; and in this world a strict, unswerving regularity reigns - no less accurate than in the world of phi-

physical, although of a different order. This is what the brilliant Christian thinker Pascal called ordre du coeur or logique du coeur - "order" or "logic" of the human heart. The main features of this order are predetermined by the precepts of Christianity, they are simply discovered in Christianity, which is the absolute truth of the human soul; it is in this sense that Tertullian's subtle dictum that "the soul is by nature a Christian" must be understood. This “order of the heart” cannot be violated with impunity, for it is a condition for the meaningfulness, strength of our life, a condition for our spiritual balance and therefore our very being; it can be just as little violated, as little can the laws of bodily health, the normal order of organic life, or the laws of mechanics and physics be violated with impunity. This spiritual order of being, the comprehension of which is "for the Jews a temptation and for the Hellenes madness", that is, it seems to be something unacceptable for those who know only the external norms and political ideals of life, and senseless - for those who know only the life of the natural world - is for the sighted, an absolute, strict truth that substantiates his entire life and provides it with the highest rationality. Morality, being abstractly unprovable as self-sufficient knowledge, by itself, with perfect necessity, with complete predetermination of its structure, follows from the religious understanding of life. Being a living, humane morality of love and salvation, it is at the same time a strict morality of asceticism, self-restraint and self-sacrifice, for its fundamental law precisely says that you cannot save your soul without losing it, and that you cannot gain the kingdom of heaven otherwise than by bearing your cross. For the gate is wide and space-

the path leading to destruction is not, and the gate is narrow and the path leading to life is narrow... And we now understand the destructive lie of immoralism, which gives a person freedom to perish and feeds a sick soul with sweets when it needs bitter medicines to recover. We even understand the relative value of an ordinary unenlightened, heteronomous — contrary to Kant - morality, for until a person has received his sight, certain external rules are inevitable that limit his arbitrariness and protect him from evil, no matter how inevitably imperfect these means are and no matter how often, being perceived as self-sufficient higher principles, they themselves did not degenerate into evil.

And yet this living religious morality is deeply different in its inner structure from the dead morality of duty and "moral ideal." For all of it is imbued with a living sensation of the presence of a real source of life and, at the same time, with a consciousness of the imperfection and weakness of man's natural being; and all of it is a radiation of love, a striving for salvation. Therefore, in her, hatred for evil never degenerates into hatred for the very essence of life and for individual concrete people. Religious asceticism is the blissful asceticism of salvation, and not the frenzied-cruel asceticism of moral fanaticism. In this state of mind, a person tries to be mercilessly strict with himself. , for he really wants to be reborn and is afraid of losing the great treasure that was entrusted to him; but, feeling his own sinfulness, he will not judge others harshly and will try to be not their judge, but their helper. For he lives not by the morality of judgment, but by the morality of salvation; and he knows very well that, on the one hand, all people do not deserve the same

live the great benefits that God gives them, and, on the other hand, are equally children of God who will not be forsaken by their Father. For a true believer, hypocrisy is unthinkable, the fatal division of life into an officially ostentatious and intimately genuine moral life; after all, it is about personal salvation, about the satisfaction of the deepest and true need of the soul, and here there is no impoverishment and drying up of the soul, but there is its immeasurable enrichment and flourishing. Perfection is here a great personal happiness, which is more inclined to bashfully hide from people in the recesses of the soul than to impudently impose on people. And in all this, the spirit of love blows, as the very essence of life and salvation: therefore, the cold, hostile to the living human soul and the severity of the external moral struggle alienated from it is inconceivable, but only love help in awakening the true light in the souls of brothers. Here it is immediately obvious that the growth of good is not a mechanical result of the extermination of evil, and still less of the extermination evil people, but the fruit of the organic inner cultivation of the very good in oneself and others. For evil is non-being, emptiness posing as fullness; it disappears, only supplanted by the fullness, the essential, the deep reality of good.

And in the same way, in this blessed light, the lost ideals of human relations and general human social order are resurrected for us with a different meaning and content. We, of course, cannot return to the old idols and now understand their falsity even better: we cannot believe in any absolute order of social order, we cannot bow to any political forms and doctrines.

US. We know that the kingdom of true life is not of this world and can never be adequately and fully realized in the conditions of an inevitably sinful and imperfect earthly life. But at the same time, we know with complete clarity the paths along which our relations with people and the development of society should go. We recognize, first of all, as the fundamental law of our moral world, the mutual guarantee that connects us with the whole world. Realizing the all-unity of being rooted in God, we clearly see our responsibility for the evil that reigns in him, and just as clearly understand the impossibility of our salvation outside of common salvation. Just as a single leaf on a tree cannot turn green when the whole tree dries up and rots, for the whole tree as a whole is bound by a community of life, so inner solidarity prevails in human life, which cannot be violated with impunity. Hence follows the basic inner rule of love for people and solidarity with them in the name of our own salvation.

But we also know what exactly is the true good of human life, and therefore from now on we will not be tempted by any utopias of social paradise, equality of distribution and universal material satiety, or internally related to them, although inverse in content dreams of the soulless power of state power , about earthly greatness and military glory. We know the true, spiritual foundations and goals of life and well understand both the inevitable hierarchy of human life that follows from them, the need to subordinate the worst - to the best and all - to the general law of life, and the need to respect every human person and a brotherly relationship to it.

The new instinct of spiritual health and self-preservation - which by more knowledgeable people can be revealed and comprehended into a whole system of hygiene of spiritual life - now guides our whole life - both our personal relationships to people and our attitude to issues of public life.

When, guided by this immediate instinct of living, genuine truth, we look at present social life and the ideological forces operating in it, we feel that we cannot identify ourselves with any of the directions prevailing in it. We, of course, repulse with disgust from the cynicism, arrogance and unscrupulousness of unbelief, which in the forces currently ruling in Russia tramples on the truth and mocks at it; and we in the least can not make spiritual concessions to him, take a spiritually half-hearted, compromise position arising from the desire to simultaneously isolate ourselves from pure evil, and keep up with the "spirit of the times", in which this evil and madness is dominant power. On the other hand, we cannot sympathize with all those who, out of sincere motivation or out of pharisaic pride, observe their purity, surrounding themselves with a wall of hatred for everything that exists and with painful exaltation indulging in the fanatical cult of social and political idols, long defeated, - who as before, albeit with the opposite content, he confuses religious faith with abstract morality, and morality with political "principles." The spiritual universe for us essentially does not fit into the linear dimension from right to left, and the cult of the “right” is for us the same idolatry as the cult of the “left”. In the midst of the maelstrom that has taken us, as they fall apart

old, habitual forms of life and unknown new ones are maturing, and when at the same time the strength of the human spirit is tested, we realize the need for a strict distinction between the eternal from the temporal, the absolute from the relative. The uncommonness of life, its shakyness and fragility, the novelty of living conditions require us to combine the greatest, unshakable and enduring devotion to eternal principles, subject to abuse and doubt, with spiritual breadth and freedom, with a sensitive, unbiased attitude to the real way of life and its needs. This combination of firm fidelity to truth with complete spiritual freedom, readiness for martyrdom in the name of truth - with tolerance for people, with a tendency, without fear of contamination, to enter into live communication with them among all the reigning evil - this combination is given only to a religious spirit that has comprehended a living eternal truth and overshadowed by its gracious spirit. With the same denial, but also with the same tolerant love for the erring human soul, we treat both unbelievers and idolaters and go our own way.

And - to put an end here with this list of, in the end, innumerable spiritual wealth acquired by us - we now find the correct attitude not only to individuals and social orders and trends, but also to collective, supraindividual living organisms. What we previously only dimly sensed at best, we now understand and see: namely, that these supraindividual wholes are living spiritual beings that have their own value and whose fate determines our personal destiny. Through the past

the overcoming of the inner isolation of our soul, through its opening and involvement with the all-unified living basis of being, we immediately internally join the super-temporal all-unity of people who live, like us, in God and with God, - to the super-individual soul of the church as the unity of holiness and religious life as the eternal keeper of sacred truths and traditions. From the very perception of eternal existence and living proximity to the Divine follows directly the perception of the church as a living universal soul of humanity, as a catholic personality, through the connection with which we participate in the universal, cosmic sacrament of communion with God. In it we have the true mother's bosom of our entire spiritual life. And in the fullness of our concrete earthly life, we join the super-individual soul of our homeland, not only feel, but also meaningfully understand it as a living being, like a mother, and we know the connection between our life and her life, the interdependence of ours and her salvation. We understand that she, like the whole world, like ourselves, is dying from blindness, from the whirlwinds of anger and hatred that have swirled in the world, that there is no outcome from this death in any political fanaticism, but there is only an outcome in spiritual rebirth, in the growth of an internally meaningful, love-filled attitude to life. We no longer place responsibility on some - on those whom we consider our political enemies, and no longer boast of our own civic virtue. We understand our common sinfulness before our homeland, our guilt in its death, in the birth of blindness and satanic malice, we are full of love and pity for the concrete, living soul of the people, which has fallen now, like ourselves, and we realize how difficult it is for her -

and we together with her - to rise spiritually after this fall. But along with faith in the living God, which gives us faith in ourselves and in people, we also gain strong faith in our homeland.

Now we are grateful to God for the entire path we have traveled, no matter how difficult it may be. The world and our soul had to go through both the worship of idols, and through the bitterness of gradual disappointment in them, in order to be cleansed, free and find true completeness and spiritual clarity. The great world turmoil of our time is not without reason, it is not the painful trampling of humanity in one place, not a senseless heap of aimless atrocities, abominations and suffering. This is the difficult path of purgatory traversed by modern mankind; and perhaps it will not be conceited to believe that we, Russians, who have already been in the last depths of hell, having tasted like no one, all the bitter fruits of worshiping the abomination of Babylon, will be the first to go through this purgatory and help others to find the way to spiritual resurrection.

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How to fill the void in your soul? It so happens that life loses its colors, emotions and feelings are dulled, energy falls, nothing else is of interest. A person begins to be bored, apathy, the meaninglessness of existence seizes him, depression comes. Emptiness in the soul: the reasons for this phenomenon can be different. Getting rid of emptiness is necessary because it affects mental and physical health.

What is soul

When answering the question: "What if there is emptiness in the shower?" it is worth understanding what the soul is. Religious, philosophical and mythological traditions characterize the feeling of emptiness from different angles.

Most often, the concept of a soul includes an incorporeal entity that is in a living being. From the point of view of psychology, these are mind, feelings, character, awareness of reality, human memory, perception and thinking. If one of the components is missing, then it is considered that emptiness settles in life.

Philosophical systems can recognize or deny the immortality of the soul. In Christianity and Judaism, it is believed that the soul is immortal. Thomas Aquinas (Catholic theologian) said that the essence of a person does not die. He also argued about the presence of a soul exclusively for humanity (animals, according to his theory, did not have a soul).

In other religions, there is the teaching that all organisms have a soul. For example, confirmation of this can be found in Hinduism and Jainism. Some non-biological objects can also be alive - this is evidenced by animism. Therefore, everything that exists can have a spiritual emptiness.

Science views the soul as a construct denoting a certain substance. It is located in the human brain. Scientists still cannot prove or disprove the existence of a higher entity in man, in the living and inanimate world.

According to biologist Cyril Barrett, the soul stands for an idea that was invented and cultivated by humans themselves. They wanted to imagine that existence has a conscience. The expert referred to the fact that a higher entity is a complex organization of matter in the human brain. The soul has a biological explanation.

At the beginning of the last century, an experiment was carried out by Duncan McDougall. He measured the weight of patients during their lifetime and after they left the world. The scientist believed that at the time of death, the person was losing weight. The soul weighed 21 grams. Presumably the essence was in the heart.

Spiritual emptiness: the reason

There is emptiness in my soul. What to do? Fill your heart with love. This is the simplest answer to complex issue... Usually, an emptiness arises inside a person, since he has no interests or he does not love anyone. It is important to love yourself first.

You can fill the void in your soul with the help of a spiritual source of love. We need to establish connections with him. As soon as a person loves himself, stops ignoring his feelings, trying to overshadow them with drugs or rituals - the feeling of empty space and meaninglessness will disappear.

It is important not to have misconceptions about yourself. This leaves an ego wound. The latter makes a person think that he is unattractive or not good enough. Creation cannot be wrong or bad. It is ideal by nature, and this must always be remembered. With a long stay in a feeling of lack of inner love and with not knowing how to fill the void in the soul, a feeling of deep loneliness and detachment from the real world arises.

Programmed beliefs to self-destruct have no real basis. They try to control human life, constantly make you feel depressed, focus on negative emotions. The individual thinks that he is not good enough, so he turns to drugs and alcohol as a means of escape from reality. it defensive reaction that leads nowhere. This will not be able to fill the empty space inside.

False reasons for emptiness in the soul

How to fill the void in your soul? Can you always feel happy? And come in harmony with yourself and outside world? The answer is unequivocal - yes. One has only to discover the truth that a person is able to fill his life with positive energy and dispose of it independently.

The main reason for the feeling of empty space within yourself lies in false beliefs about the occurrence of the process. It is customary to rank among them:

The partner does not give enough affection and does not pay the necessary attention;
There is no reliable life companion;
High ambitions that cannot be satisfied at work;
Expectations from taking off on the career ladder, their unjustification;
Lack of funds for a certain standard of living;
Boring and uninteresting everyday life;
Lack of love, attention from a close circle of people;
Life is seen in the form of continuous workdays.

Also, the reason may be an acute lack of love relationships. Sometimes an individual does not know how to properly cope with problems and minor troubles that develop into serious conflict situations.

These points can be easily solved. You should not take them to heart, let alone make them the cause of emptiness in the soul. To cope with this condition, people usually perform rituals:

They eat a lot of sweets. In the course go narcotic substances, alcohol, even if there was no craving for it before;
Detachment from the real state of affairs in the world, which contributes to immersion in television, the Internet, shopping, gambling;
At such moments, the void begins to fill, but this is a false sensation;
Inappropriate behavior is another attempt to combat the problem. This is how the attention of the people around is attracted.

How to fill the void in your soul, and what if all else fails? At least give up the listed rituals. They do not solve the situation, but only exacerbate it. Such methods only work for a short time. After that, the individual returns to a depressive state. Individual symptoms are removed, the picture as a whole does not change.

Symptoms

There are certain symptoms when one can understand that a person has an emptiness in his soul. The symptomatology was formulated by psychologists and psychoanalysts:

The individual thinks that he is not good enough or that certain people have high expectations of him;
Constant striving to be useful to everyone. Such people have a false sense of guilt before literally everyone;
Personality wants to be ideal always and in everything;
A person does not want to do anything and not have a conversation with anyone;
Fears prevent life from being full of joy and happiness. Obsessive phobias follow on the heels;
An individual every day experiences anxiety that he is not smart enough, beautiful and successful. The result is apathy;
There is a feeling of oneself as a victim, as well as the fatality and irrevocability of life;
An understanding of the meaninglessness of being arises, ideas on how to fill the void in the soul no longer appear.

The owner of such a disorder constantly feels helpless and unhappy. Pessimistic thoughts slip through, they may not leave consciousness for a long time.

It seems to a person that his love and feelings are not important. He does not want to give his love to anyone and appreciate anyone. An individual loses or gains weight for no reason, he has chronic pain, insomnia. There may also be skin and gastrointestinal disorders.

In rare cases, suicidal thoughts appear. The personality thinks that emptiness can go away only after death. Anxiety and depression are felt. Such people expect that their activities and personal life will be discussed by others, constantly envious of their success.

When people are looking for an answer to the question of how to fill the void in their souls, they tend to lean toward various addictions. Alcohol and drugs come to the fore. They give a false sense of fullness.

What to do

It is not easy to overcome the state of emptiness within yourself, but it is possible. You cannot have a superficial attitude to such a situation. It must be remembered that such a feeling requires treatment, like any phobia or depression.

In most cases, a person feels internal discomfort. It is important at this moment to seek help from a specialist:

a psychologist;
psychotherapist;
psychiatrist;
psychoanalyst.

It also happens that additional support is needed from doctors from other areas. Everything is individual and directly depends on the symptoms. heartache... Changes for no reason on the mental and physical level are diagnosed by an endocrinologist and nutritionist. Against the background of mental emptiness, a therapist will help get rid of chronic pain. He usually recommends gentle pain relievers.

In addition to medication treatment, serious work on oneself may be required. This eliminates the feeling of empty space. It happens that you need to have the courage to make changes to Everyday life... It is important to choose completely unexpected ways, to identify and eradicate the sources of internal discomfort. They might be old friends, not interesting job, the wrong life partner. Sometimes creativity helps, getting rid of unhealthy relationships, old habits.

How to fill the void in your soul? You need to try to love yourself and the world... Make changes in the actions that take place every day, make your inner world and your landmarks different.

First aid

Inner emptiness can develop into deep depression. For this reason, attention is needed both to oneself and on the part of loved ones. Sometimes this phenomenon is difficult to cope with on your own. Great willpower is needed here. The question must be asked: who do I want to be, how much I live a fulfilling life, and what needs to be done to correct the situation.

Emergency measures look like this:

It is worth complaining to everyone and everywhere. So you can look at yourself from the outside, voice everything that worries. The main thing is to find a person who is ready to listen to all aspirations.
Trust people as much as possible. This is often difficult to do, especially after a recent betrayal. You need to look more closely at the environment, look for reliable partners and friends.
Searching for the cause of the internal state on your own is another way to deal with the depressive state. Self-digging will help. It is important not to get carried away too much, to try to find rational arguments, what actions were wrong, what I would like to correct.

Psychologists also recommend looking for the cause of your condition. You need to stir up your emotions as soon as possible. It is important not to be indifferent. Adrenaline should rush into the blood. For example, it is recommended that you go in for an active sport, read a dramatic book, or watch a fun movie.

It is worth finding things that may really interest you, thinking about future events. For example, if you love books, psychologists advise you to visit bookstores more often. The plot is easily captivating, the same applies to the fans of the series.

In such a state, it is better to refrain from communicating with advisers; the choice of an interlocutor must be approached carefully. Wrong decisions or untimely information plunges a person into deep depression. It is recommended to invite people with a positive outlook on life, a thirst for energy and action. It is desirable that laughter and jokes are heard in the company.

Another option is listening to your favorite music. Do not hesitate to sing along to your favorite performer or dance. In some cases, a visit to an art gallery or exhibition in a museum is sufficient.

Having pets also helps. They require constant love and care. It is important to pay attention to them. Responsibility for younger brothers distracts from problems and worries, gradually pulls out of depression.

A change of image is suitable for a woman. It is best to go to a beauty salon, change your hair color, and do a few procedures that will be beneficial for your body and face. This will instill a charge of vivacity and confidence in the future.

It is worth remembering that people are almost never alone. Most have a circle of relatives and friends. You can visit them, ask by phone how they are doing, what they are passionate about. The meaning of life is given by complicity in their affairs.

Sometimes, you get so tired of constantly worrying, suffering, experiencing emotions that coldness, emptiness appears in the soul. Psychologists do not consider this feeling normal; it may indicate a serious mental disorder. The feeling is strange, because you seem to be living and not. Where does the abyss come from? How to get rid of the terrible emptiness and feel happy again?

Causes

Often a person himself does not notice when a crisis period begins, in which the entire inner world begins to collapse completely, forming a black hole. People around you often do not notice how bad it is for a person who seems to live an ordinary life, but in fact it is dark and "damp" inside. Factors leading to this condition can be distinguished:

Strong. Constant routine, eternal vanity lead to moral exhaustion. Imperceptibly for everyone, mental strength begins to dry up.
Stress. After a serious loss, sudden life changes, it is very difficult to recover, therefore, it appears, which eventually leads to emptiness.
Shock. While this condition is similar to stress, it should not be confused. A person experiences shocks due to betrayal, betrayal, when a beautiful fairy-tale world, like a fragile designer, collapses at one moment.
Lack of purpose. If the implemented tasks are not replaced by others, it becomes very difficult. Probably, everyone had to experience this feeling when you achieve a goal (no matter how difficult it is), after that life becomes boring and less interesting.
Acute period. When a lot of things fall on a person at once, after a while you can feel emptiness, emotional burnout.

What is accompanied by spiritual emptiness?

Unfortunately, it all ends with melancholy, indifference, depression, apathy. A person seems to live out of despair. If you do not take timely measures, everything can end in suicide.

Mental emptiness leads to the fact that a person is indifferent to everything - he is not interested in the world around him, withdraws into himself, ceases to contact with people. Due to the devastation of his soul, he launches his appearance, his house, his friends often refuse him. In order to prevent tragedy, it is important to understand that the soul was burned by experiences that, it would seem, are already in the past, but do not disappear anywhere, interfere with life.

What to do?

Gradually, you need to fill the void. Of course, this is quite difficult to do, but if there is a desire to live fully again, then it is possible. Think that it is better to be a soulless being or a real person who knows how to rejoice, cry, sincerely love. You need to overpower yourself, get angry and fill the empty space.

Follow these steps:

Don't be afraid to complain. Surely you have relatives, friends, you do not need to keep everything to yourself, cry, speak out.
Learn to trust... Close people will not wish you harm, they will always console, listen, give valuable advice, understand.
Understand the reason. Perhaps you need to change your location, get away from all the hustle and bustle. Sometimes it is enough to think alone, in a new environment. A house outside the city helps a lot. Here you can cut trees, plant flowers, get rid of dry grass. As you do all this work, you will begin to notice how you cleanse your soul, draw pain out of it.
Need to rock your emotions, for this you can do an extreme sport that will raise your adrenaline level. You can read a heartbreaking book, watch a melodrama. And for someone it is enough to enjoy the beautiful nature, the sunrise or just fall in love.

How to fill the spiritual void?

It is important to understand that emptiness affects different sides of life. Therefore, it is necessary to act correctly. In your soul should be repopulated:

The world of feelings, personal life. A person cannot live fully without tenderness and passion. Don't be afraid to start new relationships, even if the previous experience was bad. Open your soul, perhaps you will find your real loved one with whom you will feel happy again.
Relationships with loved ones... Sometimes the daily hustle and bustle leads to the fact that a person does not have enough time to communicate with loved ones. Do not abandon your family - visit your grandmother or grandfather, parents, brother, sister, have a heart-to-heart talk. These people really love you, they can stir you up.
Job. Often a person is saved by their favorite activity. If your work has not brought you happiness before, find yourself, do what you have wanted for a long time. You shouldn't look at work as hard work, get creative with it. It motivates you.
Hobbies. Do not refuse to attend different events. Find a hobby that will hook you. Thus, you will get fresh emotions.

It turns out that in order to fill the void in the soul, you just need to gather strength, learn to enjoy life, get pleasure from it. You must do everything to fill your life with bright colors, feelings, then harmony will appear in your soul.

Look for God
Search tearfully
Look people
Until it's not too late!
Search everywhere
Search everyone.
And you will find
Him one day.
And there will be joy
Above the sky!
But look so -
Like a bread beggar!

Poem written on the wall of the house
blessed Pasha (Paraskeva) of Sarov in
Seraphim-Diveevsky nunnery

If you have ever analyzed your life, and most likely it has happened more than once. You probably noticed that there are special periods or moments that change us very much. And after which, such as before, we will never be left. No, I sincerely believe that each of our meetings is far from accidental, moreover, providential. I believe that every person in our life and every situation brings us something different, speaks about something. But, such things, sometimes they are simply not noticed behind the bustle, and you can not pay attention to them at all. But ... there is one, two !!! moments that make us think about a lot and rethink a lot.

What could it be? Anything! Divorce from your beloved woman. Endless loneliness. Serious illness or injury! Perhaps a continuous series of unpleasant events. Loss of dear loved one... Sometimes, this is what shakes us out of the cocoon of self-deception, and the common lie that is so diligently imposed by the world, public opinion, on TV, rumors and the general way of life of the so-called "normal" life.

And maybe at this moment, a person for the first time in his life begins to ask himself the most important questions... "Who is God?" Can a person know this for sure? And is He even in this world, where misfortune, evil, injustice sometimes dominate almost infinitely? This terrible question about the existence of God has been asked by billions of people. And each generation, each of us will not leave the search for an answer to this question.

And if you are at least a little too lazy, at least a little try to spend time on what concerns our soul ... then you can be surprised! How little we know about the world around us. Let's take the Holy Gospel in our hands and open this holy book. Let's discover the Sacred Tradition of our native Church.

Read at least one of the books of Paisiy the Avyatogorets, Anthony of Sourozh, discover the work of the great writer Carroll Lewis “Just Christianity”. Read at least a few letters from Hegumen Nikon Vorobyov or the Russian Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov. You will discover an amazing world. The wisdom of all modern psychologists will seem to you childish compositions in comparison with the simple wisdom and life that will breathe on you from the pages of these books. There are answers to ALL your questions. About the soul, about life, about grief, about joy, about children. Questions about true love, about fidelity. About how to become, finally, a happy person, to find peace for your soul, your heart already in this earthly life.

Much will open your eyes. We will actually see that sin exists. There is both God and angels, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and of course the evil one also exists. And that his main task is precisely to destroy the human soul. By hook or by crook to distract from God. To lure a person with anything, work beyond all measure, some dangerous sport, someone with alcohol, someone with money, someone with drugs, someone with power, someone with carnal passion (even betrayal or love affairs, which have become normal so far that it is almost not condemned by society) and there are a lot of such beautiful at first sight "sweets". But inside, behind a bright candy wrapper ... sometimes not just emptiness, but a real poison. And he catches everyone with his own bait and leads on it. In fact, he doesn't care what to bring a person to the abyss, on a passion for money, on theft, on drunkenness, on excessive pride or pride. The goal is one - to destroy, to destroy the soul of a person. And without God, man has no chance. Without leading a spiritual life, even a little, a person forms an emptiness in his chest, which constantly haunts us.

I think everyone felt this emptiness in their chest. It seems that the most important, the best is somewhere nearby, but even in the most vivid love stories, this filling is only temporary, more from emotions than from a real deep feeling. And in nothing worldly, in any things or pleasures, or in any riches of the material world, this emptiness cannot be filled.

This is what unhappy (truly unhappy) people testify to. The so-called already "pretty shabby" heartthrobs-lovers, who are not enough and not enough of one beloved and they, like the possessed, are drawn more and more to new and new sensations, but for each of them more and more disappointment awaits. Or the emptiness of the one who craves power goes further and further and over the heads, over the necks, over the people ... Or the one who is just quietly drinking himself to death somewhere in a one-room apartment, in fact, is also trying to fill that inexpressible and deepest abyss of our heart, our souls. He tries to find his happiness even in this. And no one, since the time of Adam, has yet succeeded in doing this, without the most important thing. Without God.

But, when a person develops faith in God, prayer, the first acquaintance with Holy Scripture, the hope for the Orthodox saints, who are always with us, is only worth turning to them mentally (After all, everyone is alive with God. Luke, chapter 20. 38 God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for with Him all are alive), then a person can truly be happy, filled, calm on the inside and confident on the outside. Can move mountains if necessary. Then a person enters, as it were, a spiritual orbit, he begins
to open your eyes and see that this world is far from so simple, far from so material.
He begins to notice that there are small miracles and sees how prayer works, sees what incredible treasures the sacraments of the Church give us. And only here, there is a real change in a person. Cardinal. Not superficial, when a person seems to be trying to manage everything in his life and himself. He tries to overcome, for example, drunkenness, is encoded and becomes such a nasty character that they say “it would be better to continue drinking”, have you met this? I am.

Or, for example, he begins to struggle with gluttony and fixates on himself, on health, and excessive, to the point of tyranny. Or someone was promoted in position, there was a little more money in your pocket and what was left of the human in it? .. But you never know examples? And turning to God, the quality of the soul changes, by faith one can heal from any passions, from any. You only need one, a sincere desire, a request to God and a little bit of our efforts. And then miracles happen, as with the Apostle Paul, who went to Damascus to persecute and execute Christians, and after meeting with the Lord, became the great confessor of the Christian faith, the Apostle. The quality of the soul has changed.

And, as one wise father used to say, one must be able to live and enjoy life. Be grateful for everything that is given to us. Not only for the joys, but also for the difficulties in our life, which at least a little allow us to sometimes wake up from the hustle and bustle, from oblivion. And this will be our best prayer to God. But, for this it is necessary to understand once again whether we correctly understand these holy words ... "Life", "Faith", "Hope" and "Love".

And I would like to end this conversation with the words from the will of Patriarch Alexy II:

“And if in your life you feel that in the depths of your heart there is a void that nothing of what you have met in the world can fill, remember that there is Christ, that there is a Church that testifies about itself with the words of the Apostle:“ ... we are considered deceivers, but we are faithful; we are unknown, but they recognize us, we are considered dead, but behold, we are alive; we are punished, but we do not die; we are saddened, but we are always happy ... we have nothing, but we enrich everyone. Our lips are open to you, our heart is enlarged "(2 Cor. 6: 8-11)"