On Why We Judge Things Incorrectly and How to Acquire Right Judgment About Them

The reason we judge incorrectly about the things mentioned above is that we do not look into their depth to see what they truly are, but form either love or aversion toward them immediately at first glance and based on their outward appearance. This love or aversion preoccupies our mind and darkens it, so that it cannot judge rightly about things as they truly are. Therefore, my brother, if you wish that such deception find no place in your mind, attend to yourself carefully; and when you either see something with your eyes or represent something to your mind, hold your desires back as much as possible and do not allow yourself either to take an immediate liking to that thing or to conceive an aversion to it, but examine it dispassionately with the mind alone. In such a case the mind, not being darkened by passion, is free and pure in its own nature and is able to know the truth, to penetrate into the depth of the thing, where evil often hides beneath a falsely attractive exterior and where good is concealed beneath an unfavorable appearance.

But if your desire runs ahead and at once either loves a thing or takes aversion to it, your mind will no longer be able to know it properly, as it ought. For this anticipatory disposition—prior to any judgment—or rather, this passion, entering within, places itself as a wall between the mind and the thing, and, darkening the mind, causes it to think about this thing according to passion—that is, otherwise than it actually is—and through this further strengthens the initial disposition. And the more that disposition runs ahead, or the more it loves or hates the thing, the more it darkens the mind in relation to it and at last completely obscures it. And then the passion for that thing grows to the utmost degree, so that the thing seems to the person lovable or hateful beyond any thing he has ever loved or hated. It is in this way that when the rule I have shown is not observed—namely to restrain the desire from loving or hating a thing before it has been examined—then both these faculties of the soul, mind and will, always advance in evil, sinking more and more from darkness into darkness and from transgression into transgression.

Therefore guard yourself, beloved, with all care from love or aversion toward any thing arising from passion, before you have had the chance to examine it properly in the light of reason and the right word of the Divine Scriptures, in the light of grace and prayer, and with the help of the judgment of your spiritual father—lest you err and count what is truly good as bad and what is truly bad as good; as happens more often than not with certain kinds of deeds that are in themselves good and holy, but by circumstances—namely because they are performed at the wrong time, in the wrong place, or in the wrong measure—cause no little harm to those who perform them. And we know from experience what misfortunes certain people have brought upon themselves from such praiseworthy and holy deeds.