Guarding Hearing and Sight. How to Destroy Harmful Impressions From What is Seen and Heard

Last time I mentioned to you the occasions that provoke passionate thoughts, feelings, and desires, noting that one should not shift the blame onto them. Let me now say a few words about them.

Passionate thoughts, and along with them feelings and desires of the same kind, sometimes arise of themselves in the soul, one knows not how. But for the most part they are generated under the influence of external impressions. The things, persons, and events one encounters naturally stir corresponding thoughts in the one who encounters them. From good things come good thoughts, from bad things come bad thoughts. But the opposite can also happen: in the presence of good things bad thoughts arise, and in the presence of bad things good thoughts arise. Everything depends on the habitual or occasional disposition of the one who encounters them. Consequently, the full responsibility lies with him. So what is to be done?

First: do not give free rein to your senses, especially to your eyes and ears. Do not permit yourself indiscriminately to see everything, hear everything, and touch everything. Our senses are like windows or doors—or more like a ladle. Whoever opens the windows and lets in foul air does wrong. Whoever opens the doors and allows all manner of beasts to enter his dwelling cannot be free from reproach. But what would you say of someone who, taking a ladle—a cup or a mug—walked about muddy and unclean puddles, scooped from them, and splashed himself with the contents? What could be more senseless than that? Yet is this not exactly what is done by one who curiously lingers before something unseemly and listens to bad talk? He fills himself through this with bad thoughts, passes from them to bad feelings and desires—and walks about all inflamed, as if in some fog. Therefore, prudence and the duty of self-protection (of inner peace) require that one not look at everything, not listen to everything, and not touch everything that one unavoidably encounters. The moment something appears that is capable of stirring the passions, one must avert one’s eyes from it, stop one’s ears before it, or see without seeing and hear without hearing.

Second: should it happen that some thing produces a bad impression and gives rise to bad thoughts—one must immediately hasten to efface the impression and cut off the thoughts by the method shown previously, having first, of course, stopped the inflow of impressions. It is unwise to remain under a bad impression, or to leave the effacing of it and the restoration of inward peace until another time. By remaining under the impression, we will voluntarily be assisting the formation of bad thoughts and feelings, and by allowing this bad thing to remain in us for a long time, we give it the opportunity to take deeper root, and subsequently to resist expulsion and cleansing for longer—if not to take possession of the soul entirely.

Third: having once experienced a bad impression from something, one must not voluntarily allow oneself to encounter again the objects that produced it. This would indicate that one who acts so loves to take pleasure in what is bad, and consequently is impure to the very depths of the heart. But if some necessity forces an encounter with it, one must arm oneself in advance and prepare the heart to withstand the bad impression and not allow it to reach oneself. Attention, intensified self-resistance, and prayer will make this possible.

Fourth: I have already written to you about interpreting everything you encounter and might encounter in a spiritual sense. This must be done also with respect to objects of unwholesome character. After this, when you encounter them, you will receive not bad but good thoughts—just as St. Ephrem the Syrian, upon meeting a gaudily dressed and immodest beauty, said to his disciples: “Do you see how she takes care to adorn her body, which will soon be dust? How then should we not take care to adorn the immortal soul?”

These rules are sufficient. It would have been proper to point out such occasions in your daily life that are unfavorable to your inner life. But I presume there are none whatsoever, either in your family or among your relatives. You can only encounter them outside the home—for example, in that society in which you happened to be not so very long ago, as you wrote. Regarding such occasions, please adhere to what was said in the third point. Under the same heading, bring all similar ones that arise afterward. And in general, lay down as a rule to measure what is permissible by the effect it produces within. What builds up, allow yourself; what disturbs, allow yourself under no circumstances whatsoever. Who, being in his right mind, would reach for a glass of drink that he knows has been poisoned?

I have no intention of suggesting that you must constrain yourself so severely that you would resemble a recluse. I only want to lead you to the resolution not to draw in what is harmful to your spirit—now that you have become convinced that life in the spirit is the only true life, and not only convinced of this, but have experienced it.

The Lord bless you!