“When a man succeeds to do something that required much effort, pride starts to work inside him. He who losses weight will look with contempt at others that are overweight, and he who quits smoking will twist his nose despised when other bathes, yet, in his vice. If one represses diligently his sexuality will have haughtiness in his eyes when he looks at the “sinner” which tries hard to get rid of the sin, but instinct takes over.
What we succeed can make us more dirty than the sin itself. What we gain, may hinder our emotional values in a way that may fill our souls with venom. The money that we attract can make us arrogant and miserly, and success can turn us upside down into the frightening abyss of passions. The path to love gets narrow when we look at others from the heights of flying eagles.
The tenderness of the heart will dry on the haulms of contempt, hate and bitterness, if our soul is not ready to receive its success with the modesty and the grace of a flower… Everything we succeed for ourselves and brings us energy is ment to return back to those who fight in suffering and in sin. Our eyes are not designed for contempt, but to express the ways of love which our soul tries so hard to tell. Our successes are not given to us to swell us with pride, but to turn them into love, in development and in dedication to those around us.
If you repress your hunger while you are fasting, the hunger will grow even stronger. Your mind will dream about tasty and chosen foods, your mind will sense the most appetizing smells, even while you sleep, and then, next morning crazy with frustration, to compensate the lack with a defiant contempt pointed directly to the one that is not fasting. Then fasting becomes occasion for pride, for vanity and for haughty victory over lust…But above all, pride remains pride, and the feeling of frustration only confirms it.
If you succeeded in life, don’t cling yourself on other’s failures, for not awakening the fierce worm of vanity in you and become passionately opinionated. success is love’s energy and your capacity of accepting life, but it doesn’t stand still, it’s not like a mountain or an ocean. Pride and vanity of success will bring you down, slowly, from your pedestal, for they are painting on your life’s skies events of their own.
Loose weight, enjoy and be silent! Quit smoking, enjoy and be silent!
Clean your house, enjoy the tidiness and leave your neighbour’s garbage where your neighbour put it. Because between your neighbour and its garbage there is a hidden relation, emotions you do not know, feelings that you will never guess and causes that will remain, probably forever, hidden from your mind and heart. Between the fat man and its fat there is a hidden relation. An understanding. A secret. A misunderstood feeling. An unused emotion. A rejected love. Fat is the teacher of the fat man. Vice is the teacher of the vicious. And in our life there are more severe teachers than our vices and inabilities…”
“Now I know, I know that every hate, every aversion, every bad thing remembered, every lack of mercy, every lack of understanding, willingness, sympathy, every behavior that is not gracious and gentle as a Mozart menuet… is a sin and a filth; not only murdering, hurting, hitting, robbing, swearing, banishing, but every vulgarity, disregard, every bad glance, every contempt, every bad mood is from the devil and ruins everything.
Now I know, I found it out…”
Nicolae Steinhardt – “Man, as contingent being”
After reading this beautiful piece of father Steinhardt one single image came to mind. La Pieta.
Sapte Stele / Seven Stars 