The battle between darkness and light
God does not shine on us from the sky, but from within our spiritual heart.
“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Matt. 6:22–23) we hear in this Sunday’s liturgical reading.
God is Light. And He shines not from above but from the depths of our spiritual heart.
Yet surrounding the human heart is “darkness over the abyss.” This is the gloom of loveless solitude, of thoughts swirling like black clouds within our reasoning mind. Darkness dwells in the mind that has forgotten God. The entire whirlpool of the external world spins around this darkness, trying to cloud our consciousness. But if we purify the eye of our mind, we will see that the entire Universe, the whole of God’s world, is filled with the hush of invisible Light.
But man, alas, lives in such a way that darkness has become his tyrant and master. If only we would let God be born in our hearts, this Light would become the source of our eternal life. The bearer of darkness is our selfish ego. It churns the winds of our thoughts and desires so that we run around all our lives like madmen. Only the Light of grace can defeat this darkness. But to receive it, we must calm the storm of thoughts. When the mind grows silent, God’s Light manifests in the human spirit through love, humility, and compassion – effortlessly. Finding spiritual joy, a person longs to share it with everyone. When the Lord grants him the Light of salvation, he can no longer keep it to himself, knowing that every soul thirsts for that Light. No one can love truly without the Light of Divine grace. Left to himself, man falls into either unhealthy attachment or hatred.
The spiritual world has its own current of life, whose source lies in Divine Light. Therefore the Christian must constantly swim against that current to return to the Source. Paradise, the Kingdom of Heaven, inexhaustible joy, eternal life, true being, grace-filled awareness, blessed immortality, unending Light – all of this lies within our spiritual heart. The clever and learned vanish like smoke, but those who have known the love of God remain forever in the hearts of people as the Light of salvation.
The moment we allow judgment into our hearts, darkness immediately begins to seep into our soul. We always see the world as our mind sees it. And the mind, more often than not, deceives us. If we think that “I” am this body, we fall into temptations. If we think that “I” am my mind, the darkness dwelling in it will mock us until we learn to separate from it and watch it from the outside.
Divine Light lies beyond all human categories and definitions. One who has attained the Light knows nothing – and yet knows everything. He cannot explain how this is. A man living in darkness may be clever and quick-witted, but he will never be wise. Wisdom is not cleverness – it is living in the Light of Divine Truth.
Darkness spawns its own phantoms – warped imitations of the human spirit. Egoism is the sinful parody of true personhood; lust is the sinful parody of Divine love. Whether you are healthy or sick is not what matters most. What matters is: are you with Christ or not? If a person is one with God, he is immortal. Within us dwells the Light of infinite love. This Light is the Love of the Infinite God.
Book learning helps little in spiritual life. True spiritual learning consists in making the spiritual heart come alive. In times of temptation, it is better not to think, but to be alone with God, who Himself will instruct us through His grace. To put an end to darkness and remain in the Light, we must cling to the spirit, ignoring the movements of the mind. For this we need solitude, silence, and calm.
A person living in darkness cannot love anyone. When God cares for us, it is the freedom of Light. When we care only for ourselves, it is the slavery of darkness.
“God is Light,” and if we love God, this love saturates us completely and takes on all our worries. When we surrender our entire life to the Lord, He Himself begins to care for our salvation. We must turn away from darkness once and for all, and trust entirely in God, whose hands are open to embrace us with inexpressible love. When we discover Christ within us, we will never again be able to part from Him.
Hell wages war on humanity with the weapons of darkness, firing bullets of thoughts at us. Only renouncing egoism can end our temptations. The human spirit is always even, calm, and balanced. It is inseparable from Divine Light and holds boundless bliss and immortal awareness. Great indeed is the work of knowing oneself.
Salvation lies in the unseen. What is visible is temporary; the unseen is eternal. It is foolish to wage war for what is visible, doomed to disappear. When our mind rushes outward, the soul sinks into darkness and the Light vanishes. When the mind turns inward again, Light returns and darkness recedes. The fool walks the tightrope of life until he falls and shatters. The wise man walks it calmly, because he holds the balancing pole of a disciplined, steady mind.
Echoes of happiness remind us of childhood. That was a time when we knew how to live in the Light, unafraid of the future. Now that door is closed. But the Light of childhood still lives deep within our souls. Childhood is an echo of eternity. It doesn’t matter what happens to us in time. What matters is that we never lose God in any circumstance.
He who fights darkness becomes darkness himself. But he who lives in the Light not only escapes darkness but unites with God. Woe to the clever and the rich! It is hard for them to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, for behind their cleverness and wealth lie vanity and pride. Only the humble and gentle are wise with the wisdom of Divine mercy and grace.
All around us spreads an ocean of Light, yet we see only sorrow. Christ is our unending, joyful, radiant childhood. Darkness is taking the temporary, selfish self as God’s eternal creation. Darkness is attachment to body and mind. Light is the renunciation of egoism and living in Christ’s joy. Consciousness exists forever; the world does not. Body, mind, thoughts – they belong to the world. All our experiences are part of the world. Only our spirit is not of this world. It is of Divine Light, Truth, and Reality.
Our experiences drag us into the bondage of darkness. Only dispassion can shatter these chains. Once established in the Light, a person abides unchangingly in joy, tranquility of spirit, and blessedness, and nothing can return him to his former slavery. The world, the body, the mind, thoughts, feelings – all these are outside us. One who lives in the Light observes them from afar, utterly free of them.
We will begin to be saved when we grow tired of this world, when we are finally exhausted by our own bodies, when we realize that our greatest enemy lives within ourselves. When a person directs all his actions toward salvation, he becomes stronger than evil. But when he lives for worldly goals, evil becomes stronger than him.
The Jesus Prayer is like a flaming torch that won’t let the mind grab us by the throat and strip us of grace, hurling us into a pit of filthy passions and thoughts. Heartfelt silence is like a trap for the predatory mind. Caught in it, the mind can do nothing and surrenders. Our efforts themselves mean nothing, yet without them nothing is possible. Salvation comes only when God Himself blesses us and leads us to the Light. To love God means to love everything He created, and to accept all circumstances as the necessary means for our salvation.
