Training

One must accomplish the possible in order to touch the impossible. The correct exercise, in conformity with duty, of the natural faculties of will, love, and knowledge is to spiritual realities exactly what the movement of the body is to the perception of sensible objects. A paralyzed person does not perceive. The accomplishment of strictly human duty belongs to the same order as correctness in the operations of writing, translating, calculating, etc. To neglect this correctness is a lack of respect toward the object. Likewise, to neglect duty. Things related to inspiration alone are nourished by delays. Those related to natural duty, to the will, suffer no delay. Precepts are not given to be practiced; rather, practice is prescribed for the understanding of precepts. They are scales. One does not play Bach without having practiced scales. But neither does one practice scales for their own sake. Training. -- With each involuntary thought of pride one catches in oneself, turn the full gaze of attention for a few moments upon the memory of a humiliation from one's past life, and choose the bitterest, the most intolerable one possible. One must not try to change or erase within oneself desires and aversions, pleasures and pains. One must undergo them passively, like sensations of color, and without granting them any more credit. If my window is red, I cannot, no matter how much I reason with myself day and night for a year, stop seeing my room in pink. But I also know it is necessary, just, and good that I see it thus. At the same time, I grant this color, as information, only a credit limited by the knowledge of its relation to the window. To accept in this way, and in no other, the desires and aversions, pleasures and pains of every kind that arise in me.

On the other hand, since one also has within oneself a principle of violence -- namely, the will -- one must also, within a limited measure but to the full extent of that measure, use this violent principle violently; compel oneself by violence to act as if one did not have such a desire, such an aversion; try to persuade the sensibility by compelling it to obey. It revolts then, and one must undergo this revolt passively, taste it, savor it, accept it as an external thing, like the pink color of the room whose window is red.

Each time one does violence to oneself in this spirit, one advances a little or a great deal, but really, in the operation of training the animal within.

Of course, for this violence against oneself to truly serve as training, it must be only a simple means. When one trains a dog to be a performing dog, one does not whip it for the sake of whipping, but to train it, and to this end one strikes it only when it misses an exercise. If one whips it without method, one ends by rendering it unfit for all training, and this is what bad asceticism produces.

Violence against oneself is permitted only when it proceeds from reason (with a view to executing what one clearly represents to oneself as duty) -- or else when it is imposed by an irresistible impulse of grace (but then the violence does not proceed from oneself). The source of my difficulties is that through exhaustion, through the absence of vital energy, I am below the level of normal activity. And if something seizes me and lifts me up, I am above it. Then it would seem unfortunate to waste this time on ordinary activities. In other moments, I would have to do violence to myself, and I cannot manage to draw it from within me. I could accept the anomaly of behavior that results. But I know, I believe I know, that I must not. It involves sins of omission toward others. And as for me, it imprisons me. What method, then? If you will, you can make me clean. I must practice transforming the feeling of effort into the passive feeling of suffering. Whatever I may think of it, when God sends me suffering I am indeed forced to suffer all there is to suffer. Why not, in the face of duty, do in the same way all there is to do? Mountains, rocks, fall upon us and hide us from the wrath of the lamb.

I deserve this wrath at present. Not to forget that according to Saint John of the Cross, inspirations that turn one from the accomplishment of easy and lowly obligations come from the wrong side. Duty is given us to kill the self. And I let so precious an instrument rust. One must accomplish one's duty at the prescribed moment in order to believe in the reality of the external world. One must believe in the reality of time. Otherwise one dreams. For years I have recognized this defect in myself, recognized its importance, and done nothing to abolish it. What excuse could I find? Has it not grown in me since the age of ten? But however great it is, it is finite. That suffices. If it is so great as to remove from me the possibility of erasing it during this life, and consequently of attaining the state of perfection, this must be accepted like everything that is, with an acceptance accompanied by love. It suffices that I know it is, that it is bad, that it is finite. But to know effectively each of these three things, and all three together, implies the beginning and the uninterrupted continuation of the process of erasure. If this process does not begin to occur, it is a sign that what I am writing here, I do not truly know. The necessary energy resides in me, since I have enough to live. I must tear it from myself, even if I die of it. There is no other perfect criterion of good and evil than uninterrupted inner prayer. Everything that does not interrupt it is permitted; everything that interrupts it is forbidden. It is impossible to do harm to others when one acts in a state of prayer. On condition that it be genuine prayer. But before reaching that point, one must have worn out one's own will against the observance of rules. Hope is the knowledge that the evil one carries within oneself is finite, and that the slightest orientation of the soul toward the good, even if it lasts only an instant, abolishes some of it, and that in the spiritual domain, every good infallibly produces good. Those who do not know this are condemned to the torment of the Danaids. Infallibly, good produces good and evil produces evil in the domain of the purely spiritual. On the contrary, in the domain of the natural (including the psychological), good and evil produce each other reciprocally. Thus one can have security only once one has reached the domain of the spiritual -- precisely the domain where one can procure nothing for oneself, where one awaits everything from elsewhere.