“Everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die,” “Truly, truly, I tell you: whoever hears My word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life and does not come to judgment, but has moved from death to life,” “Whoever believes in me has eternal life”—says the Lord Jesus Christ. Until we have acquired the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Resurrection, we must postpone the time of death, to at least start repentance. Christians (for example, the Apostle Paul), who in baptism moved from death to life and acquired the Holy Spirit as their inseparable treasure, wish “to depart and be with Christ,” wish to move from this form of existence to another, which is beyond the threshold of dormition (pagans call this boundary, this transition death, the end). And we, Christians by name, but by life—pagans, still need time to acquire God-receiving humility… (“God gives grace to the humble” – V.A.). So, if you still want to have time for repentance—stop sinning, do not add wounds to wounds, sorrows to sorrows. If you want sorrows to be reduced—repent of past sins, which are often the cause of current sorrows, diseases. How to remove the excess of sorrows, diseases, which we add to ourselves through our sins beyond the necessary? To somewhat understand this at the level of reason, let’s say a bit about sin (the same thing we talked about above, just a bit differently, in relation to the context).
The essence of sin is the same in all contexts—departure from God, apostasy from Him. How? The personality begins to live not by the personality—God, but by nature, not to communicate directly with other hypostases, but to achieve happiness through nature as an end in itself. Sin is always the wrong realization of life. We need to distinguish two sins (as personal actions). The first—in the state of innocence, the paradisiacal childish state of Adam, and post-fall. Adam, committing sin, realizing a sinful thought, was not compelled by anything, nothing drew him to commit sin. He freely wanted to see how this or that natural principle works, he saw an alternative where there was none. He saw in the thought a path to deification through nature, the laws of its perfection (what was very good, “good evil” Adam wanted to improve, to make even better(!?) since he saw growth through nature. How did this happen? For a better understanding, let’s give (an inadequate) example: let’s say the soul and body, the spiritual nature of Adam—are glass, stained glass; Adam in everything, everywhere, saw God and through everything communicated with Him—had everything as food; in the language of our parable, this means looking through glass, a windowpane at God and not seeing the glass, even if it is dirty—your gaze and consciousness are directed beyond the glass, which currently does not interest you and it is for you clean, or does not exist; but when you focus your gaze on the glass then you see it and perhaps that it needs to be cleaned) and the pane must not exist! At a certain moment, Adam looked at himself—at nature, which by virtue of its spirituality (transparency, spotlessness) was light, shone (this is to stop the gaze on the glass and think that it itself has light); and since Adam was to move from glory to glory, from light to even greater light (to be deified), he thought that it was necessary to polish, polish the glass, so that it would become lighter and he polished it until it broke…). We are talking about the thought, the idea, which is already sin—this is the first stage of sin, and in which, like in a grain, contains all sin with its consequences. It’s not very important, in the grand scheme of things, whether this thought was suggested to Adam, or he came up with it himself (Morning Star, the devil himself came up with self-deification—more about pride in the second part), the main thing is that he accepted this anti-god thought of self-deification—began to communicate with it and look for ways to realize it. Sin is not the thought itself, but the acceptance of a sinful thought. (More about spiritual struggle at the level of thoughts in the next parts). Although God set the limits for Adam in which life is possible (gave dogma, oros), said: Do not eat, do not start living with what does not give life, what is not for food, what should be terrible for you because it can create an illusion of life—Adam did not listen. And instead of communicating hypostatically with God, he decided to orient himself hypostatically to nature, not to another Hypostasis. As in the process of turning from God to oneself (egoism) Adam began to go mad, he began to correct what does not need perfection (“good evil”) and eat what is not at all for food (see above).
We can give another practical definition of sin: sin is interference of consciousness in the unconscious! Sin is always a turn to oneself, egoism. When consciousness interferes in natural processes, a catastrophe occurs—lust, passion is born. Natural will (desire, wanting), natural passions (anger, jealousy, eros, etc.) after the intervention of consciousness (insane mind—the mind in the process of realizing an unnatural thought becomes insane: every sin kills the mind, destroys it) in natural processes, passions, desires (desires, natural will, which in primordial purity is oriented towards God the Creator) became lustful, passionate. Natural lust, passion, mixed with consciousness, insane mind, volitional hypostasis, choosing gives sin. The interference of freedom, a choosing hypostatic will in the natural will “lust,” “passion” produces “lust,” “passion.” For example, anger at evil—a good thing, but directed by our clouded consciousness at another person and God—evil; eros, as an unrestrained desire for self-giving, self-sacrifice to Another—a good lust, but eros, turned by our clouded mind into an unrestrained desire to consume, use another—evil; eating—a good desire, but overeating or seeking various gourmet dishes—evil… passion in a negative form appeared as a result of the correction of the desiring will (nature) by its insane mind (choosing will, hypostasis).