Experience of Survival. Book 2 (Russian version)
I have been studying your books for about ten years, trying to change.
Recently, an interesting situation occurred.
My son (14 years old) has a heart defect (a hole in the interatrial septum). We are not rushing to operate. Our whole family (my husband, son, daughter, and I) decided to visit 9 churches.
In the church, I didn’t ask for anything, I only prayed that for my son and all of us, the highest happiness would be to love God and feel our unity with Him, to see God's will in any situation and learn to love.
A few hours after returning home, while playing with friends, my son hit his head against the wall and lost consciousness. When he came to, he forgot a lot and was talking nonsense. My husband and I were very scared, we scolded him and took him to the hospital. In the car, my son complained that his arm and then his cheek were numb. I was in a panic. But then I thought: «What am I doing! I am drowning my own child»! I started to pray, saying that I fully accept the situation with love and gratitude, seeing it as God's will and an opportunity to feel that love for God is above everything for me. I would even try to accept the possible death of my child with love. I asked my son's guardian angel for help. I calmed down completely. And then my son said that when he was unconscious, he saw Saint Matrona and other saints. They told him a lot, but I am not allowed to retell it. He said that now he will live differently than before, confessed his sins to me (he skipped Sunday school and tried smoking). He said that now he believes that God exists.
My son was hospitalized with a diagnosis of «concussion». Also, within a few hours, complaints and claims from neighbors came in.
Three days later, my son was successfully discharged from the hospital.
I can't understand what this was. Either I did something wrong, or after intense prayer, all the «dirt» came out, and such a situation unfolded.
Did my son really see the saints, or did he just imagine it all?
City of Minsk
When you started to pray, instead of death, your son was given an injury. To save the soul, it's necessary to slow down what harms it. If it's the consciousness that led to immense pride, then a head injury occurs. Your son's pride had already turned into a worship of the body, that is, into jealousy, so the blockage was already at the last stage - the destruction of the interatrial septum. Next comes death. When the soul stops working and pride is insurmountable, then the body suffers, followed by disintegration.
In a usual situation, your son had no chance of survival. The prayer in the church allowed the revival of the soul and helped your son to overcome the dependence on the body and spirit. And when the mother started to pray in the car on the way to the hospital, the purification of the soul through the love of God began. For a moment, the child's soul became brighter. Seeing saints in sleep or in an unconscious state is only possible with a pure soul. The son's soul opened up to God, creating a feeling of unity with Him.
The question remains whether the mother will be able to maintain love and faith when her son recovers.
***
To my surprise, I realized that I had stopped striving for happiness, even though for many years it was the main goal in my life, and therefore the state of «unhappiness» was so painful. I thought it was wrong. I asked the question, «Why?» and couldn't find an answer. Of course, it's better to ask, «What for»? But the answer may not come or may not be satisfying.
So now my mental state is good. The only thing I don't understand is why I can't fast right now. I've gained quite a bit of weight. I try to fast (especially since it's now a period of fasting) for the sake of love, that is, for God, but it doesn't work out, whereas before when I did it to improve my appearance, or for my husband, or for health, everything was fine.
Some time ago, I decided to give more love to my husband not on a material level, but on the level of the soul, and then everything started to change... Our relationship worsened dramatically, and I felt a storm of indignation in my soul about him not appreciating everything I do for him. Fortunately, everything is back to normal now.
There are misconceptions deeply rooted in our consciousness from long ago. One of them goes like this: if you convince an egoist that they are bad and evil, they will become kind, caring, and responsive the next day. But for some reason, this doesn't happen, and all we are left with is to despise egoists who refuse to become good.
At some point, we may surprisingly learn from popular books that egoism not only warps a person's character but is also the cause of many diseases and misfortunes. Furthermore, the children of egoists may also suffer in soul, fate, and body. And now, having learned this, we again run to the egoists trying not only to appeal to them to become better but also to prove that being an egoist is detrimental to them. And again, nothing happens. We become even more offended and judgmental.
Often a misunderstanding of universal laws and the desire to perceive the world according to our tiny and limited consciousness give rise to great claims, and then diseases.
Egoism is a normal state for an animal. But even in animals, Divine logic is activated when it comes to offspring. Birds and beasts are ready to perish to save the lives of their young. Where there is sacrifice, there is love. As a priest rightly said, "A mother's milk is part of her body." A mother gives part of herself, sacrifices herself, so that her child may survive.
Scientists recently encountered a startling fact: sick ants crawl away from the anthill to die without infecting others. Even insects have developed a sense of altruism.
A human is an animal that has consciously begun to overcome its egoism. But when a person consciously chooses to go in the opposite direction, they can fall lower than animals and insects. To overcome egoism, i.e., the worship of the body, one must realize that there are things more important than our material shell. And not just realize — it is necessary to constantly aspire to higher levels. Then more energy from above will be spent on forming higher levels - saving the soul, strengthening unity with God, i.e., unfolding love in the soul.
To move from the body to the spirit requires energy. We draw it from love and faith. Egoism can be physical, and it can also be spiritual.
As our energy becomes stronger, we can rise above our spirit, above consciousness. We can feel that the soul is more important than our future, that morality is more important than well-being. After this begins the long stage of mastering the territory of the soul. Egoism is already overcome, but the soul's pain is still unbearable, and now we need even more love and unity with the Creator. And when love is perceived as air, without which you will die, then a person rises above the mortal part of their soul and feels unity with eternity. Only then does love for another person not generate attachment, jealousy, and fear.
This is the physiology of the soul. All these transitions, stages of ascension, cannot happen quickly and painlessly. If a person shows love on a material level, a relatively low level of energy is sufficient. If people are spiritually close, the level of love and energy must be much higher because the pleasure is now an order of magnitude higher.
The highest pleasure is relationships, caring for each other at the soul level. Therefore, the temptation to merge souls and forget about God is the greatest. Such happiness is much more robust and long-lasting than material and spiritual happiness, so love and unity with the Creator must be much more significant at this level.
Not everyone is granted the happiness of experiencing it on all three levels: physical, spiritual, and soulful. Only those who feel the touch of the Holy Spirit, or grace, in the language of Orthodoxy, can have happiness at all levels and not be dependent on it.
The sense of inner, continuous unity with God gives birth to a feeling of immersion in love. The soul finds paradise while still on Earth. But this doesn't happen immediately. Often, a person who has ascended to the peak falls down, but this does not mean that attempts to ascend should be halted.
One must limit oneself in desires. One must learn to preserve love in moments of detachment. If the soul still protests and defends its attachments, fasting becomes difficult. The larger the task, the harder it is to accomplish.
We look at a mountain from the bottom up, count on our fingers, and say: "Now we are at the foothills, and there is the middle, and where we will ascend is the summit." But then we start climbing and find out that our perceptions do not match reality. Often we want to reach the summit from the foot of the mountain in half an hour, and we do not understand why we fail. There's a beautiful Japanese haiku:
Slowly, slowly crawl, snail, up the slope of Fuji, to the very top!
We can only have those material goods on which we do not depend. We can only have those spiritual abilities that will not spoil our character. We can only have that soulful happiness which will not close us off from the love of the Almighty.
This is a school, and in desiring to possess increasingly expansive happiness, we inevitably must aspire to love and unity with the Creator. This process can be called a school, development, life, or even happiness.
When we participate in this process, every situation leads us to love.
Rejoice...