Avoid Interior Discussions

(Found here)

“Observe, during one single day, the course of your thoughts: the surprising frequency of the vivacity of your interior discussions with imaginary interlocutors. Do they deal with only those who are around you? What is their habitual source?

…A tribunal is erected in our mind where we are the prosecutor, president, judge, and jury. We are rarely the advocate, unless it is for our own cause. We inflate the perceived wrongs; we weigh the reasons; we plead; we justify ourselves, and we condemn the absent party. Perhaps we elaborate our plans of revenge or vengeful schemes. Time and energy wasted for whom all is nothing outside of the love of God. In the end, we are imbued with self-love, judgments that are hateful or reckless; passionate agitation which is destabilized further by the loss of interior peace; a diminishing of the esteem we have for our superiors and our brothers; and a regrettable increase of that which we have for ourselves. Grave error. Certain prejudice.

In treating you poorly, no one, in reality, will harm you; believe it. It is bitter, without a doubt. Love to be unknown and contemptible. Christ was killed under outrage and derision. Accept, with a sweet and quiet soul, all poor treatment. … By your neighbor, God seeks to break your self-love, to soften your rigid spine. Refuse to compose epilogues within yourself, not even for one deliberate second, about what someone has done to you. Nothing useful will come out of this clandestine courtroom.”

~An Anonymous Carthusian Monk