You Need to Be In the Tunnel to See the Light at the End

It's late and you can't sleep. You had a good streak going of waking up early, getting to the gym, cooking food, and starting your work when the clock still ended with A.M.

This threatens everything. You know that if you roll out of that bed you'll be up til 5 watching YouTube videos and eating junk food. You'll sleep late and you'll consider tomorrow a failure before you even open your phone screen and see what time it is.

You toss and turn. You go over your relaxation routine. Soften those leg muscles. Try to sink into the mattress. Count your breaths. Say a few prayers.

"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."

You repeat that out loud for a while. Then in silence. Your mind starts to relax a bit. You can feel the softness of sleep on the periphery of your perception. You try to invite it in. Your mind goes quiet.

Then the thoughts break back in.

A small surge of adrenaline hits and your heart rate picks back up. Frustrated, you let out a big sigh. Your flesh has won again. The darkness was too uncomfortable. You can't handle it anymore. You roll out of that bed.

For a minute you just sit at the edge, looking down at your feet. You sigh again. Why, every time you get some momentum going, does something unpredictable rear its ugly head and threaten to knock you off the grind? What do you need to do to finally lock in permanently? When will the struggles finally feel winnable?

The thoughts are suppressed. You're up. You fire up a video game, your room still dark, and let the glow of the monitor numb your anxious mind until the sun starts to peak through your curtains. Another L.

Oh well. Back at it again tomorrow.

On the Paradoxical Nature of Vice

Here's something you know is true: you do your best when you have the least.

• No money to spend? Impossible to waste any.

• No women to talk to? Impossible to give in to sexual degeneracy.

• No time to spare? Impossible to burn any at the altar of escapism.

Show me a man who is broke, lonely, and busy and I'll show you a man who will surely inherit the Kingdom, because it's necessity that drives him instead of greed or pleasure. In fact, his soul is only in danger when he is flush with cash and attention and, most of all, the time to give into temptations.

Yet, despite his Godly path, regardless of the security of his lock-in, besides the undeniable progress he'll make, he's sure to be plagued by feelings of uncertainty. Insecurity. Longing. Those same vices he's free of will be hissing in his ear: "Come, Child of God. You'll never feel whole without us."

Does it surprise you? Should we be shocked that the vices knock the loudest when we've successfully pushed them out the door? If sin is how the Devil keeps his grip on us, we should expect temptation most especially when we're on the path away from his playground.

In secular terms: the pull of vices is strongest in their absence. Masturbating doesn't make you feel better. Drinking is physically painful. Video games are frustrating and pointless. Degenerate, pre-martial sex will leave you feeling empty and disgusted about 6 seconds after it's over. Go on and on and add your own to the list. Temporary pleasures usually make you feel worse than you did before you engaged in them. This futile nature of vice is exactly why we're called to avoid it.

You know this, and yet you cannot help but feel called to them when the True path fades from view. When you're trying to put one foot in front of the other, groping around in the darkness for something solid to grasp onto, it's something like fear that makes the ghostly form of evil feel corporeal. What makes it especially challenging is that "fear" is not the word that comes to mind when we think of this feeling. Discomfort? Yes. Anxiety? Maybe. But fear?

It's not a haunted house kind of terror, but more like a dull spiritual fear. It's the feeling like nothing you do will ever be good enough. That the challenges you're called to face are beyond your capability to handle. The dragon is too big for you to slay. Turn around now and save your self. Leave this dark and terrible tunnel and return to the safety you know. Embrace the comforts you can easily find.

The serpent, sneering: "Distract yourself. It's all you're good for."

This, Brothers, is the War for Your Soul

The fact that it's fear that takes hold of us in the darkness, and that we don't immediately recognize it properly as fear, is what makes the war so difficult. As a man, you've already learned to embrace visceral fear. You can remain calm under pressure. You can organize, slow down your perceptions, and take pointed actions when you recognize a test. Your biological gifts ensure this.

But when the test doesn't look like a test, your instincts fail you. When the fight seems more like an option, you look for a way out instead of a way through. You're a problem solver, and thick uncertainty is an obvious problem. Why wade through the trials and tribulations for a reward you can't see? Why do battle with an enemy you can't perceive?

Raise your hand if you're familiar with the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled.

Sin doesn't want to be recognized as sin. It's better for evil to remain disguised. And when the problem is opaque, so is the solution. If you don't see distraction as a problem, how can you recognize focus as the solution to it? If you don't see masturbation or video games as wastes of time and energy, why would you see temperance and discipline as virtuous?

If you don't see the proverbial tunnel as the place you need to be, why would you walk into it blindly and have faith that there will be light at the end of it?

Cultivate Discernment

If you're convinced of the need to patiently endure the pain of the tunnel, you're ready to win the war. But it won't be that easy. Not every tunnel is real, and not every problem you'll encounter on earth is solvable. To tell which pains you must endure, you need to develop a spiritual gift called discernment.

Discernment in beginners is true knowledge of themselves; in intermediate souls, it is a spiritual sense that faultlessly distinguishes what is truly good from what is of nature and opposed to it; and in the perfect, it is the knowledge which they have within by Divine illumination, and which can enlighten with its lamp what is dark in others.

• St. John Climacus

By developing this gift, you'll have the ability to recognize problems and battles that need to be fought. You'll know that when the lack of sleep rears its ugly head, there are options other than distraction and time-wasting.

You'll take stock: what habits are causing you to feel buzzed and energized when it's time to sleep? What's on your mind that's intercepting your peace? If rest is truly inaccessible, what can you do with your excess energy until your eyelids start to feel heavy?

Most importantly, you'll understand why it's necessary to avoid distraction and embrace the discomfort. All anxieties and depressions and challenges are expressions of the divine will: they are your message from God that something in your life needs changing. God will allow you to ignore these warnings, but not without cost. Your failures, your broken relationships, your poor financial situation, your ailing health--they're all the debt incurred because of your marriage to distractions and your refusal to stay in the tunnel when the fear starts to squeeze you.

So stay in it. Don't run from the pain. Grin and bear the fear. Ignore Satan's tainted offerings of peace--they're false and perilous.

Your distractions will destroy you.

Your discomfort will save you.