Proud Minded
- Michael Haldas
- Oct 3
- 3 min read
“The striving of the proud mind to know that which is supposedly hidden from others—the temptation of gnosis, self-deification without God—throws the curious person straight into the clutches of demons…A pre-disposition to self-deception is thinking you are somebody, and showing others that you’re doing something important. It’s imagining that you have reached spiritual heights, because you believe—let’s say—that you have self-discipline; as opposed to ‘these others here, who haven’t yet even begun to understand the meaning of spiritual life.’ Behaving in such a proud manner is clearly a disposition to deception.” (Alexander Popov, St. Paisios the Athonite)
“I came to know God in early childhood not by external experience or reasoned arguments, but directly, by an inner perception, because I was created in the image and likeness of God. Being like God, man, thanks to this godlikeness, perceives Him internally and directly and comes to know Him. This internal perception of God is characteristic of all men. If we stop sensing God in ourselves, it’s not because we’re incapable of it, but because the feeling of God is stifled in us either by the delusions of our proud mind or the sinfulness of our corrupt heart.” (Hieroschemamonk Sergei Chetverikov)
“The enemy uses fear to hold us back from the purposes of God…fear is based on lies…There is one thing you should be afraid of, namely, your pride. First Peter 5:5 says, “All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’…for it is unacceptable for a man who trusts God, who seeks to live with God, to yield himself to any terror of the future, any panic or fear – this is a sign of proud self-reliance, and not of virtuous concern for our own salvation.” (Neal Lozano, Priest Roman Savchuk)
“If you are constantly angry and complaining, it is indicative of a proud soul. Humble yourself, reproach yourself, and the Lord is powerful to give you comfort and a helping hand….But we know that a man needs to humble himself in order to repent. There must be humility in the soul. A proud man will never repent. We’ve spoken about this a thousand times. The proud man is always correct. He always has a justification for everything, and the grace of God finds no place in his soul. For a man to repent, his heart must be open to God. Repentance is a gift, a gift of God. If you don’t humble yourself, you can’t recognize the presence of God in your heart. Repentance is born of humility and brings the grace of God to the soul.” (St. Anatoly of Optina, Metropolitan Athanasios of Limassol)
“In our contemporary secular, neo-pagan culture, life is presented in distorted, non-spiritual terms. Masses of people live without reference to their Creator, proud of what they “achieve.” These unfortunate souls have no gratitude to God, nor do they acknowledge their dependence on Him. Worse, they have no inkling of their enslavement to impure spirits…Each time we say the Jesus Prayer with feeling, we are humiliating the proud ego and are placing ourselves under everything, under the Way of the universe. In this way we are, breath by breath, reversing in ourselves the effects of the primordial fall, when man tried to become God.” (Dynamis 10/13/2020, Hieromonk Damascene Christensen)
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