How to Clear the Dross from the Memory

The very thing that has brought on your deepest despair of ever being made pure can give rise to a quick and effective cure, if only you will bring to the reading of the writings of the Spirit, and to meditation on them, the same diligence and earnestness that you say you gave to those worldly studies of yours. Your mind is bound to be taken up with those poems until, with the same zeal and persistence, it gains other matters to think about, and is in labor with spiritual and divine things instead of useless earthly ones. But once these have been thoroughly and completely conceived, and the mind has been nourished on them, the former thoughts can be driven out little by little and got rid of altogether. For the human mind cannot be emptied of all thoughts. So as long as it is not taken up with spiritual interests, it is bound to be occupied with what it learned long ago. As long as it has nothing to come back to and to work on tirelessly, it is bound to fall back on what it learned in childhood, and to keep thinking about what it took in through long habit and repetition. [a]

You want this spiritual knowledge to be strengthened in you with a lasting steadiness. You do not want to enjoy it only for a time, like those who merely touch it, not by their own efforts but by hearing someone else tell it, and who, if I may put it this way, catch its scent in the air. You want it to be laid up in your heart, deeply marked there, and thoroughly seen and handled. Then you should take the greatest care over this: even if you happen to hear things you know very well brought up in the conference, do not treat them with scorn and disdain because you already know them. Take them to heart with the same eagerness with which the words of salvation we long for ought to be poured constantly into our ears, and always to come from our lips. For although holy things are told over and over, in a mind that thirsts for true knowledge having its fill will never turn into disgust. Such a mind receives them every day as something new and something it wanted, however often it has taken them in, and so it will hear or speak of them all the more eagerly. From the repetition it will gain confirmation of the knowledge it already has, rather than any weariness from the frequent conferences. It is a sure sign of a cold and proud mind if it receives the medicine of the words of salvation with disdain and carelessness, even when it is offered with the zeal of an extreme persistence. For “a soul that is full scoffs at the honeycomb, but to a soul in need even little things seem sweet.”

So if these things have been carefully taken in and stored away in the inner places of the soul, and stamped with the seal of silence, then afterward, like some sweet-scented wine that gladdens the heart of man, mellowed by the age of the thoughts and by long patience, they will be brought out of the jar of your heart with great fragrance. Like an everlasting spring they will flow abundantly from the veins of experience and the watering channels of virtue, and pour out copious streams as if from some deep well in your heart. For in your case there will happen what is said in Proverbs to one who has achieved this in his work: “Drink water from your own cisterns, and from the spring of your own wells. Let water from your own fountain flow in abundance for you, but let your waters pass through into your streets.” And as the prophet Isaiah says: “You will be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters will not fail. And the places that have been desolate for ages will be built up in you; you will raise up the foundations of generation after generation; and you will be called the repairer of the fences, turning the paths into rest.” And the blessing the same prophet promises will come upon you: “And the Lord will not make your teacher flee from you any more, and your eyes will see your teacher. And your ears will hear the word of one warning you from behind: This is the way, walk in it, and do not turn aside to the right or to the left.” So it will come about that not only every purpose and thought of your heart, but also all the wanderings and roamings of your imagination, will become for you a holy and unceasing pondering of the divine law.