Temptations

Temptation is a variety of testing, but they are different because in the temptation there is no beginning agreed and there is no particular purpose, it all depends on who surrenders to temptation.

The temptation focuses on desires. There is only immunity against a temptation if there is no desire that the obsessor aims to promote. For example, if a person does not drink alcohol and do not feel any desire to drink, there is no person in the world who can tempt her to drink.

We have said encouraging because that is what the tempter does. It encourages any desire, especially one that leaves the person vexed, and which he regrets bitterly when yields to temptation, generating imbalance and favoring the subordination to obsessor’s will.

Temptation is a sign of progress. Being tempted means that you are not given to your own desires; you are not subject to them; you have some control over the desire. Hence the need for an external boost to foster the desire. Who is delivered to its wishes it does not need to be tried. If you are unruffled, you defeat temptation. But it only remains harmless to obsessional action who is vigilant and with restrained strength in prayer.

"Watch and pray lest ye enter into temptation" recommended Jesus. (Matthew 26:41.)

"Each one is tempted by his own evil desire that entices and seduces him." (James 1:14.)

It is not always the temptation needs an external agent to occur. They are often our desires who want to meet. The tempter is within us. What causes us pain, ordinarily it is the unmentionable desires that torment us, and against which we do not feel strong enough to resist.

There is only one way to overcome temptation: destroy the desire of the cause. But as such sacrifice it is usually very difficult to accomplish in a particular embodiment, one can give up the satisfaction of desire. After repeated resistance, it is expected that the next reincarnation desire is broken or fully won.

"They are, however, really useful for man temptations, since they are annoying and serious because it humiliates, purifies and instruct. It is not enough to run away from temptations to overcome them; it is the patience and true humility we become stronger than all our enemies." (Imitation of Christ, Book I, Chap. 13, items 2 and 3.)

We should see the temptation as an apprenticeship. It shows what we really want, what we really are. Temptation is one of the most effective ways to know ourselves. But for that vigilance is required in order that we can oppose our forces against the possibility of fulfillment of desire.

It is good to remember that desires are not bad in themselves. Desire is an important mechanism in the mental economy. Desires become harmful when something morbid aggregates. This morbidity is something it goes from an obsessive idea to a well characterized paranoia.

Patience and humility is the way of coping, but without violence against yourself. It has to be understood and admitted that the temptation serves as a pedagogical agent to become more humble because it humiliates us, more purified, when we resist, better educated, because it shows who we really are.