`Abba, sometimes I understand in my mind that I must love the other one but I don’t feel love inside.`
`Little by little that will go from your mind into your heart and then you’ll feel love. For loving the other one it is not enough only to use the mind, the heart is also needed. If you use only your mind you may come to say: `Now I must bear this one.` or `I have to take care not to say or do this to him` This means you don’t love the other one. You see him as a stranger, you don’t see him as a brother and you don’t feel any pain in your heart for him and your heart doesn’t leap out for him.
`Abba, when there is a gap between mind and heart if I adopt a rational attitude is the heart going to follow the mind?`
`How far is the heart from the mind? Why would be any distance between them?`
`Because although I adopt a correct position in my mind, the heart can’t follow it, because it is ruled by passions`
The diagnostic you are giving is right, but that’s not enough. For getting cured you need to have endeavour. All the spiritual work is made by the mind with the heart. The mind is the transmitter and the heart is the receiver. On any tune you’d turn the transmitter the receiver would work on the same wavelength. If the mind works in a worldly way it sends worldly signals to the heart. If it works spiritually, the heart softens and suffers spiritually. For instance how could you eat a lot when you think that in other places people die of hunger or the Bedouins eat the manure of the camels?`
`I noticed that I don’t love with the heart, but with the mind. How will the heart be able to work?`
`Don’t you know? The doctors nowadays make the heart work by drilling the chest and placing a battery inside. And we have to use our mind so that it drills the heart for making it work.`
`How can this be done, abba?`
`In my opinion this is made in three ways: either you feel a great gratitude for the blessings from God and your heart melts and glorifies God or you feel the weight of your sins and you ask God for forgiveness or you put yourself in the shoes of someone else who is in trouble and suffer for him.`
`Abba, I have a spontaneous behavior. I behave as I feel. Is this good?`
`Listen, when there’s a pure and whole love for God then any spontaneous reaction of the heart is pure. But when there is no pure love in the heart then the spontaneity must be refrained because this spontaneous reaction is full of worldly toxins.`
`What will help me temper my spontaneity?`
`Didn’t you drive a car? Didn’t it have brakes? So now tell me what you must do when the brakes don’t work?`
`I must put brakes to my heart.`
`Yes, the mind must restrain the heart because when the heart goes ahead it consumes itself in vain.God gave you a good mind and a good heart but you don’t use your mind for restraining the heart and you waste it. Think well before each action to make the heart that was given by God work properly, with simplicity and generosity.
