Greco-Christian stream·The Imitation of Christ·Book I — Admonitions Profitable for the Spiritual Life·Chapter VIII. Of The Danger Of Too Much Familiarity
VIII. The danger of too much familiarity
Non omni revela cor tuum — open not thy heart to every one. The discipline of holy reserve; the danger that familiarity breeds disregard for God's secret movements in the soul; the right measure of openness.
Source context
- Theme
- dangers of excessive social familiarity and undisciplined speech as obstacles to inner development
- Soul-faculty
- Consciousness Soul
Steiner
not engaged in the GA corpus
Cross-tradition
- Desert Fathers / Apophthegmata PatrumThe Abbas consistently identify talkativeness and indiscriminate companionship as primary dissipators of the recollected attention required for hesychast practice, paralleling Kempis's structural warning here.
- Stoic philosophy (Epictetus, Enchiridion)Epictetus prescribes restraint in social congress on the grounds that the company of the unreformed drags the practitioner back toward passion and away from rational self-governance, a cross-tradition congruence with this chapter's caution.
- Sufi adab literatureThe Sufi discipline of adab (spiritual courtesy and selective association) treats undiscriminating familiarity as a dissipation of the baraka accumulated through inner work, structurally congruent with Kempis's admonition.
Chapter VIII. Of The Danger Of Too Much Familiarity
OF THE DANGER OF TOO MUCH FAMILIARITY
Open not thine heart to every man, but deal with one who is wise and feareth God. Be seldom with the young and with strangers. Be not a flatterer of the rich; nor willingly seek the society of the great. Let thy company be the humble and the simple, the devout and the gentle, and let thy discourse be concerning things which edify. Be not familiar with any woman, but commend all good women alike unto God. Choose for thy companions God and His Angels only, and flee from the notice of men.
2We must love all men, but not make close companions of all. It sometimes falleth out that one who is unknown to us is highly regarded through good report of him, whose actual person is nevertheless unpleasing to those who behold it. We sometimes think to please others by our intimacy, and forthwith displease them the more by the faultiness of character which they perceive in us.