Elder St Paisios on Fighting the Devil…
When I’m speaking with someone and am about to say something which may be useful to him, someone else will come to interrupt, or there will be some distracting sound or something else that forces me to stop. If the tempter the devil devises such machinations against us, why should we not similarly devise our own defensive mechanisms? You must be intelligently vigilant in outsmarting the little devil… You are placing too much trust in yourself. Self-confidence. Certain sinister thoughts have become entrenched in you and this is why you are being thus tormented. You need to think straight. You have to remove the worn-out machinery of your mental factory and install good machinery. The best enterprise is for someone to establish a factory of good thoughts. Then, even bad thoughts will be transformed into good ones by his mind. For example, when you look upon a person as a soul, as an angel, you can ascend angelically to Heaven and your life becomes a festival. But if you look upon a person in a carnal way, you descend into hell.”
– ‘Spiritual Struggle’