Elder St Paisios on Self Deception
“When someone lulls to sleep his self-accusing thoughts, he represses his conscience. And when one lulls to sleep, or refuses to acknowledge these self-accusations from his conscience for a long period of time, he creates another, his own a la carte conscience, that is, a faulty conscience. But such a person has no inner peace, because a faulty conscience cannot bring about inner peace. You see, even when someone makes a mistake and another person tells him, “It’s not your fault, why are you worried?”, or even if he pretends not to have noticed his mistake, again, he will not find any inner peace. There are some who go to consult certain gurus, and so on, and when they realize that things are not going well, they will come to ask me. And while I tell them something to help them, they still insist, “No, what I believe is correct.” “But if what you believe is correct, then why do you come and ask me?” Even though they are not at peace with what is wrong, they insist and keep on trying to find a false peace one way or another, but they cannot find true peace.”
~ ‘Spiritual Struggle’