What this is
This is a short daily practice of honest self-examination, the kind the Church has always kept and the counseling room keeps in its own way. It comes from Orthodox Psychotherapy Applied: The Interior Campaign, a book by A. Damianakis that reads the human person through the Orthodox Fathers and the counseling room side by side.
Each day gives you a short passage from the book and one question. You write a few lines. On day five you look back over the four days and mark which way each one moved you: toward God, another person, or the amends that can be made, or away, into hiding. After that, the page stays here for you as a daily journal of one line and one direction.
- Cost
- Free. No account, no email, no payment.
- Time
- About ten minutes a day, for five days.
- Privacy
- What you write is saved only in this browser on this device. It is never sent to us or to anyone. Use the same device and browser each day to see your earlier entries.
- The rule
- As able. A little, done daily.
Your five days
Where this leads
These five questions are the doorway. The course Orthodox Psychotherapy Applied: The Interior Campaign takes the whole book lesson by lesson: the person made in the image of God, what the Fall bent and what it did not, the passions, the four weapons of Unseen Warfare, the Great Canon, and the road home. Thirty-seven written lessons in eight parts, each with its own work.
The other free starts
The rule that governs this practice is the rule that governs the whole book: as able. A person in the Church brings the whole of it to a confessor. A person under clinical care keeps the clinician informed.
For educational purposes only. This is not counseling, pastoral or medical care of any kind.
If you need help now: call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline). National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788. In danger: 911.