No one hears my word or my teaching unless he has abandoned self

Now you might want to ask, 'How do I know if it is God's will?' I reply, 'If it were not God's will for a single instant, it would not be - it must always be His will.' Now if you really enjoyed the taste of God's will, you would be just as if you were in heaven, whatever happened or did not happen to you. It serves them right who want anything other than God's will, for they are always in sorrow and distress.
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Now there are some people who consider themselves very holy and perfect, they make a great parade and use big words, and yet they seek and desire so many things, and want so many possessions and pay so much regard to themselves and to this and that; they claim to be contemplatives, and yet they can brook no contradiction. You can be sure they are far from God and have not attained that union.
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And so a carnal man has no knowledge of spiritual things, because he is not ready for them. On the other hand, it is easy for a man with understanding to leave all material things, because he knows spiritual things. St. Dionysius says God offers his heaven for sale.

Nothing is so cheap as heaven, when it is for sale, and nothing is so glorious and precious a possession, when it has been earned. It is called cheap, because it is on sale to everybody for as much as he can afford. Therefore a man should give all he has for heaven - his own will. As long as he keeps any part of his own will, he has not paid for heaven. For him who has abandoned self and self-will, all material things are easy to abandon.
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The higher the soul is raised up above herself, the purer and clearer she is, and the more perfectly God can do in her His divine work in His own likeness. If a mountain rose up two leagues above the earth, and if one were to write characters on it in the dust or sand, they would remain intact, untouched by wind or rain. Just so a truly spir­itual man should be raised up in true peace, entire and changeless in divine activity. Any spiritual man has good cause for shame at being so easily moved by depression, anger, or annoyance: such a man was never truly spiritual.
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And so, if you would be one Son, you must get rid of not,  for not makes for division. How so? Observe! If you are not that man, the not makes a distinction between you and that man. And so, to be free of distinction, you must abandon not. For there is a power in the soul that is immune from not, having nothing in common with things: for there is nothing in that power but God alone.
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Our masters declare that perfect rest is freedom from all motion. In this the soul must rise above herself to the divine order.12 There, in that perfect rest, the Father gives His only-begotten Son to the soul.
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And man too should be unseparated from all things, which means that a man should be nothing in himself and wholly detached from self: in that way he is unseparated from all things and is all things. For, as far as you are nothing in yourself, insofar you are all things and unseparated from all things. And therefore, as far as you are unseparated from all things, insofar you are God and all things, for God's divinity depends on His being unseparated from all things. And so the man who is unseparated from all things receives the Godhead from where God himself receives it.
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...a man should be so wholly detached in his intention that he had nobody and nothing in view but the Godhead in itself - neither salvation nor this or that, but just God as God, and the Godhead in itself. For whatever else you concern yourself with is an admixture to the Godhead. And so shed all admixtures to the Godhead, and seize it naked as it is in itself.
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Now we read in one Gospel that Christ said, "None can be my disciple unless he follows after me" (Luke 14:27) ­ and unless he has abandoned self and kept nothing for himself: and he has all things, for to have nothing is to have all things.3 But to submit to God with one's desire and one's heart, and to place one's will entirely in God's will and to have no regard for created things ­ if a man has gone out of himself in this way, he will truly be given back to himself again.
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Now I say, How can it be that detachment of the understanding comprehends all things within itself without form or image, without turning outward or transforming itself? I say it comes from simplicity, for the more pure and simple a man is of himself in himself, the more simply he will understand all multiplicity in himself, while himself remaining immutable. Boethius says, 'God is an immovable good, remaining still in Himself, unmoved and motionless, yet moving all things." 16 The simple intellect is so pure in itself that it comprehends the pure bare divine being immediately, and in the inflowing it receives divine nature equally with the angels, at which the angels receive great joy.
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But if God is neither goodness nor being nor truth nor one, what then is He? He is pure nothing: he is neither this nor that. If you think of anything He might be, He is not that. So where will the soul find truth? Will she not find it there, where she is in-formed in one unity, in the primal purity, in the impress of pure beingness - will she not find truth even there? No, she will not be able to grasp truth there ­ rather does truth come thence and descend from there.
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Observe which are the three heavens. The first is detachment from all bodily things, the second is estrangement from all imagery, and the third is a bare understanding in God without intermediary.
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The second question is whether St. Paul understood outside of time or in time. I say he understood out of time, for he did not understand from the angels who are created in time; he understood from God, who was before time was, whom time never comprehended.
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When it falls to some people to suffer or to do something, they say, 'If only I knew it was God's will, I would gladly endure it or do it!' Dear God! that is a strange question for a sick man to ask, whether it is God's will that he should be sick. He ought to realize that if he is sick, it must be God's will. It is just the same with other things.

And so a man should accept from God, purely and simply, whatever happens to him. There are some people who praise God and have faith in Him when all goes well with them, inwardly or outwardly, as when somebody says, 'I have got ten quarters of corn this year and as many of wine: I put my trust in God.' 'Indeed,' I say, 'you put your trust in the corn and the wine.'
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"Fear not those who would kill the body, for they cannot kill the soul," for spirit does not kill spirit: spirit gives life to spirit. Those who would kill you are flesh and blood, and whatever is flesh and blood, all that perishes. The noblest thing in man is blood, when it wills good. But the most evil thing in man is blood, when it wills evil. When the blood rules the flesh, a man is humble, patient and chaste and has all the virtues. But when the flesh rules the blood, a man is haughty, angry, and lascivious and has all the vices.
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Whoever has understood this sermon, good luck to him. If no one had been here I should have had to preach it to this offertory box.

There are some poor people who will go back home and say, 'I shall settle down and eat my bread and serve God.' By the eternal truth I declare that these people will remain in error, and will never
be able to strive for and win what those others achieve who follow God in poverty and exile.
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There are three things that prevent us from hearing the eternal Word. The first is corporeality, the second is multiplicity, the third is temporality. If a man had transcended these three things, he would dwell in eternity, he would dwell in the spirit, he would dwell in unity and in the desert - and there he would hear the eternal Word. Now our Lord says, " "No one hears my word or my teaching unless he has abandoned self.' For to hear the Word of God demands absolute self­ surrender.