I got a Kindle for Christmas (the simplest version) and have been downloading some of the 99-cent classics. One of them was My Life in Christ, by the Russian priest St. John of Kronstadt; I'd heard various things about him but never seen a copy of the book. It is lengthy and a mixed bag with little structure, but I was struck by this insight: "passions usually contract the heart, in the same way as God expands it and gives it true freedom." ("Passions" here in the somewhat technical sense of natural desires manifested in a disordered or misdirected state that carries us away from our true selves.)

The interesting things to me about this remark are that A) the passions inevitably give the illusion of heart- or self- expansion, but actually cause contraction, and that B) quite a lot of whipping up of religious fervor, emotionally violent doctrinal ideology, and over-the-top super-spiritual self-abgnegation/exaltation in the long run just boils down to feeding more of "the passions" under the cover of Christian language. St. John of Kronstadt's remarks help explain why people who emphasize this kind of stuff usually seem so contracted and brittle as human beings. The devil must be very happy when a longing for God, who alone can give true freedom and spaciousness, can be redirected into yet another way to contract and narrow us more.