It is harder to fool the conscience than the mind. The conscience is capable of fighting long and hard against the mind deluded by its love of sin. - Ignatius Bryanchaninov

The world pushes us off course because it serves vanity and death and tries to force everyone else to serve its fallen masters, sometimes with kind words, sometimes with outright persecution..

As someone who is in one mind and heart with the Holy Fathers, you will be saved.

The light of Christ's teaching is heavy and intolerable for the sons of the world. They run from it into their dark, soundless pits—into distraction, into various earthly pastimes, into carnal pleasures. There, in their moral darkness, they live their earthly life with no spiritual, eternal goals.