Quieting the Storm Within

If, my beloved, you are not yet acustomed to overcome sudden impulses and the excitement of passions, roused, for example, by insults or by other clashes, I advise you to do this: make it a rule every morning, while you still sit at home, to review in your mind all the occasions you may meet with in the course of the day, both favorable and unfavorable, and visualize the passionate impulses, lusts, and irritations they may provoke; then prepare in yourself beforehand how to stifle them at the very inception, without allowing them to develop. If you do this, you will never be taken unawares by any movements of passions, but will always be ready to resist them, without being troubled with anger or enticed by lust. This review of what may happen should be practiced especially when you have to go out and visit places where you are bound to meet people, who can either attract or irritate you. Being prepared, you will easily avoid the one and the other. If a wave of passion arises, it will roll over your head or will break against you as against a rock, instead of carrying you with it like a flimsy boat. Let [it]...compel your mind and heart to rise to God on high and, having produced in yourself a clear consciousness and feeling of God's boundless love and of his impartial truth, try through this to thrust out the passionate movement and to replace it by its opposing good.
Father Lorenzo Scupoli (Taken from June Magnificat, pps 308-309)