Kindle Notes & Highlights
It is when we are “on watch,” vigilant and attentive, that God comes to us. The Fathers of the Philokalia counsel us that for attentiveness to be effective, it should be combined with prayer: proseuche (prayer) and prosoche (attentiveness). When vigilance discovers a thief seeking to break in, it immediately summons help through prayer (the Jesus Prayer).
After every thought has been banished from the soul by the memory of God’s presence, stand at the door of the heart and watch carefully everything that enters or goes out from there.
Be the door-keeper of your heart and do not let any thought come in without questioning it. Question each thought individually: “Are you on our side or the side of our foes?” And if it is one of ours, it will f ill you with tranquility.
the control switch (hegemonikon) is “the mind of Christ” which we receive when we “put on Christ” in holy Baptism.
it refers to the inner eye of the soul which exercises control over the invading and distracting thoughts (logismoi) through watchfulness and prayer.
The Fathers of the Philokalia emphasize the importance of nepsis, vigilance, because they believe that the arch-enemy of the soul is a certain kind of thought which they described with the word logismoi. Logismoi in the Philokalia are essentially a train of thoughts that befog and pollute the mind so that bit by bit it drifts away from reality into a world of fantasy and delusion.
logismoi are thoughts caused by demons.
“the stairway to the kingdom of heaven is within you,” in your mind and heart. The only way to ascend this stairway is through vigilance (nepsis), posting a guard at the door of the mind and heart.
Great thoughts make great people. Holy thoughts make holy people.
The Fathers of the Philokalia place great importance on the need for ascesis, which is the Greek word for training or discipline. The purpose of such training is to produce spiritual athletes. Olivier Clement says that “the purpose of ascesis is to divest oneself of surplus weight, of spiritual fat.”
The Church is a hospital for the sick, but it is also a spiritual gymnasium. “Train yourself to be godly. For while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come” (1 Tim. 4:7-8).
The goal of Orthodox spirituality is union with God or what Orthodox theology calls theosis or deification.
The word passion comes from the Greek word pathos or pathaino. It is passive and means I am being acted upon. I am not in control. Habits that have hardened over the years take God’s grace and a lifetime of ascetic effort to break.
Thoughts are the seeds of the passions, those impulses that, if unopposed, become obsessive.
To combat such thoughts one needs to practice watchfulness
(nepsis) and ...
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Clement of Alexandria describes the passions as “diseases of the soul.” Evagrius of Pontus associates passions with demons. Gregory of Nyssa says that passions were not originally part of our nature, but came as a result of the Fall. He believes that passio...
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Thus the powerful energy of the passions is not to be destroyed but channeled toward God.
Ilias the Presbyter writes about the passions, “You will not be able to cut down the passions attacking you unless you first leave untilled the soil from which they are fed.”
Inner prayer shows us our captivity to the fallen spirits, making us realize our imprisonment and freeing us from it.
Since passions are tamed by prayer, when they arise we should practise the Jesus Prayer inwardly, very quietly and without haste: little by little this will allay the upsurging passions.
Tears are a gift of God.
The gift of tears is viewed as the renewing of the grace of Baptism. St.
Think of David’s tears, Peter’s tears, the prostitute’s tears—tears that led to regeneration and newness of life. Such tears are transfiguring according to the Philokalia.
The hesychast places himself in the presence of God and waits for God to fill him with His presence.
What is needed is constant inner attentiveness to the Holy Spirit who is constantly speaking within our hearts of the Father’s infinite love for us.
“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.”
I implore you, brethren, never to break or despise the rule of this prayer: A Christian when he eats, drinks, walks, sits, travels or does any other thing must continually cry: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me.” So that the name of the Lord Jesus descending into the depths of the heart, should subdue the serpent ruling over the inner pastures and bring life and salvation to the soul. He should always live with the name of the Lord Jesus, so that the heart swallows the Lord and the Lord the heart, and the two become one. And again: do not estrange your heart from God, but
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This all-holy and most sweet name should be our uninterrupted task and study, and we should always carry it with us in our heart, in our intellect, and on our lips. In it and with it we should breathe and live, sleep and wake, move and eat and drink, and in short do everything. It is impossible to purify our heart from passionate thoughts, and to drive out mental enemies, without constant calling on the name of Jesus (St. Hesychios).
The heart governs the whole body and when God’s grace possesses the heart, then it reigns over all thoughts. This is so because the heart is the place where the mind and the thoughts are found.
Thus, the three faculties of the heart are designed to know God with the nous; to love God with the heart; and to choose freely (volition) to follow Him.
The mind’s aim is to have knowledge of God. The sensation’s aim is to desire and love God, and the volition’s aim is the will to do what God commands.
The heart which the Fathers call “the Lord’s reception room” can also be the abode of evil and sin: what psychiatrists call the unconscious; the place that St. Paul describes so well when he talks about the law of the flesh within him warring against the law of the mind.
In it is the workshop of righteousness and of wickedness. In it is death; in it is life…. The heart is Christ’s palace: there Christ the King comes to take rest, with angels and the spirit of the saints, and He dwells there, walking within it and placing His Kingdom there.
This is especially true in today’s secular society which has dethroned God’s truth and where each person is encouraged to invent one’s own truth. Diakrisis, or discernment, is called “the queen of all virtues” by Sophronios of Jerusalem. John Cassian calls it “the mother, the guardian, and the guide of all virtues.”
…make an effort to keep company with, and be with and be under the guidance of experienced spiritual fathers. For it is dangerous living alone, on one’s own, without supervision or with persons inexperienced in spiritual warfare…for the deviousness and treachery of evil is great….
is a positive state of self-control, or rather, Christ-control or Spirit-control. It is the stilling of all passionate thoughts through askesis, purity of heart, and the gift of tears. It is being anchored and rooted in God, in the peace that passes all understanding.
They call on us “to remember God always,” “to flee forgetfulness,” “to watch and pray ceaselessly,” “to pray without ceasing in one’s heart.”
challenge us to be as constantly present to God as He is constantly present to us.
The key word is discipline: to discipline oneself to be in God’...
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If the presence of some good man always molds for the better one who converses with him, owing to the respect and reverence which he inspires, with much more reason must he, who is always in the uninterrupted presence of God by means of his knowledge and his life…be raised above himself on every occasion…. Such is he who believes that God is everywhere present, and does not suppose Him to be shut up in certain definite places, (so) that he could never be apart from God whether by day or by night. Accordingly all our life is a festival. Being persuaded that God is everywhere present on all
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When this relationship of always being present to God is realized, life becomes a constant “festival” or “feast” with God.
The essential part is to dwell in God, and this walking before God means that you live with the conviction ever before your consciousness that God is in you, as He is in everything: you live in the firm assurance that He sees all that is within you, knowing you better than you know yourself. This awareness of the eyes of God looking in your inner being…searching your soul and your heart, seeing all that is there…is the most powerful lever in the mechanism of the inner spiritual life.
Prayer is turning the mind and thoughts toward God. To pray means to stand before God with the mind, mentally to gaze unswervingly at Him, to converse with Him in reverent fear and hope…. The principal thing is to stand with the mind in the heart before God and to go on standing before Him unceasingly day and night, until the end of life…. Behave as you wish, so long as you learn to stand before God with the mind in the heart, for in this lies the essence of the matter.
prayer is to stand before God. Prayer is more than talking to God. It is waiting upon God. It is a relationship, a personal encounter. It is being in His presence, basking in it.
“Prayer should be not something we do from time to time, but something that we are all the time… (we are) not just people who say prayers occasionally, but people who are prayer continually.”
Purity of heart is not, first and foremost, a matter of avoiding all sorts of bad things; it is more so, desiring one supreme good above all.
Thus, purity of heart means loving all people and having a single supreme purpose and direction, not being double-minded and unstable ( James 1:8). Such purity or singleness of heart leads to illumination which, in turn, leads to glorification and union with God.
“the uprooting of passionate thoughts from the mind”:
“The principles of Jesus are revealed only to those who purify their minds.”
