Saint Hesychios Archives

From the Prayer of Jesus to Prayer of the Heart (Part II)

01/29/2019

Once this prayer [the Prayer of Jesus] has taken root within us, our heart is illumined by a deep confidence, in which we are spared of the former blindness that allowed us to pray only with the lips. Now we welcome prayer as an ineffable treasure. As spiritual guides have so often declared, “the Prayer of Jesus is a joy that elicits a response of thanksgiving.” At this point in the spiritual pilgrimage, the heart

SUNRISE IN THE HEART (Part I)

09/16/2016

Saint Teresa of Avila goes to great lengths to remind us that there is such a thing as inner light, “We are conditioned,” she says, “to perceive only external light. We forget that there is such a thing as inner light, illuminating our soul, and we mistake that radiance for darkness.” Saint Hesychios says our practice will dawn with yet a new brilliance, a “continuous seeing into the heart’s depths, stillness of mind unbroken even

SEEING BY TORCHLIGHT (Part II)

02/24/2016

In an early season of practice we are so caught up in our thoughts and feelings that we think we are these thoughts and feelings and miss the distinction between thoughts and awareness that St. Teresa and countless others have discovered. The great masters presume this awkwardness we all know and so they teach in a practical way the cultivation of awareness. When the light of awareness illumines no more than a torch does, we

SEEING BY TORCHLIGHT (Part I)

01/26/2016

Awareness is not like a solid tabletop or flat-screen TV. Saint Diadochos says awareness is more like the sea, which, when calm, we can see right into: “When the sea is calm, fishermen can scan its depths and therefore hardly any creature moving in the water escapes their notice. But when the sea is disturbed by the winds it hides beneath its turbid and agitated waves what it was happy to reveal when it was

AWARENESS: SILENCE’S VERY OWN PRACTICE

11/11/2015

The practice of contemplation over many winters into spring often leads to a subtle but fundamental shift in prayer: from using a prayer word as a means of concentration to simple sitting in awareness. Just being. It is much as St. John of the Cross describes it: “Preserve a loving attentiveness to God with no desire to feel or understand any particular thing concerning God.” When inner silence sits in simple repose, its prayer is

CLINGING TO DISTRACTION LIKE A DOG TO A BONE (Part I)

02/18/2014

Evagrius and others have a psychological description of how these inner videos are generated. There is within us a sort of mental craving that is fragmented and frayed (pathos was the Greek word he often used), with the result that we are nearly always either grasping at something or pushing it away and find it very difficult to receive with open palms of simple gratitude. What happens when this mental craving grasps some thought or

Archive

From the Prayer of Jesus to Prayer of the Heart (Part II)

SUNRISE IN THE HEART (Part I)

SEEING BY TORCHLIGHT (Part II)

SEEING BY TORCHLIGHT (Part I)

AWARENESS: SILENCE’S VERY OWN PRACTICE

CLINGING TO DISTRACTION LIKE A DOG TO A BONE (Part I)

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