My beloved spiritual children in Christ Our Only True God and Our Only True Savior,
CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE.
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THE THREE WAYS OF ATTENTION AND PRAYER
By Saint Symeon the New Theologian {From Myriobiblos. On-Line Library of the Church of Greece)
[Introduction]
There are three ways of attention and prayer, by which the soul can be filled and become spiritually exhausted, or crumble and perish. If these three ways are used appropriately and at the right time, the soul will be filled, whilst if they are used unreasonably and at the wrong time, the soul will perish. Attention therefore should be tied and inseparable to prayer, in the way that the body is tied and inseparable to the soul. Attention should have the lead and mind for enemies as a guard, and fight sin, and resist evil thoughts of the soul. It should be then succeeded by prayer, which will destroy all those evil thoughts which attention fought against earlier since attention alone is not able to do this.
It is this war of attention and prayer on which both life and death of the soul depend. By attention that we keep our prayer safe and therefore we progress: if we do not have attention to keep it clear and we leave it unguarded, then it is infected by evil thoughts and we become wicked and hopeless. Hence, the ways of attention and prayer are three, we ought to explain the features of each one and leave the choice to whoever may wish to find salvation.
[The first way of attention and prayer.]
The features of the first way are these: one stands to pray by raising his hands towards the sky together with his eyes and mind. He imagines divine concepts, the good things of Heaven, the armies of the Holy Angels, the residences of the Saints, and, in short, he gathers in his mind all that he has heard from the Holy Scripture. He recalls them in the time of his prayer looking at the sky, and he exhorts his soul to what seems to be love and eros for God. Sometimes he even has tears and cries. In this way his soul gradually becomes proud without realizing it, thinking that what he does is by the grace of God's compassion for him. Hence he pleads God to always grant him worthy of such deeds which are, however, signs of error.
A good thing ceases to be good when it is carried out in the wrong way or at the wrong time. To such an extent this is the case here that, if this person finds perfect solitude, it will be impossible for him not to lose his mind. Should this not happen, it will still be impossible for him to acquire any virtues or detachment from the earthly. By this method are mislead all those who see the Light with their bodily eyes, sense perfumes with their sense of smell, hear voices with their ears, and so on. Some of them have been possessed, moving senselessly from one place to the other. Others have been misled by accepting the Devil who was transformed and appeared to them as an angel of light, and they have remained uncorrected until the very end, without wanting to hear any advice from their brothers. Some of them were even incited by the Devil and committed suicide, whilst others were crumbled and others became insane. Who can describe the various illusions of the Devil by which he misleads them!
Every reasonable person can understand the kind of damage that comes from this first way of attention and prayer. It happens that someone by being accompanied by brothers (since these evils usually happen to those who are on their own) does not suffer any of the things we described, he nevertheless spends all his life with no spiritual improvement.
(Next: The Second Way of Attention and Prayer)
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"Glory Be To GOD For All Things!" -- Saint John Chrysostom
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With sincere agape in His Holy Diakonia (Ministry)
The sinner and unworthy servant of God
+Father George