…adorn your thinking power with a constant attention to God, prayer and knowledge of divine truths; the desiring power – with total self-denial and renunciation of all self-indulgence; the excitable power – with love. If you do this, then, I assure you, the light of your mind will never be dimmed and wrong thoughts will never find place in you. — Lorenzo Scupoli
Have you realized that the world and worldly cares do not hinder in fulfilling God’s commandments, when there is zeal and attention? That silence and retirement from the world are useless, if laziness and negligence prevail?” – St. Simeon the New Theologian
Worldly thoughts and the cares of life have the same effect on the understanding as a veil draped over the eyes, for the understanding is the eye of the soul. So long as we leave them there, we cannot see. But when they fall away as we remember that we are to die, then we shall clearly see the true light which illumines every man as it comes into the world from on high. – St. Symeon the New Theologian
We have to work, St. John Chrysostom says, but we need not concern or trouble ourselves about many things, as our Lord told Martha (Luke 10:41). For concern with this life prevents that concern with one’s own soul and its state which is the purpose of the man who devotes himself to God and is attentive to himself. It is said in the Law, “Be attentive to yourself” (Deuteronomy 15:9). St. Basil the Great has written about this text with marvelous wisdom. — St. Peter of Damaskos