A Guide to the Mystical Path

The following are examples from a collection of Christian monastic wisdom, a very small portion of the vast amount of teachings that exist and are still used in the monasteries of the Eastern Christian world to this day.

Each single sentence is meant to be taken as a day's reflection. It was first supposed to be learned by heart, at the beginning of the day, and then repeated as the daily text in every spare moment of quiet. Such moments of

(quietness of soul) were structured by the early monks around the simple repetitive tasks that made up daily life in remote deserts. The regular monotony of basket weaving (a favored monastic employment) was interspersed with the repetition of prayers and the musing on the "sentence" of the day.

Today life is busier and more demanding, but even the busiest of us have moments of

, in those times spent waiting for buses or trains to arrive or depart, or when we are driving or walking or simply sitting idly for a moment. Such times are ideally suited for the recitation of the sentence and its dialectic--teasing out the implications of what such an aphorism could mean: how have we already experienced it; how could it illuminate a truth about our own heart or the troubles or our friends' hearts of the secret ways that God wishes to develop our seeking soul?

The earliest writers tended to divide their spiritual teachings into three basic categories, suitable for the stages of the first searchers, young monks of several years' standing, and finally, the more advanced. The instructions were usually arranged as short paragraphs, meant to be learned by heart and meditated on over and over again for a day or even a week until the paragraph had opened like a fruit on the tongue of the monk and revealed its inner flavor to the searching mind. The same practice was adopted in regard to phrases from the Scriptures, especially the Psalms.

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