Ascetic prayer, Contemplation

That is, at this moment, if you think you are  in a miserable condition, you were once perfect. This means that perfection is within us, like a faint memory of a dream known long ago. We do not have to establish anything new: instead we must re-establish what we once were. In Greek, the word metanoiete means literally to “turn the mind, (noia) around, (meta).” This turning around of the mind is the ascetic secret.

The orthodox call this practice intelligent action;

a modern term is contemplation.

The metanoia, the mind turns away from the endless sleeping; it surrenders to the Name, the mind discovers an essential fact that Christ is “the true light which lights every man that comes into the world”.

We needn’t storm the heavens by violence to reach the heights of divine love. Through Ascetic prayer and Contemplation I am not blind but begin to see. I see the terrible violence and lies that arises within from my own blindness and this blindness is the root of  ignorance. At times I am blind to the temptations,  habits and illusions I believe about myself. I have fashion and cherish a lie i invented about myself. Our mental life is disastrously chained to our ego; our minds are swallowed and consumed by our emotions. As a result, our minds no longer see God and our emotions no longer nourish the harmonies of mind and body.

The Inner Connections

Meditation is contemplation and a precursor to prayer. It may be defined as a type of thinking in which the mind bypasses what is inessential mind and comprehends, in a single instant, the essence of all things. Contemplation  is meditation, holding the  mind in absolute silence, concentrating all-knowing onto a simple point that is Christ or OM.  The practice of writing of icons can provide the perfect method of contemplative concentration.

How? “God” the “Word” is, in the icon, made visible in image. The iconographer in the process uses Ascetic prayer to achieve contemplative concentration. All work potentially is contemplative concentration, of course, but true work in iconography is an act of Ascetic prayer, contempation.