Within the depth-psychology and contemplative library, prayer is treated not as a peripheral devotional habit but as the axial activity through which the psyche either opens toward or closes against the ground of being. The corpus divides broadly into two registers. In the hesychast and Philokalic tradition — represented by Evagrius, Climacus, Maximos, Gregory of Sinai, and the Philokalia translators — prayer is understood as the ascent of the intellect (nous) to God, a progressive purification of the passionate faculty culminating in wordless, imageless communion. Here prayer possesses an ontological dimension: it is not petitionary address but the intellect's very nature realizing itself. A second, Sufi-inflected register, most powerfully articulated by Henry Corbin's reading of Ibn 'Arabi, reconceives prayer as a creative, cosmogonic act — the conjunction of Worshiper and Worshiped that constitutes a new epiphany and mirrors the act of Creation itself. A third, therapeutic register appears in Twelve Step literature, where prayer functions pragmatically as a technology of surrender, guidance, and reconnection with an Inner Child or Higher Power. Running across all three registers is the tension between effortful, disciplined practice and the grace-given state in which prayer transcends act and becomes continuous being. The question of distraction, imageless attention, and the danger of demonic substitution further distinguishes serious contemplative psychology from merely ritual recitation.
In the library
26 passages
Prayer is the test of everything...the source of everything...the driving force of everything...the director of everything. Prayer is the raising of the mind and heart to God in praise and thanksgiving to Him and in supplication for the good things that we need.
This passage establishes prayer as the comprehensive principle of the spiritual life — simultaneously epistemological test, ontological source, and teleological director — drawing on multiple Philokalic authorities.
Coniaris, Anthony M., Philokalia: The Bible of Orthodox Spirituality, 1998thesis
Prayer is communion of the intellect with God. What state, then, does the intellect need so that it can reach out to its Lord without deflection and commune with Him without intermediary?
Evagrius defines prayer as the intellect's unmediated communion with God, making the prior purification of the soul through keeping the commandments an indispensable precondition.
Palmer, G. E. H. and Sherrard, Philip and Ware, Kallistos (trs.), The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995thesis
Prayer, because it is not an act produced unilaterally by the faithful, must be looked upon as creative; it is the conjunction of the Worshiper and the Worshiped, of the Lover and the Beloved, a conjunction which is an exchange of divine Names.
Corbin's reading of Ibn 'Arabi recasts prayer as a cosmogonic, mutually constitutive event rather than a unilateral petition, grounding it in the creative imagination's capacity to personalize the divine.
Corbin, Henry, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, 1969thesis
Undistracted prayer is the highest intellection of the intellect. Prayer is the ascent of the intellect to God. If you long for prayer, renounce all to gain all.
Evagrius articulates the classical hesychast definition of prayer as the intellect's supreme act, insisting that total renunciation is the only adequate preparation for genuine prayer.
Palmer, G. E. H. and Sherrard, Philip and Ware, Kallistos (trs.), The Philokalia, Volume 1, 1979thesis
Each prayer, each instant in each prayer, then becomes a recurrence of Creation (tajdid al-khalq), a new Creation (khalgq jadid)... The creativity of Prayer is connected with the cosmic meaning of Prayer.
Corbin extends Ibn 'Arabi's doctrine to show that every discrete moment of prayer re-enacts cosmogony, linking private devotion to the ontological structure of divine self-disclosure.
Corbin, Henry, Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, 1969thesis
First there is prayer which man himself makes; and (then) there is prayer which God Himself gives to him who prays... It is no longer man who prays but the Holy Spirit Who prays in him.
St. Theophan's two-stage schema — strenuous prayer and self-impelled prayer — articulates the pneumatological transformation by which human effort yields to divine initiative within the praying subject.
Coniaris, Anthony M., Philokalia: The Bible of Orthodox Spirituality, 1998thesis
It is not enough to say prayers; one must become, be prayer, prayer incarnate. It is not enough to have moments of praise. All of life, each act, every gesture, even the smile of the human face, must become a hymn of adoration.
Paul Evdokimov's formulation — endorsed by the Philokalic tradition — demands that prayer cease to be a bounded act and become the total existential orientation of the person.
Coniaris, Anthony M., Philokalia: The Bible of Orthodox Spirituality, 1998thesis
Undistracted prayer is the highest intellection of the intellect. Prayer is the ascent of the intellect to God... Pray first for the purification of the passions; secondly, for deliverance from ignorance and forgetfulness.
Nikephoros rehearses the Evagrian hierarchy of prayer's objects, establishing purification of the passions as the necessary first petition before higher contemplative goods can be sought.
Palmer, G. E. H. and Sherrard, Philip and Ware, Kallistos (trs.), The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995thesis
'Prayer is the most divine of the virtues.' Again, 'by its very nature the spirit is made to pray.' Evagrius tends to equate the whole of Christian life with the life of prayer.
The modern editor's introduction to Evagrius establishes prayer as the apex and totality of the Christian life, showing that for Evagrius following Christ and praying without distraction are equivalent acts.
When you are praying, do not shape within yourself any image of the Deity, and do not let your intellect be stamped with the impress of any form; but approach the Immaterial in an immaterial manner.
Evagrius specifies that authentic prayer requires absolute imagelessness, warning that demonic counterfeits exploit any tendency to project form or quantity upon the divine during contemplation.
Palmer, G. E. H. and Sherrard, Philip and Ware, Kallistos (trs.), The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
The effect of prayer is union with God, and, if someone is with God, he is separated from the enemy. Through prayer we guard our chastity, control our temper and rid ourselves of vanity.
Gregory of Nyssa enumerates prayer's concrete moral and psychic effects, framing union with God as the causal mechanism by which prayer produces virtue and social well-being.
Coniaris, Anthony M., Philokalia: The Bible of Orthodox Spirituality, 1998supporting
Unceasing prayer is prayer that does not leave the soul day or night. It consists not in what is outwardly perceived — outstretched hands, bodily stance, or verbal utterance — but in our inner concentration on the intellect's activity.
Symeon the New Theologian interiorizes the command to pray without ceasing, locating true prayer in the intellect's sustained inward attention rather than in any external bodily or verbal form.
Palmer, G. E. H. and Sherrard, Philip and Ware, Kallistos (trs.), The Philokalia, Volume 1, 1979supporting
War reveals the love of a soldier for his king, and the time and practice of prayer show up a monk's love for God. So your prayer shows where you stand. Indeed, theologians say that prayer is a monk's mirror.
Climacus employs the metaphor of prayer as mirror to argue that the quality of one's prayer precisely discloses the interior state of the soul, making it an instrument of self-knowledge.
Climacus, John, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, 600supporting
Prayer unites with the Bridegroom a soul wounded by nuptial love... it cannot fix its attention totally on things divine unless it is wholly united with intelligible light during prayer.
Ilias the Presbyter frames prayer as the moment at which the deiform soul, suspended between sensible and intelligible light, achieves its union with the divine Bridegroom through total interior illumination.
Palmer, G. E. H. and Sherrard, Philip and Ware, Kallistos (trs.), The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
You must pray not only with words but with the mind, and not only with the mind but with the heart, so that the mind understands and sees clearly what is said in words, and the heart feels what the mind is thinking.
St. Theophan insists that genuine prayer integrates word, mind, and heart into a single unified act, and that anything less falls short of the fullness of prayer as the tradition demands it.
Coniaris, Anthony M., Philokalia: The Bible of Orthodox Spirituality, 1998supporting
Watchfulness and the Jesus Prayer, as I have said, mutually reinforce one another; for close attentiveness goes with constant prayer, while prayer goes with close watchfulness and attentiveness of intellect.
Hesychios articulates the reciprocal relationship between nepsis (watchfulness) and the Jesus Prayer, showing them to be structurally interdependent in the hesychast program of spiritual warfare.
Palmer, G. E. H. and Sherrard, Philip and Ware, Kallistos (trs.), The Philokalia, Volume 1, 1979supporting
No one on his own account and without the help of the Spirit can mystically invoke the Lord Jesus, for this can be done with purity and in its fullness only with the help of the Holy Spirit.
Gregory of Sinai establishes the pneumatological limit of all prayer: the invocation of Christ in its fullness is not a human achievement but a gift and operation of the Holy Spirit alone.
Palmer, G. E. H. and Sherrard, Philip and Ware, Kallistos (trs.), The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
Prayer, then, is to become what we already are, to gain what we already possess, to come face to face with the One who dwells even now within our innermost self.
Bishop Kallistos Ware's formulation defines prayer as the recovery of an already-given interiority, placing it within the broader Philokalic doctrine that the divine indwelling precedes and grounds all ascetic effort.
Coniaris, Anthony M., Philokalia: The Bible of Orthodox Spirituality, 1998supporting
When the Spirit takes its dwelling place in man he does not cease to pray, because the Spirit will constantly pray in him. Then, neither when he sleeps nor when he is awake, will prayer be cut off from the soul.
Isaac the Syrian describes the highest stage of prayer as a continuous pneumatic state in which the Spirit prays independently of the human will, even during sleep.
Coniaris, Anthony M., Philokalia: The Bible of Orthodox Spirituality, 1998supporting
Like meditation, prayer has been used through the ages for worship, guidance, intervention, salvation, and to find comfort from aloneness. There is no standard length for a prayer, but some of the most powerful prayers have the fewest words.
The ACA therapeutic tradition democratizes prayer by detaching it from fixed location, time, and length, positioning it as a broadly available psychospiritual resource for recovering adults.
INC , ACA WSO, ADULT CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICS DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILIES, 2012supporting
We pray to put into action the principles and concepts we are finding in ACA. We pray for strength and power to work the ACA program and to stay focused. We pray for God to enter our thought life and take out what blocks us from accepting ourselves.
The ACA Twelve Steps Workbook presents prayer as an activating mechanism that channels spiritual principles into lived conduct and clears psychic obstructions to self-acceptance.
Organization, Adult Children of Alcoholics World Service, The twelve steps of adult children steps workbook, 2007supporting
It will be seen that this little religious text is not the highest moment of prayer, for that moment is wordless. The text is a constant inciter, provoker, reminder toward the highest experience of prayer.
Cassian's commentator distinguishes the repeated verbal formula from the wordless summit of prayer it is designed to induce, preserving the apophatic priority of silence over speech in contemplative practice.
Pray all in simplicity. The publican and the prodigal son were reconciled to God by a single utterance, and deal with God as with a friend and master, lifting their praises and their requests to Him not for themselves but for others.
Climacus advocates radical simplicity and altruistic intercession in prayer, citing scriptural exemplars to show that brevity and sincerity outweigh elaborate verbal construction.
Climacus, John, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, 600supporting
Imageless prayer is seen as necessary to defeat the devil's attempts to distract us from true prayer. Peter also reminds us that words are useless unless they are expressing the prayerful state of the nous.
The editorial note identifies imagelessness and the noetic ground of prayer as the twin conditions without which verbal prayer remains merely superficial and vulnerable to demonic interference.
Palmer, G. E. H. and Sherrard, Philip and Ware, Kallistos (trs.), The Philokalia, Volume 1, 1979aside
When thoughts invade you, in place of weapons call on the Lord Jesus frequently and persistently and they will retreat; for they cannot bear the warmth produced in the heart by prayer and they flee as if scorched by fire.
Gregory of Sinai presents the invocation of Jesus as an affective-thermal force that dissipates logismoi, framing prayer as a weapon of spiritual warfare rather than merely a devotional act.
Palmer, G. E. H. and Sherrard, Philip and Ware, Kallistos (trs.), The Philokalia, Volume 1, 1979aside
If it happens that, as you pray, some word evokes delight or remorse within you, linger over it... these words should be as direct, concise and uncomplicated as possible.
Climacus recommends attending to affective resonance during prayer as a guide for dwelling on particular words, advocating brevity and simplicity as structural virtues of authentic supplication.
Climacus, John, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, 600aside