"Nipsis is a method and science that, with the help of God, completely frees a person from passionate thoughts and words and from evil deeds if one continues this spiritual method for a long time and applies it willingly. Nipsis also provides secure knowledge of the incomprehensible God, as much as possible, and reveals divine and hidden mysteries. Additionally, through this method, a person achieves the fulfillment of all the commandments of the Old and New Testaments and provides all the benefits of the future age. It is primarily the purity of heart, which, due to its greatness and beauty, or, to be precise, due to our negligence, is extremely rare among monks. Chdist blesses this purity with the words: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God" (Matthew 5:8). Therefore, being what it is, it requires a great price to obtain. Nipsis, when it becomes long-established in a person, becomes a guide to a correct and God-pleasimg life. This is also the seal of theoria (contemplation). It's teaches us to justly move all three parts of the soul (the rational, the spirited, and the appetitive) and to safely guard our senses. It also enlarges the four general virtues (prudence, courage, temperance, and justice) every day in the one who possesses it."
Saturday, August 15, 2026
St. Neilos
By dogottawa
12:48 PM
"114. Do not seek to receive any form or shape during prayer.
115. Do not desire to see angels or powers or Christ sensibly so that your mind does not completely leave you, as you would be receiving a wolf instead of a shepherd and worshipping enemy demons.
116. The beginning of the mind's deception is vainglory. From this, the mind moves and tries to define the divine with shapes and forms.
117. I will say my own word, which I have told younger ones: Blessed is the mind that has acquired perfect formlessness during prayer.
118. Blessed is the mind that, because it prays without distraction, always gains more desire for God.
119. Blessed is the mind that during prayer becomes immaterial and unpossessive.
120. Blessed is the mind that alienates itself from every sense (perception) of material things during prayer."
Monday, July 20, 2026
St. Albert - That Our Labour Must Be With The Understanding And Not With The Senses
By dogottawa
12:00 AM
"Blessed is he who by continually cleansing his soul from the images and phantoms of earth draws its powers inward, and thence lifts them up to God.
At length he in a manner forgets all images, and by a simple and direct act of pure intellect and will contemplates God, Who is absolutely simple.
Cast from thee, therefore, all phantoms, images, and forms, and whatsoever is not God, that all thy intercourse with Him may proceed from an understanding, affection, and will, alike purified. This is, in truth, the end of all thy labours, that thou mayest draw nigh unto God and repose in Him within thy soul, solely by thy understanding and by a fervent love, free from entanglement or earthly image.
Not by his bodily organs or outward senses does a man attain to this, but by the intelligence and will, which constitute him man. So long as he lingers, trifling with the objects of the imagination and senses, he has not yet passed beyond the limits and instincts of his animal nature, which he possesses in common with the brute beasts. They know and feel through images and by their senses, nor can it be otherwise, for they have no higher powers. Not so is it with man, who, by his intelligence, affections, and will, is created in the image and likeness of God. Hence it is by these powers that he ought, without intermediary, purely and directly to commune with God, be united to Him, and cleave to Him.
The Devil does his very utmost to hinder us from this exercise, for he beholds in it a beginning and a foretaste of eternal life, and he is envious of man. Therefore he strives, now by one temptation or passion, now by another, to turn away our thoughts from God.
At one time he assails us by arousing in us unnecessary anxiety, foolish cares or troubles, or by drawing us to irregular conversations and vain curiosity. At another he ensnares us by subtle books, by the words of others, by rumours and novelties. Then, again, he has recourse to trials, contradictions, etc.
Although these things may sometimes seem but very trifling faults, if faults at all, yet do they greatly hinder our progress in this holy exercise. Therefore, whether great or small, they must be resisted and driven from us as evil and harmful, though they may seem useful and even necessary. It is of great importance that what we have heard, or seen, or done, or said, should not leave their traces or fill our imagination.
Neither before nor after, nor at the time, should we foster these memories or allow their images to be formed. For when the mind is free from these thoughts, we are not hindered in our prayer, in meditation, or the psalmody, or in any other of our spiritual exercises, nor do these distractions return to trouble us.
Then shouldst thou readily and trustfully commit thyself and all that concerns thee to the unfailing and most sure Providence of God, in silence and peace. He Himself will fight for thee, and will grant thee a liberty and consolation better, nobler, and sweeter than would be possible if thou gavest thyself up day and night to thy fancies, to vain and wandering thoughts, which hold captive the mind, as they toss it hither and thither, wearying soul and body, and wasting uselessly alike thy time and strength.
Accept all things, whatsoever their cause, silently and with a tranquil mind, as coming to thee from the fatherly hand of Divine Providence.
Free thyself, therefore, from all the impressions of earthly things, in so far as thy state and profession require, so that with a purified mind and sincere affection thou mayest cleave to Him to Whom thou hast so often and so entirely vowed thyself.
Let nothing remain which could come between thy soul and God, that so thou mayest be able to pass surely and directly from the wounds of the Sacred Humanity to the brightness of the Divinity."
St. Maximus
By dogottawa
12:00 AM
"The whole purpose of the monk's warfare against the demons is to separate the passions from conceptual images."
"A monk is a man who has freed his intellect from attachment to material things and by means of self-control, love, psalmody and prayer cleaves to God."
"We carry about with us impassioned images of the things we have experienced."
Thursday, April 30, 2026
St. Thomas Aquinas
"For the end toward which the contemplative life, as we are now examining it, is ordained is the consideration of truth, of that truth, I say, which is uncreated..."
"God infuses into man, over and above the natural faculty of reason, the light of grace whereby he is internally perfected for the exercise of virtue... man's mind is elevated by this light to the knowledge of truths surpassing reason... man's affective power is raised by this light above all created things to the love of God..."
"Wisdom is twofold, created and uncreated. Man is said to be endowed with both..."
"...human knowledge is assisted by the revelation of grace. For the intellect's natural light is strengthened by the infusion of gratuitous light; and sometimes also the images in the human imagination are divinely formed."
"...angels propose the intelligible truth to men under the similitudes of sensible things... the human intellect... is strengthened by the action of the angelic intellect."
"...the intellectual light itself which is in us, is nothing else than a participated likeness of the uncreated light in which are contained the eternal types."
"...man's natural light, which is what makes him intellectual, is from God."
"...God is the author of the intellect power, and... he can be seen by the intellect."
"All things are said to be seen in God and all things are judged in Him, because by the participation of His light, we know and judge all things; for the light of natural reason itself is a participation of the divine light..."
"...understanding is an intellectual principle higher than our intellect - namely, God..."
"...reason... whereby it apprehends the truth about something. This act is not in our power: because it happens in virtue of a natural or supernatural light."
"The will is the name of the rational appetite; and consequently it cannot be in things devoid of reason."
"The knowledge which we have by natural reason contains two things: images derived from the sensible objects; and the natural intelligible light, enabling us to abstract from them intelligible conceptions."
"...the image of the Trinity is to be found in the acts of the soul, that is, inasmuch as from the knowledge which we possess, by actual thought we form an internal word; and thence break forth into love. But, since the principles of acts are the habits and powers, and everything exists virtually in its principle, therefore, secondarily and consequently, the image of the Trinity may be considered as existing in the powers, and still more in the habits, forasmuch as the acts virtually exist therein."
Wednesday, April 29, 2026
St. Catherine of Siena
By dogottawa
10:29 PM
"Look at My glorious Thomas, who gazed with the gentle eye of his intellect at My Truth, whereby he acquired supernatural light and science infused by grace, for he obtained it rather by means of prayer than by human study."