Spiritual greed and the forces of the market economy turn spirituality in general into an industry, a product that sits on a shelf and sells well.

this “stacked up” head–heart split is not what St. Diodochos means when he says “enlightened by the Holy Spirit in the inner shrine of our heart.” In Judeo-Christian tradition “heart” intends the unifying, grounding, center of the human person. The heart in this deep sense permits no “stacked up” dualisms, which shape our culture and our lives.48

We do well to remember that the metaphor of decluttering does not imply a clearly delineated succession of stages; for the clutter of the mind comes and goes and comes again, in a process much like keeping house or trying to keep our desks clear of heaped-up paper and notes.

For our purposes we can describe ego as a sort of knot of psyche. This knot of ego gets in the way of our realizing with expanding clarity that there is no separate, isolated self to begin with, for we are all one in God and always have been. The problem is the knot, not the psychic energy itself.

who are we to invite God in, who is already the very ground of our seeking? God is the great invitation—an invitation to release perpetually into that Love which finds Sabbath rest in us and sustains us in being.

This allows grace to loosen this ego-knot and opens the way to a more expansive, receptive, far less cluttered awareness.

at some moment, when we spontaneously stopped looking at ourselves as objects of fascination, we cease using the practice of contemplation as a means of controlling any aspect of our progress in contemplation. Each time we sit, it is as though for the very first time and we are too innocent to expect anything at all.

A habitus is a dynamism—mental, physical, or moral—that generates an increasingly positive momentum toward love of God and neighbor (this is but one love loving love). There can also be a negative habitus, that is, away from love of God and neighbor, but here we shall focus on the positive.

God is eternal, the human mind is finite. If God could be comprehended, surrounded by a concept, this would make us greater than God.