Chapter 152

Add Self-condemnation and Watchfulness—an End to the Flight of Attention

But our trouble is that thoughts scatter, attention goes with them, and the mind begins to wander outside and doesn’t know where it is going. Prayer is cut off, even though we are standing in prayer. What should we do? I see no clear instructions anywhere—everyone just says: when you come to yourself, turn back into the heart again and start calling out from the heart; call out that the mind not escape outward. Again the mind will escape—turn it back again and start calling again, and so on... What will come of it? Will this fleeing ever end? It should, but with us it’s always getting tangled. It seems to me that if we add self-condemnation in this struggle and ask the Lord for watchfulness, then the Lord, seeing our patient seeking and sincere desire for watchfulness, will grant us this by His mercy.