Chapter 97

Noetic Prayer Itself Has an Extreme Need for Guidance

Noetic prayer itself has an extreme need for guidance, while it is still self-wrought, or laborious. During this time of practicing noetic prayer, when not directed by a skilled hand, the greater part fall from the path...

All the fathers who wrote guides to spiritual life place as the first point in the rules for those entering the interior life: to have a spiritual father-guide and to obey him. I will set forth here one or two of their sayings… Gregory of Sinai says: “Without a teacher, it is impossible for one to succeed on their own in the noetic practice. What you do by yourself, and not by the counsel of those who have already made progress, gives rise to a dangerous self-opinion. If the Son of God did nothing by himself, but as the Father taught him, so he did, and the Holy Spirit did not speak of himself, then who among us has reached such heights of perfection that he no longer requires someone to guide him? That is pride, not virtue! Such a one is already in spiritual delusion, that is, has entered upon a false path of deviation into errors.”

And in active life, it is rare for one to get by without stumbling, relying on their own good sense alone. But there, at least, the harm is not so great: a single thing, if done wrong, can be easily redone or done properly next time. But in noetic practice, a deviation from the right path gives its direction to the entire interior life, which cannot be changed at once. Some of such, as we have seen, become entangled in the nets of imagination; others stop at intellectual-head practice, or, according to Symeon the New Theologian, at the first and second degree of attention and prayer, or noetic practice. And when they become fixed in this condition, then even the most experienced and most zealous instructor can scarcely, if at all, dislodge them or lure them from these thickets into which they have locked themselves, finding them exceedingly delightful. (16, 236–239)