A soul untried by sorrows is good for nothing.
— Igumen Chariton of Valamo: /The Art of Prayer: An Orthodox Anthology/ p231
True self-knowledge is to see one’s own defects and weaknesses so clearly that they fill our whole view. And mark this — the more you see yourself at fault and deserving of every censure, the more you will advance.
Much labour and time is needed in prayer, in order painfully to achieve a state of mind free from all disturbance — that new heaven of the heart in which Christ dwells, as the Apostle says: ‘Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ dwells in you?’ (2 Cor. 13:5)