Κεφ. ΜΖ'
The Transparency of the Heart
While our outward actions reveal our inner struggles to the demons, God alone perceives the hidden depths of the heart without need of external signs.
A word we let slip or a movement of the body can reveal the passions within the soul; by these signs, the enemies detect whether we are harboring their thoughts and laboring under them, or whether we have rejected them and are attending to our salvation. For God, who made us, is the only one who knows the mind, and He does not need signs to know what is hidden in the heart.
Read the original Latin
Τῶν ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ παθημάτων σύμβολον γίνεται ἢ λόγος τις προενεχθείς, ἢ κίνησις τοῦ σώματος γενομένη, δι’ οὗ ἐπαισθάνονται οἱ ἐχθροὶ πότερον ἔνδον ἔχομεν τοὺς λογισμοὺς αὐτῶν καὶ ὠδίνομεν, ἢ ἀπορρίψαντες αὐτοὺς μεριμνῶμεν περὶ τῆς σωτηρίας ἡμῶν. Τὸν γὰρ νοῦν μόνος ἐπίσταται ὁ ποιήσας ἡμᾶς Θεός, καὶ οὐ δεῖται συμβόλων αὐτὸς πρὸς τὸ γινώσκειν τὰ ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ κρυπτόμενα.
The Praktikos companion
A daily portion of stillness
Chosen Portion delivers one short contemplative reading and a guided moment of silence each day — the ascent, one step at a time.
Chosen Portion is the paced doorway into this collection: it portions the dense mystical treatises into one daily reading plus guided silence, exactly as the 14-day plan teaches.
- Daily bite-sized excerpts from the contemplative classics, never a wall of text
- A built-in timed stillness practice that grows from 2 minutes to 10
- Gentle progression through the tradition — the app remembers where you are on the ascent