You are the One who thinks the same goodness in all men: the same thought and the same light. A man recognizes another man through You.
A man prophesies to another man through You. Through Your voice men hear each other. In Your language they understand. Truly, You are the Ultimate Man, for existentially all men are in You and You are in each.
 
You build the mind of man, and Your shadow demolishes it.

The rapt attention that keeps prayer completely free from distraction and from irrelevant thoughts and images is a gift of God’s grace. We evince a sincere desire to receive the gift of grace—the soul-saving gift of attention—by forcing ourselves to pray with attention whenever we pray. Artificial attention, as we may call our own unaided attention unassisted by grace, consists in enclosing our mind in the words of the prayer, according to the advice of St John of the Ladder. If the mind, on account of its newness to the work of prayer, gets out of its enclosure in the words, it must be led back into them again. The mind in its fallen state is naturally unstable and inclined to wander everywhere. But God can give it stability and will do so in His own time in return for perseverance and patience in the practice of prayer.
Especially helpful in holding the attention during prayer is an extremely unhurried pronunciation of the words of the prayer. Pronounce the words without hurrying so that the mind may quite easily stay enclosed in the words of the prayer, and not slip away from a single word. Say the words in an audible voice when you pray alone; this also helps to hold the attention.

83. The roof of a house rests on its foundations and walls; correspondingly the foundations themselves are laid in the manner required for them to serve as support for the roof. A roof cannot stand without foundations, and foundations without a roof serve no living or practical purpose. Similarly, God’s grace is preserved through the practice of the commandments, while the practice of the commandments is as it were the foundation for the divine gift. The grace of the Spirit will not remain with us without the practice of the commandments, nor will the practice of the commandments serve any useful purpose without the grace of God.

It is very difficult, and often impossible, to express in words the mystery and nature of knowledge. In the realm of human thought, there is no ready
definition that can explain it completely.
St. Isaac therefore gives many different definitions of knowledge. He is continually exercised in this matter, and the problem stands like a burning question mark before the eyes of this holy ascetic. The saint presents answers from his rich and blessed experience, achieved through long and hard ascesis.
But the most profound, and to my mind the most exhaustive answer that man can give to this question is that given by St. Isaac in the form of a dialogue:
“Question: What is knowledge?
“Answer: The perception of eternal life.
“Question: And what is eternal life?
Answer: “To perceive all things in God.
For love comes through understanding, and the knowledge of God is ruler over all desires. To the heart that receives this knowledge every delight that exists on earth is superfluous, for there is nothing that can compare with the delight of the knowledge of God.

Faith presents a new way of thinking, through which is effected all the work of knowing in the believing man. This new way of thinking is humility …. It is by humility that the intellect is healed and made whole… The humble man is the fount of the mysteries of the new age. True, spiritual knowledge, linked with humility, brings to perfection the soul of those who have acquired it,

In such a person the apostolic word is fulfilled, which says: In Him we live and move and have our being, for he comes to be “in” God through attentiveness, since he has not falsified the logos of being that pre-exists in God; and he “moves” in God in accordance with the logos of well-being that pre-exists in God, since he is moved to action by the virtues; and he “lives” in God in accordance with the logos of eternal being that also pre-exists in God. In this life he has already become one with himself and immovable, owing to his state of supreme impassibility, and in the age to come, through the divinization which will be given to him, he will love and cleave affectionately to the aforementioned logoi that pre-exist in God, or rather he will love and cleave affectionately to God Himself, in whom the logoi of beautiful things are steadfastly fixed.