When a man lives deeply in these transcendent truths, they nourish and satisfy his soul and cause him to live beyond the normal bounds of his existence. He becomes aware of an Existence above all other existent things—beyond the sun, the moon, the earth; beyond life and death itself. This is the apex of spirituality: that a person enter a state of being beyond his mere temporal life. - Fr Matthew the Poor

 Despondency  is  a  slackness  of  soul,  a  weakening  of  the  mind,  neglect  of  asceticism,  hatred  of  the  vow made. It is  the blessing of worldlings. It accuses God of being merciless and without love for men. It  is  being  languid  in  singing  psalms,  weak  in  prayer, stubbornly  bent  on  service,  resolute  in  manual  labour, indifferent in obedience

For the heart directs and governs all the other organs of the body. And when grace pastures the heart, it rules over all the members and the thoughts. This is so because the heart is the place where the mind and thoughts are found.- St Macarius the Great

We must also know, beloved brethren, that every secret converse, every good care o f the intellect directed toward God and every meditation upon spir­ itual things is delimited by prayer, is called by the name o f prayer, and under its name is comprehended; whether you speak o f various readings, or the cries of a mouth glorifying God, or sorrowing reflection on the Lord, or making bows with the body, or psalmody in verses, or all the other things from which the teaching of genuine prayer ensues. From genuine prayer the love of God is born, for love comes of prayer.

For our Lord came for this reason, that He might change and transform and renew and recreate the soul which had been overturned by the passions…mingling with it His own Spirit of divinity… to make new men, anointing them which His own light of knowledge, that He might put in them the new wine which is His Spirit

Those upon whom you shed a ray of your love could no longer bear to live among people. In search of their Beloved, they renounced every physical love, becoming foreigners to all. They gave up all the pleasures of this life, seeking the way of their Beloved in tears. They felt unworthy of his beauty; finding themselves on this blessed quest, they wept ...