The Jesus Prayer.
Twelve words on a hundred-knot wool rope, said until they say themselves. The Philokalia and the anonymous Russian Way of a Pilgrim carried the practice from Athos to the laity in the nineteenth century, over the objections of monks who thought it needed supervision.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. The prayer is counted on a knotted wool rope, traditionally a hundred knots, tied with a knot that is itself made of crosses. The practice belongs to the hesychast tradition of Sinai and Athos, and the technical instruction — bring the mind down into the heart, attend to the breath, do not seek visions — was written for monks under obedience to a spiritual father. Its move to the laity came through the Philokalia, compiled in 1782, and through the anonymous nineteenth-century Russian Way of a Pilgrim, which is a story about a man who does nothing else. Serious teachers still warn against unsupervised use, and the warning is specific: prelest, spiritual delusion, in which the practitioner mistakes their own imagination for God and cannot be told.
The same ground, other faiths
rites that share this one's ideasSign in to open the first thread. Everything here is attributed.