Gregory of Nyssa- from Sermons on the Song of Songs

"When the soul at the call of its beloved goes out to look for him whom no name can reach, it learns...that it is enamoured of one who is inaccessible, and  is desirous of one who cannot be grasped.  These words strike the soul and wound it with despair, because it believes its search for fullness will never come to an end...But the veil of its sadness is taken away from it when it is taught that to go forward continually in its search, and never to cease raising its sights, constitutes the true enjoyment of what it desires.  Each time its desire is fulfilled the desire for higher realities is engendered. 

  So when the veil of its despair has been taken away, and it has seen that the invisible and infinite beauty of him whom it loves is shown to increase in beauty to all eternity, it is animated by a still stronger longing for its beloved and opens to him... the state of its heart, saying that, after having been smitten with God's shaft, it has been wounded to the heart by the point of faith and has been mortally wounded by love.  Now according to John, love is God. To him be glory and power for ever and ever.  "
Sermon on the Son of Songs, 12 (PG 44, 103607) quoted from  The Roots of Christian Mysticism by Olivier Clement,  New City Press, 1996, p 191.

Fr. Clement comments in this chapter....

"God introduces the soul that has been made holy to an alternate rhythm of enstasy and ecstasy
, of contentment and  of a yearning for an irreducible otherness, so that the soul does not cease to renew its love and spread itself in the inexhaustible store  of God's riches." 

Has Your Nous Descended?

 Has Your Nous Descended
(to the tune of the hymn,  “Are You Washed in the Blood?”}

Has your  nous descended to your heart today?

Has the stillness of unknowing caught your gaze?

Has you wand’ring attention found its native home?

Has your nous returned to your heart

Refrain

    Has your nous, found your heart?

Has your gaze seen the stillness of the Lord?

Has the gate to theosis opened through the grace of God?

Has your nous descended to your heart?

2.        Have you warred against the passions with the Jesus Prayer?

Have you stilled the senses and the mind?

Have the demons fled from your humility?

Has your heart been prepared for your nous

3.        Has unceasing prayer been your way of life?

Has your body been weaned off of the world?

Has your thought life gathered to the Jesus Prayer?

Has neptic vigil made you aware?

4.        Has the bread of repentance been your daily fare?

Tears of Compunction and of sorrow filled your heart?

Has bodily stillness led you to your inward Sabbath rest?

Has the Jesus Prayer  set your life apart?

5.        Has the hesychastic pathway called you on to God?

On to union with the Divine?

Has the stillness of unknowing found your ceaseless gaze?

Has your nous returned to its home?

6.        Has the grace of God brought unceasing prayer?

Has visionary prayer come into your heart?

Has what He is by Nature, come to you by grace?

Do you  practice divine  Sonship as your art?