“More important than events is the attitude one takes towards them.” This statement, in similar or nuanced words, has been said many times, here and everywhere, for centuries; yet interiorising what it implies is not easy, because of the force of habit. What habit? That of considering our inner life as dependent on circumstances.

It even sounds unreasonable to say that we can remain equanimous when adversity appears in our life with some force. But this solid tranquillity of the heart has been, and is, the core of what the hesychasts propose, and one of the founding purposes of their practices and exercises.

At first one goes through the pain of recognising one’s dependence, that realisation that we are not masters of ourselves; there then comes the dismay of noticing a set of reactive mechanisms that drive what we say, think, feel and do. This inner moment is difficult, since it usually overturns what we have believed about ourselves and goes against the current of what is generally understood.

If we apply persevering self-observation, and if we are driven by a passionate search for truth, we abdicate the apparent throne of our self and begin the path of self-knowledge. At first it is a matter of seeing, then of learning not to react, later of understanding in essence the root of human behaviour, and then begins the deactivation of those automatisms that make us do evil when we want to do good.

Deep transformation (metanoia) requires experiential understanding and the grace of the Holy Spirit. The first requires looking at ourselves truthfully and bearing witness to the processes that unfold in us. The second needs frequent and fervent prayer, an opening of ourselves without fear to the influence of grace, which will probably lead us where we do not imagine.

Human life is a path of learning that leads us to recognise ourselves as children of God, and this implies much more than can be supposed when it is approached only from the mental or conceptual. Human life is also a pilgrimage towards the sanctuary, which is inner and also outer. For we must accept that the resurrection first required the cross, and that it is necessary to die to ourselves, to the one we have always believed ourselves to be…

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