{"id":6255,"date":"2019-03-06T12:27:10","date_gmt":"2019-03-06T17:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/?p=6255"},"modified":"2019-03-02T07:28:58","modified_gmt":"2019-03-02T12:28:58","slug":"elder-st-paisios-on-shutting-out-the-worlds-noise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/?p=6255","title":{"rendered":"Elder St. Paisios on Shutting out the World\u2019s Noise"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;A person must attain a kind of divine\u00a0 absence of mind in order to experience inner tranquillity and not be distracted by outside noises while praying. One can actually reach such a state of divine absentmindedness that he no longer hears any noise, or hears it only when he wants to, or probably, when his mind is ready to come back from Heaven. And we will reach this point if we work spiritually, if we strive. Then we will hear only what we want to hear.\u00a0 When I was in the army, I told a fellow soldier who was very pious, \u201cWe will meet at such and such a place.\u201d \u201cBut there is a loudspeaker there,\u201d he replied. \u201cIf one wants to hear it,\u201d I said, \u201che will hear it; and if he does not, he will not.\u201d When our minds are absorbed in something, do we hear other things? In the forest across from my Kalyvi, they have stripped the mountain with chain saws. When I was absorbed in reading or praying, I did not hear a thing. When I stopped, I heard every single sound.&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8211; &#8216;With Pain and Love&#8217;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-6256\" src=\"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/250061.b-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/250061.b-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/250061.b-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/250061.b-640x480.jpg 640w, https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/250061.b.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;A person must attain a kind of divine\u00a0 absence of mind in order to experience inner tranquillity and not be distracted by outside noises while praying. One can actually reach [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-modern-orthodox-elders","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6257,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6255\/revisions\/6257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}