Opening the Eye of the Heart

The monastic Fathers were always lucid and simple in understanding that the principal purpose of the monastic life is to come to an unbroken awareness of the presence of God, to continuous prayer. St Augustine, writing not only for monks but for all Christians, said that the whole purpose of life and of every Christian exercise is the permanent opening of the ‘eye of the heart’. The opening of the spiritual eye is a way of expressing undifferentiated and unbroken consciousness, that pure consciousness which is the state of unceasing prayer. When the eye of the heart is truly opened, it never blinks; it never closes again. 

The Selfless Self by Laurence Freeman OSB