Watchfulness and Conscience

6. Watchfulness cleanses the conscience and makes it lucid. Thus cleansed, it immediately shines out like a light that has been uncovered, banishing much darkness. Once this darkness has been banished through constant and genuine watchfulness, the conscience then reveals things hidden from us. Through the nous it teaches us how to fight the unseen war and the mental battle by means of watchfulness, how we must throw spears when engaged in single combat and strike with well-aimed lances of thought, and how the nous must escape being hit and avoid the noxious darkness by hiding itself in Christ, the light for which it longs. He who has tasted this light will understand what I am talking about.

- St Philotheos of Sinai, Forty Texts on Watchfulness, The Philokalia Vol. III

Mindfulness of Death - St Philotheos

6. The first gate of entry to the noetic Jerusalem - that is, to attentiveness of the intellect - is the deliberate silencing of your tongue, even though the intellect itself may not yet be still. The second gate is balanced self-control in food and drink. The third, is ceaseless mindfulness of death, for this purifies intellect and body. Having once experienced the beauty of this mindfulness of death, I was so wounded and delighted by it - in Spirit, not through the eye - that I wanted to make it my life's companion, for I was enraptured by its loveliness and majesty, its humility and contrite joy, by how full of reflection it is, how apprehensive of the judgment to come, and how aware of life's anxieties. It makes life-giving, healing tears flow from our bodily eyes, while from our noetic eyes rises a fount of wisdom that delights the mind. This daughter of Adam - this mindfulness of death - I always longed, as I said, to have as my companion, to sleep with, to talk with, and to enquire from her what will happen after the body has been discarded. But unclean forgetfulness, the devil's murky daughter, has frequently prevented this.

- St Philotheos of Sinai, Forty Texts on Watchfulness, The Philokalia Vol. III