page_title: Jesus Prayer
section_title: Levels of the prayer
hierarchical_section_title: Jesus Prayer / Practice / Levels of the prayer
caption_attribution_description: English: The Ladder of Paradise icon described by John Climacus.
context_page_description: The Jesus Prayer, also known as The Prayer, is a short formulaic prayer esteemed and advocated especially within the Eastern churches: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." The prayer has been widely taught and discussed throughout the history of the Orthodox Church. The ancient and original form did not include the words "a sinner", which were added later. It is often repeated continually as a part of personal ascetic practice, its use being an integral part of the eremitic tradition of prayer known as Hesychasm. The prayer is particularly esteemed by the spiritual fathers of this tradition as a method of cleaning and opening up the mind and after this the heart and bringing about firstly the Prayer of the Mind or more correctly the Noetic Prayer and after this the Prayer of the Heart. The Prayer of the Heart is considered to be the Unceasing Prayer that the Apostle Paul advocates in the New Testament. Theophan the Recluse regarded the Jesus Prayer stronger than all other prayers by virtue of the power of the Holy Name of Jesus.
  Its tradition, on historical grounds, also belongs to the Eastern Catholics.
context_section_description: Paul Evdokimov, a 20th-century Russian philosopher and theologian, writes about beginner's way of praying: initially, the prayer is excited because the man is emotive and a flow of psychic contents is expressed. In his view this condition comes, for the modern men, from the separation of the mind from the heart: "The prattle spreads the soul, while the silence is drawing it together." Old fathers condemned elaborate phraseologies, for one word was enough for the publican, and one word saved the thief on the cross. They only uttered Jesus' name by which they were contemplating God. For Evdokimov the acting faith denies any formalism which quickly installs in the external prayer or in the life duties; he quotes Seraphim of Sarov: "The prayer is not thorough if the man is self-conscious and he is aware he's praying."
  "Because the prayer is a living reality, a deeply personal encounter with the living God, it is not to be confined to any given classification or rigid analysis" an on-line catechism reads. As general guidelines for the practitioner, different number of levels (3, 7 or 9) in the practice of the prayer are distinguished by Orthodox fathers. They are to be seen as being purely informative, because the practice of the Prayer of the Heart is learned under personal spiritual guidance in Eastern Orthodoxy which emphasizes the perils of temptations when it's done by one's own. Thus, Theophan the Recluse, a 19th-century Russian spiritual writer, talks about three stages:
  The oral prayer (the prayer of the lips) is a simple recitation, still external to the practitioner.
  The focused prayer, when "the mind is focused upon the words" of the prayer, "speaking them as if they were our own."
  The prayer of the heart itself, when the prayer is no longer something we do but who we are.
  Once this is achieved the Jesus Prayer is said to become "self-active" (αυτενεργούμενη). It is repeated automatically and unconsciously by the mind, becoming an internal habit like a (beneficial) Earworm. Body, through the uttering of the prayer, mind, through the mental repetition of the prayer, are thus unified with "the heart" (spirit) and the prayer becomes constant, ceaselessly "playing" in the background of the mind, like a background music, without hindering the normal everyday activities of the person.
  More exactly, according with the experience of the ones which had reached at the level of unceasing prayer - for example the monks from Mount Athos but not only, this can be further divided in the Prayer of the Mind - level at which the prayer is said unceasingly in the rational parts (intellect - also called mind - and logic) of the soul and, if the practitioner advances further, then the grace will unite the rational parts with the irrational parts of the soul (inflammatory part and appetitive part) and then the prayer is called The Prayer of the Heart.
  Others, like Father Archimandrite Ilie Cleopa, one of the most representative spiritual fathers of contemporary Romanian Orthodox monastic spirituality, talk about nine levels (see External links). They are the same path to theosis, more slenderly differentiated:
  The prayer of the lips.
  The prayer of the mouth.
  The prayer of the tongue.
  The prayer of the voice.
  The prayer of the mind.
  The prayer of the heart.
  The active prayer.
  The all-seeing prayer.
  The contemplative prayer.
  In its more advanced use, the monk aims to attain to a sober practice of the Jesus Prayer in the heart free of images. It is from this condition, called by John Climacus and Hesychios the "guard of the mind", that the monk is raised by the divine grace to contemplation.
caption: Icon of The Ladder of Divine Ascent (the steps toward theosis as described by John Climacus) showing monks ascending (and falling from) the ladder to Jesus
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