The divider, tempted the mind with the thought. The same thought that banished Lucifer from God’s kingdom. This is, you can be as God and know good and evil. Against God’s command that you may eat of all the trees of the garden except the tree of good and evil; for if you eat of it you shall surely die. Genesis 3:22 KJV And the LORD God said Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat , and live for ever:
Man knowing good and evil in thought and acting on the evil thought sins or transgresses. The minds desire for knowledge now allows enmity between us. This is a feeling or condition of hostility; hatred; ill will; animosity; antagonism. [ 15...And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel."19 In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread Till you return to the ground, For out of it you were taken; For dust you are, And to dust you shall return. Genesis 3:15-19] The desire of our mind, that is of humanity’s separation from God through free will, now experiences the consequences of evil enmity.
“…Disintegration, fragmentation and estrangement. The man and the woman- and the world in which they lived-were torn apart by their behavior, and vast gaps came to exist between God and man, between the genders and finally even within the human personality itself. Each and every person is internally fragmented and externally isolated from the outside world, right down to the ultimate depths of his or her being. Fragmentation within the human personality is observed essentially as the division between the mind and the heart.” (pg 11)
How do these thoughts manifest into sinful transgression? This is what the Church Fathers call passions. [This constant stream of thought is quantified subjectively and through scientific empirical data. There are 435,000 articles using the keywords 'mind and thoughts measured'. http://scholar.google.com/scholarq=mind+and+thoughts+measured&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C15&as_sdtp=onThought suppression induces intrusion in naturally occurring negative intrusivethoughts] “The role of Evagrius Ponticus (+ 399) … We will mention here two major aspects of Evargrian thought because of their permanence in later tradition: the doctrine of passions and the doctrine of prayer. According to Evagrius, the true nature of the “mind” is to be fixed in God, and anything which detaches it from God is evil. Thus, since the Fall, the human mind is captured with self-love, which generates “thoughts”; a definite pejorative [belittling, derogatory] term in Evagrius, imply interest in sensible things and distraction from God. These Passions: gluttony, fornication, avarice, grief, wrath, weariness, vainglory, pride; form a hierarchy beginning with the casual attachment to the most inevitable of all sensible needs, food and ending with demonic possession, with love for oneself. With very slight variations, this classification of the passions and the psychology structure of the human mind which it presupposed will be retained by John Cassian, John Climacus, Maximus the Confessor, and almost all the Eastern ascetical writers. The first goal of monastic “practice” is to subdue the passions and reach a state of “passionlessness”— a detachment from senses and thoughts— which makes restoration of the true original relationship between the mind and God possible. Beginning with fasting and celibacy, the life of the monk can gradually subdue the other passions and reach true detachment.” [page 67 Byzantine Theology by John Meyendorff]
John Meyendorff accurately portrays early Church fathers original thoughts of God which allows the reader to reflect on God with them.
Union then becomes possible through prayer. It is Evagrius [http://orthodoxwiki.org/Evagrius_Ponticus] who first coins the term ”prayer of the mind” which will become standard in Byzantine Hesychasm. Prayer is also “the proper activity of the mind,” “an impassible state,” 
defined: incapable of suffering pain, incapable of suffering harm, incapable of emotion; impassive. Macarius of Egypt was a contemporary and teacher of Evagrius’ in the desert of Scete. In Macarius, the Evagrian “prayer of the mind” thus becomes the “prayer of the heart” [page 68 Byzantine Theology by John Meyendorff]
God is good and never changes. Evil cannot become eternal. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord; Romans 6:23.
[35 But someone will say, "How are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come?" 36Foolish one, what you sow is not made alive unless it dies. 37 And what you sow, you do not sow that body that shall be, but mere grain--perhaps wheat or some other grain. 38 But God gives it a body as He pleases, and to each seed its own body] 1 corinthians 15:35-58 http://www.biblestudytools.com/nkjv/1-corinthians/passage.aspx?q=1%20corinthians+15:35-58
Given then, that man has the potential to use his free will to do evil then the tree of life is kept from man. It never was or is now God’s intention to deny eternal life from man who is made in his image and likeness. The tree of life is a foreshadowing of the life saving cross. 1 Corinthians 15:45 NKJV And so it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. For Jesus said (62) What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before? 63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life. John 6:62-63 http://www.biblestudytools.com/nkjv/john/6.html
This is the essence of the book. Man is created in God’s image and likeness to commune with the creator eternally. We are renewed by Christ as is all of creation. Genesis 2:7 KJV And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
Meyendorff states As a whole, the monastic community taught the Byzantines how to pray. The cenobites developed a liturgical system( which was gradually adopted by the whole Church until today the eastern Church knows no ordo but the monastic one) ,while the hesychasts created a tradition of personal prayer and continuous contemplation. In both cases, prayer was understood as a way to reach the goal of Christian life as such: participation in God, theosis through communion with the deified humanity of Christ in the Holy Spirit. The cenobites generally emphasized the sacramental or liturgical nature of this communion, while the hesychasts taught that experience was to be reached through personal effort. There was no opposition between the hesychast (hermits) and the cenobites, it is therefore possible to speak of a single monastic theology even within Constantinople. Even in later years whereas Symeon the new Theologian (949–1022), the prophet of personal mysticism spent most of his life in cenobitic communities located in the city of Constantinople. [Pg 67 Byzantine Theology by John Meyendorff ] http://orthodoxwiki.org/Symeon_the_New_Theologian
Archimandrite Meletios Webber
In the life and teaching of St. Silouan of Mt. Athos, it is interesting to note that what he considered to be “true faith” was the manifestation of the love of God in us towards all the world. It would have certainly been the case that as an Orthodox monk, St. Silouan would have believed all of the Church’s teaching without question. And yet when he spoke of the true faith it was the state of the heart that he considered rather than running a doctrine check on somebody.
