What should we do when thoughts come? By thoughts, we have in mind what the Fathers call logismoi, distractions, iskushenie. Not just distractions, images, weird images, strange images. If you ever ask a monastic what they have to cope with when they’re praying they’ll tell you all kinds of wild stories about the images they get, really wild images they get when they begin to pray.

Some of it is a demonic attack. They’re planted. Some of it is just comes from—we don’t need any help for that. It just comes from the fact that we are dis-tractable people and we have wounded hearts that are not single. Our hearts are not single. They’re not whole. So they’re all over the place. We have a diffuse Nous to use the diagnosis of the Fathers. It’s a Nous that fires all over the place and wants to go explore and detect all kinds of things which are irrelevant and then when it comes to relevant things it can’t experience them correctly. It’s a damaged faculty of spiritual awareness that needs to be illumined.

So all of that is to say, to answer your question, we will have—not “what if”—we will have thoughts, we will have distractions. The best antidote: Psalms. The best antidote that we have, the best weapon that we have: Psalms. It may be another Psalm. In general, when the thoughts come, we have to get used to the discipline of dismissing them without trying to annihilate them. You see, if it is a temptation, the Devil can plant a thought in your mind that is virtually impossible to annihilate and just toy with you for the entire time you’re supposed to be praying. It’s mean, but I mean, he’s not playing fair.

So, you get a thought like that, don’t try to do battle with it and wipe it out. You’re still alive and your brain is producing thoughts. That’s good. If you have no thoughts, that’s bad. That means you’re dead. Which hopefully for Christians isn’t that bad, but you know what I mean. We’ll have thoughts, we’re alive, we have brains, they produce thoughts, they produce images. We just ought not to be ruled by them, but not exhaust ourselves in trying to wipe them out.

Just learn to say goodbye. In the same way that you and I have to walk down the street and we have to dismiss many images. Inside when we’re at home, there they are. They’re all playing, the tapes are always going, non-stop. Just put a little bit of distance between you and them and don’t be concerned about them and they will peter out with time. If you need, if that makes it too hard to pray the Jesus Prayer, too hard to do some of the liturgical prayers, just do a couple of Psalms. It’s okay. And the Psalms will help wash your heart of the distractions and you will reach the point where you can pray better.