Healing does not necessarily mean to become physically well or to be able to get up and walk around again.Rather, it means achieving a balance between the physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual dimensions. . . .At the end of their lives [five-year-old children with leukemia] they have little or no pain.They are emotionally sound, and on an intellectual level they can share things it is almost impossible to believe could come from a child.To me this is a healing, although they are not well from our earthly point of view.
And how does one go chasing after a glimpse of the uncreated Light? The Hesychasts, high on Mount Athos, bowed their heads upon their breasts, took a deep breath, and plunged in. What they plunged into was prayer. It began with a tack with which to fix the attention. It became breath itself, an inlet for the universe to invade one's body until the entire cosmos, drawn in, heaved out, was transformed into prayer. The body's posture was important. The breathing was to be carefully controlled so as to keep time with the words. Eventually the prayer, breathed in, united with their very blood and heartbeat; breathed out, it blessed the world. And some monks claimed after a while to have indeed seen the Light of the Transfiguration, uncreated energy beheld by bodily eyes.