If your spirit still looks around at the time of prayer, then it does not yet pray as a monk. You are no better than a man of affairs engaged in a kind of landscape gardening.
Evagrius PonticusThe further the soul advances, the greater are the adversaries against which it must contend.
Evagrius PonticusDo not be troubled if you do not immediately receive from God what you ask Him; for He desires to do something even greater for you, while you cling to Him in prayer.
Evagrius Ponticus... we should not worry about clothes or food? Such anxiety is a mark of? unbelievers, who reject the providence of the Lord and deny the Creator. An attitude of this kind is entirely wrong for Christians who believe that even? sparrows? are under the care of the holy angels (cf. Mt. 10:29). The demons, however? suggest worries of this kind? The divine word can bear no fruit, being choked out by our cares. Let us, then, renounce these cares, and throw them down before the Lord, being content with what we have at the moment?
Evagrius Ponticus