“While praying, a person should not have any thoughts but rather become selfess. Even the Holy Fathers say this: ‘While at prayer, behave as though there were no one else in the wolrd, just you and God.’ When praying, we should not be preoccupied with ourselves, because in that case we are so absorbed in our own needs that we ourselves are detrimental to our prayer.”

~ Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica