“Christ began his teaching not with any literal commandments but with a psychological idea — the idea of metanoia which means change of mind. … This word, metanoia, awkwardly translated as repentance, means a new way of thinking about the meaning of one’s own life. … That is its starting point: to feel the mystery of one’s own existence, of how one thinks and feels and moves, and to feel the mystery of consciousness, and to feel the mystery of the minute organization of matter. All this can begin to effect metanoia in a [person]. The contrary is to feel that everything is attributable to oneself. The one feeling opens the mind to its higher range of possibilities. The other feeling closes the mind and turns us downwards through the senses.”
— Maurice Nicoll, The Mark

“The heart of the Christian ascesis — and the work of Lent — is to face the unconscious values that underlie the emotional programs for happiness and to change them. Hence the need of a discipline of contemplative prayer and action.”
— Thomas Keating, The Mystery of Christ