Nikiphoros the Athonite (13th century Hesychast), considered that the journey to into the embodied heart - self is especially important for those who do not have a reliable living teacher. Accounts and discoveries of those who traveled the Heart comprise a special subset of spiritual texts, otherwise largely belong to the oral tradition. Finding the mystics of the heart is like mining gold. They are hidden among those who follow the officially acknowledged, “canonized” traditional spiritual paths. They are separated from others by the secrecy, unpredictability and spontaneity of their spiritual awakening, and by the transformative flow within their lives. Those souls are to spirituality like the salt is to the food, they are the keepers of the innermost strength and beauty of the sacred traditions.

The body of spiritual knowledge of the devotional self-enquiry, or the meditative psychosomatic prayer, scattered through all the human habitats, can be called a world tradition of the Prayer of the Heart. This is the knowledge of the human self, of it’s Oneness with the Divine Self, of the process by which one gets to the gestalt of Oneness, and of the process of personal transformation which results from this Realization. It is very important to understand that this process of mystical individuation can not be reduced to meditation, to service, to self-enquiry, to a study or to a spiritual practice per se. All of these elements, and more, are included. Above all, tradition of the Prayer of the Heart is a dialog, an engagement, where the ego is removed from its own constraints by the acts of grace. This devotional dialog happens within the indivisible reality of One Being as a preferred self-expression of this Being in the world of multiplicity. God Him/Herself worships through the human heart.