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" I don't think it's an amount of effort, but a quality of effort. Seek the Lord with all your heart."

...with ALL your heart. You see, that's the part that takes such effort. Imagine really being able to die to the self, to lose all human passions and focus your entire being on God. In the 6th century, a holy monastic by the name of John Moschos wrote a book about his travels around the Mediterranean littoral to various monasteries and hermitages of the Middle East. In it he tells of meeting hermits or hearing about hermits who had so died to the self that they appeared almost wraith-like. Now I have no idea if these stories are true (he says they are) but I certainly have no reason to doubt their veracity since it seems to me reasonable that this is precisely what someone in a very advanced state of theosis would look like. Moschos always remarks how long these people had been alone in their with God and demons and themselves and what ascetical practices they had engaged in to arrive at this point. I seems to me that the effort is very great and becomes greater, the higher up the Ladder we go. But none of this can be accomplished, not the tiniest first step, without grace. I wish I knew what this means for all the rest of us.