Stillness.

The elder said: When we have stillness there is a desert. The place is not a desert. In the desert I must make myself deserted of all my passions. When I adjust the desert to myself, I do not live in the desert. I must adjust myself to the desert. And in the world one can accomplish a lot. It's enough to try to do away with mistakes. If you have, for example, a faucet that leaks continually: drip, drip, drip — or an alarm clock that continually tick, tick, ticks, — you'll change it. One can do a lot.

The elder wrote concerning stillness. Outer stillness, with discerning asceticism, very quickly brings also interior stillness (the peace of the soul), which an essential preparation for delicate spiritual activity. For as much as one distances oneself from the world so much more is the world distanced from within you and worldly thoughts leave and the mind of a person is purified and he become a man of God.

The elder said: And by itself stillness is a mystical prayer and aids greatly in prayer, like the unceasing breath of a person.

The elder said: Stillness (far from the world) very quickly brings also interior stillness in the soul with ascesis and continual prayer. Then the person is not disturbed by exterior disquiet, because in essence only the body is found on earth but the mind is found in Heaven.