Matthew 15:19 "For out of the heart(state of soul, attitudes, will) proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witnesses, and blasphemies.

2 Corinthians 10 "For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds. Casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ."

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Our conscious minds move rapidly from one subject to another during all the days of our life. It is necessary to curb and control this tendency if we are to "put on the mind of Christ," and reach the perfection God has ordained for us. We must choose whether we are to gain satisfaction in this life from dwelling on thoughts about God, or whether we are going to allow our minds free reign to dwell on all manner of worldly and even sinful subjects. For evil can gain no foothold in a mind filled with positive thoughts and images connected with the presence of Jesus Christ, the Word made Flesh. And today, Jesus is calling all of us, like Brother Lawrence, to keep Him with us in all our secular activities, through silent repetition of His Holy Name and the practice of inner recollection of His Presence.

"To one in whom this state(recollected within) is established consciousness seems like a blank field, save for the "one point"(image of Jesus) in its centre, the subject of the meditation. Towards this focus the introversive self seems to press inwards from every side; still faintly conscious of the buzz of the external world outside its ramparts, but refusing to respond to its appeals. Presently the subject of meditation begins to take on a new significance; to glow with life and light. The (one who meditates or the) contemplative suddenly feels that he knows it; in the complete, vital, but indescribable way in which one knows a friend. More, through it hints are coming to him of mightier, nameless things. It ceases to be a picture(religious image), and becomes a window through which the mystic peers out into the spiritual universe, and apprehends to some extent--though how, he knows not--the veritable presence of God.(Evelyn Underhill "Mysticism")

For we show what we value and what we really love, by what we think about. For fallen human nature has an inclination to sin because it comes into the world separated from God, and lacks the strength it would have had through intimate union with Him. The inclination to sin starts with our thoughts. As our minds and thoughts run the gamut of all manner of subjects and pictures, they bring us good thoughts as well as temptations and thoughts of evil and pride. Once we voluntarily choose to dwell on the evil thoughts and pictures that run through our mind offering us assorted evil or forbidden pleasure, we have turned from God and started to become that which we have chosen to dwell upon.

In order to prevent sin from gaining a foothold in our thoughts, we can choose to keep our mind filled with positive thoughts and images, like the image of Jesus. For that which we dwell upon is that which we really love, and that which we become. If we fill our minds with evil, rejecting God's grace, we shall become evil. If we fill our minds with good, accepting God's grace, we shall become good. And the way to achieve this goal is through "recollection," or "practicing the presence of God." It's been proven over and over to be powerfully transformative in the lives of millions of Christians like Brother Lawrence. We refuse to allow evil thoughts entry, and keep our minds and attention centered on the love of the Good. More specifically, the Christian, through the Incarnation, has been given the Sacred Humanity of Christ as the Way to the Presence of God, and as a loving Companion(Who understands temptation) in this ongoing effort at spiritual recollection.

There is no better way to achieve this recollection than the practice of the Jesus Prayer. By repeating the name of Jesus to ourselves silently during the day, and dwelling on his Sacred Companionship in our souls, we remain centered in God's Love. And if all this seems an artificial and unnecessary adjunct to one's spiritual life, then take a hard, realistic look at where one's thoughts lead throughout the day. The evidence of the damage we suffer due to Original Sin is apparent in the varied thoughts that arise within us. It is apparent in the world today, as we are all witnesses to the evil coming from men's hearts and thoughts. We must overcome our inclination to sin by enthronment of the Sacred Humanity of Jesus Christ in our hearts and minds, and we must keep Him there, as we go about our daily tasks, as we participate in the Liturgy and Sacraments of the Church, and as we practice Contemplative Prayer so that we may become "filled with the fullness of God."

Here's what the Catholic Encyclopedia has to say on the subject:

"Recollection, as understood in respect to the spiritual life, means attention to the presence of God in the soul. It includes the withdrawal of the mind from external and earthly affairs in order to attend to God and Divine things. It is the same as interior solitude in which the soul is alone with God.

This recollection is twofold:

"Active recollection may be acquired by our own efforts aided by the ordinary grace of God. Thus any devout soul can acquire the habit of thinking of God's presence and of fixing attention upon Him and his Divine perfections.

"Passive recollection does not depend upon our own efforts, but is an extraordinary grace infused by God, by which He summons together the faculties of the soul and manifests His presence and His perfections; this kind of recollection is classed by mystical writiers as the first degree of infused contemplation.

"The first kind of recollection belongs to ascetical devotion and practice. It is necessary for all who wish to attain Christian perfection. Without it, it is most difficult to make progress in virtue. Therefore,...(whenever possible, recollection is greatly assisted by) silence and solitude, according to our state of life, keeping in mind, at the same time, that one may be recollected amidst the duties of an active life; and avoiding distracting and dissipating occupations not dictated by reason or required by necessity." (Arthur Devine, Catholic Encyclopedia, "Recollection")

And as a bonus, when we are recollected, nature finds us worthy to taste the hidden sweetness of her charms, with a "presence that disturbs us with the joy of elevated thoughts":

For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,--both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.

William Wordsworth, "Tintern Abbey."

Therefore, since we are part of a race of "fallen beings," and since we have an "inclination" to sin by virtue of what we have lost through Original Sin, we must begin the practice of "recollection," as Wordsworth did through time spent with nature, and to take back control of the inner conversation that ever goes on in the mind of every man. For we will never get to our goal, if we continue to give our minds free play to wander in and out of every imaginable nook and cranny during the many hours and moods of our day. For such careless disregard for the safety of our souls will make us prey to every manner of temptation. So now is the time to begin silently repeating the Holy Name of Jesus to ourselves, and to make Jesus' presence and companionship the underlying focal point of our life, as like Brother Lawrence we say throughout the day, "My soul remembered God, and I found peace in the midst of turmoil, and blessings in the midst of the varied activities required of me by the will of God."

DIETRICH VON HILDEBRAND:

In recollection and contemplation - kindred but not identical attitudes - we encounter two more basic constituents of religious life. Recollection is a condition of all truly wakeful and deep modes of living, and hence indispensable for our transformation in Christ. Contemplation, again, is the source that feeds all life in Christ, and at the same time, the end in which that life finds its fulfillment.

Distraction as the inability to concentrate.

What, then, is recollection? It is primarily an antithesis to distraction. We say sometimes we are not able to recollect ourselves in prayer: we are distracted. We then mean that we are unable to concentrate our attention on one point; we are controlled by the automatism of our associations; our mind is flying from one object to another; the images of our fantasy fitfully displace one another. This state of mind, in which we do not attend fully to any object and fail to penetrate the logos of any part of being but are at the mercy of our mechanism of associations, is properly termed distraction - a state of being dragged along from one object to another, never touching any of them but superficially. That distraction is the exact antithesis to recollection.

Distraction as the inability to determine the object of our concentration.

On other occasions, however, when speaking of distraction we mean that our attention is too much captivated by a certain object to allow us to concentrate voluntarily on any other object. This is distraction in a relative sense only. In this case we are not unable to concentrate at all but merely unable to control our attention at will; unable to detach it from the object that happens to hold it and to direct it to that other object which at the moment possesses thematic importance. Suppose the object which thus captivates our interest is more peripheral, less essential and less relevant than the other one which constitutes the theme of a situation and to which we vainly attempt to direct our attention; then, too, we have a state of mind opposed to recollection.

Recollection is the antithesis to concern with the superficial.

For recollection proper always means an awakening to the essential, a recourse to the absolute which never ceases to be all-important and in whose light alone everything else discloses its true meaning.

Thus, recollection is more than the absence of distraction in the narrower sense of the term. It is more than the inner coordination resulting from our concentration on any given object. It also embodies an antithesis to all superficial diversion as such. Every attitude contrasting with distraction proper does not necessarily imply recollection. A man driving a motorcar through a busy street, who is keenly concentrated on the business of steering, is not therefore recollected.

Recollection is not merely the antithesis of reverie, of loose flights of fancy, and of the state of being swayed by the play of associations, but also of all submersion in trivial activities or interests. It is not merely a formal integration of our mind (as implied by concentrating our attention upon an object, no matter what); rather, it means an integration of the entire person; a realization of its true self out of the depths of its being. "Recollection is the accomplishment of unity in the ground of the soul," says Ernest Hello.

A person who exhausts himself in the moment's concern, who passes without a breathing space from one concentrated work to another, who always gives his unreserved attention to the task of the hour without ever pausing to recollect himself - such a person is as little recollected as one who dissipates his life in dreaming, playing, and empty chatter. The latter way of life is certainly more reprehensible; but both are alike opposed to true recollection.

In recollection, we recover our deepest orientation toward God.

True recollection contains both an aspect of tension and another of relaxation. It implies a release from all tension of surface interests, but at the same time an enhanced consciousness of our central direction. In the attitude of recollection, we place ourselves at a distance from things so we can survey them all from a point of vantage, without ever being swamped in any special concerns or interests.

Yet, every kind of withdrawal from the peripheries towards the depths may not amount to recollecting ourselves. Concentration on a philosophical or artistic work necessarily implies a direction towards the depth, but it need not imply a state of being recollected. One may even be deeply touched by the beauty of nature or of great works of art, without positing an act of true recollection.

We may better understand this by visualizing some moment in which we are attempting to recollect ourselves. An important decision or a task of great dignity is ahead of us. We do not feel equal to it, as things are; we say we must first recollect ourselves. Withdrawing from all direct contact with the concern that occupies us, we try to forget whatever is on our hands, to escape the pressure of what is incumbent upon us, and to recover ourselves. To that end, we should remember the last things; and, from the whirlpool of the great and the small things of life, emerge towards God, the Cause and the Goal of all being. We return to what is truly and unchangingly omnipresent: the ultimate meaning of our life, our eternal destiny, our supreme goal.

Then only, when all else fades away for a moment, when we recover our deepest, unique direction towards God, when we stand before Christ, saying: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord" (Luke 1:38), do we actually recover ourselves and resume identity with our innermost selves. Thus alone can man attain to a real habitare secum (dwelling with oneself), as the Rule of St. Benedict calls it. For, as we have already seen, God is nearer to us than we are to ourselves. In His perspective alone can we see every finite object in its proper place in creation, revealing, in the light of the supreme truth, its particular meaning and value.

And thus alone do we secure the necessary distance which guards us from being submerged in the immanent logic of a task or a situation; a distance not calculated to destroy our living contact with the object of our vision, but on the contrary, enabling us to penetrate its essence more truly than would exclusive attention to that object.

We must proceed to the depth in order to gain a full and adequate awareness of things, hearkening to God's call from the depths of our being, and bringing our most intimate selves to full actuality. Until we meet the demands of life on a plane provided by such a primarily unpragmatic and nonfunctional attitude (that is, ultimately, by our relationship to God), we are unable to actualize ourselves except in a partial and distorted way. Our experience of things is otherwise still affected with incidental admixtures; it lacks the full sanction of personality.

Recollection may be voluntary or involuntary.

However, recollection is not always a result of a voluntary act of recollecting oneself. Without a deliberate act in this sense, a high value that seizes our heart may lead us into the presence of God and so render us recollected. This process (which, to be sure, is not provoked by every value experience, however genuine) even constitutes a deeper and more organic form of recollection than the method of recollecting ourselves by a voluntary act.

Nevertheless, it would be an error merely to wait for the gift of such a recollecting influence to guide us towards awareness of God and of the true meaning of our life. Again and again we should voluntarily relinquish the turmoil of our current occupations, the pursuit of this or that concrete aim, and return to the essential that is proper to our inmost self.

Thus, the Divine Office is preceded by the prayer Aperi, which represents not only a prayer for the grace of true piety but an express act of recollection. In fact, the Office itself, besides its primary meaning which is to praise God, also represents an act of emergence from the welter of life towards God, a recovery of the essential - an attitude of recollection.

Only the recollected man is fully alive.

In recollecting ourselves, we empty our soul of all current concerns, and are no longer possessed by the things which fill our life; we escape from the network of those autonomous systems of particular aims into which life's single situations and tasks erect themselves. We face God directly, and take a new departure from the Alpha and Omega of our being.

Through finding our way to God, we find our way home to ourselves. Thus (and not otherwise), we establish that inward order of our life which makes it possible for us to attend to its details without yielding to the illegitimate pretension of the present as present. So our care for the various concerns and details of life will become legitimate before the face of God. From the center thus secured, everything can be brought to a common denominator, so that we may achieve unity in our life and our personality.

For, mostly, our life implies a continual desertion from the habitare secum. As a rule we incline to lose ourselves in the present situation and to accept the exclusive sovereignty of its immanent logic; to forget the proper and ultimate meaning of our existence. In this dispersed attitude, we are not really and truly alive. We actualize our peripheral being only or fragments of our deeper self at most.

Notwithstanding our intense concentration upon some object, our keen attention to one task or another, in the depth of our being we are asleep; we are not wholly existent, as it were. He only who is recollected is really awake; he alone, therefore, is alive in the full sense of the word.

Recollection is essential to transformation in Christ.

The importance of recollection for the process of a transformation in Christ need hardly be pointed out. Without it, there is no full and valid life rooted in the depths and consequently, there can be no genuine, essential, and deeply penetrating transformation.

Without recollection, all good resolutions - all honest endeavors to overcome a defect or to achieve a supernatural transfiguration of natural virtues - are bound to remain impotent and sterile. Without that mobilization of our depths which the act of recollecting ourselves implies, we cannot become marked with the seal of Christ.

Recollecting ourselves vs. being recollected.

Obviously, we must distinguish two phases of the attitude of recollection: these are, to put them briefly, the act of recollecting ourselves and the permanent state of being recollected.

The first is the act of recollecting ourselves, of rising towards God and recovering ourselves; of setting ourselves at a distance from all present concerns; of ordering all things before the face of God, and referring everything to the great common denominator, Christ.

And the second phase is the state of being and remaining recollected. This state will have to endure, while we are attending to a concrete task, engaged in a serious conversation or some meaningful work, or performing any other activity. To be sure, we are then no longer empty of all present details or cares; we again divert our vision from God to some concrete creaturely thing, and actualize a partial aspect of our being. Yet, we do not separate ourselves from God; we do not sever connection with the profound and ultimate center of our being. We keep within the divine context; we accord to the theme on hand that place only which it can rightfully claim in the eyes of God; we envisage it from that ultimate point of view; and we remain wakeful and alive in the depth of our being. According to the specific nature of the activity we are engaged in, this attitude can be realized in different ways.

Recollecting ourselves for higher tasks.

Suppose we are dealing with some essential task of high rank, which we cannot even approach in an adequate manner unless we are recollected. In this case, it is recollection alone which will render possible a deep devotion to this task. From the depth of our being we should give ourselves to the task in question in conspectu Dei, on the very basis of our devotion to God. The temptation to lose ourselves or to be dispersed does not arise. Our present interest is incorporated into the integral order of a recollected mental life; an uninterrupted current leads from God, and our soul's depth, to that significant concrete thing.

Recollecting ourselves for necessary, but relatively superficial tasks.

Or else, we are faced with a neutral theme which does not require - and is not even compatible with - devotion arising from the depth, but which holds a legitimate place in the outward order of our daily life or is legitimately proposed to us by circumstances. Then, again, we shall remain recollected by maintaining an essential, a superactual, connection with God and with the real center of our being. Far from exhausting ourselves in that peripheral concern and in spite of concentrating on it in the required measure, with our integral personality we dwell in another region. While we are attending, technically and intellectually, to the task in question, our awareness of God continues to resound in our soul like an unending melody.

This phenomenon of a superior motif resounding in the background, while the foreground is filled by peripheral interests, also occurs within the context of purely creaturely things. A great love, for instance, which inspires our heart and lends wings to our whole existence, is likely to resound with its melody throughout our external occupations; it never allows our soul to be dulled by the wear and tear of our daily routine, nor silences the voice of our deeper personality.

However conscientiously we may be attending to an outward task, we remain in the world of the beloved one. Our love of that person, not the activity of the moment, colors the atmosphere in which our soul is moving. At every moment it is present to our mind (however discreetly) that what we are just doing is not the real thing that fills and guides us; that we are not centered in this petty, peripheral section of our life but continue dwelling in the depth.

The same is true of the recollected person with reference to The same is true of the God and to the ultimate meaning of his life. He always keeps on the superactual level of wakefulness; amidst the welter of his outward activities he dwells in the world of God. His momentary concentration on a peripheral object never results in a submersion of the essential and valid thing.

Still, this second mode of being recollected while dealing with the concrete situations of life, meaningful or superficial, requires an intermittent renewal of the express act of recollecting ourselves. From time to time, we must bring ourselves to a full and exclusive awareness of God and of our essential goal, emptying our minds entirely of pragmatic interests and considerations. For the latter invariably expose man, in his fallen state, to lose hold of the habitare secum and to surrender all reserve in adapting himself to the immanent logic of the present particular situation. In order to remain recollected in the broader sense of the term, we must (aside from particular cases Of extraordinary grace) lead an unceasing struggle, regaining unity with our true self again and again by an express act of recollection. The creaturely things that surround us involve, in varying degrees, a constant danger to our recollection in the real and ultimate truth; a danger inherent, above all, in many peripheral interests which appeal to our lust for sensation.(Dietrich von Hildebrand, "Trnsformation in Christ")