This is why silence and meditation play so large a part in all sane religious discipline.

But the ideal state, a state answering to that rhythm of work and prayer which should be the norm of a mature spirituality, is one in which we have achieved that mental flexibility and control which puts us in full possession of our autistic _and_ our realistic powers; balancing and unifying the inner and the outer world.
This being so, it is worth while to consider in more detail the character of foreconscious thought.
Foreconscious thinking, as it commonly occurs in us, with its unchecked illogical stream of images and ideas, moving towards no assigned end, combined in no ordered chain, is merely what we usually call day-dream.
But where a definite wish or purpose, an _end_, dominates this reverie and links up its images and ideas into a cycle, we get in combination all the valuable properties both of affective and of directed thinking; although the reverie or contemplation place in the fringe-region of our mental life, and in apparent freedom from the control of the conscious reason.

The object of recollection and meditation, which are the first stages of mental prayer, is to set going such a series and to direct it towards an assigned end: and this first inward-turning act and self-orientation are voluntary, though the activities which they set up are not.

"You must know, my daughters," says St.Teresa, "that this is no supernatural act but depends on our will; and that therefore we can do it, with that ordinary assistance of God which we need for all our acts and even for our good thoughts."[90] Consider for a moment what happens in prayer.

I pass over the simple recitation of verbal prayers, which will better be dealt with when we come to consider the institutional framework of the spiritual life.