Ignorance

   Quoted from The Mountain of Silence:
"'The most basic illness that the holy elders talk about,' Father Maximos began, 'is ignorance.  In their language, however, ignorance does not mean lack of the right kind of information or the right kind of intellectual knowledge.  What they really mean is the heart's ignorance of God.  And this lack of direct experience of God renders human beings incapable of knowing what it means to live apart from God.  Consequently, they are not conscious of how abysmal their deprivation and predicament is.'"