If you struggle to keep the commandments, persisting in the paradise of prayer and cleaving to God through continuous recollection of Him, then God will release you from the self-indulgent proclivities of the flesh, from all sensory impulsion and from all forms engraved upon your thought; and rendering you dead to the passions and to sin He will make you a participant in divine life.
A sleeping person looks like one dead so far as his bodily activity is concerned, and yet he is alive thanks to the cooperation of his soul. Similarly if you abide in the Spirit you are dead to the world and the flesh, but you live according to the spontaneity of the Spirit.
~Theoliptos, Metropolitan of Philadelphia
Prayerful Life 