What is our faculty of noetic perception?

In prayer it normally seems that God is so distant. After all, He is Spirit and we are flesh. We are created and He is the Creator. We must accept that we can never know God in His entirety. We can, however, know His energies, but never His essence. How is it we can know His energies.

It is through our faculty of noetic perception that we can know God in part and have a personal relationship with Him. This faculty is given to us by God and is one we must cultivate. It is through this faculty that we can speak with spirit to Spirit. 

Saint John Climacus says,

The intellect is clothed in the faculty of noetic perception...and we should not cease to seek for it within ourselves.

St. Diadochos of Photiki says,

By means of love the soul is joined to the virtues of God, searching out God by means of noetic perception.

Elder Aimilianos says

Faculties of noetic perception, as they are called, because it is these which can palpably lay hold of God, especially what we call the contemplative faculty (noeron). This has the ability to be drawn toward God, and, in a certain manner, speak to God, as we would say. For this to take place, the contemplative faculty must be completely united with our reasoning faculty, that is, with our mind, so that the entire content of my spiritual being can be turned toward God, addressed to God, directed to God.

It is in this way we say we are united with God and can converse with Him. Because of this faculty in the depths of our being, we are able to cry out to God, even though He is heavenly and we are earthly. Seek it always, as Saint John says, and we will discover the path to deep prayer, to know God’s energies and converse with Him.

Reference: Archimandrite Aimilianos, The Church at Prayer, p 16