Dieta of Teacher Plants & Trees

"The soul feels that it is bound and tied in its faculties and affections, so that it can neither raise its affections nor its mind to God... It is like a prisoner in a dark dungeon, bound hand and foot, who can neither move nor see, nor feel any favor from above or below, until the spirit is softened, humbled, and purified."

"The soul feels itself to be perishing and melting away, in the presence and sight of its miseries, in a cruel spiritual death... It feels as if it were swallowed by a beast and being digested in its dark belly, suffering such anguish as Jonah did in the belly of the whale.""This dark night is an inflow of God into the soul... it purges the ignorances and imperfections of the soul, habitual, natural, and spiritual... just as fire acts upon a log of wood, first drawing out its moisture and making it black, and then transforming it into its own nature.""…it is most fitting and necessary, if the soul is to pass to these great things, that this dark night of contemplation should first of all annihilate and undo it in its meannesses, bringing it into darkness, aridity, affliction and emptiness; for the light which is to be given to it is a Divine light of the highest kind, which transcends all natural light, and which by nature can find no place in the understanding.""A ray of sunlight shining upon a smudged window is unable to illuminate that window completely and transform it into its own light... But if the window is cleaned and purified of all its stains, the sun's ray will illuminate it and transform it into itself, so that it will appear to be the very light of the sun."-from "The Dark Night of the Soul" by 16th century priest and mystic, St. John of the Cross ... See MoreSee Less