St. John of the Cross- Dark Night of the Soul

St. John of the Cross- Dark Night of the Soul

“Those of you who find yourselves in this predicament need to comfort yourselves. Patiently persevere and do not let yourselves get upset. Trust in God, who does not abandon those who seek him with a simple and righteous heart. He will not neglect to give you what you need for your path until he delivers you into that clear, pure light of love. You are meant to receive this great gift, yet it is only through the dark night of the spirit that he will bring you to it.”

“To be truly humble is to feel a tender acceptance of all reality just as it is, including compassion for ourselves just as we are.”

“The secret essence of the soul that knows the truth is calling out to God…Let me only love you, Beloved. Let me quietly and with unutterable simplicity just love you.”

“The true teachers are often the invisible ones.”

“The dark night descends on a soul only when everything else has failed. When you are stuck spiritually.”

“This is the beginning of the blessedness. When the soul can do nothing but surrender. It has become clear that you are incapable of doing anything on your own to remedy your spiritual brokenness.”

“Unwilling to keep struggling, the soul finds itself surrendering to its deepest inner wound and breathing in the stillness there.”

“In striving to transcend the self, we actually mess it up. The dark night is God’s solution to our solutions, dissolving our best-laid constructions anew into the mystery of grace.”

“Cultivate a simple, loving attention toward the Beloved. That is when the Beloved takes over and all our holy intentions vaporize.”

“It is the Sabbath of the Soul when we heed the call to cease creating and remember that we were created.”

“In the silence, Divine Reality secretly reveals Itself to a consciousness cleared of the ongoing chatter of the false self.”

“In the dark night of each soul, we are simultaneously annihilated and immeasurably strengthened.”

“To step naked into the garden where the Beloved is waiting. The closer to home with God, the more ferocious the resistance of the fragmented self.”

“All we can do is surrender to the darkness and take humble refuge in the ineffable stillness of the soul’s spiritual meltdown.”

“God is teaching her in a secret way now, a way in which the faculties of sense and reason cannot interfere.”

“The dark night is about being fully present in the tender, wounded emptiness of our own souls.”

(Excerpts from St. John of the Cross-Dark Night of the Soul, translation by Mirabai Starr.)

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