This attitude takes great faith.
That is the whole point.
One does not find sweetness and delight in anything. Here I sit in one of the most beautiful countries in the world and it does not matter to my soul.
I have not created this detachment, but God has. Why? Because all distractions, even beauty and inclinations towards beauty must be destroyed. While the outward "man" dies, the inward "man" becomes stronger and more solicitous to the things of God.
I desire to be more alone and to use a phrase from St. John of the Cross, "in quietude". Simple contemplation requires solitude. Do not let liberal teachers, either nuns or priests, tell you that you are contemplating until you go through these stages of purification. Do not let those who have not made the journey themselves lead you on into dead ends.
One must move from active contemplation to passive contemplation. One can no longer will meditation or contemplation. This is key to understanding this phase.
All one's efforts are useless. All.
And, one moves beyond the use of the imagination as well.
One moves, as I have written before, from memory to understanding to will.
However, in this desert of thought and imagination, God sometimes comes through to give one consolations.
He does this to encourage one.
Also, there is a mystery of this call. Some people get more consolations than others, but this does not matter.
One cannot compare one's self with another on this road.
To be continued....
