Learning to Let Go and Wait — Dark Night of the Soul

In the dryness of this night of sense, God is changing the soul from meditation to contemplation, and spiritual persons suffer great trials because they do not understand what is happening. God now communicates by spirit in an act of simple contemplation, without discourse. The old route through sense, considerations, and images has closed. The pain is confusion at a closed door, not proof that God has stopped speaking.

The attitude required is to ignore discursive meditation, because this is not the time for it, and to stop hunting pleasure, because that hunt hinders the principal thing God is doing. That principal thing is spiritual good, given in dryness and interior affliction. Forcing the old analytical prayer is how you block the gift you are waiting to feel. The dryness is the medium, not the obstacle.

The soul has only to remain free, disencumbered, and at rest from knowledge and thought, not troubling itself about what it should think or meditate upon. It contents itself with a peaceful, loving attentiveness toward God, without anxiety, without the ability, and without the desire to experience or perceive him. Saint John is teaching a stance, not a technique: loving attention while you cannot feel or see. That is how you conduct yourself in this night.