Dark Night of the Soul Ch. 4: When Your Body

Saint John of the Cross

When Your Body Betrays Your Spirit

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Summary

John sets aside many imperfections and keeps the ones that cause the rest. Under luxury, apart from what belongs to spiritual matters, beginners meet a spiritual impurity he says is beyond enumeration. In the exercises themselves, when they are powerless to prevent it, impure acts and motions assert themselves in the sensual part, sometimes at prayer, at the Sacrament of Penance, or at the Eucharist.

These things do not come from the subject of the devotion. They come from the stirrings of concupiscence. The devil, seeing them unprepared, assails them with strong temptations of this kind, so he may disturb and disquiet their spirits and make them loathe the spiritual life. When the motions happen during the exercises, they are made to believe they must have committed grave sin.

John calls that belief a misunderstanding. What they met was a natural rebellion of sensuality, often beyond their control. The flicker is not the verdict. The verdict they pass on themselves is what drives them to loathe the practice. Loathing the spiritual life is the result the temptation is built to produce. Control was never the test. The test was whether a motion beyond control gets called a grave sin. Shame does the rest.

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Why This Matters

Separating Physical Responses from Character

Automatic bodily motions are not moral verdicts. John says impure stirrings during prayer arise from concupiscence while beginners are powerless to prevent them.

When your body contradicts your intention, judge the choice you make next, not the flicker you could not stop.

This chapter

Inside the Mind: The Beginner Who Prosecutes a Flicker

A stirring during prayer is read as a verdict. John says these motions come from concupiscence, not from the subject of devotion, yet the beginner is made to believe a grave sin has occurred, and the devil then presses the same temptation because disquiet is useful: the body flickered, and the prosecution is the mind's.

Read the full psychological reading

Coming Up in Chapter 5

Having addressed the uncomfortable reality of physical intrusions on spiritual life, John will next explore how beginners can move beyond these initial struggles and develop a more mature spiritual practice Anger in spiritual people looks different than regular anger. It's wrapped in righteousness, which makes it twice as toxic..

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Original text

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Chapter 04

When Your Body Betrays Your Spirit

Of other imperfections which these beginners are apt to have with respect to the third sin, which is luxury. Many of these beginners have many other imperfections than those which I am describing with respect to each of the seven vices, but these I set aside, in order to avoid prolixity, touching upon a few of the most important, which are, as it were, the origin and cause of the rest. And with respect to this sin of luxury (apart from what is related to spiritual matters), they have many imperfections, many of which come under the heading of spiritual…

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When Your Body Betrays Your Spirit

Summary

Why This Matters