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Oh, how sweet Your presence will be to me, You Who are the supreme good! I must draw near You in silence pleased to unite me to You in … I rejoice in Your arms. Now I ask You, Lord, do not abandon me at any time in my recollection, for I know not the value of my soul.

Seek in reading and you will find in meditation; knock in prayer and it will be opened to you in contemplation.

This is a test to discern the true lover of God. Is he satisfied with anything less than God? For the satisfaction of the heart is not found in possessions but in detachment from all things and poverty of spirit.

Oh, then soul most beautiful among all creatures, so anxious to know the dwelling place of your Beloved so you may go in search of him and be united with him, now we are telling you that you yourself are his dwelling and his secret inner room and hiding place.

There is reason for you to be elated and joyful in seeing that all your good and hope is so close as to be within you, or better, that you cannot be without him.

... When there is union of love, the image of the Beloved is so sketched in the will and drawn so vividly, that it is true to say that the Beloved lives in the lover and the lover in the Beloved...The reason is, that in the union and transformation of love, each gives possession of self to the other, and each leaves and exchanges self for the other. Thus each one lives in the other and is the other, and both are one in the transformation of love.

Never fail to keep your heart at peace and in tender love, ready to suffer as things present themselves.

The soul must be attached to nothing, whether of sense or spirit, which would introduce noise into the deep silence. The voice of God speaks to the heart in this secret place, in utmost peace and tranquility.

... the communication and sense of His presence, however great they may be, and the most sublime and profound knowledge of God which the soul may have in this life, are not God essentially, neither have they any affinity with Him, for in very truth He is still hidden from the soul; and it is therefore expedient for it, amid all these grandeurs, always to consider Him as hidden, and to seek Him in His hiding-place...

Since God is inaccessible, be careful not to concern yourself with all that your faculties can comprehend and your senses feel, so that you do not become satisfied with less and lose the lightness of soul suitable for going to him.

These persons know only their own misery and keep it so much in sight that they have no opportunity to watch anyone else's conduct. David while in this night gives an admirable manifestation of such a state of soul: I became dumb, and was humbled, and I kept silent in good things, and my sorrow was renewed [Ps. 39:2].

At the moment the soul recollects itself in the presence of God, it enters on an act of general, loving, peaceful, and tranquil knowledge, drinking wisdom and love and delight.

For, as I have said, God now sees that they have grown a little, and are becoming strong enough to lay aside their swaddling clothes and be taken from the gentle breast; so He sets them down from His arms and teaches them to walk on their own feet; which they feel to be very strange, for everything seems to be going wrong with them.