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Faith is comparable to the feet by which one journeys to God, and love is like one's guide.

For it loves Him so much that it cares about naught beside; when, therefore, it sees itself to be so wretched that it cannot believe that God loves it...it is grieved to see in itself reasons for deserving to be cast out by Him for Whom it has such great love and desire.

Many of these beginners ...feel an aversion toward adapting their will to God's. Hence they frequently believe that what is not their will, or brings them no satisfaction, is not God's will, and, on the other hand, that if they are satisfied, God is too. They measure God by themselves and not themselves by God...

Live in faith and hope even though you are in darkness, for in this darkness God enfolds the soul. Cast your cares upon God, for you are His, and He will never forget you.

All of this darkness signifies the obscurity of faith with which the divinity is clothed while communicating itself to the soul.

Simple faith is necessary in seeking God. In outward things, light helps to prevent one from falling; but in the things of God just the opposite is true: it is better for the soul not to see if it is to be more secure.

And when the soul suffers the direct assault of this Divine light, its pain, which results from its impurity, is immense; because, when this pure light assails the soul, in order to expel its impurity, the soul feels itself to be so impure and miserable that it believes God to be against it, and thinks that it has set itself up against God.

The light of faith is like the light of the sun which blinds our eyes because its light is stronger than our powers of sight. So the light of faith transcends our comprehension.

Live in faith and hope even though you are in darkness, for in this darkness God enfolds the soul. Cast your cares upon God, for you are His, and He will never forget you.

For, however dark a night may be, something can always be seen, but in true darkness nothing can be seen; and thus in the night of sense there still remains some light, for the understanding and reason remain, and are not blinded. But this spiritual night, which is faith, deprives the soul of everything, both as to understanding and as to sense. And for this cause the soul in this night says that it was journeying ‘in darkness and secure,’ which it said not in the other.

As a result the soul recognizes the truth about its misery, of which it was formerly ignorant. When it was walking in festivity, gratification, consolation, and support in God, it was more content, believing that it was serving God in some way. Though this idea of serving God may not be explicitly formed in a person's mind, at least some notion of it is deeply embedded within, owing to the satisfaction derived from one's spiritual exercises.

Like the blind, they must lean on dark faith, accept it for their guide and light, and rest on nothing of what they understand, taste, feel, or imagine.