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What you most seek and desire you will not find by this way of yours, nor through high contemplation, but in much humility and submission of heart.

These persons are most imperfect and unreasonable; for they set bodily penance before subjection and obedience, which is penance according to reason and discretion, and therefore a sacrifice more acceptable and pleasing to God than any other.

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...

The Beloved cares for nothing else but love. The soul therefore, anxious to please him perfectly, occupies itself unceasingly in pure love of God.

He would be still more ignorant if he followed God looking for sweetness, and rejoiced and rested in it when obtained. In this case his love is not set purely on God alone above all things, for in clinging to and desiring what is created, his will cannot soar to God.

Abide in peace, banish cares, take no account of all that happens, and you will serve God according to his good pleasure and rest in him.

Under the old law, the altar of sacrifice was to be hollow within. It is the will of God that the soul should be empty of all created things, and thus become a fitting altar for the King of heaven.

These aridities, then, make people walk with purity in the love of God. No longer are they moved to act by the delight and satisfaction they find in a work, as perhaps they were when they derived this from their deeds, but by the desire of pleasing God.

What you most seek and desire you will not find by this way of yours, nor through high contemplation, but in much humility and submission of heart.

If we are determined to submit ourselves and to carry the cross, we shall find in it great refreshment.

...many of these would have God will that which they themselves will, and are fretful at having to will that which He wills...Hence it happens to them that oftentimes they think that that wherein they find not their own will and pleasure is not the will of God; and that, on the other hand, when they themselves find satisfaction, God is satisfied. Thus they measure God by themselves and not themselves by God, acting quite contrarily to that which He Himself taught in the Gospel, saying: That he who should lose his will for His sake, the same should gain it; and he who should desire to gain it, the same should lose it.

The lukewarm are very lax and remiss in their will and spirit, and have no solicitude about serving God. Those suffering from the purgative dryness are ordinarily solicitous, concerned, and pained about not serving God.