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Humility and detachment are two inseparable sisters.

...you must fight your moods of sadness and their causes, uproot your unfounded sorrows and get ready for the dreadful battles that the three enemies wage against this divine union. Live united with God and see to it that nothing, whether hunger or thirst, the sword, fortune or misfortune, nothing whatsoever disturbs your heart. Live united with God and everything else will vanish like smoke.

Oh, what a sheer grace it is for the soul to be freed from the house of its senses! This good fortune, in my opinion, can only be understood by the ones who have tasted it. For then such persons will become clearly aware of the wretched servitude and the many miseries they suffered when they were subject to the activity of their faculties and appetites.

Until slumber comes to the appetites through the mortification of sensuality, and until this very sensuality is stilled in such a way that the appetites do not war against the spirit, the soul will not walk out to genuine freedom, to the enjoyment of union with its Beloved.

It should be noted here that, when we desire anyone’s affection, we always seek it because of some interest, profit or pleasure of our own....When this truth is put to them, they laugh at the distress which had been assailing them in the past as to whether their affection was being returned or no. Of course, however pure our affection may be, it is quite natural for us to wish it to be returned. But, when we come to evaluate the return of affection, we realize that it is insubstantial, like a thing of straw, as light as air and easily carried away by the wind.

When we keep little we recognize our own nothingness and expect everything from the goodness of God, exactly as a little child expects everything from its father. Nothing worries us, not even the amassing of spiritual riches.

God desires the smallest degree of purity of conscience in you more than all the works you can perform.

Many of these beginners have also at times great spiritual avarice. They will be found to be discontented with the spirituality which God gives them; and they are very disconsolate and querulous because they find not in spiritual things the consolation that they would desire.

Our body has this defect that, the more it is provided care and comforts, the more needs and desires it finds.

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.

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.

We are like so many foolish peasant lads: we think we know something of Thee, yet it must be comparatively nothing, for there are profound secrets even in ourselves of which we know naught.