Losing All That We Might Find All

I know that's an unfair way of putting it, but your trembling insecurities are kept in balance by a sort of hidden self-reliance.... But these deep, deep clingings are beyond our own power — they can only be broken by the mystical action of the Spirit, as Saint John of the Cross never tires of insisting.  Dark Nights and Mystical Deaths sound so beautiful when we read about them, or have the privilege, as I have, of seeing them in another — but they are the reverse of beautiful to experience.

As long as you have a sense of him to sustain you — as long as you feel that your prayer is achieving something in you,... let alone the question of external recognition and success, which means much to you precisely in its implicit "approval" of your spiritual course — well, as long as there are even some of these supports, you can never be thrown wholly on God, however earnestly and sincerely you desire it.  All you can do now is hold your poor barren self constantly before him, thanking him for loving you, and believing that all you suffer is love.