Status Updates From Dark Night of the Soul

Relating this back to my experiences — there is a difference between suffering because of circumstance/depression, and suffering in the purgative stages. I felt the former for so many years; it felt like a flat circle of pain. The latter feels like bitter medicine — some things get "worse" before they get better. There is a vigor and hope that John mentions as well, which is faith.

The section where John writes about how as one advances spiritually, through aridity, and is made aware of one's complete wretchedness without God really hit me. For I have realized the very same: that my smaller self is truly pitiful, and instead, identifying with the grandeur of That, of God, is the only way to approach Him with strength, while remaining humble at His feet.

I may or may not have burst into tears three times so far; something about just realizing how wretched of a state I am in, and simultaneously how much of a blessing it is to realize this — and to purify myself in God.

Every time I read St. John of the Cross, I always am reminded of how lowly I am and how much work I still need to do in my sadhana (and my praxis!) to emulate what he lived. It is a grace and endlessly humbling to know that my own small egoic self will never accomplish anything except run in confused circles, or lapse into sin, without the hand of God guiding me. As it has so many times.