We cling to things, people, beliefs, and behaviors not because we love them, but because we are terrified of losing them.

Liberation, whether experienced pleasurably or painfully, always involves relinquishment, some kind of loss. It may be a loss of something we’re glad to be rid of, like a bad habit, or something we cling to for dear life, like a love relationship. Either way it’s still a loss.

“Do not be afraid, daughter, for I am here and will not abandon you.” These experiences, she wrote, made her feel like a “new person” and gave her courage and fortitude. Nor did she doubt that the words came from God. “I would have argued with the whole world that this was God’s work.”5

At first, people usually try to recreate their old ways of prayer and living. Over time and with repeated failures, however, they recognize that such attempts come from a sense of obligation or sheer habit, not from real desire. Though they are loath to admit it, they gradually realize that they lack the motivation they once had for focused

We expect these good things to satisfy us. We do not realize that we love them not for themselves, but because they whisper to us of their Creator, the One we really long for.

The dark night is a profoundly good thing. It is an ongoing spiritual process in which we are liberated from attachments and compulsions and empowered to live and love more freely.

God is at once too immanently at one with us and too transcendently beyond us to be fully felt or appreciated in any normal way. John goes on to say that God’s true attributes are too perfect, too pure, and too delicate for any of our faculties to grasp.18

For John, the spirit of blasphemy is an impulse to rage against God. Whether we look at the ancient Psalms or modern headlines, it is painfully easy to see the natural outcries that accompany tragedies in life. “Why me, God?” “Where were You in my suffering?”

Such obscurity and attachment, followed by God-given clarity, liberation of love, and deepening of faith, are consistent hallmarks of the dark night of the soul.9 Often, this liberation results in a remarkable release of creative activity in the world. This is especially obvious in Teresa’s case. Once paralyzed by uncertainty and self-doubt, she