"For some time now they have had some practice in the way of virtue and they have persevered in mediation and prayer, in which, by the sweetness and pleasure they have found therein, they have lost their love for the things of this world and have obtained some degree of spiritual strength in God. This has to some extent enabled them to refrain from creature desires, so that for God's sake they are now able to suffer a light burden and dryness without turning back to a time when they found more pleasant things in life.
When they go about these spiritual exercises with the greatest delight and pleasure, and when they believe that the sun of divine favor is shining most brightly upon them, God turns all this light of theirs into darkness and shuts against them the door and the source of the sweet spiritual water they were tasting in Him for as long as they desired and whenever they desired it. (For, as they were weak and tender, there was no door closed to them.)
Thus God leaves them so completely in the dark that they do not know where to go with their imagination and mediation, for they cannot advance a step in mediation as they once did, because their senses are submerged in the dark night; and they are left with such a dryness that the pleasure and consolation they used to experience is absorbed by a lack of taste and bitterness instead.
God now sees that they have grown a bit and are becoming strong enough to lay aside their "swaddling clothes" and be taken from the gentle breast. Therefore, He sets them down from His arms and teaches them to walk on their own two feet. This is ver strange for them, for they feel that everyting seems to be going wrong."
Dark Night of the Soul - St John of the Cross p 108-109
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