Chapter 9
Internal aridity is not always the result of the night of the sense. It could be something else, like sin, apathy, or laziness
One of the signs that it is the night of sense is that the soul “does not find consolation in things of God or in any created thing either.”
In the night of the senses the soul is grieved by the sense that she cannot serve and please God.
The night of the senses purifies the spiritual appetite. God is transferring goodness and power from the sense through aridity to the spirit.
The senses are starving while the spirit is feasting. The soul may not notice this spiritual feasting b/c she is focused on the absence of familiar sweetness. P. 63
“Our appetite can be so base that it makes us long for our own wretched rations, repulsed by incomparably heavenly plentitude.”
This secret food and the feasting is hidden from the senses in a “secret contemplation.” the soul is not aware in a sensory way of how she is being fed and nurtured by God in the dark night.\
“If only the soul that this happens to could just be quiet….”
God no longer communicates himself through the senses.
“He begins to come through simply contemplation”
The fullness of the dark night is not for everybody. For some God weans them off of sensory sweetness just for a season here and there.
