The really essential thing, sisters, is that you should speak to your confessor very plainly and candidly — I do not mean here in confessing your sins, for of course you will do so then, but in describing your experiences in prayer. For unless you do this, I cannot assure you that you are proceeding as you should or that it is God Who is teaching you. God is very anxious for us to speak candidly and clearly to those who are in His place, and to desire them to be acquainted with all our thoughts, and still more with our actions, however trivial these may be. If you do this, you need not be disturbed, or worried, for, even if these things be not of God, they will do you no harm if you are humble and have a good conscience. His Majesty is able to bring good out of evil and you will gain by following the road by which the devil hoped to bring you to destruction. For, as you will suppose that it is God Who is granting you these great favors, you will strive to please Him better and keep His image ever in your mind. A very learned man used to say that the devil is a skilful painter, and that, if he were to show him an absolutely lifelike image of the Lord, it would not worry him, because it would quicken his devotion, and so he would be using the devil’s own wicked weapons to make war on him. However evil the painter be, one cannot fail to reverence the picture that he paints, if it is of Him Who is our only Good.  –St Teresa of Avila ‘Interior Castles’.  Sixth chapter 9.

Listening to ‘Interior Castles’ driving to Toledo, this section struck me.  I related the matter to brutal honesty.  Spiritual directors, confessors, are not just placed into my life to hear my sinful deeds, to work with what I perceive to be my imperfections.  I do not utilize a spiritual director or confessor to bewail myself.  False humility lurks within such one sided communication.  I must also relate my prayer life, including my spiritual aspects I perceive as positive.  In order to smash the work of Satan, in order to allow the works of God to shine, I must speak of those things I feel are my strongest spiritual assets.  Quite possibly, self-identified strengths could be the detriment of my spiritual life.  Nothing more than spiritual delusion.  If I see myself as a spiritual superior, someone advanced beyond those in my life, ministering to others as an authority, I must be reporting such thoughts and endeavors to my spiritual director.  If I am conducting self-prescribed heroic spiritual deeds I must present the fact to my spiritual director.  If I am hearing locutions, believing myself to be gifted in prayer, being graced with lofty wisdom, or other apparent spiritual blessings, I must be reporting the matters to my spiritual director.  I reflect upon good devout people I have encountered who believed marvelous things regarding their spiritual life: working with distinct souls in purgatory, receiving messages from deceased parents, visions of Mary, Jesus, and saints, locutions and divine dreams, constantly encountering miracles within their lives—photos placed upon their sleeping pillow at magical times, on and on infinitum.  All of these conditions must be discussed with a spiritual director.  Serious error, misinterpretation, devolves through repetition and time into the deconstruction of all spiritual aspirations to the good.  Subtler than mortal sin in its abrasive and distinct affront, a devout life of stealth misdirection inflicts the removal of God, and therefore grace, from one’s life.  The identification, through counsel, of who I truly am in the eyes of God is necessary to combat the desire to assign qualities to myself that are of not a part of God’s Will.  Unknowingly distancing myself from God creates distance from God.  Good intentions combined with tremendous effort do not bring about spiritual maturity.  The supernatural, the focus upon signs, the need for miracles, the dependence upon the sensational and extreme, the attachment to an elevated spiritual identity, must all be rejected.  I make the statement that the matter is so sublime in nature it can only be thoroughly rejected through counsel.  Growth demands fortitude through Faith most efficiently enacted through obedience, the dissolving of free will through brutal all-encompassing honesty with another.  I would venture to add surrendering, an acquiescing within prayer, comprehending my inability to truly rid myself of delusion.  Due to brokenness–acquired insecurities, I will intensely embrace matters magnifying self-esteem.  Being a sinner, truly a lowly being, struggling with life, it is only natural to seek recompense through perceived grandiose spiritual attributes.  I am wounded.  I must be careful in tendering merciful healing.  I cannot heal myself by becoming something I perceive as superior, or a receiver of supernatural gifts.

St John of the Cross elaborates in ‘Ascent of Mount Carmel’, taken from EWTN’s online edition, emphatically regarding the rejection of spiritual extremes.  Book Two chapter 11.

Regardless of the cause of these apprehensions, it is always good for people to reject them with closed eyes. If they fail to do so, they will make room for diabolical representations. And when the devil is given such a free hand, his representations multiply while God’s representations gradually cease, so that eventually all these apprehensions will come from the devil and none at all from God. This has happened with many incautious and uninstructed people who in their sureness concerning the reception of these communications met with real difficulty in returning to God through purity of faith. Many have been unable to return because of the deep roots the devil has taken in them. Consequently, it is expedient to be closed to these communications and to deny them all, for in this way diabolical errors coming from the bad apprehensions are eliminated, the hindrance to faith occasioned by the good communications is avoided, and the spirit gathers the fruit. 

…

If individuals remain both faithful and retiring in the midst of these favors, the Lord will not cease raising them degree by degree until they reach divine union and transformation. Our Lord proves and elevates the soul by first bestowing graces that are exterior, lowly, and proportioned to the small capacity of sense. If the person reacts well by taking these first morsels with moderation for strength and nourishment, God will bestow a more abundant and higher quality of food. If individuals are victorious over the devil in the first degree, they will pass on to the second; and if so in the second, they will go to the third; and likewise through all the seven mansions (the seven degrees of love) until the Bridegroom puts them in the wine cellar of perfect charity [Sg. 2:4].