The nature of some people has not been broken enough, and in this case the outer man remains present outside.
One disorder calls forth another.
Purity, understanding, and virtue make one rich in the natural realm. It sometimes happens, when those having such qualities withdraw, they become less before all creatures; and when this turns out well, they are directed to what is more perfect.
For a friend of God to be without victory is to have conquered.
A truly detached person should strive for four things. 1. To be completely upright in his conduct so that things flow from him without his activity. 2. To be proper and calm in his senses and not casting about…so that the inner senses might have a leisurely journey. 3. Not to be attached. One should be careful not to allow anything mixed with impurity to arise. 4. Not to be quarrelsome, but kind to those through whom God wants to help one withdraw.
Remain firm in yourself until you are taken out of yourself without your doing it yourself.
See whether intimate contact with good people arises from whim or simplicity. The first is too often the case.
All who use freedom wrongly take themselves as a model.
When a person wants to dwell in truth, his self-abandonment lights up his interior and he notices that a creature is still within him he wanted to have gone. He bears himself in patience and sees that he really is not yet free of things. To endure oneself thus is to become simple. Withdrawing causes weariness; in turning away it disappears.
Free yourself from everything your external judgment chooses, which binds your will and causes pleasure to your memory.
Letting one’s senses wander about far and wide removes a person from inwardness. See to it that you take up no business that carries you outward. When such business is looking for you, do not let it find you. Turn quickly inward to yourself.
Natural life manifests itself in movement and the activity of the senses. For anyone forsaking himself and losing himself, supernatural life begins in stillness.
Some people ascend without difficulty, but they do not long remain there.
–Henry Suso ‘The Exemplar: The Life of the Servant’
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