Discourse 32

On the Guarding of the Heart and on Pure Contemplation Therein in a Confined Space. Chapter 32. Do not entrust your knowledge to that power which is placed in the movements of the spirit when you are troubled by thought. For it is better that the mind be separated from the world, that it be hidden from the senses and from thought, even if it seems to be deprived of the senses. For that solitary hour is a separated power. The power of the spirit is the contractions of knowledge against the senses. When you are alone, guard your heart by these means. If not, the power of the first contemplation, which is the essence of the knowledge of discernment, is not sufficient to keep you in your place. But rather, the remembrance of the separation from the body and the remembrance of those things that are hoped for, when you recall the righteous deeds that produce tranquility, which are the distances from the agitated desires and the small guards within the cell. If you are able to go after the multitude of service that comes before you in freedom, extend it. For if you see that it is scattered, bind both with laws. For the nocturnal is to be arranged here.

When you are in these things and in such changes as reason guides, you are in the lostness of the signs of the cell: a great festival full of the merchandise of the diligent. Then you are left precisely in the undying births, for from the perceptible changes that are born to you, as you know, all the ease of the spirit is preceded by the sufferings of the cross. The ease of sin, however, is born from rest in the body. And what does it matter if the contemplation of the spirit, which is not a physician, is filled with weariness? Spiritual love, however, has a cause that is fixed. And there is no duality apart from the cause that is from weariness, and no third superiority apart from what precedes it. You can know that in the breadth of weariness, it is understood that through it one is raised to divine love, that by which one is extended toward the cloud of the law. This reason, however, is the power that extends good to man: caution not to mix with his desires, like the coals of the furnace of zeal. The conduct of the eyeless is abolished. For it brings to an end in a nocturnal manner, because of the hidden. Pray to your Lord that he may fix eyes for your conduct. From here, the seeker begins to find joy for you; then the sufferings become sweet for you like a honeycomb; in the place of dissolution, you will find your limit from here.

It is not possible to feel the passions apart from the spiritual perceptions, nor the taste of silence apart from the exercise of spiritual knowledge. The will is a small thing, and unless it is bound by discernment in the will, it does not cease from distraction. And apart from the completion of the first things, it does not give a hand to this will. In truth, apart from victory over the enemies, there is silence. And if silence does not reign, how can one find that which is placed within from silence? The passions are a fence for the hidden perceptions. These, unless they first fall by means of the manifest perceptions, it is not possible to see those which are within from them. For there is no standing outside the wall and speaking about what is within. It is not possible to see the sun in a fog, nor the natural perceptions of the soul with the disturbance of turbid passions. Pray to God that he may give you to perceive the sensations of the spirit. If these fall in your soul, the world remains from you, and you from it. These, apart from stillness and humility and the exercise of distinct reading, are not perceived. Apart from these, do not seek. But if you seek apart from them, they will be turned backwards after a little and become coarse. Trust in the one who trusts. In the place where it is fitting that this bread be eaten, that one is a wise master.

The will is a small thing, and unless it is bound by discernment in the passions, it becomes a cause of disturbance. Every excellence, however, that is acquired through the two ways—the beginning of the discovery of its own self—is like a key to the souls that are capable of receiving it. If it is not bound, it will not be able to be preserved.