This is a poem, and commentary on the poem, by 16th century Spanish mystic John of the Cross. Everything you need to know about it is succinctly explained
here. It can also be read
online if you're interested (a different translation than the one I read, of course).
The way of perfection demands a surrender of personal will and pleasure for the sake of God. Some beginners, trapped by their own laziness, may trade in this perfection for the sweet satisfaction of their own spiritual urges, more interested in following their own will than in trying to discover the will of the divine.
Many find themselves wishing that God would only be aligned with their desires! It makes them sad to have to want what God wants. They have an aversion to adapting their will to God's. They may even have convinced themselves that if something does not please them and correspond with their will, then it must not be God's will, either, and that if they are satisfied, then God must be too. They measure God by themselves and not themselves by God.
This is not in harmony with the teachings of the Gospel which say: "He who loses his will for God shall gain it and he who desires to gain it shall lose it."
Beginners also become irritated when they are directed to do something that holds no pleasure for them. Obsessed by the tasty treats of the spiritual path, they lack the fortitude to engage in the labor demanded by the way of perfection. They resemble those raised in luxury who run away, sad, from everything difficult. The more truly spiritual something is, the more it bores them. Determined to walk the sacred path in accordance with their personal inclinations and the pleasure of their own will, it stirs great pain and resistance in them to embark on that narrow way which is the way of life.
Ouch, that sounds an awful lot like me! And yet I'm not sure this is as simple as it seems. Is the Christian life about abandoning your natural desires, or about channeling them in productive ways?
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