When a soul dies, leaves the body, and goes home to God, it will be purged of the worldly desires it brings with it, for everything less than God. We call this 'Purgatory.' Such a soul must undergo the suffering of the dark night of sense and spirit which it failed to undergo in this life. This suffering is caused by "spiritual warfare" between God and the soul, as the Spirit of God acts on the soul as a purging fire to eliminate all idolatrous loves, which have been given equal weight with the love of God in this life, and which have been in competition with God for possession of the soul. Then, just as in this life, so in the next life, the purified soul will unite with God in Spiritual Marriage. In this final state of Marriage, the soul will find the Spirit of God wonderful beyond all belief, and an eternal source of goodness, delight, and never-ending joy. Moreover, after the Spiritual Marriage, with the proper relationship having been re-established between the soul and God, the soul will also take great delight, although without selfish attachment, in all God's creatures, and the marvel of all the beings that God's bounty has brought forth to reflect, in some degree, the goodness and mysterious beauty of the image of God.

St John of the Cross teaches us:

"Souls who live to indulge their desires for the flesh and the things of this world are completely impeded from beholding the light of God’s truth. For the desires that are living in the soul, so that it cannot understand Him, will be swallowed up by God by means of chastisement and correction, either in this life or in the next, and this will come to pass through purgation. And David says that God will swallow them up in wrath, because that which is suffered in the mortification of the desires is punishment for the ruin which they have wrought in the soul.”(St John of the Cross, Ascent of Mt. Carmel, Bk I, Ch. 8)

For in the perfection of the transforming union, the full force of the soul's desire, or will, and loving capacity, is occupied with God and doing God's will. In this union, there is no division, or weakening of the force of desire of the will, between God and competing loves, even such minor voluntary loves as those found in worldly habits of attachment and imperfection. God will not bring us to the fullness of transformation until we mortify all voluntary imperfections, so that our will is completely free to love Him with "our whole heart, our whole soul, our whole mind, and our whole strength, in line with the First Commandment.

But how is it possible to undergo such mortification of all our desires. St John tells us how it is only possible through the power and love of God which gives us the necessary strength:

"A love of pleasure, and attachment to it, usually fires the will toward the enjoyment of things that give pleasure. A more intense enkindling of another, better love (love of the soul's Bridegroom) is necessary for the vanquishing of the appetites and the denial of this pleasure. By finding satisfaction and strength in this love, it will have the courage and constancy to readily deny all other appetites. The love of its Bridegroom is not the only requisite for conquering the strength of the sensitive appetites; an enkindling with urgent longings of love is also necessary. For the sensory appetites are moved and attracted toward sensory objects with such cravings that if the spiritual part of the soul is not fired with other, more urgent longings for spiritual things, the soul will be able neither to overcome the yoke of nature nor to enter the night of sense; nor will it have the courage to live in the darkness of all things by denying its appetites for them."

So with the understanding that we can only fully mortify our desires through the power of God working in us, St John of the Cross counsels us:

"But all the other voluntary desires, whether they be the most serious that involve mortal sin, or less grave in that they concern venial sin, or whether they be the least serious of all in that they only involve imperfections, must be mortified. A person must be liberated of them all, however slight they be, in order to arrive at this complete union. The reason is that in the state of divine union a person's will is so completely transformed into God's will that it excludes everything contrary to God's will, and in all and through all is motivated by the will of God. Here we have the reason for stating that two wills become one. And this one will is God's will, which also becomes the soul's.

"Clearly, for a soul to reach union with God through its will and love, it must first be freed from every voluntary desire for imperfections and competing loves, however slight. That is, one must not give consent of the will advertently and knowingly to an imperfection, and one must have the power and freedom to be able, upon advertence, to refuse this consent.

"Some examples of these habitual imperfections are: the common habit of being very talkative; a small attachment one never really desires to conquer, for example, to a person, to clothing, to a book or a cell, or to the way food is prepared, and to other trifling conversations and little satisfactions in tasting, knowing, and hearing things, and so on. Any of these habitual imperfections to which there is attachment is as harmful to progress in virtue as the daily commission of many other imperfections and sporadic venial sins that do not result from a bad habit. These latter will not hinder a person as much as will the attachment to something. As long as this attachment remains, it is impossible to make progress.(Ascent of Mt Carmel, Ch 8, para. ll)

"One imperfection leads to another, and these to still more. You will scarcely ever find a person negligent in the conquering of one appetite who will not have many others flowing from the identical weakness and imperfection caused by this one appetite. Such persons, consequently, are ever faltering along the road. We have witnessed many persons, whom God was favoring with much progress in detachment and freedom, fall from happiness and stability in their spiritual exercises and end up losing everything merely because they began to indulge in some slight attachment to conversation and friendship under the appearance of good. For by this attachment they gradually emptied themselves of both holy solitude and the spirit and joy of God. All this happened because they did not put a stop to their initial satisfaction and sensitive pleasure, and preserve themselves for God in solitude.

"The attainment of our goal demands that we never stop on this road, which means we must continually get rid of our wants rather than indulging them. For if we do not get rid of them all completely, we will not wholly reach our goal. A log of wood cannot be transformed into the fire if even a single degree of heat is lacking to its preparation for this.4 The soul, similarly, will not be transformed in God even if it has only one voluntary imperfection. As we shall explain in speaking of the night of faith, a person has only one will and if that is encumbered or occupied by anything, the person will not possess the freedom, solitude, and purity requisite for divine transformation.".(Ascent of Mt Carmel, Ch 8, para. ll.5(2))

St Thomas teaches us:

"Unnatural desire... can be unlimited, because it arises from reason gone astray, which sees unlimited good in a good which is in reality limited. Thus a man who desires wealth can desire it in limitless measure, can see in wealth the ultimate purpose of his life.(St Thomas Aquinas)

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Fr Garrigou LaGrange says of desire:

"Natural desire, then, in animal and man is limited. The animal (e.g., wolf, tiger, lion) when it is sated no longer seeks prey. But intelligent man when depraved conceives and pursues ever more wealth and pleasure. Hence quarrels among neighbors and endless wars among nations. The miser is insatiable, likewise the man of pleasure and the man of power. Love when thwarted begets hate, and that hate becomes boundless. Hate, says Baudelaire, is the cask of the pale Danaides. These Danaides, says mythology, slew their husbands on their wedding night, hence were condemned to fill a cask without bottom: endless punishment of boundless depravity."( Fr. Garrigou LaGrange, "Life Everlasting")

"The first among all passions, the source of all others, is sense love, the love, for example, of the animal for the food it needs. From this love rises a series of passions: desire, joy, hope, audacity, hate, aversion, sadness, despair, fear, and anger."(Fr Garrigou-Lagrange,"Life Everlasting,")

"Passion is not always, but may become, keen, vehement, dominating. In man the passions are meant to be ruled and disciplined by reason and will. Thus ruled, they are weapons which defend a great cause. On the contrary, if they remain unruly and undisciplined, they become vices: love becomes gluttony and lust, aversion becomes jealousy and envy, audacity becomes foolhardiness, fear becomes faintheartedness and cowardice."(Ibid)

"These wide contrasts, both in good and in evil, show how deep and immense is the world of passion. Even in the animal kingdom what heights are scaled by love and hate: in the lion, for example, attacking his prey, in the lioness defending her young!"(Ibid)

"But this width and depth of passion is still more immense in man, because man's intellect grasps universal good and man's will desires that boundless good which is found in God alone. Hence when man's will does not follow the straight road to God, when man seeks supreme happiness not in God but in creatures, then his concupiscence becomes insatiable, because he has unlimited desires for a good that is limited."(Ibid)

"Man's will was created to love supreme good and the irradiations of that supreme good. Hence when the will turns aside, its tendency to universal good continues under that deviation, and this tendency of man's highest faculty now becomes foolish, exercises a lamentable influence on man's lower faculties. This truth is a proof, a sad proof indeed, but still a proof, of the spirituality of the soul. The ruins of decay are a souvenir of grandeur."(Ibid)

When our desire for the fading glory of this world is subdued through asceticism, and we want nothing in this life, more than we want God, we are at the spiritual place where true happiness is possible. We are born into the world infected by an "inclination to evil," the inheritance of Original Sin through which we create a proud false-self filled with endless desire. By practicing "mortification of desire," we gradually withdrae our will from our false-selves, and everything outside ourselves, so that the strength of our love is totally available to the God, within ourselves. And when we totally disconnect from the ten-thousand things without, and radically surrender our will to this Source within, it sustains our life, becomes our food and drink, and feeds us with manna from the Holy Spirit in Jesus Christ, "the Bread of Life."

"The perspective of mortification of desires put forth by St John of the Cross is the Biblical one. All voluntary, inordinate desires must give way to the single desire of love for God. These desires are inordinate because they are not integrated into the love of God; they are thus competitors. The mortification of all desires and appetites is the hallmark of St John of the Cross and a threatening challenge for would-be disciples. But for those who meditate, it is a long term objective; for the time being they engage in the limited mortification of struggling to be more faithful to their vocation and the right use of creatures. The project of total renunciation is a reasonable objective when the soul is in the mode of contemplation."(Ernest Larkin, O.Carmel)

The reason such mortification is possible lies in this. A soul whose spirit has no strength and felt joy from God such as comes through contemplation, cannot easily give up the pleasures of sense upon which it feeds, and which are all it has. However, once the soul becomes somewhat spiritually enamored and satisfied in contemplation, and par excellence, in spiritual union, its joy and contact with the Spirit of God gives it the strength to let go of lesser pleasures of sense, which were formerly all it had to hang on to.

For the things we desire and love in this world are in competition with our Love for God. And our suffering in this life is a direct result of the absence of God, and our attachment to finite things and possessions. For just as materialistic love and desire for the things and persons of this world "attaches" one's will to them, and makes the power of one's will unavailable for loving God, hatred attaches us the same way. Hatred is negative attachment of our will to persons and created being that ensnares us, and keeps us from loving God, just as does positive, selfish desire. That's why successful spirituality is always "the middle way," becoming unattached to persons and objects, while recognizing their essential goodness, and avoiding the hatred implicit in demonizing them by forcibly rejecting them as evil, in radical detachment. We must become "unattached" to the persons and things we turn away from for love of God. We must not hate them.

When we hate someone or something, we are forever "bound-up" with an all consuming "desire" for revenge against that person or thing until our hatred is released. The energy of our will bound up in hatred, as in selfish love, is not available for the First Commandment, to love God with our whole heart, our whole soul, our whole mind, and our whole self. That's why Christ never said "Hate your enemies." That is the mistake made by all other religions who have not understood, nor been exposed to, the depth of love required by the Fullness of Truth, when from out of His Suffering on the Cross He said, "Forgive them Father."

"Our moral freedom, like other mental powers, is strengthened by exercise. The practice of yielding to impulse results in enfeebling self-control. The faculty of inhibiting pressing desires, of concentrating attention on more remote goods, of reinforcing the higher but less urgent motives, undergoes a kind of atrophy by disuse. In proportion as a man habitually yields to intemperance or some other vice, his freedom diminishes and he does in a true sense sink into slavery. He continues responsible in causa for his subsequent conduct, though his ability to resist temptation at the time is lessened. On the other hand, the more frequently a man restrains mere impulse, checks inclination towards the pleasant, puts forth self-denial in the face of temptation, and steadily aims at a virtuous life, the more does he increase in self-command and therefore in freedom. The whole doctrine of Christian asceticism thus makes for developing and fostering moral liberty, the noblest attribute of man." (MICHAEL MAHER, "Free Will," Catholic Encyclopedia)

And contrary to what Eastern religion teaches, the problem of man's suffering is not that he has an "ego," the problem is that he has a "false-self" superstructure, comprised of pride and illusion, to which the power of his desire, or will, is attached and bound-up. And by association, and possessive imagery, all man's possessions become part of that false-self superstructure. And when it is dismantled through the Nights of the soul, and spiritual transformation, the real ego, or purified consciousness, is freed from the slavery and suffering of bondage and lust for all the illusionary possessions suffocating man's spirit. And this process also releases the bound-up energy maintaing our false-self, making it once more available to energize our conscious ego-life.

Isn't is strange that the so-called "transformed ones" writing from Hindu and Buddhist perspectives, and those promising Nirvana in the West, write nothing, and apparently know nothing, about the necessary purifications of man's soul from natural desire and pride coming through the supernatural Nights of sense and spirit? Actually, it is what one would expect from one dimentional religions bereft of a transcendent world above the natural world. For where there is just "one" dimension, as in Pantheism, there is no second, "supernatural" dimension initiating the dark nights through the refining fire of God's supernatural spirit. For reasons such as these, one is lead to suspect that much of Hinduism, and its derivative, Buddhism, is a spirituality limited to enlightenment and insight into the unplumbed depths of man's natural spirit.

St. John of the Cross says: "In spite of its generosity the soul cannot arrive at complete purification of itself, cannot render itself entirely suited for the world of divine union and the perfection of love. God Himself must set His hand to the work and purify the soul in His own dark fire."

And after we receive purification from desire and freedom from natural bondage, our unattached desire is available for the One Thing Necessary: our total happiness through single-minded, self-giving, in a love exchanged with the Divine Spirit. And wounded by our gift, Our Eternal Soul-Mate, Christ's Holy Spirit, imbues it with a Transcendent Gift of Infinite Love drawing us to a transforming spiritual union.

For when we regularly desire anything less than God, we become attached to it, subordinated to it, and forcefully bound to it, as it becomes an "idol" of our worship, and a spiritual barrier between us and God, whether we actually possess it or not. For a materially poor man, full of desires for worldly pleasures, becomes a "rich" man who cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. He is bound up with desire and natural love for the thoughts and images of the possessions he dreams about. And a rich man, who has overcome his attachments, becomes one of the blessed who are "poor in spirit," even though he lives in the midst of actual wealth. And it is through religion, and the religious act of "sacrifice," that we will give up, one by one, our attachments to these "idols" of our adoration.

For as St Thomas teaches: "it is connatural for us to pass from the physical signs to the spiritual basis upon which they rest" (Summa II-II:48:2). It is to be expected, then, that men should have agreed upon certain conventional actions as expressing adoration of the Supreme Being. Of these actions, one has pre-eminently and exclusivly signified adoration, and that is sacrifice." (William L. Sullivan, "Catholic Encyclopedia, "Adoration"). So we offer our gifts of adoration to Almighty God as we sacrifice our attachments to everything less than God. And our ultimate sacrifice of adoration will come through giving up our selfish attachment to our pride of "self," or false ego, the proud god we have placed on the throne of the Living God. And the death of the false ego is very real and very painful as we become "unbound" to attachments and illusions.

Bernard Olivera, Cistercian Abbot General, tells us:

"In other words, desire is the living impulse which, together with truth and action, constitutes the deepest orientation and drive of a human being toward something more complete, final and absolute. Without desire for God there is no communion of love with God. Desire is, therefore, hunger and thirst for the infinite, a life process unable to be satisfied, an existential groan of hope.

"I have spoken of "desire" in the singular to distinguish it from "desires" in the plural. The latter are explosive fragments of true desire which have become misdirected toward something finite, toward illusions or simply toward self-satisfaction. These so-called "desires" are what psychoanalysis is speaking of when it tells us that desire is a regressive phenomenon which prevents self-gift and self-fulfillment, and that, as separate beings, we are full of desires to recover our lost fusion."(Bernardo Olivera(l999);Abbot General, Cistercian Order of the Strict Observance(Trappists)

Pope John Paul II teaches:

"Concupiscense is the name for the rebellious desire, lust, and the 'inclination to evil," born into every man that comes into the world, due to Original Sin, and the loss, along with sanctifying grace, of the preternatural gift which subjected concupiscense to reason. And God allowed such sin, because from it He would produce greater good, i.e., no longer just servants, but friends, particpation of the Fallen Children of Adam, through the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ, in the Divine Life, as natural heirs and Adopted sons and daughters. However, in this life, the rebellious aspect to man's nature remains, as a predisposition to be dealt with through "overcoming" grace and virtue, and concupiscense is the felt and experienced rebellion of the sensuous appetite against the promptings of what is reasonable and good for us:

"To understand how the sensuous and the rational appetite can be opposed, it should be borne in mind that their natural objects are altogether different. The object of the former is the gratification of the senses; the object of the latter is the good of the entire human nature and consists in the subordination of reason to God, its supreme good and ultimate end. But the lower appetite is of itself unrestrained, so as to pursue sensuous gratifications independently of the understanding and without regard to the good of the higher faculties. Hence desires contrary to the real good and order of reason may, and often do, rise in it, previous to the attention of the mind, and once risen, dispose the bodily organs to the pursuit and solicit the will to consent, while they more or less hinder reason from considering their lawfulness or unlawfulness(John Paul II).

"This is concupiscence in its strict and specific sense. As long, however, as deliberation is not completely impeded, the rational will is able to resist such desires and withhold consent, though it be not capable of crushing the effects they produce in the body, and though its freedom and dominion be to some extent diminished. If, in fact, the will resists, a struggle ensues, the sensuous appetite rebelliously demanding its gratification, reason, on the contrary, clinging to its own spiritual interests and asserting it control. "The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh." (John Paul II)

"It is St. Paul who describes in a particularly eloquent way the tension and struggle that trouble the human heart. We read in the Letter to the Galatians: "But I say, walk by the Spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you would."(234) There already exists in man, as a being made up of body and spirit, a certain tension, a certain struggle of tendencies between the "spirit" and the "flesh." But this struggle in fact belongs to the heritage of sin, is a consequence of sin and at the same time a confirmation of it. This is part of everyday experience. As the Apostle writes: "Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity, licentiousness... drunkenness, carousing and the like." These are the sins that could be called "carnal." But he also adds others: "enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy."(235) All of this constitutes the "works of the flesh." (John Paul II, "Dominum et Vivificantem")

From the Catholic Encyclopedia, regarding "Concupiscense," John Ming:

"Human nature was deprived of both its preternatural and supernatural gifts and graces, the lower appetite began to lust against the spirit,(due to the loss of the preternatural gift controlling concupiscense) and evil habits, contracted by personal sins, wrought disorder in the body, obscured the mind, and weakened the power of the will, without, however destroying its freedom."(Catholic Encyclopedia, "Concupiscense," John Ming) And the foregoing explanation is fully consonant with the day-today reality of the concupiscense, and inclination to evil, we find within our day-to-day selves.

Fr. Jordan Aumann teaches:

"The soul that aspires to perfect union with God must strive energetically against its own self-love, which subtly penetrates even holy things. It must examine the true motive for its actions, continually rectify its intentions, and not place as its goal or the goal of all its activities and efforts anything other than the glory of God and the perfect fulfillment of his divine will. It must keep constantly in mind the decisive words of Christ himself, who makes perfect selfabnegation the indispensable condition for following him: "Whoever wishes to be my follower must deny his very self, take up his cross each day, and follow in my steps" (Luke 9:23). (Fr. Jordan Aumann, "Spiritual Theology," Progressive Purgation, Ch.8)

"Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.(Ibid)

"And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.(1John2:15)(Ibid Fr. Aumann)

St John of the Cross Comments:

"The third evil that the desires cause in the soul is that they blind and darken it. Even as vapours darken the air and allow not the bright sun to shine; or as a mirror that is clouded over cannot receive within itself a clear image; or as water defiled by mud reflects not the visage of one that looks therein; even so the soul that is clouded by the desires is darkened in the understanding and allows neither the sun of natural reason nor that of the supernatural Wisdom of God to shine upon it and illumine it clearly."

"The complete mortification of desire required for transforming union comes about primarily through the power of Almighty God, rather than by our efforts. St John of the Cross:

"For, in order to conquer all the desires and to deny itself the pleasures which it has in everything, and for which its love and affection are wont to enkindle the will that it may enjoy them, it would need to experience another and a greater enkindling by another and a better love, which is that of its spouse; to the end that, having its pleasure set upon him and deriving from him its strength, it should have courage and constancy to deny itself all other things "with ease." (St John of the Cross, "Ascent of Mt. Carmel," Ch. 8)

Desire and the egotism of the false-self are closely related. The false-self is formed as a result of choosing to accept satisfaction from entertaining desires based on proud thoughts and images of delusion and falsehood. We desire the pleasure of these thoughts, along with the emotional feel-good triggered by possession of their image, and accept them into our false ego, self-image system even though we know they are false. They are thoughts and images which deny that we must depend one hundred per cent on Almighty God for everything. Instead, we build a god-like image of ourselves in our minds, in which we take credit for God's attributes and activities, as if they were our own. And then we become attached to this false-self image, living an artificial life based on this "empty shell," which is sustained in existence through the very real physical pleasure and emotional payoffs we gain from it, and which ever strengthen our bondage to it. And we live all the activities of our life through this prism of this possession-bound, spirit hardened, illusionary self, who has lost the freedom of will necessary to love others. For living in the untruth of this mental delusionary world, we create a web of illusion and thought barriers separating us from reality in terms of Love for God, love for other human beings, and love for God's creation.

Instead of having all our desires and needs satisfied in our participation in God-Consciousness, which Supernatural Consciousness contains all the good things of Creation for our enjoyment, we seek to find our happiness outside ourselves, by taking possession of His Creation as ours by right of conquest. For our spirits are born into this world without the living water of God's life feeding us from within. We are born with a natural consciousness, which lacks the innate capacity of self-satisfaction, since all good is in God. And because of the limitations and dependent needs of our natural consciousness, we are in continuous, subtle spiritual pain, which we experience as discontent, dissatisfaction, or boredom, and which motivates us to a compulsive, ongoing rat-race search for pleasure and satisfaction to fill our needs. And when we can't have the things we want to allay our dependency needs, we frantically desire and seek the pleasure from thoughts about possessing "things" which make us independent and fill our spiritual hunger. But our hearts were made for rest in the complete Freedom and Independence of the ultimate Source of Eternal Good in the being of God. The finite being of the things of the world are passing away, and they can never sustain nor satisfy our eternal hunger.

So through desire, we build false self-images made up of the delusion that we are independent beings equal to God. We are beset by thoughts regarding fear of death and fear of losing our possessions and treasures. We are beset by fear of other people who are a threat to our god-like self-image. So in our "desire" to be rid of the pain of our fearful thoughts, we desire thoughts which give us pleasure in our superiority over others. And we pretend we are invulnerable to the pain and suffering of life. We "desire" to keep away the fearful thoughts, so we build a false ego-image from these desires, in which we see ourselves always in control of our life and our world.

And, at the same time, we build egotistical thought barriers based on our own superiority which separate us from communion with other human beings. And, of course, we are always shocked when reality strikes and our egotistical pretense is exposed to the light of day by the humiliation of the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." For then, we find to our shame that we are not the god-like beings we pretend to be. And our weakness and vulnerability is exposed for all to see, including humiliation in the eyes of the "inferior" others. And as the light of painful truth begins to penetrate our proud, self-induced blindness, there is hope that we may decide to give up the charade and to admit our need for and dependence on the God who created us to live without fear in the joyful truth of our union with His being.

St John of the Cross tells us that the whole business of spiritual transformation involves the liberation of our will from attachment and slavery to self-centered cravings and willful desires based on egotism and the possessive need for things of this world. The major work of the spiritual life is liberation from desire accomplished through the dark nights of sense and spirit that come to us through the activity of the Holy Spirit in Contemplation. We cooperate with this effort by withdrawing ourselves from mortal and venial sin and habits of imperfection arising from the desire and proud thoughts entertained by our egos. And we mortify all such habits when we learn to forgive, and to say, "I'm sorry," and to find wisdom in humility and humiliations.

And we weaken the power of the self-centered ego when we undertake spiritual strategies such as "practicing the presence of God," or continually praising God for everything, whether good or bad, that happens to us. For our desires follow our attention and thoughts. And when we give all our thoughts, attention and longing to Almighty God, He becomes the source of the satisfaction of our life, and all our craving, and gives us the power to undertake this difficult work of mortification. For His Spirit becomes our spiritual food as He told us when He said, "I am the bread of life." And when we are in union with Him, we no longer "earn our bread in the sweat of our brow" in fulfillment of the curse on the human race resulting from Adam, the Head Man's rejection of God. For when we seek Him first, above all other things, and reach the state of union possessed by Adam before the Fall, we receive all we need effortlessly, in conjunction with loving activities we undertake with pleasure for the "Bread of Life," as he gives Himself to us, "full measure, pressed down, running over," as well as the whole world to enjoy. But we must remember that there is nothing wrong with desire, itself; for that is the nature of our will. It's just that our desire, or will, was created to "love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, thy whole soul, and thy whole mind." And our hearts will never find complete rest until, in union with His Love, we do just that.

The process of spiritual transformation through Contemplation involves the destruction of all our idols by undoing willful attachments, changing our false worldview, and reconstructing our habitual ways of dealing with life. In the First Epistle of John, we are warned not to become attached to materialism, pride, lust, and the spirit of the world: "Do not love the world or the things of the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world-the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life-is not of the Father, but of the world." (1John2:15) And, the goal of the contemplative life is transformation of our will from the worldly spirit involving ten-thousand voluntary natural desires into the one thing necessary-the desire and love for God. At the same time, it includes a transition from our false, natural egotistical self to our natural true-self. And this true-self no longer has its will enslaved by sham and compulsive behavior and is, therefore, capable of the radical freedom required to become completely one with Unselfish Love. And in the perfect, the desire for God, and the simultaneous satisfaction of that desire, takes place from within,... in the present moment.

"Bernard of Clairvaux, as a student in the school of St. Augustine, teaches us that desire is undifferentiated psychic energy which searches with increasingly insistent urgency for what we need. Desire expresses a feeling of absence and is a movement which drives our entire being toward the absent good: Every rational being naturally desires always what satisfies more its mind and will. It is never satisfied with something which lacks the qualities it thinks it should have (Dil 7:18; cf. SC 58:2; 31:4; 32:2).

"Desire for the infinite shows both the finiteness and the fullness of the human being. It is a precious footprint of the Creator in the human soul. In this sense, desire is a basic thrust of the spirit, a psychic sigh, in which the desire for God can take root. Desire is the underlying source and root of love. When it bursts into consciousness and becomes the willed search for God, it is converted into the love and desire for God. God is touched by desiderii digito, the finger of desire, as St. Bernard says (SC 28:10). When the soul has nothing of its own, nothing in its exclusive possession, but has everything in common with God, it is called a spouse. This spouse, who whispers, "Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth," is a soul athirst for God (SC 7:2). It boils down to saying that we are desire, because God is Desire in us. He arouses our desire in order to awaken and to satisfy our hope. That is why desire is grace." (Bernardo Olivera(l999);Abbot General, Cistercian Order of the Strict Observance(Trappists)

For, as St. John of the Cross has told us, by freeing the will of its affection and desires, it may be capable and available to participate in a higher form of love, the unselfish love of Jesus Christ. However, in this daunting process, which takes place over many years, and which destroys and recreates our habitual ways of seeing ourselves and the world, one must always remember that God is the prime mover when it comes to transformation. We must do our part, but it is of secondary importance. For with God as the senior partner in our transformation and contemplative life, there is no obstacle that cannot be overcome.

Now we ourselves, and everything in existence, and all good, comes from Almighty God. And those in the state of transforming union experience this reality as an indwelling of perfect humility, or freedom from narcissistic love of the false-self, and loving dependence on the God, within, from whom all good things come. And like manna eternally springing up in the desert, the joy of the Spirit of God springs up, eternally, within the spirit of such a humble soul, bountifully satisfying all its needs. And perfect humility is the truth of the soul's creation for union with an Infinitely Powerful Other, its vulnerability, neediness, and openness to Love, which is the bond of authenticity required of the creature in order that it may enter honestly into the transforming relationship with Almighty God. In perfect humility, our ego-self, or "pride," has been destroyed and we live as our transformed true-selves, acknowledging our dependence on God by our attitude and by the way we live our life.

One must not be deterred by the fear of radical asceticism and total mortificaton of desire found in the writings of St John of the Cross and other spiritual teachers. For the mortification of desire they describe is not possible by natural efforts alone. What St John says about asceticism in the classic, "Ascent of Mount Carmel," relates to the efforts of a dedicated soul, empowered by God through contemplative prayer. What Christ told his apostles in regard to divorce and remarriage applies here, too. "With man it is not possible; but with God all things are possible." We must do our part in connection with efforts at asceticism, but the real work of mortification of desire and transformation comes about through the power of Almighty God. Here's what St. John has to say about this:

"I expect that for a long time the reader has been wishing to ask whether it be necessary, in order to attain to this high estate of perfection, to undergo first of all total mortification in all the desires, great and small, or if it will suffice to mortify some of them and to leave others, those at least which seem of little moment. For it appears to be a severe and most difficult thing for the soul to be able to attain to such purity and detachment that it has no will and affection for anything.

"To this I reply: first, that it is true that all the desires are not equally hurtful, nor do they all equally embarrass the soul. I am speaking of those that are voluntary, for the natural desires hinder the soul little, if at all, from attaining to union, when they are not consented to nor pass beyond the first movements (I mean, all those wherein the rational will has had no part, whether at first or afterward); and to take away these -- that is, to mortify them wholly in this life -- is impossible. And these hinder not the soul in such a way as to prevent its attainment to Divine union, even though they be not, as I say, wholly mortified; for the natural man may well have them, and yet the soul may be quite free from them according to the rational spirit.

"For it will sometimes come to pass that the soul will be in the full union of the prayer of quiet in the will at the very time when these desires are dwelling in the sensual part of the soul, and yet the higher part, which is in prayer, will have nothing to do with them. But all the other voluntary desires, whether they be of mortal sin, which are the gravest, or of venial sin, which are less grave, or whether they be only of imperfections, which are the least grave of all, must be driven away every one, and the soul must be free from them all, howsoever slight they be, if it is to come to this complete union; and the reason is that the state of this Divine union consists in the soul's total transformation, according to the will, in the will of God, so that, there may be naught in the soul that is contrary to the will of God, but that, in all and through all, its movement may be that of the will of God alone.

"It is for this reason that we say of this state that it is the making of two wills into one -- namely, into the will of God, which will of God is likewise the will of the soul. For if this soul desired any imperfection that God wills not, there would not be made one will of God, since the soul would have a will for that which God has not. It is clear, then, that for the soul to come to unite itself perfectly with God through love and will, it must first be free from all desire of the will, howsoever slight.

"That is, that it must not intentionally and knowingly consent with the will to imperfections, and it must have power and liberty to be able not so to consent intentionally. I say knowingly, because, unintentionally and unknowingly, or without having the power to do otherwise, it may well fall into imperfections and venial sins, and into the natural desires whereof we have spoken; for of such sins as these which are not voluntary and surreptitious it is written that the just man shall fall seven times in the day and shall rise up again.

"But of the voluntary desires, which, though they be for very small things, are, as I have said, intentional venial sins, any one that is not conquered suffices to impede union. I mean, if this habit be not mortified; for sometimes certain acts of different desires have not as much power when the habits are mortified. Still, the soul will attain to the stage of not having even these, for they likewise proceed from a habit of imperfection. But some habits of voluntary imperfections, which are never completely conquered, prevent not only the attainment of Divine union, but also progress in perfection.

"These habitual imperfections are, for example, a common custom of much speaking, or some slight attachment which we never quite wish to conquer -- such as that to a person, a garment, a book, a cell, a particular kind of food, tittle-tattle, fancies for tasting, knowing or hearing certain things, and suchlike. Any one of these imperfections, if the soul has become attached and habituated to it, is of as great harm to its growth and progress in virtue as though it were to fall daily into many other imperfections and usual venial sins which proceed not from a habitual indulgence in any habitual and harmful attachment, and will not hinder it so much as when it has attachment to anything.

"For as long as it has this there is no possibility that it will make progress in perfection, even though the imperfection be extremely slight. For it comes to the same thing whether a bird be held by a slender cord or by a stout one; since, even if it be slender, the bird will be well held as though it were stout, for so long as it breaks it not and flies not away. It is true that the slender one is the easier to break; still, easy though it be, the bird will not fly away if it be not broken. And thus the soul that has attachment to anything, no matter how much virtue it possess, will not attain to the liberty of divine union.

"The soul, then, says that, 'kindled in love with yearnings,' it passed through this dark night of sense and came out thence to the union of the Beloved. For, in order to conquer all the desires and to deny itself the pleasures which it has in everything, and for which its love and affection are wont to enkindle the will that it may enjoy them, it would need to experience another and a greater enkindling by another and a better love, which is that of its spouse; to the end that, having its pleasure set upon him and deriving from him its strength, it should have courage and constancy to deny itself all other things "with ease."

"And, in order to conquer the strength of the desires of sense, it would need, not only to have love for its spouse, but also to be enkindled by love and to have yearnings. For it comes to pass, and so it is, that with such yearnings of desire the sensual nature is moved and attracted toward sensual things, so that,..."if the spiritual part be not enkindled with other and greater yearnings for that which is spiritual, it will be unable to throw off the yoke of nature or to enter this night of sense, neither will it have courage to remain in darkness as to all things, depriving itself of desire for them all."(St. John of the Cross, Ascent of Mt. Carmel, Ch. 14, p2)

And so the soul truly commited to Contemplation and union with God, will not be afraid to make the effort to mortify all its disorderly, voluntary desires. For God will take the soul's effort and combine it with His own and, "through His power," over the years, the soul will accomplish all the seemingly "impossible" asceticism and mortification described by St John of the Cross. And, in the end, the soul will find itself, somehow, at the goal: "Union with God." (Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book II, Ch. 14)

Moreover, St John says the following in Book III, Ch. 16 of the Ascent:

"And, now that we have to treat of the active detachment and night of this faculty, in order to form it and make it perfect in this virtue of the charity of God, I find no more fitting authority than that which is written in the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy, where Moses says: 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul and with thy whole strength.' Herein is contained all that the spiritual man ought to do, and all that I have here to teach him, so that he may truly attain to God, through union of the will, by means of charity.

"For herein man is commanded to employ all the faculties and desires and operations and affections of his soul in God, so that all the ability and strength of his soul may serve for no more than this, according to that which David says, in these words: Fortitudinem meam ad te custodiam.

"The strength of the soul consists in its faculties, passions and desires, all of which are governed by the will. Now when these faculties, passions and desires are directed by the will toward God, and turned away from all that is not God, then the strength of the soul is kept for God, and thus the soul is able to love God with all its strength. And, to the end that the soul may do this, we shall here treat of the purgation from the will of all its unruly affections, whence arise unruly operations, affections and desires, and whence also arises its failure to keep all its strength for God.

"These affections and passions are four, namely: Joy, hope, grief and fear. These passions, when they are controlled by reason according to the way of God, so that the soul rejoices only in that which is purely the honour and glory of God, and hopes for naught else, neither grieves save for things that concern this, neither fears aught save God alone, it is clear that the strength and ability of the soul are being directed toward God and kept for Him. For, the more the soul rejoices in any other thing than God, the less completely will it centre its rejoicing in God; and the more it hopes in aught else, the less will it hope in God; and so with the other passions.

"And in order to give fuller instructions concerning this, we shall treat, in turn and in detail, as is our custom, of each of these four passions and of the desires of the will. for the whole business of attaining union with God consists in purging its will from its affections and desires; so that thus it may no longer be a base, human will, but may become a Divine will, being made one with the will of God:

"In order to arrive at having pleasure in everything, desire to have pleasure in nothing. In order to arrive at possessing everything, desire to possess nothing. In order to arrive at being everything, desire to be nothing. In order to arrive at knowing everything, desire to know nothing. In order to arrive at that in which you have no pleasure, you must go by a way in which you have no pleasure. In order to arrive at that which you do not know, you must go by a way which you do not know. In order to arrive at that which you do not possess, you must go by a way that you do not possess. In order to arrive at that which you are not, you must go through that which you are not. When your mind dwells on anything, you are no longer casting yourself upon the All. In order to pass from the all to the All, you must deny yourself wholly in all. And when you come to possess it wholly, you must possess it without desiring anything. And if you will have anything in having all, you do not have your treasure purely in God. (St John of the Cross, "Ascent of Mt. Carmel)