How the soul is to keep itself solitary, that God may work in it

CHAPTER V

How the soul is to keep itself solitary, that God may work in it.

You cannot make too much account of your soul, where God resides and delights himself. Set so high a value upon it as to disdain and scorn to permit anything else to enter in and defile it. Let your whole expectation and longing be fixed in the coming of your Lord, who desires to find in it this free and happy disposition, without any other thought, any other wish, any other ill or tendency. Seek not out of your own head, without the advice of your spiritual Father, crosses which you may pretend to suffer for God; but let God dispose of you to suffer for his sake what and how he pleases. Do not you do what you have a mind to, but let God do in you what he hath a mind to. Let you will on all sides be at free liberty, your affections perfectly disengaged; wish no one thing more than another; but if you needs must, let it be in such a manner that if not it, but the contrary were to happen, you would receive no trouble but equal satisfaction. True liberty is in this; to adhere to nothing, to have no dependence, no bias. God works not his wonders but in a thus solitary and disinterested soul. Happy solitude where the walls of Jerusalem are built up! Desert of pleasure, banishment above all fruition of friends and country, where God himself is so securely enjoyed. Take nothing with you for this journey; put off your shoes, for it is a holy land; salute nobody in the way; leave the dead to bury the dead. To the land of the living you are traveling, let nothing mortal bear you company.