I'm currently reading through St. John of the Cross' "The Dark Night of the Soul." In this short book, the 16th century mystic expounds upon his "Songs" which deal with the "dark night of the soul," the period of purgation through which all followers of Christ must come in order to be perfected and united completely in love and purpose with the Divine.

The Songs itself is quite short–only a few stanzas. However, St. John devotes several pages to expounding the meaning of the verses. In his introduction to the concept of the "dark night of the soul," St. John describes some of common barriers that hinder believers from true knowledge of God and precipitate the need for the grand purgation. Two of these hindrances are spiritual voluptuousness and spiritual gluttony…or simplified, the danger of experiential worship.

To John, the con-mingling of the spiritual and physical experience of worship is wholly positive: to be united with God is not just an act of mystical ecstasy, but is rather a way of being that intersects the whole of one's life with that of the divine. The danger of experiential worship, however, arises when the experience of worship–and not God–becomes the thing for which More >