Dangers at this stage of spiritual growth
Once again there is the danger of pride, a belief that I must be better than other Christians because I am so close to God. But if the soul really believes this, as opposed to being tempted to believe it, this is evidence that the soul has not actually reached this third stage. A soul in the third stage generally recognizes the immense gulf that separates her from God and that it is only by the grace and mercy of God that she is allowed to come to God at all. Often someone in this stage will consider herself the worst of sinners because she sees herself in relation to God in whose light she feels stained and polluted.
If a soul does fall out of love, so to speak, at this stage, great will be that fall. Great love can turn into more profound hatred than superficial love. The soul that has been close to God and falls away can become demonic in her lashing out at God. But what might cause a soul to fall away once it has reached this stage? The soul, in experiencing one of the “nights” to be discussed later, might feel it has been rejected, abandoned, by God, its love scorned. The nights are intended for purification, not punishment, and, during the nights God is closer at hand than ever, but without proper guidance the soul may fail to recognize this, or to see God with the eyes of faith when the light of God has turned to darkness.
Another danger is scrupulosity, where the soul is so anxious to please God that it becomes obsessed with its sinfulness and compulsively worries about what it may have done wrong and how to conduct itself, even as regards to the most trivial detail, so as to avoid offending God. In fact, scrupulosity is also a danger in the first stage as well where the soul is concerned about “doing things right” in order to avoid sin.
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