There is a powerful stage of spiritual growth where longing for the Friend, the Beloved, is a consuming passion, a burning. And there is another place where personal longing for God gets pushed over into a vast Silence.
It is the task of the teacher to set the heart aflame with an unquenchable fire of longing ... and, to keep it burning until it is reduced to ashes. For only a heart which has burned itself empty is capable of love.
