Something about both our nature and our state longs to be more than we are. The most that can be is God. God wants to give himself to us. If we are to receive, however faintly, the overflow of God himself, we must be emptied of everything that will get in the way. The evil we do will get in the way. Even some of the good we want could get in the way. God must alienate us from ourselves.

In this context and presupposing these ends, Saint John of the Cross says of the means,

When he is brought to nothing, the highest degree of humility, the spiritual union between his soul and God will be effected. The journey does not consist of recreations, experiences, and spiritual feelings, but in the living, sensory and spiritual, exterior, and interior death of the cross. (Ascent, Bk. 2, Ch. 7, #11)