A divine darkness covers the soul so well prepared for pure contemplation

"May the Holy Spirit be served in granting his aid, and whatever is said here be for the glory of the same God.

This Lord says, that in the beginning when God made the heaven and the earth there was darkness over the abysses, and the spirit of the Lord walked over the waters. When his Divine Majesty wants to grant favor to a soul, He makes it remain in nothing and empty of all, remaining so broken-down and lost from itself as if it weren't , that it may truly receive his divine spirit, having completely gotten rid of all affections and appetites, conquered and beaten all passions, erased from itself all the images and forms that could disturb it. Being as it were a flat and smooth board, without a smudge, and without anything that in itself that would remove or disturb the new paint for which it is disposed, then, to this soul so well prepared, a divine darkness covers its deep abysses of its capacity, in the immensity of God; because this is a pure contemplation in which the soul receives communication from God himself in its very substance. And because the immensity of light of this divine being of God excels so much at the sight of the soul, this divine light becomes for it darkness in terms of what it can receive from him; that the blinder it is and He with immensity in himself is brighter, the darker it seems; and the more it receives from him (the greater the brightness that it receives from him), that greater clarity leaves it blinder in terms of itself and its natural operations."

-- Transformación del alma en Dios, 1 by Cecilia del Nacimiento, ocd
translated by ocdsister