Religious Experience

Religious Experience
Every individual soul in short, like every individual machine or organism, has its own best conditions of efficiency.
First of all, carefully excite yourself an habitual affectionate will in all things to imitate Jesus Christ. If anything agreeable offers itself to your senses yet does not at the same time tend purely to the honor and glory of God, renounce it and separate yourself from it for the love of Christ, who all his life long had no other taste or wish than to do the will of his Father whom he called his meat and nourishment.
For example, if you take satisfaction in hearing of things which the glory of God bears no part, deny yourself this satisfaction; mortify your wish to listen. If you take pleasure in seeing things and objects, which do not raise mind to God, refuse yourself this pleasure, and turn away your eyes. The same with conversations and all other things.
Act similarly, so far as you are able, with all the senses, striving to make yourself free of their yokes.
St. John of the Cross