Juan De La Cruz (John of the Cross)
1542-1591 · Christian Mysticism · Prominent
John of the Cross was a sixteenth-century Spanish Carmelite friar and poet. God withdraws every comfort and the soul feels abandoned. He named that stretch the dark night and read it as progress: one night strips the senses, a deeper one strips the spirit, and the soul climbs through unknowing toward union with God. He began the poems in a cell where fellow friars had locked him for nine months.
Signature
The position John of the Cross is most identified with in the Profiler:
- The Divine
- strongly leans Indescribable
- Time
- Sacred Time
Positions on the 10 axes the sources answer
- Mind
- leans Beyond Brain (75 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- The Divine
- strongly leans Indescribable (100 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Beauty
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Meaning
- strongly leans Inherent (100 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Order
- leans Vertical (25 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Opposition
- leans Concurrence (75 on a 0–100 scale from Sublation to Concurrence)
- Nature
- leans Harmony (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mastery to Harmony)
- Ethics
- leans Means (75 on a 0–100 scale from Ends to Means)
- Ignorance
- mildly leans Bondage (38 on a 0–100 scale from Bondage to Bliss)
- Conviction
- leans Certain (75 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
10 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or John of the Cross refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Union with God
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Good Real, Evil Privative
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Non-Dual Awareness / Idealism
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Intuition
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Divine Command / Virtue
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Synergism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Creation ex Nihilo
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Sacred Time
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Language
- Logos
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Paradox
- Apophatic Pointer
What is the status of paradox? - Law
- Divine Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Union with the One / Ascent of the Soul
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Path to the Divine
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Redeemably Corrupted
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- The Divine
What is your primary bond and loyalty?