This dissatisfaction, sometimes associated with the negative vision or conviction of sin, sometimes with the positive longing for holiness and peace, is the mental preparation of conversion; which, though not a constant, is at least a characteristic feature of the beginning of the spiritual life as seen in history.

We might, indeed, expect some crucial change of attitude, some inner crisis, to mark the beginning of a new life which is to aim only at God.
Here too we find one motive of that movement of world-abandonment which so commonly follows conversion, especially in heroic souls.

Thus St.
Paul hides himself in Arabia; St.Benedict retires for three years to the cave at Subiaco; St.Ignatius to Manresa.

Gerard Groot, the brilliant and wealthy young Dutchman who founded the brotherhood of the Common Life, began his new life by self-seclusion in a Carthusian cell.
St.Catherine of Siena at first lived solitary in her own room.

St.
Francis with dramatic completeness abandoned his whole past, even the clothing that was part of it.