In St.Catherine of Genoa this conflict lasted for four years, after which the thought of sin ceased to rule her consciousness.[60] St.Teresa's intermittent struggles are said to have continued for thirty years.

John Wesley, always deeply religious, did not attain the inner stability he calls assurance till he was thirty-five years old.

Blake was for twenty years in mental conflict, shut off from the sources of his spiritual life.

So slowly do great personalities come to their full stature, and subdue their vigorous impulses to the one ruling idea.
The ending of this conflict, the self's unification and establishment in the new life, commonly means a return more or less complete to that world from which the convert had retreated; taking up of the fully energized and fully consecrated human existence, which must express itself in work no less than in prayer; an exhibition too of the capacity for leadership which is the mark of the regenerate mind.

Thus the "first return" of the Buddhist saint is "from the absolute world to the world of phenomena to save all sentient beings."[61] Thus St.Benedict's and St.Catherine of Siena's three solitary years are the preparation for their great and active life works.