First, and most often. It may be depression

This is the honest point the rest of the course has been building towards, and it is the one people find hardest to hear.

Dryness that will not lift, and that has taken everything else with it, is often not a spiritual state at all. Depression removes reward from everything, worship included, and it does it without announcing itself. The person notices it in the prayer first because that is where they are paying attention, and then describes an illness in religious words.

The markers are plain. Two weeks or more, most days. Food, people, work and things you used to enjoy have all gone flat too. Sleep or appetite has changed. You cannot do what you could do three months ago.

If that is you, this course is the wrong course, and the right one on this platform is When you are told it is weak faith. Read that instead of this, and see a doctor as well. Do not spend another year on religious remediation for something a doctor could name in twenty minutes.

And if going to a doctor feels like a step away from the religion, the tradition has its own instruction about that. They asked whether they should make use of medical treatment, and they were told to make use of it. Nothing in that says anything about what you have.