The fledging initiate is still very much attached to the world of the senses and so the revelations are perceived as quite fantastic. Years later the revelations will be of a much higher order and will be stripped of all sensual content. These revelations are usually accompanied by many years of secrecy, doubts about one's sanity and increasing isolation from the rest of humanity whom the mystic loves, but G-d keeps at a social, emotional and physical distance from, even as a fetus is kept protected in the womb. Within Judaism the asceticsm is relatively very mild. This period is not less arduous that the ascetic phase.
Revelations usually stop or come very infrequently.
The person's endurance is being tested. As one is obsessed with justice in the world and will not partake in any of the compromises of one's morality required in the workplace, even in order to survive, poverty now comes about as a matter of course, not because one seeks it out actively. This stage usually comes when one is no longer young and the ongoing poverty begins to become truly hard to bear. This is an excrutiatingly painful and protracted process which outwardly appears to be recurring bouts of 'depression'. G-dconsciousness to the point that it is no longer a fleeting experience, but a permanent state of consciousness.