Dark Night of the Soul

 

I wanted to write something on the theme of the painful existential crisis known as the ‘dark night of the soul’ in which a person can feel isolated and lose the sense that life has meaning, in part because it is closely linked to the topic of my previous blog post on ego death, and also because it is experienced by some, but certainly not all, who are on a path of awakening.

Background

To give a little history, St John of the Cross was a Carmelite monk who proposed reforms to the Church, but his efforts made him enemies and in December 1577, he was led bound and blindfolded to a monastery in Toledo where other Carmelite monks imprisoned him in a tiny cell. For several months, the only time he left the cell was when he was taken out to be flogged by his fellow monks for refusing to renounce the reforms he had proposed. It was probably while he was held in that cell that he wrote the poem that is known in English as ‘The Dark Night of the Soul’. The poem and his commentaries describe a process of purification leading to conscious mystical union with God. The poem itself is the fourth part of a larger work called ‘The Ascent of Mount Carmel.’

For John, the cell was where he sought union with God and it became a place of discovery, not just despite the pain he endured, but through and because of it. He was transformed by his experiences. Everything that didn’t matter was stripped away and he came to describe the dark night as God’s best gift.

Experiencing the dark night

Part of the challenge of writing this blog has been that what John meant by ‘dark night of the soul’ was very different to the way we use the phrase today. For John it was a stage in the process of union with God. Today it can refer to much broader processes that follow, for example, the death of someone close, diagnosis of a life threatening illness, a traumatic experience and more. To make this intelligible I have tried to go with the contemporary usage, while making sure that it is particularly relevant to those whose struggles are connected to consciously following a spiritual path. So here, for example, a student of Sean Webb (Webb, 2017) describes the dark night process in contemporary terms:

It was during a time in my life where basically nothing was going right. I wasn’t enjoying my job, my personal life was a mess, my monetary situation wasn’t good, and I was just really, really depressed. I went to bed one night . . . and I remember this like it was yesterday . . . and at about 3:30 or 4:00 a.m., I woke up, and out of nowhere, I just started weeping. I mean, not just crying, but weeping . . . actual full-on sobbing. But the strange thing was, that it wasn’t out of sadness . . . it was out of joy. I had no idea why, but for some reason I was really, really happy. I had this incredible feeling of oneness with the universe, and somehow I just knew that I am supposed to be here . . . that I have a purpose . . . and I don’t know how I knew it… but I just knew that with everything that was going on in my life . . . that everything was going to be okay. And I’ve never forgotten what that felt like. I never felt anything like that before then, and I’ve never felt anything like it since. And I’ve been trying to figure out what it was ever since, because it has really changed my whole outlook.

The way many of us live our lives today, we put considerable effort into seeking pleasant experiences and avoiding unpleasant ones, or escaping from unpleasant experiences as quickly as we can. As many of us know, prolonged painful experiences that we cannot escape can lead us to a profound sense of despair, not knowing how to find joy or meaning in life any more. Life can come to seem empty and pointless.

The old ways of escaping unpleasant experiences don’t work - we don’t know how to move forward.

However, there are many ways of working with the emptiness, the loss of a sense of self, or loss of the feeling that your life has meaning. I’ll give some ideas below that have helped some people but you know what you need better than I do, so the ideas I include here are just pointers. I include the way of St. John of the Cross, as it is not an approach that many have come across, and I also include other hopefully helpful ideas and resources.

Moving through the dark night

The heart of the message of St. John is still relevant today - not to try to escape the pain but to look within oneself, accept that pain is there and embrace it, because within it is what we are seeking.

“The purest suffering bears and carries in its train the purest understanding,” wrote John.

If you are experiencing feelings of despair, desolation and despondency connected with a sense of the meaninglessness of it all and don’t feel you need outside help yet, then one or two of these other ideas may help move the dark night process along These are not about resisting or avoiding the dark night process, by the way, but to help you move with it to all that it has to reveal to you:

• Accept that all these feelings are part of your process for now. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, this doesn’t mean you are committing to being passive, but for now, the despair and loss of meaning are there, you observe them and accept them before doing anything else. Sit with the feelings without trying to escape them.

• If formal meditation practices feel too much then it may help to simply go through your day being more mindfully present during daily tasks. As far as possible staying focused on the tasks themselves without your mind wandering. Exercising mindfully can also help the process along.

• Some people find gardening or other ways of being in touch with nature helpful.

• As far as possible reduce sources of stress in your life:

  • don’t watch or read the news or ‘current affairs’ programmes

  • don’t take on new projects if you can help it

  • do spend more time with people who are good at listening rather than good at giving advice and

  • simplify your life as far as possible.

If none of these help then it might be worth considering one or more of the following:

Sources of help

If you feel you could do with some help then there are whole schools and approaches that can help with just these sorts of issues, from mindfulness-based and Buddhist therapies, Christian-oriented therapy, Existential Therapy (which specifically includes anxiety about death and loss of a sense of meaning as two of the main areas that therapists work with), and Psychosynthesis (which includes the transcendent dimension as part of its model of human life). In fact Roberto Assagioli, who developed Psychosynthesis, wrote the following:

Before the full and final victory, however, the soul has to undergo another test: it must pass through the ‘dark night’ which is a new and deeper experience of annihilation, or a crucible in which all the human elements that go to make it up are melted together. But the darkest nights are followed by the most radiant dawns and the soul, perfect at last, enters into complete, constant and inseparable communion with the Spirit, so that – to use the bold statement employed by St John of the Cross – "it seems to be God himself and has the same characteristics as him".

And if you need help with a sudden crisis then the Spiritual Crisis Network UK (SCNUK) can help in this country. Other countries have similar resources. I’ve put a link to the UK network below. As SCNUK say:

Psychological and mental health difficulties can be deeply transformative, offering the possibility of breakthrough rather than breakdown.

And finally there may be no obvious ‘solution’ to the experience of the dark night of the soul. The resolution may consist simply in carrying on, trusting the process you are going through and finding ways to live with it. Sometimes that’s all we need to see something wonderful within ourselves…

Truly, it is in darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest to all of us. Meister Eckhart, Christian mystic

What you seek is seeking you – Rumi, Sufi mystic and poet

A link to the Dark Night of the Soul poem, with contemporary commentary, is given in the Bibliography below. Singer and harpist Loreena McKennitt set the poem to music and a link to that is also given below.

Bibliography and videography

Assagioli, R. (2007). Transpersonal Development. Inner Way Productions: Findhorn, Scotland, 146–147.

McKennitt, L. (1994) The dark night of the soul. Accessed October 5, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MclLF473XtA

Spiritual Crisis Network UK https://spiritualcrisisnetwork.uk/

The Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross (n.d.). Accessed October 5, 2023. https://makeheaven.com/st-john-of-the-cross.html

Webb, S. (2017) Mind Hacking Happiness Volume II: Increasing happiness and finding non-dual enlightenment (chapter 15). CCRSM Press.

Key words

God, union, dark night of the soul, despair, depression, meaning, identity, awakening, mind,

Image

The picture above is of Toledo by El Greco.

Link

https://herethewaking.blogspot.com/2023/10/dark-night-of-soul.html