What is a Dark Night of the Soul?
The original usage of the popular spiritual term isn’t what you think
Dark night of the soul is a term used in modern-day spirituality referring to a challenging period of time, often due to a disruptive life event, that makes you question the meaning of life or sends you spiraling into deep depression. You may even question reality or God (if you were a person of faith before the disruption).
Curious about the origins of this ubiquitous term, I discovered that its original usage described something different: a specific spiritual practice rooted in Christian mysticism.
The term first appears in a poem titled “The Dark Night of the Soul” written around the 1570s by a Christian mystic and Catholic priest, John of the Cross. It was written after he was imprisoned and tortured for trying to reform his monastic order. He later became a saint.
In the sixteenth-century poem that is responsible for the term “dark night of the soul,” the darkness refers to a sort of spiritual sensory deprivation tank, not a life crisis.
According to John of the Cross in order to achieve union with God, the soul must travel through a darkness that is the result of detaching from the world. This mystical goal of union with the divine cannot occur at the level of the eye’s perception. The senses must go dark in order to go through the metaphysical process of un-selfing. It’s akin to the “ego death” of modern-day spirituality or the awareness that the material reality around us is not the ultimate reality. We are blind to this reality just as John of the Cross was “in the dark” of knowing an unknowable God.
According to subsequent books by John of the Cross explaining the process, this purgation of the senses is just the first phase—and the experience can feel like purgatory.
This multi-step process of spiritual purification reminds me of the ascent of the soul described in Mary Magdalene’s gospel, which dates back to the second century, and involves the releasing of the seven powers of the ego.
In a nutshell, the origins of the dark night of the soul are Christian and refer to an arduous inner journey to reunite the soul with God.
What is the contemporary meaning of the dark night of the soul?
Dark night of the soul has morphed meaning over the centuries. It can mean different things, based on your beliefs.
For people of the Christian faith, it often refers to a feeling of separation from God. This is actually the last stage in the process John of the Cross describes: a feeling of withdrawal from God (before the ultimate unification). Mother Theresa famously suffered a fifty-year dark night of the soul, in which she questioned the existence of God and her beliefs.
In spiritual spaces, it has more to do with a life crisis than a crisis of faith, though the two can overlap. Spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle describes it as “a term used to describe a collapse of a perceived meaning in life… an eruption into your life of a deep sense of meaninglessness.” He locates it in the process of a spiritual awakening, preceding a state of higher consciousness.
Most people, however, use the term colloquially to describe their reaction to a life event or world events that disrupt their sense of reality and make them question the meaning of life, the goodness of the Universe, or of humanity. Others simply use it to describe a dark period of depression.
Advice from a 16th-century monk for your dark night of the soul
Whatever your beliefs or whatever dark-night moment you’re going through, I believe John of the Cross's poem offers us wisdom in these lines:
Without other light or guide
Save that which in my heart was burning.
That light guided me
More surely than the noonday sun
[read the full poem here]
While groping through your despair, you can find a light within you to guide the way.
Sometimes the way out is not through but in.
By dropping out of your mind and into your heart, the heart can guide you to where the eye cannot yet see. And connect you to the love that has never left you.
