In which an struggling believer stumbles into spiritual darkness.
The most profound spiritual experiences tend to be described in positive, glowing terms. People talk of being saved, of “seeing the light,” of feeling love, or of feeling a deep sense of connection to God, the universe, to humanity. I don’t want to speak about any of these things.
There is a tradition in Western mysticism, exemplified by Saint John of the Cross (San Juan de la Cruz), of the dark night of the soul. The soul, after experiencing the love of God, is abandoned by God, and left to stumble blindly in total spiritual darkness crying out for God’s love. This is seen as a necessary step to achieving a higher spiritual state.
When they believe that the sun of Divine favour is shining most brightly upon them, God turns all this light of theirs into darkness, and shuts against them the door and the source of the sweet spiritual water which they were tasting in God…And thus he leaves them so completely in the dark that they know not whither to go…
Dark Night of the Soul
, by St. John of the Cross, pp. 63-4
This separation can last for months or even years. Sometimes it is experienced passively, with the soul listlessly plodding through each day, abandoning its pursuit of the divine Beloved. Some aspects of this dark experience can be quite traumatizing:
The Divine is this purgative contemplation, and the human is the subject–that is, the soul. The Divine assails the souls in order to renew it and thus to make it Divine…as a result of this, the soul feels itself to be perishing and melting away…in a cruel spiritual death…for in this sepulchre of dark death it must needs abide until the spiritual resurrection which it hopes for…But what the sorrowful souls feels most in this condition is its clear perception, as it thinks, that God has abandoned it, and, in His abhorrence of it, has flung it into darkness; it is a grave and piteous grief for it to believe that God has forsaken it.
Dark Night of the Soul
I see echoes of St. John’s dark night in Job’s sufferings, Saul’s blindness, and Jesus’ forlorn cry on the cross: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” I see it in the shaman’s dream death, when s/he watches the skin and flesh flayed from their bones, and in Innana’s descent into the world of the dead. And when I read these things, I am convinced that I am in the middle of my own Dark Night.
A couple of years ago, I embarked on an optimistic journey towards mystical union with the divine. Instead, I found myself stripped to the bone and left exposed to a dark, cold universe.
Tomorrow: the midnight of the dark night, and a fearful encounter with the Void.
12 responses so far ↓
1 Miko // Dec 8, 2006 at 8:36 am
hmm…I suppose I have gone through that. Although, when I came out the other side, it wasn’t with the same diety I went in with…
2 Jonathan // Dec 8, 2006 at 11:32 am
I don’t think I’ve encountered this kind of thing yet in my walk. You and Miko are a step ahead of me. I’m sure it will come sooner or later.
3 Jonathan // Dec 8, 2006 at 11:45 am
The timing of this subject is interesting - both my best friend and my wife admitted to me that they haven’t felt close to God at all in 3-4 years. I consider both of them more spiritually along in life then myself.
4 John // Dec 8, 2006 at 11:52 am
Miko, did you get a close look at yours? Mine seems to be missing.
Jonathan, I’m not sure if I’m a step ahead of you by any means. I’m playing with these concepts because it’s a space where I can be without God–an atheist–and still be spiritual, even a mystic. I don’t mean to privilege one path over another, but I think that a variety of pilgrims can take comfort or find inspiration in reading about the dark-night experiences of others.
5 Lucy // Dec 9, 2006 at 11:08 am
Maybe this doesn’t quite fit with your post, but it reminded me of a conversation I had with my mom. When she was 30 she had a massive heart attack with her heart stopping. When I was a teenager I asked her about the experience, hoping that she would tell me about a glorious near-death experience. Instead, she told me that as she neared death she felt nothing from God. It was dark and cold and God was not there. She commented, “Only I was there, and I could only hear my own voice. I brought myself back.”
6 Dave Sigmann // Dec 9, 2006 at 4:02 pm
Very interesting. I went through that experience as a TBM. It is neat to see that many other people experience that as well.
This phenomenological experience has given me something new to theorize about. I don’t believe in the interpretation that St. John of the Cross gave. I believe in naturalistic explanations for all “spiritual/mystical” experiences. But, I have never thought about why, psychologically, we do sometimes experience a dark night. Thanks for the food for thought.
7 Matt Bowman // Dec 9, 2006 at 5:51 pm
I posted about Joseph Smith as a John-of-the-Cross type mystic over at Mormon Mentality a couple of months ago. I think that modern American Protestantism (Mormonism included) has been infected with the theraputic movement; since God loves us, religion should make us warm and happy. That’s not John’s religion, or Calvin’s, or Luther’s. Or, I think, Joseph Smith’s. God and religion should be weird and sometimes terrible; hidden and awe-inducing. Christianity is a powerful religion because it finds redemption in blood; that, I think, speaks to the deep seriousness that lies at the bottom the search for ultimate meaning.
8 Watt Mahoun // Dec 9, 2006 at 10:05 pm
It seems to me that a dark night, of the type described in the poem, is only possible if one has never left piety behind. How exactly can one feel abandoned unless one still desperately believes in and desires the one who has done the abandonment?
I’m with Dave on this… I’ve experienced (and continue to experience to some degree) the dark night, but once my piety was reduced the world appeared brighter than before. In fact, I would call it my first experience with natural light.
Matt Bowman wrote:
Life has enough of this without institutionalizing and worshipping it as a god. We might just consider the possibility that what these men thought religion ought to be was laced with ignorance, superstition, and brutality.
We can and should trust ourselves to look forward at least as much as these venerable men did.
9 John // Dec 9, 2006 at 11:43 pm
Great comments everyone. Thank you, Lucy, for sharing your mother’s experience–it fits perfectly with the sort of thing I want to explore.
I believe that the institutional contexts frame spiritual expressions and filter out much of these sorts of comments. And I agree with Matt that religion has become very therapeutic and ignores much of what Rudolf Otto calls the mysterium trememdum. While I agree also with Dave that there are naturalistic explanations for these phenomena, I believe that the sense of reverential awe or numinous dread shouldn’t be dismissed, but rather should be appreciated and harnessed.
10 Matt Bowman // Dec 10, 2006 at 2:30 pm
Watt, on the contrary, the God of the mystics is beautiful because he is not completely understandable. There’s a humility there that is admirable, and an appreciation for the arational poetry of faith that I, though I’ve never had such an experience, value deeply.
11 Jonathan // Dec 12, 2006 at 8:55 am
Lol… Who’s to know?
But one thing that has always seemed true to me is that hardship and difficulty in life lead to maturity. This seems to hold true for almost all spheres of activity in a person’s life - whether home or work or the spiritual. In the careful observation of my own inner nature, as a person with free will, it appears that hardship is absolutely necessary for me to grow into a more balanced, humble, and mature person.
12 Miko // Dec 12, 2006 at 11:05 am
I think I’m with the concept of you-don’t-have-a-dark-night-without-faith (don’t know who suggested it first, now that I have it in my consciousness, it seems implicit in all comments…). I think that one can have a personal revelation about one’s place in the world without a diety but it does seem that, if one is raised with a diety, there is always a moment when one realizes (perhaps unconsciously) that there is no diety without faith and then despairs. “Is my faith enough to create this diety in my subconcious so that I can continue in a manner I have come to believe is ‘normal’? Can I continue as ‘normal’ if I know that I’m only believing in this diety because it makes me ‘normal’…?” I think this may be what Dawkins had in mind when he said that is was a form of child abuse to raise children as religious.
[Incidentally, I thought of everyone here when watching Brothers & Sisters on Sunday: a child on the show just found out she has diabetes and wants to explore her Jewish heritage in the hopes that the Jewish God will cure her (since her secular God did not). This gives us a foil for a great scene wherein her grandmother agrees that they are, in fact, ethnically Jewish but religiously secular humanist. “Sek-you-what?” is the child’s next line, followed by her mother telling her grandmother that she will send the therapy bills to her. Once again, Dawkin’s point.]
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