We must undergo a transformation that happens in the darkness of our unconscious, to reach the light. This mysterious and confusing transitional experience is called the dark night of the soul.
Video by Einzelgänger
Key Takeaways
"The endurance of darkness is preparation for great light."
We seek pleasure and avoid pain. And most of us are stuck in that cycle until death. However, some people go beyond the cycle, like Spanish mystics John of the Cross and his mentor Teresa of Ávila.
According to John and Teresa, humans have an inborn longing for completion. This completion cannot be achieved by worldly pleasures.
So, instead, we must go within, to reach the inner core of our soul in which ‘the divine’ lies hidden. Through spiritual awakening, we adopt a different perception of reality.
Our predicament becomes clear. Knowing that our past way of life never fills the void, while not knowing where to turn next, can leave us in despair.
This observation closely resembles what the Taoists call ‘Tao’, which is an undefinable and incomprehensible force, that cannot be understood by the human intellect.
John of the Cross became an apprentice of Carmelite nun Saint Teresa of Ávila in 16th-century Spain. Both were deeply concerned with the union between the soul and the divine, and both experienced a dark period in their lives during which their own unions took place.
"O guiding night! O night more lovely than the dawn! O night that has united the Lover with his beloved, transforming the beloved in her Lover."
Blinded by worldly pleasures (the things that our senses can perceive) it’s no surprise that many people don’t go beyond their search for sensual gratification.
"They grow up trying to adjust themselves to the values and strivings that surround them, but somehow their hearts are never in it. They have a deep awareness that fulfillment cannot be found through acquisition and achievement. They often feel like misfits because of the different, deeper, ungraspable love they feel inside them."
We know that the activities hold us back from achieving something that we cannot intellectually explain, but desire nonetheless.
No matter what we do, we’ll always feel the pull in a certain direction without exactly knowing why or where it leads us.
“The purest suffering bears and carries in its train the purest understanding,”
Therefore, the union that comes through the dark night of the soul entirely revolves around love. It’s the Lover seeking union with the Beloved, which is the divine. And the divine is in everything and everyone.
The dark night of the soul is a process of shedding off the ego.
This experience can range from quiet awareness to deep depression and hopelessness, so it doesn’t necessarily go together with pain.
Nevertheless, the frustrating thing about the dark night of the soul is that there’s no way to control what we cannot comprehend. We can’t fight it, nor can we intervene in its workings.
As John described:
"I abandoned and forgot myself, laying my face on my Beloved; all things ceased; I went out from myself, leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies."