The Dark Night of the Soul

Faith is, instead, a way of being, completely open, empty, as John would say, of all specifics. Contemplative faith is more like a continual fire of goodness, warming and illuminating every breath. Contemplative love is completely beyond comprehension. It is not love of some things to the exclusion of others, for that would be attachment. True love

He then goes on to enumerate five somewhat quaint ways in which the soul at dawn is like the sparrow on the rooftop. First, he says, as the sparrow likes high places, so the soul rises to “the highest contemplation.” Second, as the sparrow turns its face toward the wind, the soul turns toward the “Spirit of Love, which is God.” Third, the soul is s

In practical terms, this means that just as we often experience the obscurity and confusion of the dark night, we are also often given experiences of the dawn.

I have characterized the night as the ongoing spiritual process of our lives. We have periodic conscious experiences of it, but it continues at all times, hidden within us. We are aware of only the experiences that come to our consciousness. Thus what someone else might call “going through the dark night” I would call “having an experience of the d

One of the developments that the morning light reveals is growing freedom, experienced as the energy of desire is liberated from the attachments that have kept it restrained. A second change is the classical transition from meditation to contemplation in prayer and the equivalent movement in the rest of life: a metamorphosis of the soul from autono

Thus the dark night of the soul exists for the sole purpose of furthering love, a love that is partially realized in each experience of the dawn. In the last verse of his final poem, John writes of this awakening: How gently and lovingly you wake in my heart, where in secret you dwell alone; and in your sweet breathing, filled with good and glory,

Just as experiences of the night are dark because of their obscurity, experiences of the dawn are times of light, of seeing things more clearly. John is quick to say that the clarity of the dawn is not complete. The light, although divine, is not like the fierce sun of midday. It is, instead, a muted light of “early morning” or “rising dawn.” It co

By the time life begins to break our idols, we normally find ourselves deadened and insensitive to the tender gifts we’ve been seeking all along. It is as if we have gorged ourselves on rich meals for so long that we cannot appreciate the delicate freshness of a sip of spring water.

gross satisfactions and dulled by overstimulation. The dark night of the senses, through its dryness and the spirits it brings, serves to cleanse the faculties and to energize and sensitize them. To put it in more modern psychological terms, most of us become desensitized or habituated to the especially delicate experiences of life. Most of us live