The Dark Night of the Soul

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.

To participate in the active nights, John says it is best to take up one’s cross and to imitate Christ to the best of one’s ability. This involves not only following Jesus’ external behavior, but also his inner attitude of self-emptying and willingness. With Christ as the model, John emphasizes that liberation comes neither through understanding, n

God is at once too immanently at one with us and too transcendently beyond us to be fully felt or appreciated in any normal way. John goes on to say that God’s true attributes are too perfect, too pure, and too delicate for any of our faculties to grasp.18

Everyone always has been and always will be in union with God. This union is so deep and complete that seeking God must include self-knowledge, and self-knowledge must include the search for God. Teresa heard God’s voice in prayer saying, “Seek yourself in Me, and in yourself seek Me.”3

As our dark nights deepen, we find ourselves recovering our love of mystery. When we were children, most of us were good friends with mystery. The world was full of it and we loved it. Then as we grew older, we slowly accepted the indoctrination that mystery exists only to be solved. For many of us, mystery became an adversary; unknowing became a w

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,

We do not understand that the changes we are experiencing are opening us to more free and complete love. Instead, our most common reaction is self-doubt. Because we assume we should be in charge of our spiritual lives, our first reaction is usually, “What am I doing wrong?” This self-doubt, combined with loss and confusion, explains why the passive

When Teresa and John speak of the soul, they are not talking about something a person has, but who a person most deeply is: the essential spiritual nature of a human being.

According to John, it takes love to realize this union; it happens in love, and however deep the realization is, it results in more love. In this manner, John says the soul “arrives at perfect union with God through love.”9