The Dark Night of the Soul

Whether we admit or deny it, we are worshiping false gods. Most of the time, we try to deny it.

The classical spiritual term for this compulsive condition is attachment. The word comes from old European roots meaning “staked” or “nailed to.”

During the dark night of the senses, the soul finds freedom from its attachments to particular sensory gratifications, while the dark night of the spirit releases attachments to rigid beliefs and ways of thinking, frozen memories and expectations, and compulsive, automatic choices.

Sooner or later, there is nothing left to do but give up. And that is precisely the point, the purpose of the “dizzy spirit.” In each relinquishment, the person’s faculties are further emptied and sensitized and, more important, reliance upon God is deepened. John says God sends this “abominable spirit” not for the soul’s downfall, but to help prep

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.

For John, the spirit of blasphemy is an impulse to rage against God. Whether we look at the ancient Psalms or modern headlines, it is painfully easy to see the natural outcries that accompany tragedies in life. “Why me, God?” “Where were You in my suffering?”

The force of attraction between the soul and the center of God, however, is not gravity. It is love.10

This is the root meaning of the Spanish word oscura, translated as “dark,” as in noche oscura, “dark night.” As in the dark of a real night, Teresa could not see clearly.

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