There Can Be No Rebirth Without A Dark Night of The Soul

As this death experience unfolds, we literally feel as if we are “dying,” as if “there is nothing to live for”—that “our life is over,” it is “hopeless to do anything,” and we are condemned forever to these feelings of darkness, doom, and gloom. Yet, within a relatively short period of time, within hours or sometimes days—depending on the immensity

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.

The sixteenth-century Saint John of the Cross coined the phrase “the dark night of the soul” to refer to a time of grief, doubt, and spiritual crisis, when God seems shadowy and distant.6