The Dark Night of the Soul: A Psychiatrist Explores the Connection Between Darkness and Spiritual Growth by Gerald May
“Mindy, if God takes you to the desert, go to the desert and learn what the desert has to teach you.”
I received those unwelcome but perfectly aimed words from a mentor during a particularly difficult season of my life. Unwelcome because I wanted to hear the path out. Out of the desert. Out of the disillusion. Out of the suffering. Out of the confusion. Out of the hopelessness.
Instead, I found her advice raised disturbing questions…
- “Could God actually lead me to the desert?” (You’d think I had a better sense of this from the biblical record, but in the moment it seemed impossible that following God could actually lead to such a desperate, dry, and hopeless place.)
- “Do I have a choice to cooperate with my being in the desert right now? What would it mean for me to willingly GO to this desert, as one being led?”
- And the most difficult but intriguing of all: “Could it be that there are things for me to learn that can only be learned in a desert? Could there really be a gift for me in this barrenness?”
I shudder to think how my life may have strayed in further false and shallow directions without her keen guidance at that critical juncture. To this day, I am not certain whether my friend quoted an author left unnamed in that sensitive moment, or if her advice emerged from honest reflection on the path she herself walked. Either way, it guided me. It helped me surrender, yield, pay attention. And I have often passed on these exact words to others who similarly resisted the message and benefitted from the questions raised.
“Mainly, sometimes, in the midst of things going terribly wrong, something is going just right. But that’s the devil of it; there is no way to know for sure. All we can do is hope for the dawn.” p. 180
Some years later, I discovered the long history of writing and spiritual direction that honored similar seasons of something like spiritual anarchy in the soul—particularly in the soul of one whose former general experience of God had been quite strong. The teaching most directly relates to a book authored by St. John of the Cross, a Spanish monk from the 16th century, entitled Dark Night of the Soul.
I have never read St. John’s original work, though I often hear it quoted. I was delighted when a gifted and insightful writer, Gerald May, released a new book by that same title in an attempt to both clarify and amplify St. John’s original work, and to place it in a modern setting.
“This deepening of love is the real purpose of the dark night of the soul. The dark night helps us become who we are created to be; lovers of God and one another.” p. 47
May’s book sets John in his historical context and opened me up to a vivid picture of a young man with a deep love for God and brilliant intellect. No stranger to suffering, May traces through the years of John’s early development and call into ministry, ultimately becoming a reformer in collaboration with his mentor and friend of many years, Theresa of Avila. The close ideological relationship between John and Teresa can be seen in the way their written works bear similar emphases.
One of the most striking areas clarified for me was this: the experience of a “dark night”, according to John and Theresa, is not in fact just a season of difficulty. May asserts that a deeper meaning has been often lost in translation with the word, dark. Dark in John’s sense did not refer to something sinister or particularly bad. Rather, the Spanish word in John’s writing is oscura. May writes,
Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, another Carmelite mystic, lived in seventeenth-century France. At one point in his famous treatise, The Practice of the Presence of God, he says, “People would be surprised if they knew what their souls said to God sometimes.” Centuries before Freud “discovered” the unconscious, contemplatives such as Brother Lawrence, Teresa, and John had a profound appreciation that there is an active life of the soul that goes on beneath our awareness. It is to this unconscious dimension of the spiritual life that Teresa and John refer to when they use the term “dark”.… For them, it simply means obscure. In the same way that things are difficult to see at night, the deepest relationship between God and person is hidden from our conscious awareness.
In speaking of la nocha oscura, the dark night of the soul, John is addressing something mysterious and unknown, but by no means sinister or evil…. John says it is one thing to be in oscuras and quite another to be in tinieblas (the sinister kind of darkness). In oscuras things are hidden; in tinieblas one is blind. In fact, it is the very blindness of tinieblas, our slavery to attachment and delusion, that the dark night of the soul is working to heal. (p. 67-68)
The third question my friend’s advice raised for me is what I believe opened me up to this work of God in “dark” or obscure regions of my soul. It made sense to me that perhaps there were things God could or would do in my soul that would happen below the water line of my conscious awareness. I would be wise to allow that work to happen rather than resist it. I could learn to settle into a peace in God, minus the experience of God.
I’d like to leave you with a few of my favorite passages from the book; hopefully they will inspire you to read the whole of it! In reading, I felt like I got to know John and Teresa as friends, as trusted guides. And I discovered a vision and corresponding language to give words to my own experiences as well as those I love and serve. Few of my books are as underlined, scribbled in, and dog-eared as this.
May we all grow in our capacity to go wherever God leads, and to learn what that environment has to teach.
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Nada te turbe; Let nothing disturb you;
nada te espante; Let nothing make you afraid;
todo se pasa; All things pass;
Dios no se muda; But God is unchanging,
la paciencia Patience
todo lo alcanza is enough for everything
Quien a Dios tiene, You who have God
nada le falta lack nothing,
Solo Dios basta. God alone is sufficient.
Let Nothing Disturb You or Theresa’s Bookmark
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So What? (p. 194)
If there were such a thing as a divine suggestion box, I’d suggest that God make things easier. Or if not easier, at least clearer. I would love to close this book with something more substantial than empty faith, unattached love, and hopeless hope. I would love to be able to make practical suggestions about how to identify and claim the transformative qualities of the dark night in your own life. I yearn to offer something that would really make the hard times easier and bring a definite sense of meaning to the unavoidable sufferings of life. It would be so wonderful to be able to prescribe effective methods or understandings that could help us all get a grip on our destinies. But the nature of the dark night does not permit that. It comes as a gift and in obscurity, as and when it will, taking us where we would not and could not go on our own. And though in truth we say yes to it, we have little or no control over it. The reason for the obscurity, John says, is to keep us safe, so we don’t stumble because we think we know where we’re going. I do want to trust that.
All we have in our own hands is our desire, which is at once our prayer, our yes, and our hope. For me, in the good times, hope is synonymous with trust. I move into the next moment with confidence and an expectation of goodness. In the hard times, hope takes on an increasing feeling of risk. I hope for the best, but the next moment feels uncertain, even scary. And in the worst of times, the hope and desire may be reduced to a bare ember, so faint as to be almost undetectable. But it is always there, and sooner or later we are drawn to it. I believe that with repeated experiences of touching that desire, we do learn to recognize it, claim it, and know it as who we really are. Maybe, in a way, that is a kind of progress.
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Mindy Caliguire is founder and president of Soul Care, a spiritual formation ministry, and serves as a frequent speaker and consultant for ministries and churches. She has authored several books, including Spiritual Friendship, as part of the Soul Care Series. She and her husband, Jeff, make their home in Algonquin, Illinois, and are active members at Willow Creek Community Church.
Interested in reading more of the dark nightof the soul.
I have frequently read John 21:18-19 and wondered if this was more than a concrete response, with death meaning death of the ego and going to “deserts” and places of weakness that would bring a good humiliation and growth in trust, to God’s glory. “Follow Me” comes immediately afterward. Our part is the willingness to enter the unknown darkness in faith.
I have read and reread Gerald May. I find his thoughts and insights profound and affirming of what my heart has come to know. I’m not sure that “dark night” is as much about our willing as our recognizing. If the dark night is a gift might it be about receiving and resting in the unknown. I have personally found it is about letting go of my need to make meaning, to learn from the experiences, to understand. I also sense that many followers of Jesus experience dark nights and do not have words or perspective that allows them to “enter in and know that He is God!” What God does in these times is most often known in retrospect. May we be more willing to bless others in the real places they find themselves, rather than contributing to their sense of doubt and confusion. Just some thoughts…Cheryl