A Dark Night of the Soul always arrives uninvited, yet it could be the best thing
to ever happen. It’s a sacred initiation into the underbelly of the soul that
will make you feel cursed and blessed at the same time. Dark Nights of the
Soul are all the rage these days. Our civilisation is self-destructing and we
seem powerless to stop it. Some say we have brought ourselves to this dangerous
precipice through our collective blindness, arrogance and selfishness, and that
may be true. But we may also be on the brink of a breakthrough.
I don’t want to get into a forensic examination of our nihilistic culture. It does no good to pick at your wounds. I want to find a way through the darkness to the light at the end of the tunnel – if it exists.
The best we can say of
these dark times is that we have entered a Global Spiritual Crisis designed to
release us from our bad habits into a revelation of the true nature of Reality.
Whether or not we succeed is yet to be seen. Many are now being plunged into
their own personal spiritual crises as old structures disintegrate and
certainties are challenged.
So what is this process
called the Dark Night and how can we find our way through it?
Not a Dark Night
Most people experience
periods of sadness and darkness in their lives at some point, and the phrase
‘Dark Night of the Soul’ is often used to describe them. But this may not be
entirely accurate. ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ may be one of the most misused
phrases in English, along with words like Love, Mysticism, and God.
A Dark Night of the
Soul is not just a normal depression (although that can be hard enough to live
with). It isn’t about having a difficult time because things aren’t going your
way and you’re not getting what you want out of life. Many people struggle with
the negative emotions and confusion that can arise due to big life changes like
losing a job, getting a divorce, or suffering with failing health, but that
does not equal a Dark Night.
Those with a spiritual
practice also encounter problems as the subconscious is stirred up, giving rise
to heightened sensitivity, confusion, fear and negativity. But these
disturbances can usually be handled by continuing to practise.
A Dark Night goes
deeper.
What is the Dark Night of the Soul?
The Dark Night of the
Soul most often occurs as part of the spiritual path. It is a crisis of meaning
and identity that rips the ground out from under your feet. Once you reach a
certain point of the spiritual journey the Dark Night becomes inevitable and
can come as quite a shock.
“Say he knows you are ready to receive him and to be annihilated in love. Can you say YES to that?” – Mirabai Starr
It begins when
everything seems to be going so well. Many people take up meditation or
spiritual practice with the intention of improving themselves. You want to be
happier, calmer, healthier, more in control, and so on. There is nothing wrong
in this, and for a little while it even works. But there is another side to
meditation and spiritual practice which is rarely understood, at least not by
beginners.
There is an inherent
paradox at the heart of this approach which ultimately undermines itself: the ego is attempting to improve itself,
but the ego is part of the problem.
Meditation is designed
to undermine your sense of self. It gradually shifts the focus of
identification away from your small personal perspective onto the unlimited
ground of your experience – awareness. In time, this deconstructs the ego and
all its attachments. A regular and consistent meditation practice will break up
your mental habits, disrupt your value system and force you confront the shadow
side of your consciousness.
Of course, the ego will
only cooperate with this process as long as things are going well and you
appear to be making progress. As soon as the ego gets wind of its imminent
destruction, all hell breaks loose and you enter the Dark Night of the Soul.
So the Dark Night of
the Soul is a process of transformation which takes you from identification
with the ego to transcendence and identification with the higher Self. To put
it another way, it takes you from reliance on the self to reliance on the
divine. You move from believing you are in control of your life and your
choices, to an acceptance that this is impossible and you are not, and never
have been, in control.
It is an act of sacred
destruction involving the purgation of the personal will and a confrontation
with existential despair, sometimes called the Death of the Ego. In the Dark Night of the Soul, you consciously
live through your own death.
When does the Dark Night begin?
Technically, the Dark
Night begins after awakening and
represents a point of no return. It tends to happen after an encounter with the
truth of No Self or non-being. Through an act of grace, you attain insight into
the true nature of the self, or a state of mystical union with God, and the
true work of spiritual practice begins.
This work involves the
self learning that it is not separate from life. Everything that happens from
this point on is designed to undermine that sense of separation until you can
surrender totally and unconditionally. It sounds a simple thing, but the ego
can put up quite a fight.
The depth and subtlety
of your attachments will slowly be revealed as the Dark Night unfolds. I’ve
lost count of the number of times I believed I was following the higher Self’s
will, only to discover my ego had slipped in the back door and taken over.
Back in high school,
there was a boy in my class who was always pulling pranks and messing about.
One day, the English teacher, a rotund man with an enormous ginger beard, sent
this boy to stand outside the door in punishment for being disruptive. But the
boy (I can’t remember his name) managed to slip back into the room unnoticed.
He crawled between the desks and slid into his seat while the teacher’s back
was turned. The entire class remained silent until the teacher turned around,
saw the boy and erupted in anger, sending the rest of us into fits of laughter.
This is what the ego
does. It distracts, entertains, misdirects, and generates drama, all in an
attempt to avoid the inevitable. In a very real sense, the Dark Night of the
Soul is just one long ego tantrum.
“God ties your hands and feet to be able to carry on His work without interference; and you do nothing but struggle, and make every effort, but in vain, to break these sacred bonds, and to work yourself according to your own inclination. What infidelity!” – Jean-Pierre deCaussade
Different versions of the Dark Night
The phrase ‘Dark Night
of the Soul’ was first used by Christian mystic St John of the Cross in his classic text of the same name. He
describes two different spiritual crises: the
Night of Sense, and the Night of the
Spirit. The first acts as preparation for the second, and while both are
tough, the Dark Night of the Spirit is excruciating.
In the Night of Sense
your attachments to worldly pleasures fall away as the senses are purified.
Then in the Night of the Spirit your mind empties and your will is broken.
Everything falls away and you are powerless to act. Even meditation and prayer
stops working at this point. You may feel lost and abandoned by God, or as if
you are falling into madness.
There is another Dark
Night which goes beyond even the Night of the Spirit, but this happens rarely
and seems to be reserved for saints. In this, the soul suffers on behalf of
others as an act of service.
Some of the
descriptions of the Dark Night of the Spirit are truly terrifying. The soul is
pulled into an existential abyss and torn apart. It is a spiritual rite of
passage, like Jonah slowly dissolving in the belly of the whale until he is
ready to fulfil his divine destiny. You may believe you are in darkness, but
that is an illusion. As St John of the Cross explains:
“Darkened and emptied, the soul is purified and illumined by divine light. Like the ray of light that remains invisible even in the middle of a room as long as it has nothing to bump up against, so this divine light is invisible to the purified soul and she thinks she is in darkness.”
All seems lost, but you
only suffer at this stage of the process because you still believe you are
separate. If you can let go and allow the apparent darkness to do its work, the
light will return and you will see with new eyes.
The Dark Night in other traditions
In Buddhism the Dark
Night of the Soul is called Falling into
the Pit of the Void. It can happen after you gain insight into the
emptiness of all phenomena and see the reality of No Self.
In Vipassana the Dark
Night is experienced as part of the dukkha
nanas which arise following the realisation of Arising and Passing Away (A
& P, for short). In this tradition, these stages of the path have lovely
names, such as Dissolution, Fear, Misery, Disgust, and Desire for Deliverance.
These are seen as challenging stages of the process and are considered a sign
of progress. The aim is to continue practising until you gain Equanimity.
It’s interesting to
compare the experience of the Dark Night between traditions as each has its own
characteristic approach. Reading descriptions of the suffering of the Christian
mystics is a hair-raising experience; there seems to be an awful lot of wailing
and misery and ‘woe is me’ type stuff. David says, “You have put far from me my
friends and acquaintances; they consider me an abomination.” And this from
Ezechiel: “I shall gather up the bones and light them on fire. The flesh shall
be consumed and the whole composition burned, and the bones shall be
destroyed.” And Jeremiah has this rather spectacular rant:
“I am the man who sees my poverty in the rod of his indignation. He has roused me from slumber and led me into darkness and not into light. He has turned and turned his hand against me all the day. My skin and my flesh he has made old. He has broken my bones. He has built a fence around me and encircled me with bitterness and labour. He has set me in a dark place, as those who are forever dead… He has thwarted my footsteps. He has become as a lion, hiding in secret places. He has twisted my steps and broken me in pieces… One by one he has broken my teeth. He has fed me on ashes. My soul is a stranger to peace…”
It goes on…
Although I can relate to some of the sentiments expressed, there is another part of me that thinks (perhaps uncharitably) “get over yourself.” Maybe the emphasis on suffering that characterises Christianity affects the way these experiences are described. In contrast, Buddhism emphasises equanimity and selflessness, and so the experience of the Dark Night is seen as a stage to move through without getting attached. Perhaps there’s no real difference in the experience, just in the cultural conditioning and language used. (Also, it’s unfair to quote out of context. When you’re in the middle of it, the death throes of the ego feel very real, even if they are ultimately illusory.)
Although I can relate to some of the sentiments expressed, there is another part of me that thinks (perhaps uncharitably) “get over yourself.” Maybe the emphasis on suffering that characterises Christianity affects the way these experiences are described. In contrast, Buddhism emphasises equanimity and selflessness, and so the experience of the Dark Night is seen as a stage to move through without getting attached. Perhaps there’s no real difference in the experience, just in the cultural conditioning and language used. (Also, it’s unfair to quote out of context. When you’re in the middle of it, the death throes of the ego feel very real, even if they are ultimately illusory.)
I have found both
approaches useful in their own way. The torment and suffering described by the
Christian mystics puts my own pain into perspective, and the rationality of
Buddhist equanimity helps me to let go of that pain and not take it personally.
Dark Night or Pathology?
Shinzen Young describes
the Dark Night of the Soul as Enlightenment’s Evil Twin and says that in modern
terms it would be described as Depersonalisation
and De-realisation Disorder (as it is listed in the DSM). He also thinks
it’s quite rare. The true Dark Night happens, he says, when you have trouble
integrating the insight into selflessness and non-being.
>Watch a fascinating video of Shinzen Young discussing
Experiences of the Dissolution Process with a man who had a terrifying
ordeal as part of his awakening.
The breakdown of the
self can be disorienting and makes it hard to deal with daily life, but there
is a real danger in seeing this experience as pathological. As Shinzen
indicates, it’s only a problem if you can’t let go of the self, and you’re much
more likely to have that problem if you think the Dark Night is a bad thing.
This experience is not a sign that something has gone wrong.
Perhaps we struggle
with the dissolution of the self because our culture is so egotistical. To move
away from the self towards selflessness could be seen as naïve, deluded or
crazy, but that doesn’t mean it is.
Who will have a Dark Night?
Some say the Dark Night
is an unavoidable part of spiritual awakening and will be experienced by
everyone in some form or another. While others say it is rare. Perhaps this
just reflects different definitions of the Dark Night, but it does seem to be
the case that some people go through it relatively easily, while others have
extreme problems and find the loss of self terrifying.
Willoughby Britton of
Brown University has researched the Dark Night of the Soul, which she defines
as “the inability of an adult to work or take care of children”, and says that
serious complications requiring hospitalisation occur in less than 1% of cases.
That definition seems
extreme to me. In my (admittedly limited) experience, I was able to hold down a
full-time job during one of my Dark Nights, and graduate from college during
the first, and in neither case was it easy. My third Dark Night is underway now
and although I have bad days (and weeks), I am slowly learning to let go.
Perhaps the quality of
your experience depends on other factors, such as the structure of your
personality, the stability of your spiritual practice, access to a good teacher
for guidance, and karma. If you find yourself mired in a Dark Night, the
chances are you have been through it before, especially if your spiritual
journey begins with a descent into darkness against your will.
Most people
encountering the Dark Night will do so because they have chosen to work on
themselves as part of a spiritual practice. But it is possible to have an
insight into the nature of the self and non-being without having any kind of
spiritual practice. This was how my spiritual journey began, and I can only
assume my soul prepared for the experience in other lives (either that, or I am nuts!). This is particularly hard
because you are plunged into a kind of hell without any sense of why or what is
going on.
What is the point of the Dark Night?
The Dark Night varies
in length and intensity. You may burn through it fairly quickly, or it could
take years or even lifetimes. Willoughby Britton’s research found it lasted from
six months to 12 years, with an average duration of three years.
You may also experience
more than one Dark Night. The deconstruction of your ego attachments happens
over a long period of time so it may take many attempts to strip back the
layers of your personality. The Dark Night is like a storm system circling
round and round. It hits you for a little while, then moves away and life
settles down, only for the storm to return. It will do this as many times as is
necessary for you to let go of whatever no longer serves your spiritual growth.
In the end, the point
of the Dark Night of the Soul is to bring you to enlightenment. Most people
don’t achieve this in one hop, as it were. It takes time and discipline and
practise. And compassion, patience, and humility.
And you must be ready
for the experience. Paradoxically, you need to have a strong sense of self
before you will be willing to sacrifice that self. That strength is required
because the process of dissolution can be so punishing. Those who are too
weak-minded or who lack courage, will not get far along this path.
For anyone who believes
mystics are wishy-washy or that love is for fools, all I can say is: try it!
Ultimately, the Dark
Night is about love. Can you say yes to life even if you are suffering? Can you
keep your heart open even as it is breaking? Can you live up to your highest
ideals in a less than perfect world that seems intent on self-destruction?
“If he could see his nothingness and his deadly, festering wound, pain would arise from looking within, and that pain would save him.” - Rumi
Addled:
Adventures of a Reluctant Mystic is a fictionalised account of my
experience of awakening and the Dark Night. Find out more here.
