Dark Night of the Soul: Learning on a dark night…

[Explor­ing Life] Dark­ness means an absence or defi­ciency of light. It cre­ates an intu­itive space in which the fragility of our own per­cep­tion becomes uncom­fort­ably appar­ent. Dark­ness immerses us in the unknown and ren­ders our beliefs inad­e­quate. On a dark night, when the veil of dark­ness merges with our sense of mean­ing and pur­pose our cer­tain­ties dis­solve — and we feel aban­doned. It is aban­don­ment that is, for me, the essence of a dark night of the soul. This deep and per­va­sive sense of aban­don­ment is not that which is cre­ated by lost friends or a lack of com­pany; we have lost our sense of self and place in the world. On a dark night we are embraced by a soli­tude of being which ampu­tates our sense of iden­tity. On a dark night, we reach a cross­road in which we can no longer be who we were and yet do not know who we are. A dark night of the soul is not merely an iden­tity cri­sis, it is the sud­den absence of iden­tity and an absolute loss of self. A dark night of the soul is the medium in which we learn about our own suf­fer­ing, and to learn about suf­fer­ing is to pur­sue the essence of pres­ence.

On a dark night,
Inflamed by love-longing–
O exquis­ite risk!–
Unde­tected I slipped away.
My house, at last, grown still.
(Dark Night of the Soul)

A Mod­ern Foun­da­tion For Suf­fer­ing: We live in a world in which the qual­ity and capac­ity our minds seem to be steadily dete­ri­o­rat­ing. Anx­i­ety is now a lifestyle. Dis­trac­tion is a default think­ing style. Igno­rant ideas such as mul­ti­task­ing take prece­dence. Non­sense mas­quer­ades as insight. In our world, knowl­edge build­ing does not serve to clar­ify; it fos­ters increas­ingly deeper lev­els of con­fu­sion and con­tra­dic­tion. The bland and arid sur­face of infor­ma­tion over­whelms the higher ground of com­pre­hen­sion and under­stand­ing. Exper­tism increas­ingly man­u­fac­tures vic­tims for its wares. The accel­er­a­tion and per­va­sive­ness of inter­ac­tion erodes our pow­ers of dis­cern­ment and con­cen­tra­tion; we obses­sively com­mu­ni­ca­tion more and more yet have increas­ingly lit­tle to share. And we become seduced into the vast fren­zied iner­tia that is our mod­ern tech­no­log­i­cal society.

The dark night of the soul is one of the foun­da­tional expe­ri­ences of being human and thus is found through­out the world’s reli­gious, spir­i­tual, and artis­tic tra­di­tions. Within these tra­di­tions, the mys­tics and artists, who yearn for a direct expe­ri­ence of tran­scen­dence, grap­ple most pro­foundly with the ques­tions of mean­ing inher­ent in the soul’s strug­gle after God. — Dark Night of the Soul in Chris­tian­ity and Other Religions

When our inte­rior world begins to fail and a sense of des­o­la­tion begins to over­whelm our sen­sory expe­ri­ence, soci­ety is quick to pro­vide the label of depres­sion. Of course, depres­sion is vir­u­lent and does infect our thought pat­terns, emo­tional states, and bio­log­i­cal func­tion­ing. To relieve our­selves from depres­sion we often seek to change our thought processes and/or use chem­i­cal inter­ven­tion to relieve the symp­toms. A dark night of the soul may invite depres­sion, how­ever, it is some­thing far more expan­sive and primal.

We have anes­thetized our­selves to spir­i­tu­al­ity. Reli­gion has become more of a ques­tion mark, per­haps even more of a road­block, than a place of belief. Merely adopt­ing a par­tic­u­lar set of beliefs, whether they be reli­gious or spir­i­tual in ori­gin, does not pre­vent a dark night of the soul from vis­it­ing. In essence, a dark night kid­naps us from the false secu­rity of our beliefs, tra­di­tions and faith. It is the mer­cu­r­ial space in which we ques­tion the very assump­tions of our own iden­tity and being. In a sense, a dark night is a phys­i­cal, men­tal and spir­i­tual abyss in which ques­tions such as, “Why am I here?” find no solace in our exist­ing sys­tems of knowl­edge or hope. In this sense, a dark night is the place of utter soli­tude and lone­li­ness — there is no one that can relieve this burden.

Per­haps, in a way, this kind of intense descrip­tion sounds exces­sive. Is there not enough mean­ing and value in our ordi­nary lives to pur­sue? Is it not enough to edu­cate our­selves, raise fam­i­lies, con­tribute to soci­ety, and retire well with­out adding in the angst gen­er­ated by the soul? Isn’t reli­gion enough — just choose one to believe and all will work out in the end? Is there really an inter­nal world,a spir­i­tual ter­rain, that we must tra­verse in order to relieve our bur­den and reach a calmer place? Is the angst of the soul really a delu­sion in itself, a source of suf­fer­ing that we have in fact man­u­fac­tured for our­selves in the pur­suit of false assump­tions and beliefs? Have we fallen vic­tim to our imag­i­na­tion and false reli­gious notions? More­over, why will­ingly fall into what is described as an abyss of suf­fer­ing, dis­lo­ca­tion, and desolation?

He [God] leads them into the dark night. Here is where he weans them from the breasts of per­sonal plea­sure, through pure arid­ity and inner dark­ness. He removes all the gra­tu­ities and child­ish attach­ments and helps them acquire the virtues by very dif­fer­ent means.

A dark night of the soul is a kind of learn­ing envi­ron­ment or medium for trans­for­ma­tion. We learn about our­selves in the dark­ness through con­tem­pla­tion. In this sense, suf­fer­ing is a phe­nom­e­non that must be fully inhab­ited in order to acquire its mes­sage. The tools of the dark­ness are lone­li­ness, soli­tude, sen­sory arid­ity, dis­il­lu­sion­ment, iso­la­tion, and des­o­la­tion. Dark­ness is a medium of suf­fer­ing that our body, mind and spirit become immersed in with the pur­pose of trans­for­ma­tion. St. John of the Cross refers to two kinds of dark­ness within a dark night of the soul. The first kind of dark­ness, the night of sense, the soul is puri­fied, while in the sec­ond kind of dark­ness, the night of the spirit, the spirit is purged and pre­pared for union with God.

The Medium of Darkness

The purifi­ca­tion of the soul is the pur­pose of the dark night. St. John of the Cross pre­sumes that there are two inter­de­pen­dent aspects to the soul: the sense and the spirit. Purifi­ca­tion of the soul means that both the senses and the spirit are puri­fied through divine com­mu­ni­ca­tion with God, or the source of life itself.

The dark night pro­ceeds in two phases. The first phase is the dark night of sense in which the senses are puri­fied. Unless the sense are puri­fied, true con­tem­pla­tion is not pos­si­ble, and there­fore spir­i­tual purifi­ca­tion is not pos­si­ble. The sec­ond and final phase is the dark night of the spirit in which the spirit is puri­fied. A basic premise is that both the senses and the spirit must be cleansed in order to purify the soul.

The dark night, which we name “con­tem­pla­tion,” cre­ates two kinds of dark­ness which align with the two aspects of human nature: the sen­sual and the spir­i­tual. In the first night of purifi­ca­tion, the soul is stripped of senses and accom­mo­dated to pure spirit. In the other night, the spirit itself is purged and made naked in readi­ness for the soul’s union of love with God. (Dark Night of the Soul)

St. John of the Cross char­ac­ter­izes the first night, the night of sense, as one expe­ri­enced by many peo­ple seek­ing spir­i­tual devel­op­ment. The sec­ond night, the night of spirit, as being quite rare and only expe­ri­enced by those who are deeply dis­ci­plined. While the first night is bit­ter and dev­as­tat­ing, it is far less excru­ci­at­ing than the sec­ond night, which he char­ac­ter­izes as hor­ren­dous and ter­ri­fy­ing to the spirit

1. The Dark Night of Sense: Purifi­ca­tion of the Senses
The night of sense is a purifi­ca­tion of the senses in which the soul is com­pletely unable to find con­so­la­tion in any expe­ri­ence or thing. In other words, the abil­ity to cre­ate mean­ing and pur­pose is absent and the soul feels inca­pac­i­tated, or what is fre­quently described as an inter­nal arid­ity. John of the Cross describes spe­cific kinds of expe­ri­ences that offer cri­te­ria for the night of sense:

• The Com­plete Absence of Plea­sure: …the soul finds no plea­sure in the things of God, she does not find con­so­la­tion in any cre­ated thing either;
• Painful Mem­ory: …mem­ory is car­ried con­stantly back to God with a depth of car­ing that is actu­ally painful to the soul:
• True Con­tem­pla­tion: The mind (thoughts, con­cepts, ideas, beliefs, desires, etc.) is inca­pac­i­tated and inca­pable of func­tion­ing lead­ing to true con­tem­pla­tion untainted by dis­cur­sive thought.
• Lost and Aban­doned: There is a deeply rooted feel­ing of being lost and aban­doned in the world, of being utterly unable to find mean­ing and pur­pose in that which is around us. The soul finds no delight in the mat­ters of the spirit.

The essen­tial pur­pose of the night of sense is a com­plete sur­ren­der to the con­tem­pla­tive qual­i­ties of still­ness, silence, and form­less­ness. The soul is no longer trou­bled by the labor of intel­lect, thought, and ideas. Con­tem­pla­tion is there­fore a means to expe­ri­ence spir­i­tual aware­ness with­out the pres­ence of thought or imag­i­na­tion. The attach­ment to sen­sory want and desire is anni­hi­lated, and humil­ity before that which is eter­nal is embraced.

Now the soul, inspired by the night, moves beyond cre­ated things and jour­neys toward eter­nal things.

Con­tem­pla­tion is the medium of the dark night: In con­tem­pla­tion, when the soul leaves behind the func­tions of the dis­cur­sive mind and enters the state of the adept, it is God who is work­ing in her. A dis­cur­sive mind is one that either tends toward aim­lessly wan­der­ing from one thought to another, or pro­ceeds from ratio­nale argu­ment rather than intu­ition. Either qual­ity is counter to the con­tem­pla­tive mind, which orig­i­nates in the absence of thought and the embrace of intu­itive aware­ness. An adept is there­fore pro­fi­cient in emp­ty­ing the mind of thought and remain­ing focused on the aware­ness of present moment. St. John of the Cross’ ideas about con­tem­pla­tion are sim­i­lar in kind to those found in other med­i­ta­tive prac­tices such as Yoga and Buddhism.

2. The Dark Night of Spir­i­tual Purifi­ca­tion
The purifi­ca­tion of the senses is a pre­req­ui­site to the purifi­ca­tion of the spirit: the purifi­ca­tion of the sense is only the gate­way to infused con­tem­pla­tion. Spir­i­tual purifi­ca­tion is the sec­ond and essen­tial phase in the purifi­ca­tion of the soul. With­out it, the soul can­not be fully trans­formed through the purity of the Cre­ator. Though the senses may be puri­fied, the spirit may still retain the stain of sen­sory attach­ments and may still suf­fer from a nat­ural dead­en­ing of the mind every­one con­tracts through wicked­ness.

John of the Cross iden­ti­fies the Spirit of Evil as the enemy of spir­i­tual purification:

…the Spirit of Evil makes many souls believe in vain visions and false proph­e­sies. This is where they may con­clude that God and the saints are talk­ing to them. This is where they are filled with arro­gance and pride. Moved by van­ity and arro­gance, they allow them­selves to be caught up in exter­nal dis­plays that make them appear holy, like trances and other exhibitions.

The Spirit of Evil is there­fore the source of illu­sion and decep­tion. In this sense evil is a means to fos­ter neg­a­tive qual­i­ties of spirit such as pride van­ity and arro­gance. We deceive our­selves about our­selves. Evil there­fore pro­hibits the cul­ti­va­tion of pos­i­tive spir­i­tual qual­i­ties such as humil­ity, com­pas­sion, and reverence.

The dark night of spir­i­tual purifi­ca­tion is sig­nif­i­cantly more chal­leng­ing and painful than the dark night of the senses. Ter­ror and suf­fer­ing infil­trate the dark­ness. The soul expe­ri­ences a sense of com­plete and utter depri­va­tion while leav­ing it with faith alone to counter the forces of the Spirit of Evil. The dark night of spir­i­tual purifi­ca­tion is there­fore a kind of spir­i­tual bat­tle­ground in which our spir­i­tual essence is tried, tor­mented, and suf­fers extreme depri­va­tion. The only weapon we have in our own defense is to sub­mit to faith.

The dark night of spir­i­tual purifi­ca­tion will last years: But if it is authen­tic, it will last for a num­ber of years how­ever intense it may be. Dur­ing this period of time the soul will unre­lent­ingly feel as if there is some­thing miss­ing from deep within her essence. While there may may inter­vals of rel­a­tive relief, the pres­ence of an enemy within remains, an enemy who might at any moment wake up and wreak havoc.

Spir­i­tual purifi­ca­tion is a process lead­ing to a divine union. This union is bonded by both love and wisdom:

It is love that infuses mys­ti­cal wis­dom; God never bestows wis­dom with­out love. …The very same divine wis­dom that puri­fies and illu­mines these souls cleanses the angels of igno­rance and give them under­stand­ing. This wis­dom flows from God from the first lev­els to the last and on into the human realm.

The Obsta­cles to Learning

All learn­ing invites obsta­cles and uncer­tainty. St. John of the Cross out­lines seven imper­fec­tions com­monly found in the spir­i­tual prac­tices of begin­ners. The seven imper­fec­tions are spir­i­tual pride, greed, lust, anger, glut­tony, envy, and laziness.

1. Spir­i­tual Pride: Begin­ners are often anx­ious to be rec­og­nized and praised. They seek the atten­tion of oth­ers, and worse they secretly seek the admi­ra­tion of oth­ers. In a sense, their spir­i­tual prac­tice is aimed at exter­nal dis­play be embrac­ing behav­iors that in some man­ner set them apart and dis­tin­guish them as hav­ing some form of spir­i­tual aura. Spir­i­tual “mas­ters” are sought after in order to pur­sue their own desire to become a revered spir­i­tual mas­ter. Spir­i­tual begin­ners will often strive to hide their faults, or self-condemn them­selves openly — in other words they seek to cre­ate a facade to present to oth­ers. They pre­sume to teach rather than learn. Their own pride deters spir­i­tual advance­ment and mires them is shal­low dis­plays of ego.

Yet those on the true path to per­fec­tion walk in a spe­cial way through all this. They are assisted by their very humil­ity, plac­ing lit­tle impor­tance on their own efforts and draw­ing lit­tle sat­is­fac­tion from their accom­plish­ments… With deep tran­quil­ity and humil­ity, they yearn to learn from any­one who might have any­thing to teach them… They never pre­sume to be right about any­thing. They do not feel like talk­ing about them­selves… keep their trea­sures con­cealed and reveal only their imperfections.

2. Spir­i­tual Greed: Spir­i­tual begin­ners are often plagued the need to acquire and con­sume mate­r­ial attach­ments. They are entranced by orna­men­ta­tion and mul­ti­plic­ity, rather than the actual sub­stance of devotion.

Those who begin ell and progress along their path are the souls who do not attach them­selves to vis­i­ble instru­ments or bur­den them­selves with acqui­si­tions. They are not inter­ested in know­ing more than is nec­es­sary to do good works. Whether spir­i­tual or tem­po­ral; pos­ses­sions, these souls are happy to lie with­out them…

3. Spir­i­tual Lust: The spir­i­tual begin­ner is eas­ily dis­tracted by sen­su­ous crav­ing; their soul is frag­ile and can fall prey to sen­sual long­ings. The desire to free one­self of sen­sual crav­ing can rein­force it even in the midst of prayer. Some spir­i­tual begin­ners are so del­i­cate that they are eas­ily bur­dened feel­ings that pro­duce emo­tional suf­fer­ing and pre­vent spir­i­tual growth.

…love con­nected to the senses ends up in sen­su­al­ity while love that blos­soms in the spirit stays with spirit and grows deeper.

4. Spir­i­tual Anger: Once new lev­els of spir­i­tual expe­ri­ence deepen, the peri­ods of time when it is with­drawn leads to dis­tress and anger in the spir­i­tual begin­ner. The spir­i­tual begin­ner may also feel per­pet­ual annoy­ance at what they per­ceive to be the trans­gres­sions of oth­ers. Fur­ther, they may also feel anger at their own imperfections.

This impa­tience is not humil­ity… Many begin­ners have big plans and high inten­tions, but they are not hum­ble; they fail to ques­tion them­selves. They have no patience to wait..

5. Spir­i­tual Glut­tony: Spir­i­tual begin­ners will often relent­lessly pur­sue the delights found within their ini­tial spir­i­tual expe­ri­ences. This pur­suit becomes an obses­sion and form of glut­tony. They become moti­vated by the “pecu­liar plea­sures they find in super­fi­cial self-sacrifice.”

Don’t they real­ize that sen­sory ben­e­fits are the least gifts offered by the divine? …Spir­i­tual tem­per­ance and for­bear­ance will cre­ate a sacred space of sac­ri­fice, awe, and sur­ren­der. The soul will begin to see that gen­uine value does not reside in the mul­ti­plic­ity of spir­i­tual activ­i­ties or in the delight they bring, but in know­ing how to gen­tly deny her­self within them.

6. Spir­i­tual Envy: Spir­i­tual begin­ners when they per­ceive some­one else is ahead of them on the spir­i­tual path. They are lack­ing in char­ity toward their fel­low spir­i­tual seekers.

…those whose hearts hold char­ity are happy when another sur­passes them in ser­vice to God; they are well aware of their own inad­e­quacy in serv­ing him.

7. Spir­i­tual Lazi­ness: Spir­i­tual begin­ners can become bored of those things that are the most pro fondly spir­i­tual, and instead focus on sen­sory sat­is­fac­tion. These souls are lazy and impa­tient when imme­di­ate grat­i­fi­ca­tion is not found. They may aban­don spir­i­tual rit­u­als that do not imme­di­ately pro­duce what they crave.

A Dark Night of Learning:

In the midst of a dark night of the soul, how­ever, there is no pre­req­ui­site to cre­ate the infra­struc­ture for learn­ing. In this sense learn­ing has noth­ing to do with edu­ca­tion or train­ing. The con­tent of a dark night is not pre­de­ter­mined; the con­tent for learn­ing is the mer­cu­r­ial call­ing and relent­less pur­suit of the soul. Con­tent is there­fore emer­gent and orig­i­nates in direct expe­ri­ence. The learn­ing envi­ron­ment demands per­sis­tent impro­vi­sa­tion in order for the learner to nav­i­gate it. The nature and char­ac­ter of learn­ing in the spir­i­tual realm is far removed from learn­ing in the realm of education.

The mind is pro­foundly immersed in the knowl­edge and feel­ing of its lim­i­ta­tions and mis­eries… The soul has no clue that she is advanc­ing on her path… She is los­ing her­self to all that she has ever known or tasted. She is walk­ing a road of entirely new fla­vors and new knowl­edge… To get to an unknown land by unknown roads, a trav­eler can­not allow him­self to be guided by his old expe­ri­ence… When an appren­tice is learn­ing new details about his trade, he works in dark­ness. If he were to cling to old meth­ods, he would not make any progress… The soul is mak­ing the most progress when she is trav­el­ing through the deep­est dark­ness, know­ing nothing.

Edu­ca­tion has a curi­ous ten­dency to avoid the inevita­bles in life. While our abil­ity to com­pose an essay and con­duct aca­d­e­mic research may pro­lif­er­ate, our capac­ity for main­tain­ing resilience in the face of mys­tery, the unknown, and the unex­pected is extremely frag­ile. The expe­ri­ence of learn­ing described by St. John of the Cross is dra­mat­i­cally dif­fer­ent. Here is a list of qual­i­ties I find to be essen­tial to a dark night of learning:

1. Inevitabil­ity: The nature of the learn­ing to be embraced is inevitable. In this sense, learn­ing is a response to sit­u­a­tions and cir­cum­stances that have emerged from mys­te­ri­ous, unknown and unex­pected sources within the psy­che. Spir­i­tual learn­ing is there­fore not man­dated by social decree; it is an unavoid­able real­ity of being alive.
2. Mys­tery: The learn­ing envi­ron­ment is the medium of dark­ness. Dark­ness means absolute mys­tery in which we expe­ri­ence a sense of com­plete dis­ori­en­ta­tion. We find our­selves in unex­pected and unfa­mil­iar places and spaces. Our very notion of motion and move­ment is con­fused by an inabil­ity to find a direc­tion to pur­sue. Immersed in mys­tery we have the choice to embrace it or suc­cumb to it.
3. Con­tem­pla­tion: Con­tem­pla­tion is the capac­ity to move out sen­sory entan­gle­ment toward pure aware­ness. This is a form of men­tal dis­ci­pline, or mind­ful­ness, which pro­vides the essen­tial foun­da­tion for inter­ac­tion within a medium of dark­ness. Con­tem­pla­tion forms the fab­ric of com­mu­ni­ca­tion in spir­i­tual learning.
4. Expe­ri­ence: All exist­ing knowl­edge that a per­son has acquired in life is of no use in nav­i­gat­ing through a dark night of the soul. Knowl­edge emerges through inter­ac­tion with the unknown; knowl­edge orig­i­nates in the con­tem­pla­tive expe­ri­ence. The pur­pose of expe­ri­ence is to dis­cover wis­dom and love, not knowl­edge and skill.
5. Impro­vi­sa­tion: Impro­vi­sa­tion is the main activ­ity of learn­ing. The sen­sa­tion of learn­ing is vast and per­ilous. Learn­ing does not feel safe or clin­i­cal. are no les­son plans or instruc­tional mod­ules to guide us. Learn­ing is inex­orably embed­ded within the processes of emer­gence. Learn­ing is raw and immersed in emo­tional tur­moil that deeply affects both the body and the mind. There is a pri­mal instinc­tual feel­ing that learn­ing is really about the sur­vival of body, mind, and spirit. In other words, a fail­ure in learn­ing could mean a fail­ure in survival.
6. Absolute Loss: The progress of learn­ing is directly related to the qual­ity of loss we expe­ri­ence. This means that until the indi­vid­ual fully expe­ri­ences the absolute futil­ity of their own pre­ex­ist­ing knowl­edge, real progress can­not be made. Exist­ing knowl­edge is a deter­rent to learn­ing; progress first means the absolute loss of going back to zero. Spir­i­tual learn­ing in the dark night of the soul is there­fore deeply trau­matic and unset­tling. The indi­vid­ual can be over­come with feel­ings of iso­la­tion, despon­dency, and depression.
7. Sur­vival: Learn­ing in the spir­i­tual realm is not nec­es­sar­ily a safe endeavor. If learn­ing fails, it may in fact mean a fail­ure of the indi­vid­ual. The nature of the fail­ure can range from an inabil­ity to progress spir­i­tu­ally to depres­sion or even death.

One of the great­est lim­i­ta­tions to learn­ing is a fail­ure to embrace the unknown, the unex­pected, and the mys­te­ri­ous in life. A great deal of our men­tal effort is spent in a vain attempt to avoid these inevita­bles in life. Learned avoid­ance is a process in which we intel­lec­tu­ally jus­tify var­i­ous ways and means of learn­ing designed to inten­tion­ally avoid that which we find uncom­fort­able or too dif­fi­cult to face. We are often so frail in the face of imper­ma­nence that we seek modes of learn­ing that pro­vide an illu­sion of con­trol and the delu­sion of per­ma­nence. Spir­i­tual learn­ing reveals our addic­tion to learned avoid­ance pat­terns and forces them into sub­mis­sion. This is not as much an act of per­sonal will and intent, as it is a deep a mer­cu­r­ial call­ing from some­where within our own psy­che, or what John of the Cross calls the soul.

Related

1. Deli­cious: Dark Night of the Soul
2. YouTube Chan­nel: Spirit