Dark Night of the Soul

In the late 1570s, the Spanish Carmelite monk who would become St. John of the Cross was imprisoned by his brothers, opposing his attempted reformations within the Order. Alone, betrayed, hard work dashed and life left seemingly aimless, St. John proceeded to compose the wonderful poem, La Noche Oscura del Alma. Later in 1584, he proceeded to write a theological commentary of the same title on the poem, discussing each stanza.

Dark Night of the Soul is, as with most mystical texts, not an easy read, and not one for every reader. Beautiful as his ideas are, most translations (particularly of E. Allison Peers, from which this author uses as reference) are bulky and wordy. In some cases, this is necessary, but in most areas - notably Book 1 Chapter 1 - many terms are overly specified and repetitive.

In recent (relatively speaking) years, the concept of the Dark Night of the Soul has been given a more scientific treatment and title: Positive Disintegration, the theory of personality development that sees tension, anxiety, despair, and other severe negative experiences as vital to human growth. It is comparable to a snake shedding its skin, or to better reflect its horrible agony, a phoenix arising from the ashes. But like the serpent and his skin, it is a key part part of his maturing, though the Disintegration is a spiritual phenomenon rather than a biological.

The Dark Night, though, is best described as spiritual desolation: sorrow becomes the norm, sensations become caustic and uncomfortable, and, darker than any night on earth, all light fades away. St. Therese of Lisieux once told her Carmelite sisters about such an experience concerning the afterlife, saying "If you only knew what darkness I am plunged into."

John of the Cross, for his part, attempts to describe the experience of his joy of union with divinity versus the unspeakable pain of arriving there. He looks back on the terror of the night with such words as "O guiding dark of night!" and "O dark of night more darling than the dawn!" His life is so much larger and so much more wonderful for this harrowing; "My cares all fall away / Forgotten in the lilies on that day."

Left distant, blackened fear and misery becomes an abstract grey. We grow complacent to it, sometimes condemn those trapped within it ("Why don't they just get over it?"). Sometimes we take the fortunes of the light for granted, forgetting why we crossed what bridges we did and why we burned others. In either case, contemplation alone cannot provide a satisfactory result. The best comparison is that all food is better when one is starving; the same applies to most aspects of man's nature.