The Soul's Night and Awakening

Anyone searching today for Carl Jung and the “Dark Night of the Soul” will quickly discover countless videos, podcasts, articles, and discussions. In many of them, it is almost taken for granted that Jung described the same experience that John of the Cross wrote about centuries earlier. The connection has become so common that the two seem inseparable. Yet there is a problem. Jung himself did not use the term “Dark Night of the Soul” in the sense that John of the Cross did. His language was different. He spoke of individuation, the shadow, encounters with the unconscious, psychological crises, and profound inner transformation. The expression “Dark Night of the Soul” was largely applied to Jung's ideas by later interpreters who noticed striking similarities between his descriptions and those found in the mystical tradition. One could dismiss the comparison as a misunderstanding. But the matter is not so simple. The real question is not whether Jung used the same terminology. The r...

There are forms of silence that gather a person inwardly. And there is another kind of silence that empties them. Most people know contemplation or meditation only in its early form: as calmness, centering, or clarity. The mind becomes quieter, thoughts begin to settle, life feels more structured. One feels more awake, more present, more inwardly stable. That is precisely why meditation today is almost automatically regarded as a method for improving cognitive performance. Concentration increases. Stress decreases. Thinking becomes clearer. But describes something entirely different. And this is exactly where a problem begins that modern spirituality often no longer understands. For according to John, genuine contemplative deepening does not initially lead to stronger mental control, but rather to a darkening of the ordinary faculties of understanding. Not only emotions begin to change. Thinking, remembering, and imagining themselves enter into a peculiar crisis. This is the ...

The experience of enlightenment often appears foreign—even within the Christian tradition. When people think of John of the Cross, they usually associate him with the “dark night of the soul”: a phase of inner emptiness, dryness, and spiritual trial in which previous experiences of consolation disappear and the soul seems abandoned. Yet within these descriptions lies something deeper: a transformation that shows striking parallels with Buddhist enlightenment. The Dark Night of the Soul: More Than Suffering The dark night is not simply a period of suffering, but a necessary process of purification. In it, external attachments, inner desires, and even the most subtle forms of spiritual pride are gradually stripped away. What remains is a form of radical inner emptying that prepares the soul for a direct encounter with the divine. John of the Cross explicitly describes this as a path of “enlightenment” in the sense that the soul is transformed in its very mode of being. It does not...

The “dark night of the soul” is often treated as a problem to fix. But John of the Cross saw it differently: as a necessary passage of transformation rather than something to escape. In contemporary culture, there is an almost automatic reflex when it comes to suffering: if something is painful, it should be eliminated as quickly as possible. Problems are expected to be diagnosed, treated, and solved. This is especially true for inner crises—loss of meaning, spiritual emptiness, emotional dryness—where we tend to immediately search for familiar categories such as psychological distress, depression, burnout, or some form of dysfunction. This approach certainly has its value. Many people suffer from genuine psychological conditions that require attention and care. But there are also experiences that do not easily fit into these frameworks. One of them is what Christian mysticism calls the “dark night of the soul.” The term comes from the Spanish mystic John of the Cross, whose work Th...

Religions often begin with direct inner experience, yet evolve into institutions focused on ritual and structure. This article explores the forgotten mystical core across traditions and why inner transformation remains central. Religions did not originally arise from theory. Before institutions, dogmas, or rituals existed, there was usually a profound inner experience at the beginning—an experience that completely transformed a person’s life. In Christianity, this experience is associated with Jesus. In Buddhism, with the awakening of the Buddha under the Bodhi tree. Both figures stand at the origin of traditions that today include millions of followers. Yet if one looks more closely, something becomes apparent: Many religious people identify with these traditions, but the actual path that leads to the original experience is often barely visible anymore. Religion frequently becomes something else: a mixture of moral orientation, social belonging, and occasional forms of piety. ...

Introduction: When Thought Stops Feeling Like “You” There are moments in inner life when thinking loses its transparency. A thought appears — sharp, repetitive, emotionally charged — and something in you hesitates. Not because it is unusual in content, but because it does not feel fully authored by you. It arrives, persists, distorts perception, and leaves emotional residue. Modern psychology might call this intrusion, rumination, or cognitive fusion. But long before clinical terminology existed, the desert tradition of early Christian monasticism had already developed a sophisticated vocabulary for exactly this phenomenon. One of its most systematic thinkers was Evagrius Ponticus (4th century CE), who proposed something that still feels surprisingly contemporary: The inner life is populated — not by external entities, but by patterned forces of thought that behave with remarkable autonomy. In some translations and later interpretations, these were described as “demons.” Not in t...

About the Author Felix* is neither a theologian, nor a monk, nor a religious person in the ordinary sense. Outwardly, he lives a largely normal life. In this guest contribution, he describes an inner reality that is difficult to communicate. His self-narrative is an experiential account from an advanced phase of what John of the Cross calls the S econd Night, the Night of the Spirit . *  Name changed. This contribution is published anonymously. What This Text Is About Felix describes how contemplative union and radical inner emptiness can alternate—without constituting emotional highs and lows or mood instability. He portrays the paradox that spiritual progress can appear, from the outside, as a worsening condition: withdrawal from social contact, estrangement in conversations, misunderstandings in everyday life—even in seemingly trivial situations such as a medical appointment with a familiar doctor. The text is deliberately narrative in form. It explains little and instead al...

Many people who seriously engage with spirituality eventually encounter a similar question—often not as a theoretical concern, but arising directly from their own experience. Why does the path sometimes feel clear and supportive, and at other times diffuse, ungraspable, or unexpectedly empty? Why does regular practice not simply lead to continuous deepening, but instead to a kind of oscillation between intensity and stagnation? Behind such experiences lies an implicit expectation: that spiritual development follows a linear progression. More practice leads to more clarity, more meditation to more stability, more insight to more inner freedom. And yet, over time, this expectation is quietly undermined. This gives rise to a fundamental question: Does every spiritual person eventually enter a phase of inner “darkness” or stagnation that disrupts the expected course of the path? This question is less abstract than it may seem. It touches the point where spiritual practice can no longer ...

The term “dark night of the soul” is today mostly associated with Christian mysticism. Many people immediately think of monasteries, monks, or deeply religious individuals. The assumption is widespread that this is a specifically Christian—or even Catholic—experience, limited to those engaged in prayer, asceticism, or theological practice. This interpretation is understandable. After all, the concept originates in the work of the Spanish mystic John of the Cross, whose famous text The Dark Night of the Soul is one of the most influential works in Christian spirituality. But the origin of a concept does not necessarily determine the scope of the experience it describes. In fact, there are strong reasons to assume that John of the Cross was describing something that extends far beyond his religious context—a process that can affect people across cultures, traditions, and even secular worldviews. A Concept from Christian Mysticism John of the Cross lived in 16th-century Spain, in a...