The Soul's Night and Awakening

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...

The journey inward is not a straightforward path. Those who embark on the contemplative path soon realize that the inner world is not always immediately accessible. There are phases of ease, where meditation flows effortlessly, and phases in which the inner self seems hidden behind a "cloud" (2DN 8,1; 16,1). This cloud is a kind of spiritual blockage, separating us from meditation and cognitive abilities (cf. 1DN 8,3; 11,4). During this phase, access to one’s soul appears locked, and our nervous system reacts to this blockage, often without conscious awareness. When this occurs in the Dark Night, Johannes of the Cross provides some explanations. Information differentiating the Dark Night from pathological states can be found in another article. The distinctions between phases of the Dark Night have already been covered in a previous blog episode. The First Dark Night: Blockage and Vulnerability In the first Dark Night, inner regulation is severely limited. Normally, the ne...