The Dark Night of the Soul

Its Origin in John of the Cross

The phrase comes from the Spanish mystic and poet John of the Cross, who in the late sixteenth century wrote a poem, En una noche oscura, and a commentary on it. He described the soul leaving its familiar house at night, guided by a secret inner light, to meet the beloved. The darkness in his account is not simply suffering but the unavoidable obscurity of a soul being drawn beyond what it can understand.

Two Nights

John distinguished two stages. In the night of the senses, the spiritual consolations that once drew a person to prayer fade, and one must learn to love without reward. In the night of the spirit, a deeper and more demanding purification occurs, in which even the person's sense of self and of God is stripped of images. In both, the experience is dark because the light is too great or too unfamiliar for the soul to grasp it.

What It Feels Like

People describe prayer or meditation becoming dry, feeling that their faith is empty, that they are far from God or that life has lost meaning. Interest in activities that once gave satisfaction may fade. There can be grief, restlessness and a sense of abandonment. The experience is often accompanied by self-doubt and the fear that one has lost the way.

Not the Same as Depression

It is important to distinguish a spiritual dark night from clinical depression, though the two may overlap. The Christian writer Gerald May, a psychiatrist, noted that depression usually involves a loss of interest in life as a whole, feelings of worthlessness and sometimes thoughts of self-harm, while a dark night often includes a deep longing for God or meaning and a continuing capacity to love and function. If you are in doubt, consult a doctor or therapist. The two are not alternatives.

Mother Teresa's Darkness

After her death, letters revealed that Mother Teresa had experienced a long period of spiritual darkness, in which she felt the absence of God for decades while continuing her work. The disclosure surprised many and comforted others. It showed that great faithfulness can coexist with prolonged doubt and that the absence of feeling is not the absence of love.

Beyond Christianity

Other traditions describe similar stages. Buddhist meditators describe periods in which insight into impermanence brings fear, disgust or despair, sometimes called the dark night of vipassana. Sufi writings speak of states of contraction, qabd, alternating with expansion, bast. The Hebrew Psalms are full of lament in which the singer cries out to a God who seems silent. The pattern is nearly universal.

The Purpose of the Darkness

Mystical writers suggest that the darkness has a function: it strips away dependence on consolation and on the image one has made of God or of oneself. What remains is a more naked and honest relationship. This claim cannot be proved, but many people who have passed through such times report that they emerged with more compassion, less need for certainty and a deeper simplicity.

What Helps

Traditional advice is to persevere in simple practices without expecting feeling, to keep company with a trusted guide or friend, to avoid making major decisions in the midst of it and to be gentle with yourself. Sleep, food and exercise matter. Reading accounts of others who have been through it can reduce isolation.

What Does Not Help

Pressure to feel grateful, platitudes that everything happens for a reason and attempts to analyze the darkness away rarely help. Forcing positivity can deepen the loneliness. People in this condition most need patient presence rather than answers.

Psychological Perspectives

Carl Jung described a stage of life, often in midlife, in which the values of the first half of life lose their power and a person must find new meaning. Many therapists see the dark night as an analogous crisis of meaning that can lead to growth if it is met with support. In this view, darkness is both a symptom and an opportunity.

When to Seek Help Immediately

If the darkness includes thoughts of ending your life, please reach out to a crisis service, a doctor or someone you trust without delay. Spiritual interpretations are never a reason to delay care. In many countries there are free helplines available at any hour.

Coming Through

People often describe the end of such a time not as a dramatic breakthrough but as a gradual lightening, a morning that arrives without announcement. They speak of an altered faith that holds uncertainty with more ease. The dark night, in this telling, is not a punishment but a passage.

The Cloud of Unknowing and Apophatic Prayer

An anonymous English author of the fourteenth century wrote The Cloud of Unknowing, advising that God is to be sought not by concepts but by a naked, loving intent beyond understanding. This apophatic tradition, which speaks of God by what cannot be said, gives a context for the dark night: when images fail, the heart is invited into a simpler attention. Many people who have felt their old faith dissolve find this strand of Christianity unexpectedly consoling, since it treats not knowing as a form of nearness and not as a failure.

Lament as a Form of Faith

The Psalms contain some of the most honest expressions of desolation in world literature. Psalm 22 begins with my God, my God, why have you forsaken me, and Psalm 88 ends without any consolation, with darkness as the singer's only companion. These texts have been prayed by Jews and Christians for millennia, suggesting that complaint is a legitimate form of prayer. The permission this gives is valuable: you do not have to pretend to peace you do not feel in order to remain within a tradition of faith.

Companions on the Way

Because the dark night can be isolating, human companionship matters. Spiritual directors, pastoral counselors, therapists who are open to spiritual questions, and friends who can sit in silence are all helpful. John of the Cross himself wrote for the guidance of those who accompany others, noting that a wise guide can recognize the night and refrain from hurrying the person through it. If you are in such a time, seek someone who can bear not having answers.