Dark Nights and Clear Mornings

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

Many people I know have spoken about going through the dark nights of their soul. As the name implies, these can be among the most difficult phases of spiritual growth.

“The dark night of the soul is an inevitable experience in a person’s life. It is a passage of profound initiation, a rigorous breaking down of the forces that hold together our need for life to be reasonable, orderly, fair, and logical – everything life can never really be for most people.

The dark night is a fight to the finish, a bending until there is a breakthrough. Like the addict that is broken and retrieved through treatment, brighter days are the promised end for travelers through the dark night. And all the while, your spirit speaks to you, even through the most difficult of times.” Caroline Myss

Night Sky

Can you imagine being outside on a night of the deepest midnight blue?   The silence.  The stillness. The sense of potential, of imminent rebirth.  Awe.  Just you and the cosmos.  If you’re at peace within yourself, you might feel at one both with that sense of infinity and with all of life.     However, during a “dark night” you might feel terribly alone and small in the face of such infinity.  It may feel endless.  Yet no night is endless, even if it feels like it at the time.

I’ve been doing a lot of research around the dark night. Perhaps like many of you reading this, I have often experienced it on a level beyond words.  Yet, in more recent times, part of me would remember, even in the midst of it all,  that I been there before and had lived to tell the tale. Not only had I emerged, I had always emerged renewed and strengthened. I knew that, while very uncomfortable, it was necessary and ultimately very beneficial.

Dark Nights of Isolation, Loneliness and Emptiness

Why is there often this sense of the dark night, of isolation, of loneliness, of being cast adrift, when we are on a spiritual path? We’ve done so many workshops, read so many books and bought so many t-shirts! Should we not be further along the road by now? Where’s the bliss gone? Where’s the feeling of unity with all life gone? Why this sense of emptiness, of aloneness and loneliness?  

Surely by now, with all the explorations and meditations we have done, with all the spiritual people we know, we should be fully enlightened? We have indeed at times have glimpsed that Divine Love. We may have, at times, experienced this Love to our very cells. But now where’s it gone? Why do I feel the pain more deeply than before I started all of this? 

Several years ago during a counselling course, I discovered  Anthony de Mello’s “Awareness.”  This was one of the first times I had ever come across anyone deal directly with the experience of letting go of perceived needs on a path of growth. And more especially the issues of loneliness and emptiness that can often seem to be part of the growth process.

God-Substitutes

 De Mello wrote of this in terms of the need for people. However, it has been my experience that this concept also includes anything we think we need in order to feel fulfilled. It also includes anything with which we distract ourselves from feeling what might at first seem like an inner emptiness. 

We may intuit that the goal of spiritual growth is a direct, living, breathing experience of the oneness of all life. However, it seems that, on the way to that direct knowing of unity, we have to let go of many of the “God substitutes” we have created.  These substitutes or “fillers”  have distracted us. They may have temporarily filled the gap of emptiness. They may have simply felt good in times of keenly feeling the pangs of separation.

In my own life, the temptation to avoid recognizing where I may have made a God-substitute out of someone or something can be very strong. Nevertheless, the call of my inner self usually grows from a whisper to being very loud and clear. It depends on how long I take to get the message or how much I resist!

Into the Desert

As de Mello describes so eloquently, it can feel like going into a desert, one way of describing the dark night, but then the desert comes to life.  Whenever I revisit these lines, I also include whatever might be currently getting in the way of my allowing that inner connection to deepen.

“How can you love people when you need people?… When I die to the need for people, then I’m right in the desert... In the beginning it feels awful, it feels lonely. But if you can take it for a while, you’ll suddenly discover that it isn’t lonely at all.  It is solitude, it is aloneness, and the desert begins to flower.  Then at last you’ll know what love is, what God is, what reality is. But in the beginning, giving up the drug can be tough.“

Finding our Tribe

At the beginning of our quest, there can be excitement, delight in finding other people to share our enthusiasm, a sense of adventure and relief that there are others who think the way we do.   In a sense, we often move from our tribe of origin, our family or country or ethnic group, to a whole new spiritual tribe.

“At last I’ve found my tribe, my spiritual family!  I’ve come home!”   That is a necessary part of growth, of the path.  This tribe may consist of different groups as we go from one system to another to find what resonates most with us.  Much is learnt, many connections are made, spiritual truths integrated. And there are lots of opportunities for our spiritual buttons to be pushed and our enlightened feathers ruffled!

Comfort in numbers

However, the other side of the coin is that it is still a tribe.  Belonging may be comforting and comfortable. It may indeed be necessary while we grow and develop our spiritual wings. There is a comfort in numbers and being identified, as well as identifying ourselves, as, for example, a seeker or a meditator or a member of a particular group.   We can gain much from being part of such a tribe, just as we can in our tribes of origin.

However, in the comfort of belonging we can forget that the ultimate conscious union with God-Source is an individual, private matter between each one of us and Source.

Letting Go of Spiritual Crutches

Spiritual teachers, practices, groups and explorations can lead us to the door, but we’re the ones who have to open that door and enter. Or, perhaps more accurately, we arrive at the door and surrender to the Higher Power within us. In the process, it is necessary to let go of all of the “crutches” that have brought us this far, no matter how lofty or inspiring or comforting. Ultimately we need to let go of all Source-substitutes. Many of these substitutes can be very subtle, but they will gradually make themselves known.

For example, regular meditation is at the centre of most people’s spiritual path, and the benefits cannot be over-estimated. However, even meditation can become a crutch. What happens on the day I miss my meditation for some unavoidable reason, perhaps a sudden illness in the family or a severe weather event? Do I tell myself that I can’t cope with the situation properly because I didn’t get those 20 minutes of silence in the morning? Or, if I sit to meditate and suddenly there is a lot of noise in the house or the street, do I tell myself that I can’t meditate because of the noise? Or if someone interrupts my meditation? How do I react? With annoyance or impatience or frustration? (And I have done all of these!).

Those reactions are pretty natural especially in the early stages of meditation practice. We would all prefer a quiet environment and to have those uninterrupted 20 minutes to ourselves. And of course, In general, it’s a good idea to create the optimum conditions whenever possible.

Attachment to externals, even “spiritual” externals

But if I give too much power to having to have the ideal environment, then, at some stage in my spiritual odyssey, my own spiritual intelligence will provide many learning opportunities for me to let go of setting such rigid conditions on my meditation life. After all, I want to reach unity consciousness. That means gradually letting go of finding the key to my God-Source connection anywhere but within my own being. And it means being able to be in touch with my God-Source connection in the midst of noise, chaos and the rough-and-tumble of life.

Similarly, if my spiritual life is defined by belonging to a particular group or system I’m affiliated with, my spiritual intelligence may well intervene. It may arrange things so that I get thrown out of that particular nest (group, church etc.) and learn to fly on my own. Even though it may not feel like it, what seems like being cast adrift is motivated by the purest Love. The guiding hand or spirit knows that I cannot truly embody Love while there is anything I think I need from outside, including a quiet environment or a cosy group!

Distractions and Diversions

Loneliness, like fear or addiction, stems from the gap between I AM ALL-ONE and I AM AL-one.  Can we be willing to look in the eye, as it were, any fears within us? And, just as importantly, can we step back from trying to assuage them with the usual comforts or distractions which we’ve used so much in the past?

Pruning and Clutter-clearing

Our inner self knows that these distractions must be shed.  It also knows that the shedding will not always be comfortable. There are often deeply engrained habits and reactions, or ones we don’t want to admit to having.   The caterpillar must go into the cocoon and experience what may feel like chaos. It surrenders its familiar state and comfort zones, on its way to emerging as a butterfly.

The dark night of the soul is an opportunity for our inner spiritual gardener to clear anything that is getting in the way of a felt-sense of our true intimacy with Source. Our inner gardener is lovingly pruning our lives, our psyches, our mindsets, our shadows. When you prune a rose-bush it emerges all the stronger and more beautiful.  When you clutter-clear your home it can for a while be even more chaotic than before. Long-neglected drawers and closets yield their treasure-troves of junk! But it’s worth it to experience a new sense of space and clarity.

The Darkest Hour before the Dawn

The closer we get to the Light, the more of our shadow we see. Thus, truly holy people are always humble people. Invariably when something upsets us, and we have a strong emotional reaction out of proportion to the moment, our shadow self has just been exposed. So, watch for any overreactions or over denials. Richard Rohr

A new dawn

It may feel like the loneliest of times. However, the dark night is actually the time when the divine part of us, our Source-li-ness, is holding and nurturing us most lovingly.   

For anyone going through a dark night, triggered maybe by rejection or confusion or exclusion, hold on.   This is a fertile time and one you may soon find yourself looking back on it with gratitude.  Keep on keeping on, as they say.   That dark night gives birth to a new dawn of greater empowerment and inner connection.  And, as night follows day, there may be other dark nights, other layers to clear, other levels of finetuning. But we gradually realize that we have built up a track record of bouncing back again. Our resilience muscles become stronger each time.

There is tremendous richness in that midnight blue, and the darkest hour is indeed before the dawn.    Take that as a traveller’s tale from one who has touched that dawn. Who knows that, without that dark night, that dawn would have still been clouded and dull.

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