The Dark Night of the Soul

I decided it was time to go back into counselling and one of the first things my counsellor asked me was, have you heard of the dark night of the soul?

It was a phrase I’d heard bandied about and had been introduced to the concept through the T4GM Diploma. But it wasn’t something I’d ever really considered closely or personally. After all, I’m just me on my journey, not some spiritual guru or Christian mystic. Nevertheless, as my counsellor had mentioned a particular book I thought I should get it and have a read.

In Gerald G. May’s 2005 book, The Dark Night of the Soul, we move from our outer senses (sight, taste, smell, touch and hearing) to our inner spiritual aspects (intellect, will and memory) with imagination the borderline between the two, and on to our very centre, which is God (or from a tantric perspective we might say universal consciousness or shiva/shakti, which while at the centre also pervades all aspects right to and surrounding the outer, so we are all aspects of God, divinity, oneness – this is a non-dualistic view).

We access our centre through prayer (meditation and contemplation, which reflects a shift from effortful to effortless) where we pray for our desire, which is the soul’s desire for God (or to reconnect with universal consciousness). So, rather than chase away our desires we descend into our deepest desire, our desire for God. (I love, at this point, that Christian mystical tradition and tantra coincide around descending into our deepest desire rather than negating our desire).

Our deepest desire then is for love, God’s love, self-love, and a liberation for a love of all life. But God can’t be found as an ‘object’, for God is no-thing and can’t be encountered directly, so our attention is drawn to things that represent God. This leads to attachments to things we perceive to be good or pleasant. Indeed, my attachment to my journey, my meditation, which was going so well is a perfect example of this. This causes problems though as these attachments become habits which can then become compulsions and addictions.

Attachment thrives on denial. We live most of our lives in denial, otherwise we would have to confront the reality of our dissatisfaction. But as awakening dawns so to does the dark night of the soul. We awaken to our own attachments. However, we must appreciate that this is not a dark night, as in bad, but a dark night, as in obscure. Not sinister, but mysterious and unknown. This can cause tremendous confusion.

It is, however, a transformative process that frees us from our attachments where we can be fully in love with God, as ourselves, where the delusion of separation is dispelled, and where we realise the freedom of love as we share in practical service in the world. But we can’t do the work of awakening all by ourselves, which is where meditation and contemplation comes in,

Meditation is a range of practices, while contemplation is an openness and welcoming of the ‘gift of grace’. Working from the active to the passive, the effortful to effortless, from intentionality to welcoming. From subtraction and simplification (deconditioning) to a loosening, acceptance and receptivity, a willingness to abide in love.

To help us understand better the degree of contemplation Gerald G. May highlights Teresa of Avila’s imagery of the Interior Garden, which she likens to the soul. There are four ‘grades’ of prayer. First, we water the garden by hauling a bucket of water from a well. Highly intensive with a small amount of result (meditation with great effort). Secondly, we can use a waterwheel which is less work and gives better result (meditation with less effort). Third, we can make use of a nearby stream which would do most of the watering naturally (contemplation with little effort). Fourth, the rain waters the garden. This fourth grade is a metaphor of the union with God (effortless contemplation).

But progress along these four grades is non-linear and often precipitates the dark night of the soul, where we find no consolation on our journey, have no desire to re-enact our old ways of meditative practice, and yet still have a desire to ‘remain in loving attentiveness to God…’ (And I chime with these points).

To counter this, we might turn away from our journey seeking gratification elsewhere, or rage against God, or try and work out what went wrong resulting in a sense of confusion. And for those of us who are heavily mind-orientated this last point can seem so appealing. When what we might be better doing is to simple relinquish trying and accept that none of the things we seek are God (or universal consciousness). God is no-thing.

Bringing it all together

So, we liberate our desire by diminishing attachment. We do this to live a life of love, that is, to live a life of oneness. Practically we do this through a shift from effortful meditation to effortless contemplation, which itself is likely to precipitate the dark night of the soul. It is then only by relinquishing the search for the things that represent God that we can connect to the no-thing at our core that is God (universal consciousness). And as we start to relinquish the search our attachments begin to drop away.

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Email me direct if you are interested in mindful, embodied, trauma-informed, or spiritually-informed coaching, or if you would like to join my new Pink Tantra Towards Awakening group for chat rooms, video channels and in-person workshops around tantra and intimacy practices robert.pinktantra@gmail.com

See my personal development / personality profiling book DISCover the Power of You published through John Hunt Publishing Ltd, 2017. ISBN: 978-1-78535-591-2

And for a bit of light reading, see my first historical fictional novel Fermented Spirits published through Austin Macauley Publishers, 2022. ISBN-13: ‎978-1398437159