Mystics, saints, and shamans throughout history have referred to our struggle as humans in different ways – but they all pointed to the need for us to consciously grow into our divine potential. One of these people was Saint John of the Cross, a Spanish monk who coined the term “Dark Night of the Soul” based on his own experience.
Presently, the concept of the Dark Night of the Soul has come to be used in a much broader way. What was once a term reserved for people actively going through a Spiritual Journey, now has come to easily label anything ranging from a few bad days and a period of depression, to the death of a loved one.
I often hear people speak of the Dark Night as some kind problem they have to “fix,” or something they “went through a long time ago, that is now over, thank God.” But what these people thought was a Dark Night may have just been a glimpse of the darkness within them, especially when they speak egotistically about it as if it were a badge of honor.
The Dark Night is a herald, an omen, of change. It lets us know that we can’t continue living the way we have been living. There is no growth, no awakening in life, to life, without first seeing and acknowledging our existing disappointment.
Acknowledging our disappointment means becoming aware of the deeply held sense of “incompletion” that we all carry; it means becoming aware that something is desperately missing from our lives. Those that have experienced, or are currently experiencing a Dark Night of the Soul will know that something very fundamental at a core level is out of focus or completely lacking in their lives. Those going through a Dark Night will sense that so much more is possible in their lives, even though they don’t exactly know what that “so much more” is.
A true Dark Night of the Soul leaves a long lasting impact--it changes an individual completely. When an individual exits a Dark Night, they discover that something has been taken away (for the better), such as your beliefs, your perceptions, your former meaning in life, or even in rare cases, an inflated ego.
Have you ever seen a butterfly begin to emerge from its cocoon? It must struggle in order to strengthen its wings. If someone frees the butterfly from its cocoon prematurely, it won’t be able to fly because its crucial tempering stage will not have occurred.Your Dark Night of the Soul is your cocoon; it is the struggle of shedding the Ego Self in order to embody the Soul Self.
If you think you might be going through this journey, it’s important that you know that many of us have been where you are, including myself. Many people still are presently going through the process as you read this. There is no one map, there is only the flickering luminescence of your Soul to light the way.