DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL
"Dark Night of the Soul" is the title of a poem written by the 16th Century Spanish poet and Roman Catholic mystic Saint John of the Cross.
The poem is about the painful experience that people endure as they seek to grow in spiritual maturity and union with God. More specifically, it refers to the period of spiritual dearth that sometimes follows an episode of exaltation. The Dark Night of the Soul can be brief or can last for many years. Mother Teresa was said to suffer from it for 45 years.
In this state, a person feels abandoned by God, even though he has been steadfast in his spiritual practice. He has done everything today that he did yesterday, when the glorious event occurred, but now there is nothing. And it feels like there will be nothing for the rest of his life, leaving him in deep despair.
Several matters are at work here. First, the person perceives God as separate from himself, rather than part of himself. It is the difference between Christianity and Advaita Vedanta, between dualism and nondualism. Vedanta teaches that never for one instant is God not with you, because the Atman in you is God. Any feeling of abandonment one has is psychological only, not the fact of it.
The second consideration is time. Atman/Brahman, or Atman/God, is eternal, whereas the person is time bound, is changing, ever changing. While he may insist that conditions are identical today to the day before, when he experienced the exaltation, he is wrong. All the ducks have to be in a row for a mystical event to happen, but by the next day one of the ducks may not have even shown up.
And lastly is the issue of grace. It is by God's grace and not by human will that mystical contact occurs. There is no point in worrying or becoming depressed over something that is beyond one's control.
The poem is about the painful experience that people endure as they seek to grow in spiritual maturity and union with God. More specifically, it refers to the period of spiritual dearth that sometimes follows an episode of exaltation. The Dark Night of the Soul can be brief or can last for many years. Mother Teresa was said to suffer from it for 45 years.
In this state, a person feels abandoned by God, even though he has been steadfast in his spiritual practice. He has done everything today that he did yesterday, when the glorious event occurred, but now there is nothing. And it feels like there will be nothing for the rest of his life, leaving him in deep despair.
Several matters are at work here. First, the person perceives God as separate from himself, rather than part of himself. It is the difference between Christianity and Advaita Vedanta, between dualism and nondualism. Vedanta teaches that never for one instant is God not with you, because the Atman in you is God. Any feeling of abandonment one has is psychological only, not the fact of it.
The second consideration is time. Atman/Brahman, or Atman/God, is eternal, whereas the person is time bound, is changing, ever changing. While he may insist that conditions are identical today to the day before, when he experienced the exaltation, he is wrong. All the ducks have to be in a row for a mystical event to happen, but by the next day one of the ducks may not have even shown up.
And lastly is the issue of grace. It is by God's grace and not by human will that mystical contact occurs. There is no point in worrying or becoming depressed over something that is beyond one's control.
posted by Donald L. Simons at
10:32 AM
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