The dark night of the soul is the stretch when comfort drains out of your spiritual life and nothing replaces it, a phrase from the sixteenth-century friar St John of the Cross that people now use for any long, heavy darkness.
I lived in one of those long darknesses for years, addicted and no longer in control of myself, and when it got worse I was sure there was no way out. Then a spiritual awakening came and changed everything, and I now believe the universe was testing me.
If you are in a dark place yourself, the ordinary causes deserve a look before any spiritual explanation.
Could It Be Something More Ordinary Than a Dark Night?
A bad stretch can have ordinary causes, and the old text behind the phrase starts from that point. St John of the Cross lists weakness, lukewarmness and a sickness of the body among the things to rule out first (Book One, chapter nine).
A modern version of that list is short, and it deserves an honest look:
- Weeks of poor sleep or heavy stress
- A loss, a break-up or a move that has not settled
- An illness or a change in medication that a doctor can check
- Depression, even when nothing seems to have triggered it
- Alcohol or cannabis, including heavy use and the days after stopping
In esoteric circles the same heaviness is sometimes read as an attack or a curse, and I understand why, since it can feel that way from the inside. Fear makes every one of these causes heavier, and naming the likely one calms things down before any spiritual question comes in.
If the weight is heavy, talk to a doctor or someone you trust. If you are thinking of harming yourself, call emergency services now.
Gerald May, a psychiatrist who wrote a book on the dark night, takes the same line. Signs of depression should be recognised, he says, and the person should at least see a psychiatrist, whether or not a dark night is also going on.
What Does the Dark Night of the Soul Mean?
A period in which the comfort that prayer or practice once gave disappears, with nothing visible to take its place, is what the phrase means in its original sense. It comes from a short poem and a long commentary by a Spanish friar who wrote in the late sixteenth century.
Definition: The dark night of the soul is the stage where a person who has practised prayer loses every comfort it gave and finds nothing in its place. Its author saw it as a purification done in hidden ways.
Christian mysticism is where the term comes from, a tradition that is not mine, and I borrow it as a map. May reads the word dark as hiddenness, since the change happens beneath conscious understanding, and he says it implies nothing sinister.
Since then the phrase has left the monasteries. Pop spirituality turned it into a catchphrase for everything from tragedy to disappointment, May writes, and he thinks both that use and the older belief that it belongs only to saints are wrong.
Where the Phrase Comes From
Eight stanzas make up the poem, and it opens with the words “On a dark night”. A commentary then explains it line by line, and I quote that commentary from E. Allison Peers’ English translation.
St John built on earlier writers, above all Teresa of Ávila, whom he called his spiritual mother. May finds nearly all of his imagery in her earlier work, and the text itself credits the phrase “ray of darkness” to a sixth-century author who wrote as Dionysius.
The Two Nights
Two nights appear in the text, one of the senses and a later one of the spirit, and the second is described as far harder than the first (Book One, chapter eight). Here is how they differ.
| Question | Night of Sense | Night of the Spirit |
| Who It Comes To | Beginners moving into deeper prayer, a night described as common | People already practised, a night said to be the portion of very few |
| What It Feels Like | Dryness, with no taste left for prayer or meditation | Deep darkness, with the sense of being cast out by God and by friends |
| What the Text Says to Do | Rest in quiet and stop forcing meditation | Endure it patiently, since God is working and the soul can do nothing |
| Where to Read It | Book One of Dark Night | Book Two of Dark Night |
Between the two nights a soul usually spends a long time, even years, according to Book Two, chapter one. Few people, in this account, reach the second at all.
What Does the Dark Night Poem Say?
Read plainly, the poem is a love song. May says it is full of passion and sensual yearning and has no explicit religious words in it, and he had expected something austere before he read it.
A soul slips out of its house at night unseen, “my house being now at rest”, and the commentary reads the house as the senses and desires gone quiet (Book One, chapter fourteen). Only a fire in its own heart leads it, more surely than the light of noon.
Darkness in the poem therefore works as cover for an escape, and the soul names its going-forth a “happy chance”. That is a far warmer picture than the grim one most people carry into the phrase.
What Does a Dark Night Feel Like?
Dryness comes first among the symptoms: a flat feeling in prayer and in everything that used to please, with effort failing to bring the taste back. Later the dryness can deepen into a sense of being abandoned.
Dryness and Worry
Prayer and meditation go empty, and nothing else gives much pleasure either. People in this state fear that they are lost on the road and that God has abandoned them, and the text names that fear as the heaviest part of the first night (Book One, chapter ten).
A rush of effort usually follows, a scramble to get the old feeling back. It wears the person out, because dryness does not answer to effort.
Three Restless Moods
Alongside the dryness, the text names three restless moods, and May describes them in everyday terms. One is the imagination flailing for some new kick when the old pleasures dry up, and he offers the midlife crisis as an example.
Another is an impulse to rage at God, the “Why me?” that follows loss. A third has a Latin name, spiritus vertiginis, “the dizzy spirit”, and it is the endless attempt to work out where you went wrong, and May admits it is the one that always does him in.
The Heavier Night
By the later night the soul feels cast out by God, believes this will last for ever, and feels abandoned by friends too (Book Two, chapter six). I read that as a reason to keep a living person close, since a night like that is hard to carry alone.
How Can You Tell the Dark Night of the Soul From Depression?
St John gave three signs for telling the night from other dryness. May restates them as nothing satisfying you, a painful worry about failing God, and a wish only for quiet, and he says the third sets the night apart from depression.
The Three Signs
| Sign | In Plain Words | What It Rules Out |
| First Sign | Prayer and ordinary pleasures both go dry | Dryness from recent sins or attachments, since a person in that state still wants other pleasures |
| Second Sign | A painful worry that you are failing God | Lukewarmness, where nobody worries about it |
| Third Sign | A wish only to rest quietly in loving attention | A passing indisposition that lifts and lets the old ways return, and in May’s reading depression |
When a bad humour alone is the cause, the text adds, the longing for God is missing. In an earlier book May wrote that sense of humour and compassion for others are not usually impaired in a dark night as they are in depression.
Why the Line Between Them Blurs
A careful reader will see the problem with sorting the ordinary from the spiritual, because the old text itself says the pain may be increased by melancholy, and May says both often happen together. He writes that there is never a spiritual reason to leave any illness untreated.
I still think the sorting is worth doing, since it tells you who to call first, and May’s conclusion points the same way: treat depression where it exists. In his view medication does not block the dark night, and a prescription question belongs with the prescribing doctor.
Among ten contemplative Augustinian nuns in a Spanish monastery, a 2010 study in Transcultural Psychiatry, led by Glòria Durà-Vilà, found something worth knowing. They read symptoms that might otherwise suggest a depressive episode through the dark night story, and they turned the distress into reflection and meaning.
Does a Dark Night Mean You Are Spiritually Advanced?
No, it can happen to anyone, and May writes that it is not restricted to holy people. He has often heard people say that the dark night is for holy people and not for them, and he treats that belief as one of the old misunderstandings.
According to the text, the first night is common and comes to beginners who have practised for a while. Only the second is called rare, and a dry, flat stretch in your practice therefore says very little about how far along you are.
Why Do Spiritual Seekers Go Through a Dark Night?
In my experience, people who do esoteric and spiritual work often meet some of the heaviest periods of their lives, and I believe those periods are a test the universe sets. That is my own belief and my own observation, and I cannot prove either.
Teachers in other traditions say the same, and the meditation teacher Jack Kornfield writes in a 1989 anthology that such difficulties appear in every age, and Ram Dass, in the same book, describes the dark night as the despair that arrives when achievements can no longer justify your existence.
Evagrius, a teacher of early monks, wrote about demons of pride, fear and sleep that meet hermits, Kornfield notes. St John adds that God takes away the sweetness of prayer the way a child is weaned, and the soul learns to stand on its own feet (Book One, chapter eight).
Nobody who stays wrapped in comfort is pushed to find out what they are made of. I believe no one reaches their full potential, spiritually or in any other way, from inside the comfort zone.
How Does a Dark Night Fit Into Esoteric Practice?
Esoteric Dude is where I write about folk magic, the evil eye and entity attachment from my own knowledge, and heavy stretches come up again and again around them. People in these circles often reach for a spiritual reading first, such as a curse, an attachment or an attack.
I take those readings seriously as traditions and beliefs, yet I think the order matters. Rule out the ordinary causes first, then ask the spiritual question, and keep a doctor beside any practice.
A dark night is one reading among several, and it is the quietest of them, because nothing is attacking you and something is being taken away. If you are new to this kind of work, a dry spell in your practice is no proof that you are doing it wrong.
What Triggers a Dark Night of the Soul?
Losing the comfort that practice once gave is the trigger in the old text, and it tends to arrive at the moment the practice feels sweetest (Book One, chapter eight). Everyday triggers look different and are often more ordinary.
In their anthology, Stanislav Grof and Christina Grof list a lost relationship, a death in the family, a divorce, a run of failures, a firing and lost property as events that can come right before a spiritual crisis. I take that as a pattern they noticed, not a rule.
Can Hitting Rock Bottom Lead to a Spiritual Awakening?
It did in my case, and I offer that as one person’s story, with no control group and no count of other outcomes behind it. The order of events is the part I can vouch for: the long collapse came first, and the awakening came after.
Years at the Bottom
I was addicted, and for years I had no control over myself. Alcohol and cannabis were part of it, and my mental health was in ruins.
Completely lost, I watched it get worse, and at that point I thought there was no way out of it, ever.
The Awakening
Then the spiritual awakening came, and everything changed. I believe the universe had been testing me, and I believe it never gives anyone more than they can bear.
As a belief it proves nothing, and I do not read it to mean that people who struggle have failed. Carrying a weight often includes letting someone carry it with you.
Nothing in my story says the awakening treated a mental illness, and I would not tell anyone to wait for one in place of getting help. It is no case for alcohol or cannabis either, since both were part of how I reached the bottom.
Where My Story Fits the Old Description
St John describes his night for people who already pray or practise and then lose the comfort, and I cannot say my bottom matched it. In the wider sense people use today, the words fit what I lived through, and I have no better name for those years.
Attachment, Addiction and Losing Control
May uses an old word for it, attachment, from roots meaning nailed to. People cling to things, he says, not because they love them but because they are terrified of losing them, and when the clinging gets bad enough to block love it is called an addiction.
That describes my years better than any clinical word could, because I was nailed to something I could not put down and acted because I had to, not because I chose to. Losing control of myself was the hardest part, and I believe it was also where the lesson began.
I do not say that every addiction is a spiritual matter, or that a spiritual idea is enough to deal with one. Support from people who understand addiction is a separate and serious thing, and it deserves its own place.
What May Says About Addiction
Twenty-five years in medicine and psychiatry lie behind May’s claim that no one understands the dark night better than people recovering from life-threatening addictions. Some Alcoholics Anonymous members, he notes, call themselves “grateful alcoholics” because the addiction finally brought them to their knees.
He then describes what he calls a dark night of recovery. After working a twelve-step programme for a while, some people find that a desperate need for God as the means of recovery is turning into a wish for God for his own sake.
Several people he accompanied through this were terrified of relapse, he reports, and some did relapse for a time, though all came through to deeper freedom, in his words. I read that as one clinician’s experience and not as a promise.
Is a Dark Night a Spiritual Awakening?
Not in the old text, where the word awakening never appears. St John places the night after a person has begun to practise and before the union he names as the goal, and in my reading that makes it a middle stretch.
In my own life the order ran the same way, with the long darkness first and the awakening after. A dark night, as I understand it, takes away the comfort you leaned on, while an awakening opens something up, and I only speak for my own order of events.
Do You Have to Go Through Hell to Grow Spiritually?
Sometimes, I believe. For some people the only way up goes down first, through bad things that strip away everything they leaned on, and I went through hell and back before anything in me could rise.
I also believe everything happens for a reason, even when the reason only shows later. Ram Dass puts a similar thought in one line, that people are never nearer the light than when the darkness is deepest.
For most people, May argues, growth does not demand great tragedy. He labels “no pain, no gain” a myth and says suffering comes from the ordinary circumstances of life and is not God’s will.
I take his point seriously, since it spares people from hunting for disasters, and I would never tell anyone to go looking for hell. My view is narrower: when hell arrives uninvited, it can turn out to be the place where the growth happens.
What Is the Purpose of the Dark Night of the Soul?
Freeing a person from everything they lean on, including the comforts of prayer itself, is the purpose in the old account, so that a quieter kind of love can take over. May reads it the same way, as a process that frees people from attachments and compulsions.
Book One, chapters twelve and thirteen, list the benefits. Self-knowledge comes first, and humility follows, because the dry soul stops thinking it is ahead of other people and starts to see its own poverty before theirs.
Patience and endurance come next, put to use in the dry hours, and then a peace that arrives once the craving for pleasure has quieted. This is the part I recognise from my own life, since craving was what ran me for years.
The best-known picture in the text is a log in a fire that dries it, blackens it, taints the air and only then sets it alight (Book Two, chapter ten). Whatever burns the log is also what lights it, and the soul sees faults it never noticed.
Why Is the Dark Night So Hard to See Coming?
Part of the answer, in May’s reading of the text, is that the darkness itself is a protection. In spiritual matters a person is most likely to stumble just when they think they know where they are going.
May adds a blunt thought: if people knew what they were being asked to let go of, their defences would never let them take the first step. Sometimes the only way into the deeper part of the road is by being unable to see where you are headed.
I could not see any way out during my years at the bottom, and I could not have planned one either. I believe the darkness was doing something for me even then, though I had no way of knowing it.
What Are the Stages of a Dark Night?
The old account gives a rough map and not a schedule, and nobody should expect to tick the stages off in order. It starts with the night of sense, where comfort in prayer dries up and a fear of being lost sets in, and the text calls this night common.
A long stretch follows, often years, which the text describes as a time of more freedom and ease. Then comes the night of the spirit, far harder and far rarer, where the soul feels cast out and can do nothing except endure.
The dawn is the last stage, and May says it brings freedom and gratitude. He also argues that the whole cycle is no once-in-a-lifetime event, and that a person may return to an earlier stage more than once.
How Long Does a Dark Night Last?
How long the night of sense lasts cannot be said with any certainty, according to Book One, chapter fourteen. It depends on how much each soul has to be purified, with stronger souls purged more quickly and weaker ones kept longer and more gently.
A soul usually spends years between the two nights, and inside the second each period of relief is followed by a harder stretch (Book Two, chapters one and ten). May argues that the dark night is no once-in-a-lifetime event.
Teresa of Ávila, May recalls, said that no one is so advanced in prayer that they do not often have to return to the beginning. I have found no study that gives a typical length, and I treat any fixed number as a guess.
How Do You Get Through a Dark Night?
Stopping the effort to force it, and letting the soul rest in what St John calls a peaceful and loving attentiveness toward God, is his advice for the first night (Book One, chapter ten). People in this state turn back when nobody understands them, he adds.
Rule Out the Ordinary Causes
Start with sleep, stress, health and the substances in your life, and see a doctor if the weight is heavy. Anything prescribed stays between you and your doctor.
Stop Forcing the Old Practice
Forcing it is compared in the text to a sitter who moves while the painter is at work and ruins the portrait. A short stretch of quiet each day, for example ten minutes, with nothing asked of it, is a gentler way to stay in touch with practice.
Talk to Someone Who Understands
Tell one person what is happening, ideally someone who has been through something similar. May warns against spiritual directors who try to do too much, and he relays that St John called them pests.
Keep Alcohol and Cannabis Out of It
Alcohol can make a spiritual crisis easier to bear, Grof and Grof warn, while exposing anyone with an unrecognised dependency to great danger of addiction. My own reason is my story.
Do Not Chase a New Method
A fresh method can feel like the way out, and May admits he chased one more than once, each time ending in dryness and a new search. Kornfield describes the same trap in deep practice, where delight in good states turns into grasping.
Keep a Simple Routine
Grounding and a plain cleansing routine are the practical tools this blog covers, and I treat them here as steadying habits for the body and the home. They sit beside a doctor and never replace one.
Let the Question Stay Open
Not knowing is one of the gifts of the dark night, May says. Working out where you went wrong is the dizzy spirit again, and letting that question rest is part of the work.
What Happens After the Dark Night?
Freedom and gratitude come with the dawn, May says, and a person ends up freer and more grateful than before. The poem names the night “more lovely than the dawn”, and both describe a turn where losing comfort opens what comfort had kept shut.
That matches what happened for me, because the awakening followed the worst years and not the easy ones. I would not call the years themselves good, and I would not wish them on anyone, yet I cannot separate them from what came after.
Is a Dark Night the Same as a Spiritual Emergency?
Spiritual emergency overlaps with the dark night but comes from a different century and field, since it is a modern term from the psychiatrists Stanislav Grof and Christina Grof, who use it for crises of personal transformation that traditional psychiatry diagnoses as mental disease.
Their 1989 anthology argues that such episodes can lead to growth when understood and supported, and it is wary of routine medication for symptoms. That is one side of a real disagreement with conventional psychiatry, and I treat it as their reading and leave medication to doctors.
In the same book, Kornfield says tranquillisers have their place when a person cannot be grounded another way. He also uses the dark night for a stage of deep meditation where the world seems to dissolve, bringing terror and deep suffering.
In my reading, a dark night is a quiet loss of comfort, depression is a medical condition, and a spiritual emergency is an upheaval of the mind, and a person can be in more than one at once, and then a doctor and a trusted person belong close by.
FAQ
Nobody can say, and the old text itself admits that the first night’s length cannot be known with certainty. It ties the length to each person’s strength and to the work to be done, and Teresa of Ávila adds that even advanced people often return to the beginning.
Because they can look alike and can happen together, Gerald May says depression should be treated wherever it appears. The old signs separate them mainly by what you still want, since the text says that when a bad humour is the only cause, the longing for God is missing.
St John’s Dark Night never uses the word awakening, and it places the night after a person has begun to practise and before the union it names as the goal. I read it as a middle stretch, and in my own life the awakening came after it.
In the old text the trigger is the loss of the comfort that practice once gave, while ordinary triggers include loss, stress and illness. I believe the universe also tests people, and I hold that as a belief.
May says freedom and gratitude arrive with the dawn, and the poem says the night is more lovely than the dawn. In my own life, everything changed.
