The Dark Night of the Soul

The Dark Night of the Soul

Have you ever felt alone in a meaningless universe, unable to bear going through the motions, having no sense of direction and feeling like you have lost all hope? You could be going through an experience called the ‘Dark Night of the Soul’. The purpose of this article is to shed light on this deeply miserable process of growth, to come out the other side a more conscious and mature individual.

The dark night of the soul is a state in personal development when a person undergoes a difficult and significant transition to a deeper perception of life and their place in it. This enhanced awareness is accompanied by a painful shedding of previous conceptual frameworks such as your identity, relationship, career, habits or belief systems, that previously allowed you to construct meaning of your life.

The Dark Night of the Soul might sound unfamiliar but it has various relative conceptions in religion, mythology and psychology. Some common associated conditions like ‘existential crisis’ coined by Irving Yalom, and forms of depression are more widely labeled and recognized. But what is Depression? As a clinician I can give you the DSMV’s definition. However, in my decade+ of working in this field, I’ve come to have a more respectful definition of depression. To depress, to sink into the self for refuge because there is a need, a soulful need to give something back to the self. The self almost implodes, withdrawing from activities once loved, withdrawing from others seeing our pain in order to preserve and cultivate something— life changing. And that De-pression, is often accompanied by pain and loneliness. A real attempt of the soul, the true essence, to lower in force and vigor in order to truly sense, recalibrate and invoke something more meaningful and colorful into our life.

Other related concepts of the Dark Night of the Soul, include ‘Positive Disintegration’ in psychology, ‘Soul Loss’ or the ‘Descent to the Underworld’ in Shamanism, or ‘Nigredo’ as Carl Jung symbolically understood it in Alchemy.

The “Dark Night of the Soul” aka “Oscura Noche” however, references the name given retroactively to an untitled poem by the 16th century Roman Catholic priest and mystic; St. John of the Cross, where he describes the hardships and difficulties the soul meets in detachment from the world, and thus reaching the light of the union with the Universe/Creator.

So what does the dark night of the soul really mean?

The ‘dark night’ symbolizes an obscuration, and ‘soul’ usually refers to an individual’s true essence. In other words; the dark night of the soul is the obscuration of the true self. The obscuration may consist of a previous idea of what one believes about themselves or the world, as it is thrown into question.

“There can be no rebirth without a dark night of the soul, a total annihilation of all that you believed in and thought that you were.”― Hazrat Inayat Khan

As we grow through different stages/states of life, we are influenced by many factors. From birth, the family impresses upon a child a name, what the family believes, and what is acceptable and unacceptable. Reinforcements through our experiences and trauma, the systems we live in, and the changes around us solidify these impressions, creating schema: an underlying organizational pattern or conceptual framework that makeup how we see ourselves, the world and others. For example, in high school, the adolescent seeks the acceptance of the community as well as internalizes or rejects its values. At work there is a role to play, and at home many switch on the news or attend social gatherings where the topics of conversation can jump between media, the economy —failures and successes sensationalized.

Furthermore, personal goals may be the goals of everyone else: to have nice clothes, a fancy car, a comfortable home, an attractive partner and so on without a thought of the why, what or how any of this is relevant to me as an individual.


To a person who has bought into the regular motions of modern society, life can seem like it is on autopilot, guided by the ego and habit based on arbitrary and subjective conditioning from the surrounding culture.

However, for many there is a rude, maybe even a chosen awakening, one that at first can seem like a tragedy. Ram Dass puts it, an experience of a non-ordinary state of consciousness, loss of a sense of objectivity, distrust in authority, an accident, career change, illness or realization that you don’t know who you really are or what you want to do in your life — or maybe you have everything you ever wanted and you are still unhappy. Ultimately something shakes you out of your day to day limited perception of life into a new a vision with greater clarity.

“These are the kinds of pressures that perhaps have been placed here to remind us that we have an individual existence and that this existence must be given expression or the life we are living will remain incomplete.”

― Manly Hall

During the dark night of the soul a person can struggle with their sense of meaning in the world. Everything can seem purposeless and it seems that there is no place where one belongs.

It is quite easy to reluctantly succumb to a despondent nihilism as one floats in a kind of purgatory. The allure of victim-hood, comfort and avoidance of responsibility dwells in this place but it comes with the cost of misery… because at least it’s familiar.

It’s no wonder people choose this option because unfortunately there seems to be little refuge for this in the fast paced modern world which can cause the pressure to outweigh a person’s capacity — a threshold where the dark night of the soul can go from emergence to emergency, with accompanying suicidal thoughts or apocalyptic hallucinations of death and destruction in extreme cases. There are usually intense feelings of sadness, frustration, hopelessness, meaninglessness and homesickness — for a place that never was.

How long does the dark night of the soul last?

To place a definite time on this state of consciousness would be a mistake. As with any spiritual crisis it is highly idiosyncratic. There is no predetermined time, no ‘normal’ experience as it depends upon each individual. This night is more like a polar night, where due to the earth’s tilt and life’s conditions, the darkness may last much longer than a regular night and day (happiness and sadness). To the rest of the world, this person is miserable and may seem like they are “hiding” and not using their extraordinary potential. I disagree. I strongly urge patience with the self and with others. Any attempt to forcefully speed up the process will inevitably hinder it.

Make space and time for proper contemplation, and this contemplation must occur in the context of radical honesty. You can no longer lie to yourself about how you feel or tell yourself how you should feel; meditation helps with the distractions and illusions of the mind; relaxation is required because tension will not reveal how you feel, only that you are refusing to feel.

Meditation and relaxation facilitate openness and surrender. Without these tools, the pressure of trying to figure everything out simply tires, and one can easily burn out.

Please understand that there are feelings you need to feel and hang-ups you need to overcome in order to be functional again. Whipping yourself into submission won’t work as the mental pressure you are already under will inevitably lead to burnout.

One thing to remember here is that you don’t need to ‘be more’, you need to ‘be’ more. You need to be able to switch off from everything external and come back to the basic experience of being alive in the present moment. Meditation and quietude will be a helpful practice right now to meet life at a level beyond the noise and chaos of the fractured mind.

And the hardest part of the Dark Night of the Soul is to face our shadow, which contains the repressed parts of yourself, the fears, desires, trauma and stuck beliefs. At last, behind the Dark Night of the Soul is a treasure. It is guarded by snakes but you must go into the abyss, nevertheless. If you turn away it will slowly devour you.

Understanding the process you are going through and that you are not alone is a great first step in finding some fragments of meaning to hold onto again. Once a small amount of meaning returns it will then give hope, in turn redefining the frustration and sadness, introducing a sense of feeling more at ease in the process. Whatever your natural temperament, there is an interpretation that can allow you to start to draw meaning from, this is an experience to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Fortunately, the situation resolves itself and there are practices that can help this change at the fundamental level of perception. As you cultivate greater ease through mediation and relaxation exercises, balance this with a healthy dose of intentional activity. More and more you will start to see the world as it is, rather than what you were taught, or what you would prefer it to be. From a place of calm, you can be honest enough with yourself to rebuild your life in accordance with who you are. Guidance from a mental health professional or a sound reputable healer who has made this journey, can also be invaluable.

With hope, if you are experiencing the ‘Dark Night of the Soul, know that you are awakening into something deeper, which is no longer based on concepts in your mind.  You will have a deeper sense of purpose and connectedness with life, one that is not dependent on explanations. This is a lived experience, to be tasted and savored. The truth is like that. We can never understand it or realize it through ideas/concepts. This journey is definitely a profound period in your life and it is worth every step. While you may feel powerless right now, know that how you carry the pain as well as the joy, shapes your life’s mission and unfolds a greater purpose in this existence.

There is a deep wisdom within our very flesh, if we an only come to our senses to feel it. - Elizabeth A. Behke.

So, trust. Trust that you are on your way home. There is a light through this darkness leading to greatness. Else, the body always leads us home… if we can simply learn to trust sensation and stay with it long enough for it to reveal appropriate action, movement, insight or feeling. -Pat Ogden