![]() However, all will generally pass through a dreaded black vortex, an abyss, or many such passages, to be born again from the ground up. It is just that they occur, and must be accounted for. We can not say that the classic dark night itself and all of the various stages are required experiences. In this third and final stage, even the world, as well as the personal self, is no longer negated, or even avoided, but is spiritualized or seen as existing in and as God or, in more philosophic traditions, Mind or Consciousness. He is actually being brought to a new stage in which he is humbled, purified, emptied of self-satisfaction, and prepared for a more permanent realization of his essential Self or Soul, wherein he will also be able to perceive things in a divine or universal manner, as it were, rather than a personal or egoic one, which he could not do otherwise as a beginner, due to his inherent ignorance. John, however, in order to progress further, these kinds of experiences must fade, and true tests of will, determination, patience, discrimination, and understanding will come to the aspirant, who may then feel as if he has been abandoned, whereas, in truth, this is not so. It may not be necessary or even appropriate in any individual case, however, for one to achieve complete mystical success in its traditional form–or even pursue it, perhaps–for the essence of the dark night experience to settle into one’s bones, as it were. This is the traditional mystical portrayal of the dark night. John, the dark night generally only comes to those souls who have completed this initial stage and enjoyed many such “sweets,” which were gifts to wean them from complete attachment to the world, or from a materialistic viewpoint. These are a glimpse of things to come and a form of incentive for the seeker to persevere in spiritual work. Into this dark night souls begin to enter when God draws them forth from the state of beginners – which is the state of those that meditate on the spiritual road – and begins to set them in the state of the progressives – which is that of those who are already contemplatives – to the end that, after passing through it, they may arrive at the state of the perfect, which is that of the Divine union of the soul with God.” (2)ĭuring the course of one’s initial approach to spiritual practice, grace or the apparent fruit of one’s effort often manifests in the beginning with the gift of visions, positive emotions, interiorization of attention, and experiences of subtle energies. John, while somewhat confined to the world-view of his time, specifically states: While it has been written about and experienced on many levels, and may perhaps be considered a metaphor for much of the spiritual path itself, St. It works to produce a complete metamorphosis wherein one’s conception of self and world are literally turned inside out. It brings a thorough purgation where the personal will passes through existential hopelessness and increasingly becomes sacrificed to the impersonal divine will. In essence, the famed “dark night” is considered by some to be a transitional phase between a long novitiate of self-effort to a more direct path of self-transcendence through grace and active endurance, from a time of reliance on the ego to one of reliance on and transformation by the divine, from belief in a personal self to knowledge of its relative unreality, from identification with the ego to identification with the higher Self, and the very non-dual Self of consciousness-being that you are, and from the feeling of the soul exclusively being somehow inside the body to that of the body also being inside of the greater Soul. The Dark Night of the Soul, his best-known work, is considered a peerless account of spiritual blindness and its eradication by divine grace, and his astute analysis and advice have meaning and usefulness for many who find themselves in an apparent impasse or quandary on the path. John of the Cross was described by Thomas Merton as “the greatest of all mystical theologians”, and his writing stands at the pinnacle of the Christian esoteric tradition. When your grief transcends all bounds, it becomes its own cure. – Ghalib This is an edited version of the longer essay, found here. ![]()
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