Dark Night of the Soul

After a truly amazing year, for which I am deeply grateful, 2010 ended with a period of prolonged difficult and dark days for me.

I don’t mean to suggest that the rest of 2010 was without pain and disappointment and darkness. Just that there’s a difference between life’s ordinary slings and arrows and a true dark night of the soul—and over the past few weeks, I’ve been in the throes of the latter.

The experience is complex and multilayered—part circumstantial with identifiable causality, part inexplicable, utterly unmooring in its mysteriousness.

I can’t remember ever feeling as lonely or broken or empty for as long. It’s as if during the year’s final days, I’ve been experiencing a death of my own.

During this time of downness and darkness, of loss and loneliness, of pain and puzzlement, of melancholy and meaninglessness, I have attempted (and often failed) to be mindful and present, open and engaged, resisting the urge to bypass, short circuit, fix, or otherwise prematurely end the experience. I’ve tried to follow the wise advice of the Sufi mystic and poet, Hafiz, who wrote:


Don't
Surrender
Your loneliness so quickly.
Let it cut more
Deep.


It’s not easy, of course. Who relishes being lonely or cut deeply? But there is something about brokenness, about the crushing of the grapes of our being, something about spending a solitary, sleepless night at the place of pressing, the Gethsemane of our souls, that produces the most potent and profound wine. As Hafiz says:


Let it ferment and season you
As few human
Or even divine ingredients can.


Hafiz words heal and inspire, but no one’s words have done more for me, have resonated more in me, that those of Thomas Moore.

Though he’s best known for, “Care of the Soul,” and I’ve benefited greatly from all his books, the two titles of his I find myself returning to most often are, “The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life” and “Dark Nights of the Soul”—the latter especially helpful in recent dark days.

A mentor and counselor to me in more ways than I can begin to express, Moore was a Catholic monk for twelve years and later became a psychotherapist, earning degrees in theology, musicology, and religion. His many books are at once accessible and abstruse.

His approach to life is one of soul. Through psychology and art and religion and myth and literature, he performs and teaches care of the soul—reminding us of its vital importance, exploring its dark depths, helping us view life in the light of its needs.

Gentle and wise, caring and compassionate, Moore’s revelatory work is revolutionary without being egocentric, heroic, or sentimental.

Truly shamanistic, Moore’s medicine offers a soothing salve while encouraging the embracing of soul-building darknesses and difficulties.
As he writes, “At one time or another, most people go through a period of sadness, trial, loss, frustration, or failure that is so disturbing and long-lasting that it can be called a dark night of the soul.

“If your main interest in life is health, you may quickly try to overcome the darkness. But if you are looking for meaning, character, and personal substance, you may discover that a dark night has many important gifts for you. Every human life is made up of the light and the dark, the happy and the sad, the vital and the deadening. How you think about this rhythm of moods makes all the difference.”
In “Dark Nights of the Soul,” Moore examines life’s difficulties—such as the loss of a loved one or the end of a relationship, aging and illness, career disappointments—not as obstacles to be overcome, but as periods of incubation and positive opportunities to delve the soul’s deepest needs for healing and a new understanding of life’s meaning.

Moore goes on to say, “Many people think that the point in life is to solve their problems and be happy. But happiness is usually a fleeting sensation, and you never get rid of problems. Your purpose in life may be to become more who you are and more engaged with the people and the life around you, to really live your life. That may sound obvious, yet many people spend their time avoiding life. They are afraid to let it flow through them, and so their vitality gets channeled into ambitions, addictions, and preoccupations that don’t give them anything worth having. A dark night may appear, paradoxically, as a way to return to living. It pares life down to its essentials and helps you get a new start.

“Here I want to explore positive contributions of your dark nights, painful though they may be. I don’t want to romanticize them or deny their dangers. I don’t even want to suggest that you can always get through them. But I do see them as opportunities to be transformed from within, in ways you could never imagine. A dark night is like Dante getting sleepy, wandering from his path, mindlessly slipping into a cave. It is like Alice looking at the mirror and then going through it. It is like Odysseus being tossed by stormy waves and Tristan adrift without an oar. You don’t choose a dark night for yourself. It is given to you. Your job is to get close to it and sift it for its gold.”

C S Lewis said we read to know we’re not alone. This is no more true than of a book like “Dark Nights of the Soul” that speaks directly down into the deep, dark well of our most utter and complete aloneness.

If you or someone you know is experiencing a dark night of the soul, get Thomas Moore’s brilliant book so whether you go gentle into that good night or rage, rage against the dying of the light, you won’t do it alone. If you’re not experiencing a dark night of the soul, get the book anyway, so that when you do, you’ll be better equipped to receive the dark gifts offered by the experience.