Finding Light in Your Darkest Spiritual Moments
Published: March 22, 2025
Beloved Seeker,
If you're reading this during a time when your spiritual path feels dark, confusing, or even completely lost, please know that you are not alone, you are not broken, and you have not failed. What you're experiencing has a name—the Dark Night of the Soul—and it's actually a sign that your spiritual journey is deepening, not ending.
The term "Dark Night of the Soul" comes from the 16th-century Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross, who wrote about the inevitable periods of spiritual dryness and apparent abandonment by God that serious seekers experience. But this phenomenon isn't limited to Christian mystics—it appears in every authentic spiritual tradition and in the journey of every soul committed to awakening.
What the Dark Night Actually Is
The Dark Night of the Soul is not depression, though it may feel similar. It's not a punishment or a sign that you've done something wrong. It's a sacred passage—a necessary death and rebirth process that strips away everything that is not your essential truth.
Think of it like this: imagine you've been living in a house that you thought was your home, only to discover that it was actually a prison. The Dark Night is the process of dismantling that prison, brick by brick. It's uncomfortable, disorienting, and sometimes terrifying—but it's also the only way to freedom.
During this passage, you might experience:
Spiritual Dryness: Practices that once brought you joy and connection now feel empty or mechanical. Prayer feels like talking to a wall. Meditation feels pointless.
Loss of Meaning: Things that once seemed important—career success, material possessions, even relationships—may feel hollow or meaningless.
Identity Crisis: You may feel like you don't know who you are anymore. Old roles and identities no longer fit, but new ones haven't emerged yet.
Isolation: You might feel disconnected from others, even those who share your spiritual interests. Nothing seems to resonate anymore.
Questioning Everything: Beliefs, practices, and teachers you once trusted may now seem questionable or even false.
Why This Happens
The Dark Night occurs because your soul has outgrown its current container. Like a snake shedding its skin or a butterfly dissolving in its cocoon, you're in the process of a fundamental transformation that requires the death of who you thought you were.
Your ego-mind, sensing this threat to its existence, fights back with everything it has. It creates doubt, fear, and confusion to try to pull you back to the familiar, even if the familiar was limiting or painful.
Meanwhile, your soul is calling you toward a more authentic expression of who you really are. This creates an internal war between the old self that's dying and the new self that's being born.
The Gifts Hidden in the Darkness
While the Dark Night feels like pure suffering, it actually contains profound gifts:
Purification: Everything that is not truly you is being burned away. This includes false beliefs, inauthentic relationships, and ego identifications that have kept you small.
Humility: The Dark Night dissolves spiritual pride and the ego's desire to be "special" or "enlightened." This humility is essential for true spiritual maturity.
Compassion: Going through your own darkness gives you genuine empathy for others' suffering. You become a wounded healer.
Authenticity: When everything false is stripped away, what remains is your essential truth. You discover who you really are beneath all the masks.
Surrender: The Dark Night teaches you to let go of trying to control your spiritual journey and trust the process, even when you can't see where it's leading.
How to Navigate the Dark Night
Here are essential practices for moving through this sacred passage:
Stop Trying to Fix It: The Dark Night is not a problem to be solved but a process to be surrendered to. Trying to think your way out or force yourself back to your previous spiritual highs will only prolong the suffering.
Maintain Basic Practices: Even if your meditation feels dry or your prayers feel empty, continue showing up. The practices are working on deeper levels than you can perceive.
Seek Support: Find a spiritual director, therapist, or mentor who understands the Dark Night. Many people pathologize this experience as depression when it's actually spiritual emergence.
Be Gentle with Yourself: This is not the time for harsh self-discipline or pushing yourself harder. Treat yourself with the tenderness you would show a dear friend going through a difficult time.
Trust the Process: Even though you can't see it, profound transformation is occurring. Your soul knows what it's doing, even when your mind doesn't.
Stay Present: Don't try to rush to the other side of this experience. The Dark Night has its own timing, and fighting it only creates more suffering.
What NOT to Do
Avoid these common mistakes during the Dark Night:
Don't Make Major Life Changes: This is not the time to quit your job, end your marriage, or move across the country. Wait until you've emerged from this passage before making big decisions.
Don't Abandon Your Path: Many people give up on spirituality entirely during the Dark Night, thinking it's not working. This is like leaving the theater in the middle of the movie.
Don't Compare Yourself to Others: Everyone's Dark Night looks different. Don't judge your experience against others' apparent spiritual success.
Don't Numb the Pain: Avoid using substances, shopping, relationships, or other distractions to avoid feeling what needs to be felt.
Signs You're Moving Through
You'll know you're beginning to emerge from the Dark Night when:
Acceptance: You stop fighting the experience and begin to accept it as part of your journey.
Glimpses of Light: Brief moments of peace, clarity, or connection begin to appear, like stars becoming visible in a dark sky.
New Perspective: You begin to see your life and relationships from a more mature, compassionate viewpoint.
Renewed Purpose: A deeper sense of meaning and calling begins to emerge, often quite different from your previous understanding.
Integration: You start to integrate the lessons and insights from your dark passage into daily life.
The Dawn After the Darkness
What emerges from the Dark Night is not the same person who entered it. You are reborn—more authentic, more compassionate, more genuinely spiritual, and more deeply connected to your true purpose.
The spiritual highs you experienced before the Dark Night were often ego-based—you felt special, chosen, or superior. The spirituality that emerges after is humble, grounded, and focused on service rather than personal aggrandizement.
You discover that the Divine was never absent during your Dark Night—it was simply working in a different way, like a surgeon operating while the patient is unconscious. The apparent abandonment was actually the deepest intimacy, as God was restructuring your very being.
A Personal Note
I want you to know that I've walked through my own Dark Nights—plural, because they can happen multiple times as we continue to evolve. Each one felt like it would never end, like I had lost everything that mattered, like I was going crazy or had been abandoned by the Divine.
But each Dark Night was followed by a dawn more beautiful than I could have imagined. Each one stripped away another layer of illusion and brought me closer to my authentic self and true purpose.
If you're in the darkness now, please hold on. Please trust the process. Please remember that this is not the end of your story but the most important chapter—the one where you die to who you thought you were and are reborn as who you really are.
Your Invitation
If you're currently in a Dark Night, I invite you to:
Stop trying to escape it and instead ask, "What is this experience trying to teach me?"
Find one person who understands the spiritual journey and share your experience with them.
Create a simple daily practice of showing up—even if it's just lighting a candle and sitting in silence for five minutes.
Write in a journal about your experience, knowing that future seekers may benefit from your insights.
Remember that countless souls throughout history have walked this path before you and emerged transformed.
The Dark Night of the Soul is not your enemy—it's your initiation into authentic spiritual maturity. Trust the darkness, for it is pregnant with a light you cannot yet imagine.
Walking with you in the darkness, knowing the dawn is coming,Mitch