Sooner or later, you will have to face "the dark night of the soul." This phrase, first used by St. John of the Cross, refers to a condition that occurs in the mystic process in which you feel totally devoid of spiritual ability or any sense of inner light. It usually refers to an experience that you have after an extended period of doing your practice, once you have started to feel some kind of positive result. Suddenly, the positive results disappear, and you begin to feel lost in darkness and spiritual dryness.
Miguel de Molinos states that this darkness is actually God's way of drawing you in. He believes that it is necessary for the ideas and personality of the aspirant to withdraw so that God may do the instructing. "So in the beginning, when God intends to guide the Soul by an extraordinary manner into the school of the divine and loving notices of the internal law, he makes it go with darkness, and dryness, so that he may bring it near to himself."
There is an old saying that the first step on the spiritual path is one into pure darkness. That is because the spiritual path leads you into your internal world and the darkness that you find there is the chaos of your own mind. At first, you may be so enthusiastic about your practices that you will not notice any darkness. It may seem as if your Angel is only inches away, as if you are almost done before you have really begun. Very quickly, this enthusiasm will falter, and you will doubt everything. It will feel as if you have lost not only that spiritual light you thought you were getting so close to, but all of the light in your life. All of this is the dark night of the soul.
This is a totally natural process. Any activity that you undertake will have this dark phase. Whether you are invoking your Holy Guardian Angel, starting to exercise, or writing a play, after a short while you will find it acutely painful to continue. Only by suffering through this darkness and letting the things that are holding you back drop away can you succeed in completing your project.
The darkness will usually manifest as a loathing for the project, a feeling that you are getting nowhere, and doubt that there is really anywhere to go. You may feel as if you are losing your mind. You may feel like you are actually becoming a much worse person than you were when you started off. What this darkness truly consists of is all of your internal conflicts and fears that you have kept quietly at bay by building a wall between yourself and the universe. By looking within yourself, you are forced to confront these fears, and if you do not approach this operation with all of your will, you will be consumed by these fears. Only by quietly facing each of your fears, doubts, and delusions with intelligence, perseverance, courage, and silence can you succeed through this critical stage.
You may not recognize that you have entered the dark night of the soul until it completely surrounds you. It may begin as a mild boredom, or a creeping doubt, but quickly it will turn into panic and perhaps even a feeling of madness.
This is just part of the spiritual growing process. At some point, we each have to go through a period of tribulation. It happens in mundane situations too. Any learning process involves this period of dryness and anguish. Think back to when you learned the multiplication tables. At first, maybe it seemed fun, then horrible, like a looming beast, and then you were its master.
There is another old saying that once you take a single step onto the spiritual path you are compelled to walk its entire length. This is also very true. If you abandon your practices in the middle, before you complete the operation, you will remain subject to all of the mental chaos that you've unearthed. Eventually, you will most likely manage to force it all back down into the shadows, but you may never take another step on that path. Once you begin this operation, you must succeed, or you may never succeed.
Just remember that you are seeking your Holy Guardian Angel. You cannot force this Angel to come to you; you must just be patient. Allow your fears and doubts to enter your consciousness, because you will face every one of them in one way or another before your Holy Guardian Angel will appear. Forgive yourself for having these fears, and let them quietly slink away. Eventually, they will not trouble you any longer, and you can be assured that your Angel is only moments away.
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