The Dark Night

I recently read Gerald May’s “The Dark Night of the Soul: A Psychiatrist Explores the Connection Between Darkness and Spiritual Growth”, a helpful and thoughtful read in which May reflects on some of the things with which we struggle. As he says at the beginning: “The bad news is that bad things happen to everyone, and they have nothing to do with whether you are a good or bad person, how effectively you’ve taken charge of your life, or how carefully you have planned for the future. The good news, or at least part of it, is that good things happen to everyone too.” May draws on the thinking and writing of St John of the Cross and St Teresa of Avila, demonstrating the contemporary relevance of their perspectives. In particular, he makes the point that a so called dark night is not a one-off, but something that recurs. Things will neither be constantly good, nor constantly bad. As May puts it: “I have repeatedly suggested that, contrary to popular assumptions, the dark night is not a single event in one’s life that one undergoes and then somehow moves beyond. Instead, I have characterized the night as the ongoing spiritual process of our lives. We have periodic conscious experiences of it, but it continues at all times, hidden within us. We are aware of only the experiences that come to our consciousness. Thus what someone else might call “going through the dark night” I would call “having an experience of the dark night.” That’s worth remembering when things are not going well, but probably also when life is great!