A Carmelite priest, by the name of Saint John of the Cross, was a prisoner for nine months in 1577-78. He was kept in solitary confinement. He entered the dark night illuminated by a light he could not see. He surrendered to the darkness and let its hidden light purge his soul. He escaped his tormentors. He then wrote poems that became his "Spiritual Canticle" and "The Dark Night." John's imprisonment was an archetypal image of the interior struggle he named the dark night of the soul.
John says that the dark night is really an "inflow" of God into the soul, but it is an inflow that purges us of our natural and spiritual ignorance and imperfections. The dark night is really infused light, but the imperfect soul neither knows nor understands what is happening. This is so because up to this time the soul has been intensely engaged in striving to prepare itself for God's grace. Then, when God's infused contemplation arrives, the soul is blind to see that now God is at work, and what appears to be darkness is really light so bright that it blinds our seeing. God is working deep within, and because there are impurities within, the light is so painful that it doesn't seem like light but darkness. If we are not yet entirely illumined, this light causes spiritual blindness, darkness.
When the light enters the soul, the soul feels unclean. The person suffers because it seems that God has abandoned him altogether; whereas just the opposite is happening, and it will take time for the person to adjust to this new light. God's mystical light, is in reality preparing one to be able to enjoy fully all earthly and heavenly things with a divine freedom from attachment to them. To be pure and completely open before God is the purpose of the dark night, of living in darkness- but in order then to see the light and to see by the same light.
John says that the dark night is really an "inflow" of God into the soul, but it is an inflow that purges us of our natural and spiritual ignorance and imperfections. The dark night is really infused light, but the imperfect soul neither knows nor understands what is happening. This is so because up to this time the soul has been intensely engaged in striving to prepare itself for God's grace. Then, when God's infused contemplation arrives, the soul is blind to see that now God is at work, and what appears to be darkness is really light so bright that it blinds our seeing. God is working deep within, and because there are impurities within, the light is so painful that it doesn't seem like light but darkness. If we are not yet entirely illumined, this light causes spiritual blindness, darkness.
When the light enters the soul, the soul feels unclean. The person suffers because it seems that God has abandoned him altogether; whereas just the opposite is happening, and it will take time for the person to adjust to this new light. God's mystical light, is in reality preparing one to be able to enjoy fully all earthly and heavenly things with a divine freedom from attachment to them. To be pure and completely open before God is the purpose of the dark night, of living in darkness- but in order then to see the light and to see by the same light.
Reference~ Mystics by Murray Bodo
