A dark night of the soul is a period of intense spiritual or emotional distress, typically characterized by feelings of emptiness, despair, and a loss of meaning or purpose in life.
REVELATION
The Dark Night reveals all of our fundamental attachments; the purpose of the Dark Night is the very liberation of your soul.
A dark night calls you into a true baptism.
A dark night sears away pretense, dragging all – beliefs, motives, coping mechanisms – into hell’s white heat.
Entering the Refiner’s Fire
The dark night starts with desolation, a profound sense of abandonment and emptiness. All that you trust in our depend on more than Him will become your opposition, you will feel despised, you will be deserted.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? -Psalm 22:1
And there, in that crucible of flames, the essence meets its agonizing winnow:
“Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature” – Colossians 3:5
What forms the core, what residue to ash… He’ll burn away ego and attachments that distance us from Himself…
“For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.” Romans 8:13
Here darkness holds no delicacy.
Its firebrands flay hope from writhing flesh, strip sanity bare till only raw nerve remains. Reason fragments under pounding torture, oozing through mind’s fissures in diarrhea of doubt.
“Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Galatians 5:24
In the darkness, we’re moulded by God alone. But like gold in a furnace, we don’t break—we’re transformed by the Alchemist, The great Architect – God Himself!
Our false identity sloughs away, peeling off in scorched layers as even (the pronoun) “I” dissolves.
Yet into this nuclear hell-mouth descends the Divine, wielding flames to burn away death’s shroud from our encrusted soul.
Far from punishment, the dark night is a clear display of Divine love placing us into intense spiritual refinement.
“Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. John 15:2
You find that you contain many branches, we are each branches containing many branches, and fragments of branches.
Fallen man is in sin which equals (=) separation, hence fragmented, sinful, broken, no longer a branch but a fractured, pile of branches.
Emerging with renewed vision
Though form disintegrates at such intimacy with cosmic conflagration, the heart’s diamond emerges purified.
Through suffering, we experience greater union with Christ who understands our pain. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.” -Isaiah 53:3-5
What emerges is not the same substance.
Spirit is born from the sacrifice of the flesh. The old is still attached, this is why St Paul States:
“Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” -Corinthians 5:8
When blackened flesh falls from whitened bones and darkness swallows the final scream, deep-bedded Spirit leaps forth on New Wings, reconstituted through Sacred Fire’s Cataclysm.
Detached from the fleeting,
“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble…” Psalm 46:1
The dark night readies our soul to receive Divine wisdom in humility, lighting our path ahead.
But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn,which shines brighter and brighter until full day. Proverbs 4:18
A journey of joy through darkness
Though the dark night terrifies, its end brings relief and peace infinitely deeper than before the fall …
Jesus said:
“Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy. ” John 16:20-22
Freed from fear of trial by fire, we walk joyfully toward the Light which the darkness could not overcome (John 1:5).
We see then how God strategically uses all things for good.
The darkness isn’t a sign of His absence but preparation for an intimacy closer than ever dreamed.
I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them. Isaiah 42:16.
How can God guide you if you already know the way? God delights to guide us into new places, new paths, take us on new adventures and lead us in new ways.
But first, He wants us to trust Him and depend on him even though we feel “blind” and “in the dark.”
Things become clear only in the place of following Him into the unknown.
This is the Way: through hell’s annihilating forge, past all fears, to new creation’s dawn.
“And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” – Romans 8:28
For those called to this sacred spiritual process, take heart—the way is made straight, and dawn follows.
“I will go before you and make the crooked places straight; I will break in pieces the gates of bronze and cut the bars of iron . . . That you may know that I, the Lord, Who call you by your name, Am the God of Israel” –Isaiah 45: 2, 3“
A voice of one calling in the desert:
‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for Him. Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low. The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth. And all mankind will see God’s salvation’ Luke 3: 5, 6
Steadfast Faith sees us through.
May those navigating these waters find strength, by the strength of our substitute, protected in God who doesn’t put is in the out valley without going with us into the deepest valley…
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. Psalm 23:4
