Chapter 20: The Dark Night of the Soul

Juan de Yepes was imprisoned by his own religious order. In a cell six feet by ten, with no light except what seeped under the door, he composed the poem that would become one of the greatest works of mystical literature. He called it "The Dark Night of the Soul."

The dark night, John taught, is not punishment but purification. It is not the absence of God but God's way of drawing the soul deeper than its own images and expectations can go. "God leads the soul into darkness precisely because the light is too bright for our weak eyes."

There are two dark nights, John explained. The first is the dark night of the senses — when all the consolations of faith dry up, when prayer becomes tasteless, when God seems to have withdrawn. Many turn back at this point, seeking easier comforts. But those who persist enter the second night: the dark night of the spirit.

"In this deeper night," John wrote, "even the memory of consolation fades. The soul feels abandoned not just by pleasure but by God himself. It cannot pray, cannot hope, cannot see any way forward. This is the crucifixion of the soul — the death that precedes resurrection."

The paradox at the heart of John's teaching: darkness becomes light. "What feels like abandonment is actually embrace. God comes to us as darkness because our images of God — even our best and holiest images — are idols that must be shattered. In the dark night, God is closer than ever, but we cannot see him because he is too close."

The end of the poem is not despair but union: "Oh, night that guided me! Oh, night more lovely than the dawn! Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover, lover transformed in the Beloved!" The darkness was never the enemy. It was the womb in which transformation happened.

John was eventually released from prison. He became one of the great reformers of his order. But he never forgot the lesson of the dark cell: that God does his deepest work in darkness, and that the soul that can embrace the night will find the dawn.