Quotes on Dark Nights of the Soul

It is easy to keep your equanimity in heaven; can you keep it in hell?
–Zen story

A Dark Night is . . . a mental and emotional state of despair that arises when something is so painful that it blots out all other considerations and makes carrying on as usual out of the question. —Susan Piver

Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that all growth does not take place in the sunlight.—Joan Chittister

A dark night is not primarily something but a someone, a presence that leaves an indelible imprint on the human spirit, on one’s life.

The dark night is a profoundly good thing. It is an ongoing spiritual process in which we are liberated from attachments and compulsions and empowered to live and love more freely.

The night is the means by which we find our heart’s desire, our freedom for love. It works to heal our blindness, our “slavery to attachment and delusion.

To be darkened is to be emptied of the ‘false gods’ we cling to.

—Above quotes from —Gerard May,”Dark Night of the Soul”

The night sea journey takes you back to your primordial self, not the heroic self that burns out and falls to judgment, but to your original self, yourself as a sea of possibility,
your greater and deeper being. —Thomas Moore

The fact that grief takes so long to resolve is not a sign of inadequacy, but betokens depth of soul. —D.W. Winnicott

The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness.
—Nikos Kazantzakis

Catastrophe is the essence of the spiritual path, a series of breakdowns allowing us to discover the threads that weave all of life into a whole cloth. —Roshi Joan Halifax

…an encounter with god or with the transcendent, per se, can only occur when we experience the violent side of god.—Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig

Life is so generous a giver. But we, judging its gifts by their covering, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love by wisdom, with power. Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel’s hand that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow or a duty, believe me, that angel’s hand is there. —Fra Giovanni (1513)

In a very real sense, the dark night of the soul is just one long ego tantrum.—Jessica Davidson

Your separation from God is the hardest work you will ever do. —Hafiz