Spirituality of The Deep

Dark Nights of the Soul
by Thomas Moore, Ph.D.

(Page 7 of 8)

The language of psychology may not say enough about the darkness and therefore may not get you through. With its therapeutic goals, psychology reduces experience too far. Its mission is to relieve you of your suffering. It is not philosophically or theologically attuned for helping you find meaning in the dark. And so it isn't sufficient.

Religion, too, often avoids the dark by hiding behind platitudes and false assurances. Nothing is more irrelevant than feeble religious piousness in the face of stark, life-threatening darkness. Religion tends to sentimentalize the light and demonize the darkness. If you turn to spirituality to find only a positive and wholesome attitude, you are using spirituality to avoid life's dark beauty. Religion easily becomes a defense and avoidance. Of course, this is not the real purpose of religion, and the religious traditions of the world, full of beautifully stated wisdom, are your best source of guidance in the dark. But there is real religion and there is the empty shell of religion. Know the difference. Your life is at stake.

Flight from the dark infantilizes your spirituality, because the dark nights of the soul are supposed to initiate you into spiritual adulthood. You have to be exceptionally alert in the sphere of religion, because, for all its beauty and substance, it can be full of traps. Even those who perpetrate religious nonsense don't seem to be aware of what they are doing, and that makes it only more difficult for the susceptible seeker of spiritual wisdom. You have to use your intelligence every step of the way.

The spiritual life is both deep and transcendent. It shouldn't whisk you away from your daily challenges but should offer you an intelligent way of dealing with all the complexity involved. It should make you a person of character and discernment, emotionally tough and intellectually demanding, as well as loving and compassionate. It should give you insight into the deepest of your questions and problems, and give you a vision that extends beyond the everyday issues. Religion often fails to explore the depths and only offers the vision, but then the transcendent possibilities lack depth and in the end hurt more than help.

One of the strongest voices of religion in the face of death, and yet another compassionate and talented person speaking from prison, is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a theologian and pastor, sentenced for participation in a plot against Hitler. In his last letters from prison, he tries to describe a kind of religiousness that is exactly the opposite of what it once was for him. "The world that has come of age," he writes, "is more godless, and perhaps for that very reason nearer to God, than the world before its coming of age."10 What he means, I think, is that in the old days religion called on God as a power outside of life to solve our problems. Today, Bonhoeffer says, we have to face our problems directly, and having lost the option of a God coming like the cavalry from the sky, we discover the real meaning of religion, an openness to the mysteries that are playing themselves out. Bonhoeffer wrote this toward the end of a dark night of the soul that was, by all accounts, not at all depressive. He kept his hope alive, but he also turned the very idea of religion upside down. He was another who won the battle morally, but lost it physically. He was hanged, but his letters now inspire a new and "ultimately honest," to use his phrase, way to be religious. He wrote from the heart of his darkness, and there was an inspiring luminosity and energy in his thoughts.

Jonah's Calling

Jonah's resistance to the call of God could be seen as resistance to the other will that rises from within. Most of our decisions involve an interior dialogue: Should I take this job or that job, stay home or travel, get married or remain single? Circumstances may solve the question, but often you are torn between two sides of the issue, two voices trying to persuade one way or the other. From ancient times, the inner urge, which can be both guide and tempter, has been called a daimon.

The ancient Greeks used the word to describe any unnamed spirit having an impact on someone. Plato spoke of love as a daimon. Later, Jung described it as a spirit with a degree of autonomy, having a strong influence on your interior life. The existential psychiatrist Rollo May wrote frequently about the daimonic, describing it as a strong push, an urge like sex or hunger. He said to keep this daimon from overtaking a personality, it needs dialogue. You need to talk to people about it and maybe even, as Jung did, converse with it. As I see it, the daimon is a strong drive found either within you or sometimes in the world that urges you toward some action. You have to spend time with this daimonic force before you discover how to give it a creative place in your life.

When you feel an urge to take a major turn in your life, that is the daimon waking you up. When you find unexpected strength in your voice or in your work, that is the daimon empowering you. When you want to go in one direction, and something in you pushes strongly in a different direction, that other voice is the daimon. It is an ancient idea, but it also lies at the heart of the work of the Greek mystic Heraclitus, C. G. Jung, W. B. Yeats, Rollo May, and James Hillman. You live with your daimon when you take your innermost passions into account, even when they go against your habits and standards. You need dialogue so that you can work out a livable connection with this challenging but ultimately creative power.

In the best of cases, over time you get to know your deep passions. You come to recognize the voices that speak deep in your imagination. You sort out the devils from the angels, the voices of fear from the voices of hope. You may get to the point where you feel in harmony with yourself because you are in dialogue with these other presences. A psychologist might call them fantasy figures and warn against giving them too much reality. But in spite of the dangers, you can bring them into the equation and consider them carefully.

Copyright © 2005 Thomas Moore

About the Author

Thomas Moore, Ph.D., wrote the phenomenal #1 bestsellers Care of the Soul and SoulMates as well as many other successful books. Moore was a Catholic monk for twelve years and later became a psychotherapist, earning degrees in theology, musicology, and religion. Moore now lectures extensively throughout North America.