What Now? Songs of the Soul

Dark Night of the Soul
by Saint John of the Cross, Mirabai Starr

(Page 7 of 7)

What Now?

A life of contemplative devotion could be somewhat easier for the ones who remove themselves from the distractions of the marketplace and set themselves apart in mountaintop monasteries than for those immersed in the world. Monks and nuns may well struggle mightily with their inner shadows, but the focus of their lives is primarily on a direct relationship with ultimate reality.

What about those of us who struggle each day to pay taxes to a government we may not agree with, spending our weeks engaged in labors we may not find fulfilling? Those of us who are called in the night to nurse a sick baby or pick up a rebellious teen from the police station? Those of us so exhausted from a day of chopping our twenty-first-century wood and carrying our twenty-first-century water that the thought of getting up an extra hour earlier each morning to sit in silent meditation feels like adding another ten pounds to our already barely manageable load? What about those of us who spent our youth trying every way we could find to "get to God" and ended up in Cincinnati or Santa Fe, with a couple of failed marriages behind us, ownership of a modest business, and credit card debts for pleasures we cannot remember? Those of us struggling to keep our community water clean and our kids crack-free and our own codependent tendencies in check?

Many of us have reached a plateau and have become resigned to the aridity of our spiritual lives. We are probably caught in the wilderness John calls the "night of sense." We no longer pursue the spiritual fireworks we once found so compelling. The "highs" we used to attain while chanting and prostrating and dancing for God have proven to be fluff obscuring the simple quietude of divine suchness. And yet, there is bitterness and grief in our capitulation. We may no longer be suffering from the delusions of a spiritual carnival, but we have lost something vital.

Maybe what we're missing is the love. Maybe we have forgotten that the only reason to strive and to surrender, to sit in the silence or to make a joyful noise unto the Lord, is because ultimate reality is love, and it is only by loving that we remember. Be still now, John would say. Borrow a moment from each day to stop and touch down with the stillness that is your true nature, which is God's true nature, which is nothing, which is love.

Perhaps if we recommit to the journey without any hope of arriving anywhere, the longing for union will rekindle and we will be propelled into the terrible night of the spirit where we are simultaneously overcome with thirst for the Beloved and lost in utter formlessness. But then, maybe this night of spirit will make us wish we had been content to hang out in the tolerable aridity of the night of sense where we rarely felt connected to our Beloved but at least we still knew he was there.

Is it enough to do our best to be good citizens of the planet, raising compassionate families and running ecologically responsible businesses, reading meaningful books and guiding friends through authentic crises, showing up for the occasional Dharma talk or celebration of the Shabbat, keeping a framed photo of a Hindu guru or a statue of the Virgen de Guadalupe in our bedroom to honor what we know to be that which, though intangible, is Most Important? Why plunge willingly off this comfortable flat place and into the abyss?

The leap is not required. Most souls never jump, says John. There is no judgment about this. The dark night is not about who wins the race by crossing the finish line of self-annihilation. There is nothing we can do, anyway. The dark night is about being fully present in the tender, wounded emptiness of our own souls. It's about not turning away from the pain but learning to rest in it. Rather than distracting ourselves from the simple darkness at our core, we sit with it, paying close attention, and opening our hearts to all that is left, which is love. It is the cultivation of compassion for our suffering selves and for all selves who suffer the illusion of separation from the Beloved. It a quiet, formless, willingness to return.

Songs of the Soul

On a dark night,
Inflamed by love-longing-
O exquisite risk!-
Undetected I slipped away.
My house, at last, grown still.
Secure in the darkness,
I climbed the secret ladder in disguise-
O exquisite risk!-
Concealed by the darkness.
My house, at last, grown still.
That sweet night: a secret.
Nobody saw me;
I did not see a thing.
No other light, no other guide
Than the one burning in my heart.
This light led the way
More clearly than the risen sun
To where he was waiting for me
-The one I knew so intimately- In a place where no one could find u
s. O night, that guided me!
O night, sweeter than sunrise!
O night, that joined lover with Beloved!
Lover transformed in Beloved
! Upon my blossoming breast,
Which I cultivated just for him,
He drifted into sleep,
And while I caressed him,
A cedar breeze touched the air.
Wind blew down from the tower,
Parting the locks of his hair.
With his gentle hand
He wounded my neck
And all my senses were suspended.
I lost myself. Forgot myself
. I lay my face against the Beloved's face.
Everything fell away and I left myself behind,
Abandoning my cares
Among the lilies, forgotten.

— John of the Cross
Translated by Mirabai Starr

Copyright © February 2002, Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin Putnam, Inc. Used by permission.

About the Author

Saint John of the Cross (Juan de la Cruz) was a major figure in the Catholic Reformation, a Spanish mystic and Carmelite friar born at Fontiveros, a small village near Ávila.

Mirabai Starr is a professor of philosophy, religious studies, and Spanish at the University of New Mexico who has studied a wide variety of religious traditions including Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, and Christianity. Mirabai is an accomplished translator and fiction writer who brings the sensibilities of both seeker and scholar to her translations. Her most recent work is the translation of St. John of the Cross's mystical writings, Dark Night of the Soul.