When Deeper Healing Begins — Dark Night of the Soul

The night of sense may and should be called a kind of correction and restraint of desire rather than a full purgation. The imperfections and disorders of the sensual part have their strength and root in the spirit, where all habits, good and bad, are brought into subjection. Until those are purged, the rebellions of sense cannot be purged thoroughly. What felt like a finished night was only the surface being held in check.

In the night that follows, sense and spirit are purged together. That is why it was well to pass through the corrections of sense first and then enter this night of the spirit. The deeper night is not a repeat of dryness. It is the root being treated, not only the appetite.

This dark night is an inflowing of God into the soul, which purges ignorances and imperfections habitual, natural, and spiritual. Contemplatives call it infused contemplation, or mystical theology. Herein God secretly teaches the soul and instructs it in perfection of love without its doing anything, or understanding of what manner this infused contemplation is. Saint John is naming a deeper healing: God comes in, the soul does not manufacture the lesson, and the old night of sense was only the door.