Spiritual Depression & The Dark Night of the Soul

By Hilary Canto

Human beings at their core are spiritual beings, and the challenges of our physical life manifest most noticeably in our mental health. Our personal mind which we rely on for our daily existence is a survival mechanism to serve the spiritual mind that is our true self. However, we have to learn to remember this source waiting to shine through the control within our personal mind. This becomes the battle between light and dark.

Medically diagnosed mental health issues have set criteria for their manifestation but there will always be an underlying spiritual component in them. This existential issue is within all sentient life, which has everything to do with where we came from and why we face daily life events that affect us deeply.

My direct experience of spiritual depression and dark nights of the soul of which there are many in our lives is quite a journey. The dark night of the soul metaphor came from the 16th century Spanish Mystic and poet St John of the Cross, who wrote the “Dark Night of the Soul” classic poem.

We are born into a world where we need to learn why we came here and remember our true self. The way this occurs is through a challenging life. Without challenge we would be bored and wouldn’t need to be here in the first place. The fact that these events involve the most traumatic, horrific, deep chasms of depression, violence, self-harm, abuse, and a myriad of upsets in our lives, makes the task of learning how to find peace, light, and unity within ever more complex to our personal mind.

Yet within every human being is the spark of the Divine, the life experienced is for the purpose of uniting with that spark and helping others. Being in a physical body with a personal mind which derails us, is a tough call, but it is a step-by-step process to freedom where the inner life is understood and spoken about in both physical and spiritual terms. Spirituality is the essence of who we truly are in relationship with life.

Spiritual depression can enter every mental health condition because those conditions affect our spiritual self. If we are cut off from that, our inner light dimmed or snuffed out for whatever reason, we sink into depression and darkness. The dark night of the soul is the soul journeying to freedom through unity within. To explain in simple terms, this summary explains it beautifully: -

“Dark night of the soul is a stage of final and complete purification, marked by confusion, helplessness, stagnation of the will, and a sense of the withdrawal of Divine presence. It is a stage of final 'unselfing' and the surrender to the hidden purposes of the Divine will."

It is a kind of re-birth, a collapse of a perceived meaning in life, and an eruption into your life of a deep sense of meaninglessness. It is essentially any time when our darkness comes to the forefront, as if we are doing everything we can to stay afloat, and it seems as if the universe, the world, and life is against us.

"The dark night of the soul is an essential part of spiritual awakenings and is sure to teach some hard-fought lessons. It is a stage in personal development when a person undergoes a difficult and significant transition to a deeper perception of life and their place in it, accompanied by a painful shedding of previous conceptual frameworks such as an identity, relationship, career, habit, or belief system that previously allowed them to construct meaning in their life.”

As you can see, everything we are and write about in our poetry from life experience is in those words. Our darkness enters spiritual depression where we lose our sense of who we are, feel worthless, and sink into a deep dark abyss thinking we are isolated and alone.

Yet we are not, we are loved beyond measure and can climb out with a flicker of light to pull us back into life, into purpose, into what we came here to do, becoming our true self, recognising, and remembering we have a reason to help others, to serve, to contribute from our personal experience. We write poetry to heal ourselves and others.

We are all spiritual, there is no “your spirituality or my spirituality”, we are all interconnected in a great fabric of life beyond our understanding which is at the core of our being. A living flame of love lives within us and can pull us through whatever we face, even in our darkest hour.

The best way to demonstrate is through four poems at the end of this piece. One is the poem by St John of the Cross – Dark Night of the Soul, the second my own poem Emptiness about the loss of my baby daughter five months into pregnancy, the third and fourth are explained at the end. These were dark nights of my own and let it be said, these dark nights can go on for a long time, once you recognise you are in one, you can see it through and come back into the light.

All the poems refer to the love and light of the Divine entering after a dark time. Until we are emptied, until we are on our knees, until we are ready to let go of the persona we have created that we think is who we are, the Divine light can’t come through us. Trauma and abuse can make us think that there is no such thing as the Divine, because we have an expectation and projection onto what we think the Divine should be or do for us. However, it doesn’t work like that; it isn’t a magic wand, where we can escape and live in a romantic fantasy land. The cruelty humans are subjected to, unforgiveable in our personal mind, can reunite us with spirit, even if it may not seem so in the dark moments, that is the mystery.

Spiritual depression can be triggered in many ways. My way of dealing with it is to ride it, to be with it, to talk to my spiritual self and to practise stilling my personal mind so that my spirit can be free to lift me back into life and purpose. Not everyone can do that easily, I know, but if you can, it brings such release to move forward and re-engage with life in a way that nothing else has ever done for me. I have a daily practice that helps me keep on track.

The last verse of my poem Emptiness explains the light entering into a broken, empty vessel (me) and the point when my life turned around to become a healer. Yet I witnessed the darkness in my brother, greatly gifted, when he closed his spiritual self in the abyss of his personal mind and committed suicide. These are two examples showing the opposing outcomes from trauma experienced when in the darkest night of the soul.

I descend into darkness when I feel I have no purpose and life is meaningless, as soon as I remember I am here for a reason, the light returns. Therefore, my third poem Darkness is a combination of what I sensed in my brother as well as my own dark pit. 

The fourth poem Transcending is my most recent dark depression which lasted around six months. I have M.E and depression is common in M.E but I had never really gone into the deep darkness that I recently experienced. I have been at the point of considering assisted suicide. However, as I have just relayed. There was a spiritual component to this too and this poem describes the transcending from the old me to a new me. I still have M.E but made some changes to my life and I am entering a positive phase again. It is a roller coaster, but understanding the spiritual aspect in depression can really help find the way out of the dark night of the soul and into the light of the soul.

May each of you hold onto your light and free yourself from the darkness of your personal mind.

DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL

By St. John of the Cross

Translated by A.Z. Foreman

Once in the dark of night,

Inflamed with love and yearning, I arose

(O coming of delight!)

And went, as no one knows,

When all my house lay long in deep repose

All in the dark went right,

Down secret steps, disguised in other clothes,

(O coming of delight!)

In dark when no one knows,

When all my house lay long in deep repose.

And in the luck of night

In secret places where no other spied

I went without my sight

Without a light to guide

Except the heart that lit me from inside.

It guided me and shone

Surer than noonday sunlight over me,

And led me to the one

Whom only I could see

Deep in a place where only we could be.

O guiding dark of night!

O dark of night more darling than the dawn!

O night that can unite

A lover and loved one,

Lover and loved one moved in unison.

And on my flowering breast

Which I had kept for him and him alone

He slept as I caressed

And loved him for my own,

Breathing an air from redolent cedars blown.

And from the castle wall

The wind came down to winnow through his hair

Bidding his fingers fall,

Searing my throat with air

And all my senses were suspended there.

I stayed there to forget.

There on my lover, face to face, I lay.

All ended, and I let

My cares all fall away

Forgotten in the lilies on that day.



DARKNESS

By Hilary Canto

Darkness falls, where are the sparks,

candle flames, starlight, sunshine

How come I‘m here, lost, lonely,

so much pain, even light hurts

unable to move, see, feel, hear

paralysed in fear, confusion reigns

Where is the key to open the door

how do I find freedom?

Walking the tightrope, madness, sanity,

loneliness, inclusion

Can anyone hear me, see me, feel me

hear my cries in a silent voice

Someone listen, someone care,

Love…what’s love?

Love myself is what I’m told

How? From this place of desolation

God and angels never here…why?

Darkness deepens, what worth my life

does anyone truly care if I live or die?

A way out…death…or life?

Eternal sleep sounds wonderful

yet what if I have it wrong

what if there are those who care?

Am I lost in the mists of space and time

lacking self-worth, lost in life

in my own head?

Some people love me, I’ve not let in, not heard, not seen, have yet to meet

mysteries to unfold,

great happiness to feel,

freedom calls me to embrace

the light, the key, the open door

just one step, a thread of light,

a flickering star shines 

at the end of the tunnel

Allow myself, follow the star,

my heart light calls, heart flame flickers, feel again

Angels lift me, God’s love, light, freedom

pulls me back from the abyss

I live again, love again

feel, hear, and see again.

People to meet, places to go,

things to do, a lifetime of beauty,

on this wonderful earth

Nature restores, and needs me,

People smile, and need me

Children laugh, play, delight, 

and need me

Family and friends, love and need me

All I thought lost was a trick in my mind

down a blind alley, into a dark tunnel

the heart light won, the heart flame fired my soul, I’m whole again

free of darkness, free in light, at peace

God, angels, nature, humanity, the beautiful power of love

Be gone darkest hour of my soul.

Your light shines through with eternal brightness

Thank God,

I am alive,

I live again.

EMPTINESS

By Hilary Canto

Fulfilled, content

That’s what she felt

A beautiful soul

Growing inside

Nurturing life

promise of joy

New beginning

to light her world

Happiness cut cruelly short

Trauma, tears

Hospitals, tubes, drips

Facing fears

Can’t go back

Can’t go forward

Lying, waiting

glimpse joy and pain

Birthed, loves miracle

held 90 minutes

fragile fingers, tiny body,

cradled to breast

Breath now silent

heartbeat gone

Tears, sorrow

Goodbye little one

Emptiness, no reason to live

heartbreak, grief

numbs the mind,

unable to forgive

Empty, desolate

Brought a miracle

Filled soul with light

unto God Unite

Strength regained

Day by day

Gave the Divine

an open pathway

Beyond the gloom

darkest hour

new beginnings

began to bloom

Golden light

filled the void

Trauma’s shift

to healing gifts.



TRANSCENDING

By Hilary Canto

Today I’m being attentive

Watching, listening, feeling

The reality of life

I want to leave this world

No interest any longer

In the chaotic human plight

Spent my life helping others

Teaching, healing, advising

Contributing, forgiving

Mistakes are there

For all to see

The lessons on my journey

The hour is late

The time is now

Still my world isn’t learning

I’m all used up

Energy gone

Light inside now waning

Once I believed

In the goodness of my race

Yet daily horror speeds up at pace

Is it too late, turn the tide

Release the spirit

Buried inside

Not for me, to second guess

Humanity ‘s job to

clean up its mess

I’ll finish now

Words fail me so

Transcending is where I’ll go

Goodbye my race

My world, my home

Time to die and be reborn.

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