Tag: dark night of the soul

Meditation Becomes Contemplation: Part 4

Meditation Becomes Contemplation: Part 4

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One experience I have described in an earlier blog, The Dark Night of the Soul: Part 2, with the losses from my business and the injustice done to my family. The stress became so overwhelming that I cried out to God in despair. 

Another dark night period, after I had lost my business and my employment contract had been prematurely terminated eight months thereafter. My son called the day I was terminated and, without the knowledge that I was no longer working, asked if I were interested in doing some consulting.  

I told him I was interested and began consulting the next week. I had gainful employment for the next six months. I perceived that the hand of God had intervened, as often the case, to provide for me and my families’ well-being.

Nevertheless, the next few months were a dry period in my meditation.

I did not know what God wanted for me and there was a notable absence of God’s presence when I sat down to pray. No matter how long I sat there, it seemed void and without fruit. However, I had an intense longing and desire for God and I also had a strange sense that God was somewhere near, just not present to me.  

Initially, I struggled with the thought that my prayer life was somehow at fault but since this experienced was so contrary to what I knew, I resolved to persevere. I continued the practice of sitting in the void and, then at the end of the session, I would offer prayers for others which was also my usual practice.  

This went on for several months until I was finally able to experience a flooding of God’s love into my being. I was filled so completely that I felt consumed by this love; I could sit for any length of time and revel in the grace and blessings that had been bestowed on me.  

Yet I had no sense that I was deserving of this tremendous outpouring of love, rather it humbled me to the point of being mentally prostrate before God. 

Click to check out Meditation Becomes Contemplation: Part 1, Meditation Becomes Contemplation: Part 2, Meditation Becomes Contemplation: Part 3, Meditation Becomes Contemplation: Part 5 and Meditation Becomes Contemplation: Part 6

Meditation Becomes Contemplation: Part 3

Meditation Becomes Contemplation: Part 3

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During the dark night of the soul to struggle at this time is fruitless, for God has captured the soul and keeps it in abeyance. There is no longer illusion and worldly desire to comfort or self-identity to control what is happening.  

This is a period of timeless waiting and of purification of the soul, preliminary to becoming awash in the infinite sea of God’s love.  

However, at this point of the journey, it is a perpetual and perplexing state of unknowing. “The Cloud of Unknowing” is a 14th-century treatise (author anonymous) on the deep and penetrating contemplative mysteries of God.

During this period, any remaining remnants of psychological attachments such as fear, anger, non-forgiveness, envy, despair, and so forth, are purged along with worldly or material attachments.   

Much has been written about the dark night of the soul, but in the experience of contemplation, it is that last step of finally realizing complete and utter dependence on God, the last turning of all to His loving care. 

My dark night was seemingly much less intense than many contemplatives have described in their writings.  Although I felt deeply the lack of God’s immediate presence, I never felt the total abandonment or despair that many speak of in their journey.

I suppose that there have been two periods in my life that I could describe as the dark night of the soul. 

Click to check out Meditation Becomes Contemplation: Part 1, Meditation Becomes Contemplation: Part 2, Meditation Becomes Contemplation: Part 4, Meditation Becomes Contemplation: Part 5 and Meditation Becomes Contemplation: Part 6