A book for readers who already have some background on Christian mysticism. Most other readers will likely find this book hard going.
St. John of the Cross was a revered Christian mystic from 16th Century Spain, and his eight-stanza poem The Dark Night of the Soul is considered a masterpiece of Christian mystic poetry (the full poem is at the end of this post). This book is a 188-page excerpt of a very long commentary and analysis of that poem, possibly also written by John of the Cross, although from what I can tell his authorship is not known for certain.
So: we get both the poem and a very long (but partial) commentary on it. When I say readers may find this book hard going, here's what I mean: by page 149 of this book, the discussion moves to the second stanza. (!)
However, if you can (patiently) read it as metaphor, this book will reward you. Literally, The Dark Night of the Soul is about handling obstacles on the soul's journey to genuine communion with the Divine, but a modern reader could also read it as advice for handling obstacles and setbacks (even shattering, devastating setbacks) on a journey towards any important goal.
Relevant examples will depend on your specific life situation: do you perhaps seek more self-control? Are you grappling with your ego, or struggling with some other psychological challenge? Is there someplace you'd like to be in life that you think is so far away, so out of reach, that you don't even dare to articulate it to yourself? I'll go more into some of these thoughts in the notes below, but I found this to be a useful way to read this work, and I found many helpful ways here to rethink many of my own "journeys" over the course of my life.
Notes:
1) This is also a book about attachment (or really, non-attachment). Whatever the goal/destination is, somehow when you really want to have that goal, when you grasp it in your hand with avarice, or in competition against others, it always slips from your grasp. Somehow, reaching the goal has to involve non-attachment to the goal.
2) Also to what extent do you trust the process of the road you're on towards this destination? This can be framed in many ways too: trust in God, trust in your habits or your disciplines, trust in a teacher or a leader, etc. Some people are arrogant and can't be led, and it's likely no coincidence those people don't reach their goals. Somehow you have to find the right path, the right teacher, extend trust, and somehow handle the paradox of wanting to make progress to a goal while also paradoxically having the non-attachment to your goal required in order to actually reach it.
3) The book illustrates a strange insatiability in humanity: no matter how well our lives are going, we want more. Whatever progress we're making (even if it's moral progress), it's somehow not fast enough and we get impatient. The Israelites grew to despise the sweet manna given to them in the desert, ungratefully thinking nostalgically back on the bitter onions and garlic they ate as slaves back in Egypt. It's the same set of problems: we are insatiable, we have rubber yardsticks, we have low frustration tolerance, we wish for things to be perfect... and thus life is never good enough.
5) The Christian mystics have their own language and vocabulary, and there's conflict between Christianity mysticism and standard "vanilla" Christianity. That tension is interesting because it mirrors the conflict between attending to the everyday world and attending to the transcendent state of being. We have an attachment to the physical world, and it's hard to let go of it. The physical world is an illusion, but it's all we think we have, which is why it's so difficult to lose our attachment to it.
6) On the idea of a long study period or preparatory period as an adept before being "ready" to achieve a transcendent state. Similar with stages of advancement in Eastern religions.
7) Other commonalities with Buddhism, Taoism (and most faiths probably): the idea of finding a secret pride in your spiritual progress, giving rise to vanity. "I'm way holier than that guy!" By yet another paradox the practice of spirituality becomes a vice.
8) Another paradox: if you were to lose your imperfections that you see in yourself you would likely become still "prouder and more presumptuous."
9) On having a humble "beginner's mind" with your progress: having a deep desire to be taught by anyone who can bring you forward, and on not acting as if you knew the teacher's words already "(yeah, I know all that already"). And being ready to set out on whatever road you are so commanded by your teacher. Also on being aware of and willing to speak of your faults and sins: "that these should be recognized rather than their virtues."
10) Avarice in the spiritual sense: for example a desire to own relics or spiritual trinkets that have value or that "advertise" your spirituality, as opposed to losing your attachment to these type of things on your route to spiritual perfection.
11) Other examples of committing the various seven deadly sins in the practice of spirituality: "Spiritual gluttony" (doing spirituality "too much" or being gluttonous in your efforts to collect "spiritual merit badges"). Experiencing "wrath" because your progress is frustrated or the journey is much harder than you expected. It is a type of childishness to wish the journey were easy rather than hard.
12) Spiritual envy and sloth: we experience displeasure at the spiritual growth of others, we feel outstripped, outdone. Contrast the idea of feeling "delight when others outstrip us in the service of God." You want to cultivate happiness when someone makes spiritual (or any other) progress faster than you do.
13) Also not having trust in the will of God, being fretful and having to will that which he wills, and find it repugnant to accommodate their will to that of God. Bringing to mind the paradoxical Bible verse "that he who should lose his will for His sake, the same should gain it; and he who should desire to gain it, the same should lose it" (Matthew 16:25). On trusting your process, your mentor, trusting the Universe, etc.
14) This concludes a more than 20-page discussion of the first four words (!) of the stanzas of the soul: "On a dark night" which is an elaborate metaphor for the darkness of the sins we experience as we become proficient in a new discipline (in this case the author is speaking about genuine communion/contact with the Divine, but you can insert your own metaphor here too).
15) On how "trying harder" doesn't help, "making yourself have more patience" doesn't help, "persevering harder" doesn't help you make progress. Also there are lots of midwit problems in this process: instead "trouble not yourself and what you shall think or meditate upon, instead content yourselves on being without anxiety... for all these yearnings disquiet and distract the soul"
16) Discussion of the growth stage or progression of the soul: from a childlike stage of breastfeeding and simple foods, metaphorically speaking, to graduating to the foods of the adult. Also an awareness of the soul's misery and lowliness "which in the time of its prosperity it was unable to see."
17) The soul "experiencing no satisfaction in itself." True humility. On being "empty" of desires, of attachments to sense experience. Like in Zen: "empty your cup."
18) Submission, obedience and true lack of ego on the spiritual journey after we have achieved humility: "Likewise, from the aridities and voids of this night of the desire, the soul draws spiritual humility, which is the contrary virtue to the first capital sin, which, as we said, is spiritual pride. Through this humility, which is acquired by the said knowledge of self, the soul is purged from all those imperfections whereunto it fell with respect to that sin of pride, in the time of its prosperity. For it sees itself so dry and miserable that the idea never even occurs to it that it is making better progress than the others, or outstripping them, as it believed itself to be doing before. On the contrary, it recognizes that others are making better progress than itself."
19) The value of practicing several virtues together, for example working on your patience/longsuffering along with working on your fortitude.
20) On being angry at oneself for one's own faults, but by a process of purgation becoming undisturbed at your faults and failings. We are all flawed beings.
21) See also the sin or flaw of "irksomeness" when life isn't the way you want.
BOOK 2:
Moving on to the second night of the soul.
22) The trials of the first night/purgation now move to the second night of the spirit: you've become a proficient and are no longer a beginner.
23) More on losing your attachment to the goal (of union with God here but can be thought of in the context of any goal), specifically losing a sense-based, self-satisfaction-based or pleasure-based attachment.
24) "...the more directly we look at the sun, the greater is the darkness which it causes in our visual faculty, overcoming and overwhelming it through its own weakness. In the same way, when this Divine light of contemplation assails the soul which is not yet wholly enlightened, it causes spiritual darkness in it..." Just like staring at the sun, or when an owl tries to see during the day: this is why there's a process to become "a proficient."
25) The soul can't handle the divine light and experiences grief and pain because it now believes God has cast it away. See Job for example. The soul suffers, sees its own impurities, "and know clearly that it is unworthy of God... and what gives it most pain is that it thinks that it will never be worthy and that good things are all over for it." You feel like you'll never get there, you feel like you'll never be any good. Amazing how this shows up in all life domains, all disciplines, it's an example of "the obstacle is the way."
26) In the darkness however, you can see more clearly that your soul is wanting, you realize that you're impoverished on many levels. You have to take a hard, sincere look at yourself, your motivations, your lack of humility, etc., to find the way.
27) See also Jeremiah, the long tradition of ascetics in the desert, metaphors for various trials that the soul has to go through without end. Also on the idea of remaining in a constant present, not asking "when will it end/when can I be done?" The ego wants to think that all the trials will be over one day.
28) On combating defeatism: You believe your prayers will not reach God, and therefore pray without strength. Or you believe that whatever you do doesn't really matter, so you bag it, you don't even try.
29) "Having nothing yet possessing all things" Nihil habentes, et omnia possidentes (2 Corinthians 6:10). on embracing ascetic life, embracing voluntary poverty, etc., as a path to needlessness (paradoxically, this is one definition of abundance!) and non-attachment.
30) The second night is painful, afflicted, filled with doubts and misgivings, the soul believing that "its blessings have gone for ever." See Job again.
31) "The firmer the edifice, the harder the labor."
32) More on purgation: A log of wood in the fire being consumed by the fire and made into the fire itself, transforming the wood into itself, and by that being cleansed of all sin and abhorrent things. A metaphor for the soul experiencing perdition on the second night.
33) On leaving the house without being observed: often the greatest challenges in your life must be done utterly alone.
34) "Oh, miserable is the fortune of our life, which is lived in such great peril and wherein it is so difficult to find the truth! For that which is most clear and true is to us most dark and doubtful; wherefore, though it is the thing that is most needful for us, we flee from it. And that which gives the greatest light and satisfaction to our eyes we embrace and pursue, though it be the worst thing for us, and make us fall at every step." On how our senses deceive us, we have to trust in God, our teacher, etc., and follow the road that may seem totally dark or obscure, we much deny our own wishes, reject our own egoic desires.
35) The problem of lacking words to describe an experience so sublime that no suitable way exist to express it. Even if you did find words for it it would still remain undescribed. You cannot "give an account" of this spiritual state, in fact to do so would be repugnant to you, it must remain indescribable. "How base and defective, and, in some measure, how inapt, are all the terms and words which are used in this life to treat of Divine things.... And thus, when by means of this illumination the soul discerns this truth, namely, that it cannot reach it, still less explain it, by common or human language, it rightly calls it secret."
36) Secret wisdom likened to a paradoxical ladder: to go up is to go down, to go down is to go up, "for he that humbles himself is exalted and he that exalts himself is humbled." More Zen-like paradoxes. The soul has to suffer many ups and downs. Prosperity must be followed by storms and trials.
37) Extending the metaphor by describing each of the ten steps on the ladder towards union with God. The idea of making it through difficult trials to later receive blessings.
38) Oddly, the footnoted commentaries in this edition of the book offers all kinds of nuanced explanations for the translation decisions from the original Spanish into English, but the book gives readers absolutely no help translating the many extensive and obscure Latin phrases! This strikes me as weird: if you're translating a book from Spanish to English you are assuming the readers don't speak Spanish, but Latin-proficient readers will clearly be a tiny subset of both of these groups.
39) A totally unfinished commentary that leaves off suddenly, at the beginning of the third stanza, with nothing more, and no real explanation for why the book just... stops.
Vocab [I'll be seeking non-attachment to my goal of one day using any of following four words in a sentence]:
Discalced: literally "without shoes"; referring to ascetic religious orders that go barefoot or wear sandals
Amanuensis: a copyist
Opuscules: works of minor literary importance
Hyperbaton: reversing the typical order of words in a sentence ("this I must see")
Reading list:
St Teresa of Avila: Interior Castle
Full text of "Stanzas of the Soul"
1. On a dark night,
Kindled in love with yearnings—oh, happy chance!—
I went forth without being observed,
My house being now at rest.
2. In darkness and secure,
By the secret ladder, disguised—oh, happy chance!—
In darkness and in concealment,
My house being now at rest.
3. In the happy night,
In secret, when none saw me,
Nor I beheld aught,
Without light or guide, save that which burned in my heart.
4. This light guided me
More surely than the light of noonday
To the place where he (well I knew who!) was awaiting me—
A place where none appeared.
5. Oh, night that guided me,
Oh, night more lovely than the dawn,
Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover,
Lover transformed in the Beloved!
6. Upon my flowery breast,
Kept wholly for himself alone,
There he stayed sleeping, and I caressed him,
And the fanning of the cedars made a breeze.
7. The breeze blew from the turret
As I parted his locks;
With his gentle hand he wounded my neck
And caused all my senses to be suspended.
8. I remained, lost in oblivion;
My face I reclined on the Beloved.
All ceased and I abandoned myself,
Leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.