I have spent the last ten years of my life on a spiritual journey. It has taken me through zeal, into fundamentalism, into burnout and eventually losing my faith. I spent years as an atheist, then a spiritual seeker. I have been brought to a place of mystical contemplation, a place where I now can plainly see the presence of God or Spirit through my entire journey, and especially in the dark parts.

John of the Cross has been a guide for me, perhaps more than any other christian writer. His experience of the Dark Nights has been my mapbook as I look at where I have come from, and where I might be going. I have spent the past two years studying his writings and message in depth, and I strongly resonate with him.

This week I have been reading about a church I was involved with over twenty years ago, and remembering some of my times as a youth. I was passionate for God, extremely zealous. The church I went to was caught up in revivalism, and the undertone was always this – if we can just pray fervently enough, then eventually God will have no choice but to “come down” and bring revival.
As part of a vibrant youth and student group, we were pushing in to God – there were a couple of years where I was attending church meetings six times a week. From early morning prayer meetings, youth groups, joint prayer meetings with other churches in town, bible studies at the local Anglican church, and normal Sunday services. We were on fire, and I remember an oft-cited phrase in a lot of these meetings which was, “come on!”.

“Come on” meant pray harder. It meant we should become more passionate, more zealous. It meant we should shake and tremble more as we prayed. It put all of the onus on us, and made us feel superior to other “nominal” Christians who weren’t this passionate. We saw ourselves as the burnt offering on the altar, ardently consumed with love for God and a spirit of revival. Unfortunately it also always meant that we weren’t quite trying hard enough – if we could just push ourselves harder in our fervency (and push everyone else around us too), then God would finally act and prove that he was real by doing miracles. We wanted signs and wonders, we wanted people coming in off the streets, desperate for a divine encounter. We wanted people rolling on the floor out of control, filled with the Spirit.
I look back on those days, and I see a lot of immaturity and judgementalism in myself and those around me. But I also see the zeal of young adulthood, a zeal which is entirely normal at that stage of life.

I also see the beginnings of my own dark night experience – a precursor what what beset me in midlife.

After a few years of such fervency, you either obtain what you are pursuing (we didn’t obtain revival, in case you are wondering) – or you burn out. In my case, I began to burn out. Meetings always were the same, behind the fervency it was the same songs, same attitudes, same words of motivation, same feel-good prophecies about revival being just out of reach. At some point I must have started not coming to so many meetings, because I remember having a visit from some of the elders of the church. They basically sat me down and reprimanded me for losing my zeal, and tried to convince me to come to more meetings again and to keep up my fervour. I remember a sense of disappointment at their words – there was not any compassion at how I was beginning to become a bit jaded with the whole things, just a reprimand, and an admonishment to try harder (“come on!”). I felt misunderstood, and for the first time I began to sense that revivalism may not hold all the answers.

I think it was around this time that I first began to practice meditation.

Although I did mention this to my church, there was simply no place in charismatic circles for the quiet and silence of contemplative practices, so I couldn’t find anyone to talk with. From the front we were also taught not to “dabble” in such things, since “If you empty your mind, the devil is sure to fill it!”.It was also around this time that I first read about John of the Cross. I must have been nineteen or twenty years old.

In the spiritual canticle, he starts by saying:

Where have you hidden yourself, my love and left me groaning?You fled like the stag after wounding me. I went out calling you, but you were gone.

I felt like I had been left groaning, and that God had gone. How could I explain this to my church elders? At that young age, surrounded by the positivity of the charismatic movement, how could I have known anything about purgation or the Via Negativa?

John draws heavily on the Song of Solomon, and in another place he talks about the watchmen who beat the bride when she goes seeking her bridegroom (Sos 5:7). I felt beaten by the “watchmen” of the church, the elders. My desire for God had taken me to a place which they didn’t understand, so their only possible reaction towards my struggles was negative.

A visiting prophet prayed with me in one meeting in those days. I told him about my feelings of dryness and darkness after years of fervency. He prophesied that this darkness that I was sensing was something that God would take me all of the way through, and that it would become my life’s message.

Some fifteen years later, I went through the hardest times of my life, a complete loss of faith and years of secretly being an atheist (whilst still in full-time christian leadership). That’s another story, but it was John of the Cross who proved to be the turning point, with his understanding of the Dark Night. I lapped up his writings like a parched man in the desert, and slowly began to realise (through the austerity of his teachings) that this darkness was actually of God.

It was my deep desire for God that took me through times of fervency. It was my deep desire and longing for the living god which led me to give my life in ministry and christian service. It was my desire which led me to experience the fact that simple human fervency and zeal is not enough.And it was my desire for God which led me into the desert and death of the Dark Night.

I wasn’t satisfied with atheism, nor with buddhism or other spiritualities which I explored. I still desired God, though I no longer knew what the term “god” even meant any more.

And this is the deepest part of John’s message – that it’s only raw longing for God which will sustain us and keep us moving on in our spiritual journey.

Not zeal or religious passion (they all come to an end sooner or later). Not spiritual disciplines or ascetic practices (these also are limited by our own power to sustain them, which will one day end). Not ardent, passionate worship or slick services. No, only the raw desire, the deep yearning.

The ancient Celts had a word for this – they called it “hiraeth”, a yearning for the homeland.

And I recognise that deep yearning as being present in my student years, the years of shouting “come on!“. I also recognise it as being present through my years of spiritual seeking. No human tradition or religion brought me satisfaction – I always desired something more, the very Presence of the Divine, no matter what the cost.

Here is the greatest secret of christian mysticism which I have come to learn through my years of darkness (I didn’t read this in a book, though other mystics seem to say similar things):

In god’s very absence, is his greatest presence.

Yes, I have learned that it’s by being lost that we are truly found, it’s only by knowing god as completely absent that we can know him as fully present, even though he is still absent.
If that sounds like a paradox, it’s because it is. The thing about mystical awakening is that you learn to become comfortable with paradoxes. (You don’t resolve them, you just begin to enjoy sitting with them).

As Meister Eckhart, a 13th century German christian mystic has said,
“If you think you know God, you don’t.You are far away.”

When we have gone through years of agonising dryness, endless seeking, and darkness, if we come to a place of mystical understanding then we are able to see that it was in the very seeking that God was present all along.

This darkness and lack of satisfaction is a key to mysitcal awakening, and is present in other traditions too. There’s a sufi saying which pretty much says this same thing, that the presence of god is found in the very search for him, whilst experiencing him as entirely absent.

Or on the words of Ross Nichols, a Druid Chief and one of the fathers of the modern pagan revival has said:

Respect always the place of the dark, for it is the fosterer of splendour. Through the dark places the divine shines the clearest.

If you are walking in darkness in your spiritual journey today, please rest assured that this is normal, and that others have walked in the darkness before you.

May you be blessed with the treasures of darkness. So may it be. Marc