The dark night of the soul

In the language of the sixteenth-century mystic John of the Cross, the dark night of the soul is a period of spiritual emptiness and dryness in which meaning withdraws. It is a passage where the old handholds no longer work and dispersion and uncertainty prevail. Some read this night as a threshold toward purification and a deeper integration. The concept says that periods which look like collapse can sometimes be a threshold of ripening.