Considering Darkness as a Spiritual Practice 

I still remember my first night run when I was running ultra marathons. I was training for a 100k and was running a 27-mile loop at the park I always train at. Never running in the dark with a head lamp was spooky to say the least. Watching the day animals go to their roosts for the evening and the night animals coming out of their day roosts, the forest was alive with activity. The most memorable scene was running along the bike trail and having bats diving at my head to get the bugs flying around my headlamp. Maybe not for everyone, but that run marked the first of many night runs I did over the years I ran overnight ultras. I have found the night running to bring a special kind of peace. This week, I want to consider how we can use darkness both figuratively and literally as a practice for spiritual growth.  

Emotional Sobriety 

In a society marked by limited emotional maturity and pervasive emotional excess, the spiritual discipline of emotional sobriety offers an approach for individuals to regain balance and self-awareness. Embracing darkness as part of one’s spiritual journey, commonly referred to as the “Dark Night of the Soul,” enables individuals to confront and accept their emotional experiences, thereby enhancing self-awareness and emotional regulation. This process is instrumental in promoting healing and transformation, both of which are vital to achieving emotional sobriety during recovery. 

With professional guidance from a trained clinician, individuals can navigate their “dark night of the soul”—a profound spiritual experience characterized by significant emotional distress and a sense of alienation from oneself and the surrounding world. This phase typically involves intense feelings of sadness, emptiness, and confusion, and is regarded as an important milestone in spiritual development, ultimately resulting in personal renewal. 

Through this practice, individuals may cultivate: 

• Self-Reflection: Facing challenging emotions facilitates deeper understanding and acceptance, supporting effective emotional regulation. 

• Ego Death: The transformative nature of the dark night often leads to the dissolution of established identities and behavioral patterns, creating space for a more genuine and emotionally stable self to emerge. 

• Mindfulness and Acceptance: This discipline fosters a mindful presence with one’s emotions. Acceptance of all emotional experiences, including those that are difficult, remains central to the achievement of emotional sobriety. 

Shadow Work 

Another way to utilize darkness as a way to foster spiritual growth is to engage in shadow work. Shadow work, “in analytical psychology, the shadow is an unconscious aspect of the personality that does not correspond with the ego ideal, leading the ego to resist and project the shadow, creating conflict with it. The shadow may be personified as archetypes which relate to the collective unconscious, such as the trickster.” 

Essentially, shadow represents everything we don’t see in our lives. It is the part of us that hides in the darkness, just over our shoulders, always there, but always out of reach. We are so afraid of the darkness that we never stare long enough to see it. When we explore the shadow, we are led to greater authenticity, internal strength, creativity, increased energy, and a more profound sense of awakening. 

Countering a Feel Good Faith  

While our faith can lift us up to the mountain peaks, there are the valleys. These are the most common features among the terrain of our faith walk. Finding God’s presence here is the key to spiritual growth. We must not stay in the space of a feel good faith experiences and instead, seek discomfort in order to understand how God shows up. For ten years, I ran ultra marathon races. Some were better than others. Consistently though was my approach. I always anticipated the dark times and leaned into trusting my body and the divine spirit to get me through these times. In these trials, I learned how navigate challenges in the training field that would translate to my day-to-day experiences as a father, husband and a therapist. Taking on the darkness was a challenge that helped me grow spiritually, mentally and physically.  

Turning to the term “dark night of the soul” noted earlier in this post, this experience can also refer to a period when someone feels profoundly abandoned by God, resulting in a crisis of faith. This challenging experience encourages spiritual development and maturity, ultimately guiding the individual toward a deeper mystical connection with God. While God is infinitely present with us, constantly presenceing itself infinitely, we go through periods of spiritual drought where we feel that God has abandoned us. This is particularly vivid in the Psalms, where the Psalmist is always asking where God has gone.  

When we lean into and exist only in a feel-good faith, full of positive words and experiences, when we seek only the mountain top experiences and not explore the dark valleys, we never full get to experience the richness of God’s love and providence.  

Recognizing the transformative power of darkness allows us to approach our spiritual journey with honesty and courage. Rather than resisting the discomfort that comes with uncertainty and spiritual drought, we can learn to embrace these moments as opportunities for deeper growth and connection. By surrendering to the mystery and trusting that wisdom can be found even in the shadows, we cultivate resilience and faith that endures beyond fleeting feelings. In this way, darkness becomes not a barrier, but a gateway to experiencing God’s presence more fully and nurturing a richer, more authentic spiritual life. 

To Close 

Here, I have tried to lay out the powerful role darkness can play in our spiritual walk. It is not something to avoid, rather a practice to embrace and explore. By engaging in the spiritual practice of recognizing the darkness in our lives, we grow spiritually and can cultivate emotional sobriety, and personal transformation. Rather than seeking only the comfort of “feel-good” faith, I encourage you the reader to lean into challenging experiences, trusting that true growth often emerges from the shadows. As you reflect on your own journey, challenge yourself to step into the darkness with honesty and courage, and see what wisdom and resilience you discover within.