Your dark night is forcing you to consider alternatives. It is taking you out of the active life of submission to alien goals and purposes. It is offering you your own approach to life. You can sit with it and consider who you are and who you want to be. You can be fortified by it to stand strong in your very existence. You can be born again, not into an ideology that needs your surrender, but into yourself, your uniqueness, your God-given reality, the life destined for you.

We can’t understand what is happening to us, and if we are in the habit of always wanting to know what is going on, this aspect of the dark night will be maddening. We can find meaning in these times of change, but we have to think differently about our lives, be less psychological in our approach, and more philosophical and spiritual.

You can see that the point of staying in the dark is not to trick it into making you brilliant and germ-free, but to make you a more interesting person and to give you a more fascinating life. In therapeutic times like ours, these goals may seem odd. But they are ultimately more humane. Rather than giving you a spotless, well-adjusted personality, they give you substance. You become a person worth knowing, worth listening to, and worth loving, in all your dimensions.

A dark night can toughen you and steel you, helping you to be a real presence in your world. In the realm of the soul, most of us are wimps at first. We have to deepen and strengthen our outlook and style.

The dark night of illness sets severe limits on what you can do. It forces you to slow down and focus on the things that matter. It keeps you in one place and on your back. It prevents you from eating what you want and doing the things you are used to doing.