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.

A person suffering a dark night might say, “Help me. I’m depressed. Get me out of it.” But how can you get out of a natural process of change? How can you medicate self-transformation? The problem, of course, is that we no longer think in terms of passages and transitions. We have exchanged a spiritual awareness of life’s meaningful moments for a psychological view based on medicine. We would like to cure ourselves of the darkness. The resulting confusion of categories only makes things worse.

You are not complete until your relationships have been cared for. Your dark night is important not only for yourself but for those around you. You may not realize it, but they have been enduring your dark night, too. They need at least a small rite of return, some signal that night has ended and new life can get under way.

People still don’t know how to do several things at once or understand the importance of imagination in relationship. They suffer their unions because they think of them as unconscious, surface acts instead of deep developments of the soul. Many people aim for surface compatibility instead of deep, nonrational connection.

There is a difference, however, between becoming more mature through dark sexuality and literalizing that darkness in actual violence. There, you have gone over the line, out of the ritual of sex, in which symbolically you visit the underworld of fantasy, and into actuality, which is not an initiation but victimization.