The Dark Night of Soul

12/14/18 • 26 min

The podcast of the Sacred Inclusion Network

Just before the Dark Night came calling, Fiona Robertson felt she was on top of the world. She was the co-founder of an award winning health project, had a charismatic new boyfriend, and felt more physically fit than any time in her life.

Yet in quiet moments she felt that something wasn't quite right. The material success she'd achieved wasn't really giving her peace. Within a relatively short time, a series of circumstances occurred that undermined her carefully constructed sense of self-esteem.

"Becoming the person I had believed I should be did not bring about the happiness or contentment I had imagined it would, simply because it wasn’t who I really was," she writes in her new book, The Dark Night of the Soul: A Journey from Absence to Presence.

Robertson here shares how she navigated the spiritual crisis first described in a poem by St. John of the Cross. She explains how the process involves the disintegration of a false self that masks fear and unworthiness, and the emergence of a mature, stable and integrated true self. She describes what she's learned by comparing her experiences with those of a group she calls her amam cara, a group of friends and associates who've also experienced the Dark Night of the Soul.

Links:

Book site
Robertson's main site
Wikipedia's description of the Dark Night of the Soul
Diversity and Spirituality Network's site
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Links:

Book site
Robertson's main site
Wikipedia's description of the Dark Night of the Soul
Diversity and Spirituality Network's site
Provoked by this episode? Record a response!
Like the podcast? Support us on Patreon!

Previous Episode

Facing Death Without Religion

How do non-religious people – which now comprise nearly 30% of the American population – face the coming of death? That’s the subject of Dr. Christel Manning’s John Templeton Foundation-funded research project.

Although a fair amount is known about how religious people face the certainty of their demise, relatively little is known how non-religious people do. This category, which religious studies scholars refer to as "the nones," now comprises 27% of the population, up from about 7% in the 1980s.

Unlike their religious contemporaries, this group lacks the powerful set of stories, symbols and rituals that have for generations characterized the predominate American religious approach to dealing with dying. This group instead relies on different types of what Manning refers to as "maps of meaning." These might include the sense-making that comes from personal growth narratives gained from such processes such as engaging in a 12-step program or therapy after surviving a divorce.

In this podcast, Manning describes her own belief-system journey; what is currently known about how aging people in general approach the coming of death; and the new types of secular rituals that are emerging to help non-religious people become more comfortable with death and dying.

Manning's faculty page
Her research project's description
Death Cafe website
Diversity and Spirituality Network's site
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Next Episode

How Millennials Find Meaning

When Casper ter Kuile and Angie Thurston began their research on their fellow Millennials in 2014, they discovered there were a lot of people who were just like them. Like many of the people they interviewed, neither were affiliated with traditional houses of worship. ter Kuile was a former activist who'd grown up in a secular household, while Thurston was deeply influenced by the Urantia Book, a spiritual and philosophical book popular in New Age circles.

They and the people they studied were members of what demographers have labeled "the nones," or people who said they had no religious affiliation. According to some studies, the number of Americans ages 18 to 29 who had no religious affiliation has nearly quadrupled in the last 30 years.

But, as ter Kuile and Thurston discovered, Millennial disdain for traditional religion didn't mean they'd abandoned the search for belonging and meaning. Instead, many were getting their spiritual needs met within secular organizations, many of which served roughly the same function as traditional churches.

But in a larger sense, ter Kuile said, "nothing has changed" in terms of people's need to fulfill their religious or spiritual needs. "The way it's expressed and the cultural context is changing."

ter Kuile here shares his own story, what he and his colleagues discovered in their research, and his thoughts on what traditional religious institutions can do to support this emerging landscape.

Links:

How We Gather - home of a series of reports created by ter Kuile and his colleagues
Casper ter Kuile's website
The OnBeing Project
Diversity and Spirituality Network's site
Provoked by this episode? Record a response!
Like the podcast? Support us on Patreon!