The Dark Night of the Soul: Why Darkness Often Comes Before Transformation

A personal reflection on healing, awakening, and emerging into a new chapter of life

I have been sharing articles about awakening, but I also want to share that spiritual processes aren’t easy. Along with an awakening, we go through a dark night of the soul, and it often doesn’t last just one night. In fact, we have just ended a nine-year-long Dark Night of the Soul.

It was eye-opening for me to learn that, collectively, we are ending a nine-year cycle that started in 2017. Looking back, I recognize that that year was a pivotal year for me. I was recovering from being in the hospital, and that’s the year I looked into intuition, because I didn’t understand what it was, how to use it, or how it was different from my gut and my instinct. It’s when I truly dedicated myself to writing. I joined writing groups and took writing courses. My spiritual world was unfolding, my writing life woke up, and my health suffered.

I talked about this during the live session with Kim Roberts this past weekend, which I recommend that you listen to here.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was entering a nine-year-long dark night of the soul. We all were, and as I look back over the last nine years, I recommend that you do the same.

What exactly is a dark night of the soul?

Dark nights of the soul are those times in our lives when we must face our shadows and work and heal at a deep level.

It’s been a hard nine-year stretch. I changed my relationships, broke off many of my friendships, and confronted aspects of myself that I hadn’t wanted to face but needed to. My health deteriorated, and I later learned this was a call to finally live for myself and not for others, and not for how I thought I should be.

A dark night of the soul can be a terrible experience. Your soul experiences different states like bliss, joy, depression, and grief. As the name suggests, the dark night of the soul is a phase where your soul enters a depressive state, although it goes beyond the realms of your mind and emotions. Essentially, it's your soul experiencing an existential crisis.

When that happens, you question everything.

You question why you are alive, what the point of life is, what your purpose is, what would happen if you didn't exist, and so on. Basically, it's a time when you are extremely confused, detached, dispassionate, miserable, and disheartened all at once. Nothing seems to make sense, and you don't see any way out of your predicament.

The dark night of the soul can be triggered by a painful event such as the loss of a loved one, an accident, a natural disaster, a financial crisis, and so on. Usually, these events are outside your control.  In my case, it was triggered by a health crisis that landed me in the hospital back in 2017.

But things get even more confusing when this phase is triggered by something unexpected that you can't explain logically. Something might happen to you that might shatter your beliefs, or someone you trusted might turn out to be a fraud. Or it could also be that everything you worked towards for years might crash and burn. No matter what the trigger is, you are sent into a hellish phase where everywhere you look, you see darkness.

Don’t lose heart; it’s temporary

However, even though it might not feel like it at the moment, this phase is temporary. In fact, it can lead to something monumental and positive. The dark night of the soul can act like a bridge where you move from a lower state of potential to a much higher state of potential. Often, this phase brings about a spiritual transformation in people, and they come out with a heightened sense of awareness. You could say that they emerge as awakened beings.

It wouldn’t be a surprise if you become a new person. You might stop doing things just to please people; your appetite may change; sleep patterns may change; you might not find happiness in materialistic things anymore; you might stop fearing adverse events; you may feel the need to focus on your health; and you might become more spiritual.

The lessons I learned

I confronted what brought me true happiness and spent years exploring who I truly am at my core—not who I thought I should be while I minded the opinion of others, but who I truly am when I care less about what others think and what society dictates, and when I don’t act to please others or mind their feelings. I had to expunge a lifetime of learned behavior, unhealthy habits, heartbreak, doubt, fear, negative thoughts, and pain.

I immersed myself in spiritual teachings to further heal and polish my soul. In a nutshell, I had to learn to love myself, see that my life wasn’t a punishment, people weren’t out to hurt me, and that I wasn’t someone who came here for others to use.

I learned that my life is a gift and I am a gift, and as worthy as anyone to be here. I don’t need to be an overachiever. I just need to be.

I focused on me and on improving my health. There was much that needed my attention within myself. I cut people off that I should have cut off a long time ago, but didn’t because of fear, pity, or self-imposed obligation and responsibility. I identified behaviors and habits that I took on but were not mine. Most of them I acquired from others or from society, and some were self-imposed. I welcomed emotions that I had stuffed down. It helped me to heal and connect within.

In the end, as unlikely as it might sound, you will be grateful for having experienced the dark night of the soul. You will realize that without it, you couldn't have been reborn. A new and incredible life will be possible after this phase only because of the pain you experienced.

As 2026 arrived and a new nine-year cycle began that will culminate in 2035, I know a new phase of my life has come. After a dark night of the soul ends, the dawn rises, and light envelops me.

Looking back, I realize my dark night of the soul wasn't simply about surviving hardship. It was about becoming free. Free from conditioning. Free from expectations. Free from obligation, fear, perfectionism, and the identities I had built around them.

Those lessons eventually became the foundation for Uncaged: Free Yourself, Reclaim Your Life, a journey designed to help others recognize the invisible cages that keep them stuck and gently begin freeing themselves, one layer at a time.

If this article resonates with you, perhaps your own journey toward becoming uncaged has already begun.