Dark Nights of the Soul · A Guide to Finding Your Way Through Life's Ordeals

Every human life is made up of the light and the dark, the happy and the sad, the vital and the deadening. How you think about this rhythm of moods makes all the difference. Our lives are filled with emotional tunnels: the loss of a loved one or end of a relationship, aging and illness, career disappointments or just an ongoing sense of dissatisfaction with life. Society tends to view these dark nights in clinical terms as obstacles to be overcome as quickly as possible. But Moore shows how honoring these periods of fragility as periods of incubation and positive opportunities to delve the soul's deepest needs can provide healing and a new understanding of life's meaning. Dark Nights of the Soul presents these metaphoric dark nights not as the enemy, but as times of transition, occasions to restore yourself, and transforming rites of passage, revealing an uplifting and inspiring new outlook on such topics as: - The healing power of melancholy- The sexual dark night and the mysteries of matrimony- Finding solace during illness and in aging- Anxiety, anger, and temporary Insanities- Linking creativity, spirituality, and emotional struggles - Finding meaning and beauty in the darkness Praise: All of us go through troubled times, when we lie awake at night unable to sleep, wishing we had a comforting book to read. Now you do. DARK NIGHTS brings solace to the aching heart.--Marianne Williamson, author of Everyday Grace and A Return to Love In these reductive and fundamentalist times, Thomas Moore asks us to acknowledge the dark moon within us all, to question the workings of a sun-bright culture which demands our happy, healthy productivity at perhaps the cost of our very souls. This is a wise and timely book, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.--Andre Dubus III, author of House of Sand and Fog Thomas Moore is one of the profound spiritual writers of our time. In Dark Nights of the Soul, he delves into the mystery of human suffering. This book really tells it like it is. We've all been discouraged by neat, tidy self-help dogmatism and Moore refuses to succumb to the commercialism of simplistic, superficial, and subjective solutions.-John Bradshaw, author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child, Creating Love, and Healing the Shame that Binds You Thomas Moore is the master of conveying the insight that the dark times in our lives are not threats but friends and teachers.--Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People