When Spiritual Practice Feels Empty (Is it the Dark Night of the Soul?)

From loss of bliss to nondual initiation

Today I sat down to meditate but was confronted with what is an all-too familiar experience – a stubborn feeling of emptiness, dullness and an absolute lack of the transcendent bliss that sometimes accompanied my meditations. This morning, though, something happened, which I will tell you about here in case it is of benefit to you.

What happened is that in the midst of this dullness devoid of any hope of transcendence, I heard a subtle voice within saying, “What is beneath feeling?”

I was about to dismiss it as nothing more than a cryptic statement generated by the mind, but then I realised it was pointing to something significant.

What is beneath feeling?

If I could not feel love or peace or bliss or contentment, this question was pointing me to what lies beneath feeling.

And what lies beneath feeling is knowing.

But wait … let me back up a bit and give you some context so that you can apply this to your own life.

When spiritual practice feels dull and juiceless

There is a stage in spiritual practice where something essential seems to disappear. Meditation feels flat. Prayer feels mechanical. The sense of connection, once vivid or comforting, is no longer there.

This experience is well documented by St. John of the Cross in his description of the dark night of the soul. He observed that sincere practitioners often reach a point where all emotional sweetness in their relationship with the divine is withdrawn. What once felt alive becomes dry and inaccessible.

This shift is often misinterpreted as failure or regression. In his view, it marks a transition into a deeper form of spirituality.

The limits of feeling

At earlier stages, feeling plays a central role. Devotion, gratitude, and a sense of presence help orient attention toward what is sacred. These states can be stabilizing and meaningful.

However, feeling has structural limitations:

• It is variable, dependent on physiological and psychological conditions
• It positions the divine as something experienced, and therefore separate

As long as one “feels God,” there is still a subtle subject–object split: the one who feels, and that which is felt.

When this duality begins to dissolve, the emotional component often drops away.

The Dark Night as transition

In the framework of St. John of the Cross, the dark night is not a loss of God, but a loss of reliance on sensory and emotional experience.

What is being removed is not the divine itself, but the forms through which it was previously perceived.

This can feel like absence because the mind is conditioned to equate:

• intensity with truth
• feeling with presence

When both are removed, what remains is subtle and easily overlooked.

From feeling to knowing

At this point, the path shifts from experience to recognition.

Ramana Maharshi articulated this with his teaching that the most fundamental truth is not something that is felt, but something that is known directly.

That knowing is simply this: I am.

This is not a thought or a belief. It is the most basic fact of experience. Even in confusion, even in emptiness and disconnection, the knowing of being remains.

This knowing does not depend on state. It does not intensify or diminish. It is present whether or not anything is felt.

Beyond subject and object

When attention shifts from feeling to knowing, the structure of experience changes.

• Feeling implies an object: something is being felt
• Knowing “I am” does not divide experience in this way

There is no longer a separate “God” to be perceived. The distinction between subject and object begins to collapse.

This is why the loss of feeling can coincide with a deeper form of union. What was previously encountered as other is no longer encountered at all – it is simply what is.

The subtle nature of bliss

In Vedantic language, this underlying reality is described as satchitananda – being, consciousness, and bliss. The consciousness of one’s own being is bliss itself.

This “bliss” is often misunderstood. It is not emotional pleasure or intensity. It does not resemble excitement or euphoria.

It is closer to:

• the absence of disturbance
• a stable, unremarkable okayness
• a background completeness that does not call attention to itself

Because it lacks contrast and intensity, it is frequently missed. The mind is trained to notice peaks, not stillness.

As attention becomes more refined, this quiet stability may become perceptible. However, it does so not as a feeling imposed on experience, but rather as the baseline of experience itself.

So … what to do?

When spiritual practice feels empty, the impulse is often to recover what was lost – to generate feeling, to restore intensity, to reconnect through effort.

A different approach is required. Instead of seeking a state, attention can turn to what is already undeniable:

• Regardless of what is felt, there is a knowing that you are
• This knowing does not need to be strengthened or confirmed
• It can be recognized without adding interpretation or expectation

This marks a shift from experience-based spirituality to recognition of being.

The disappearance of feeling does not indicate that something has gone wrong. It indicates that what is unreliable is falling away. In short, you are being called to true nondual practice where subject and object are gradually erased.

Feeling comes and goes. Knowing that you are does not.

In closing

Well, that turned into a bit of an essay, but writing it helped me clarify and ground the original insight about feeling and knowing. I hope these words will help you as much as the original insight and daily practice of it is helping me. When I can’t feel bliss or joy, I rest in the knowing of I-am.