28 : the dark night of the soul

My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.

— Matthew 26:38

The Garden of Gethsemane is the place of deep sorrow, struggle, and surrender. It is here that Christ, on the eve of his crucifixion, faces the full weight of what is to come. He prays for another way, for the cup to pass from him, yet in the end, he surrenders: “Yet not as I will, but as you will.” This moment is one of profound human vulnerability — an encounter with suffering that cannot be avoided, only moved through.

In Jungian terms, Gethsemane represents the dark night of the soul, the place where we come face to face with our deepest fears, grief, and uncertainty. It is the threshold moment before transformation, where the ego resists but the Self calls us to surrender. The experience of Gethsemane is not one of defeat but of acceptance — the recognition that suffering is not meaningless, and that through surrender, we move toward something greater.

Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi’s Christ at the Garden of Gethsemane (1901) captures this intensity of emotion. The dark, haunting landscape, lit only by a small glow, mirrors the inner turmoil of this moment — the heaviness of sorrow yet the quiet presence of something beyond it. The garden is both a place of struggle and a sacred space of transition, where anguish becomes the gateway to transformation.

In our own lives, we each have our Gethsemane moments — those nights of sorrow, fear, and uncertainty where we long for an easier path. But just as Christ moved through his suffering with courage and surrender, we too are invited to trust the process, to let go of control, and to step forward into what transformation requires of us.

Journaling Prompt: Think of a time when you resisted something painful or uncertain in your life. What happened when you stopped fighting and surrendered to the process? How can you hold space for sorrow without losing sight of transformation?

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