When God Comes as Darkness: Apophatic Prayer and the Light We Don’t Chase

Why true contemplative prayer means dropping everything—even the desire for spiritual experience

If you’ve been reading my Magdalene reflections, this might seem like a bit of a turn—but it’s connected. After all, it’s likely that Mary Magdalene and the other apostles practiced something very close to apophatic prayer. What else could Jesus have meant when he said, "When you pray, go into your inner room, shut the door, and pray to your Father who is in secret" (Matthew 6:6)? Or when he taught in silence, withdrew alone to pray, or told the woman at the well that true worship is "in spirit and in truth" (John 4:24)? These aren't calls to verbal performance—they're invitations to interior stillness, to union without form. In the Gospel of Mary, we see a path not of belief but of inner knowing, of descending past fear and confusion into the ground of the soul. Apophatic prayer draws from the same well. It invites us to release everything—even beautiful visions, even revelations—and rest in the hidden source.

During apophatic prayer, I became aware of a kind of interior darkness. It wasn’t frightening or confusing—it was simply what remained when I let go of everything else. There were no thoughts, no images, no particular sense of God’s presence. Just a quiet stillness. I didn’t analyze it or try to make something of it. I just rested there, consenting to God’s presence and action, without needing to understand.

Later, I found myself wondering: What is this “Uncreated Light” the Orthodox speak of—and how does it relate to the darkness I’m resting in?

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**That question led me deeper into the practice itself. What I’ve come to realize is that apophatic prayer isn’t about finding something at all—not even a glimpse of light. It’s about releasing every impulse to grasp or understand.

In apophatic prayer, we don’t seek darkness. We don’t seek light. We don’t seek anything.**

We practice consent to God's presence and action within, using the method of release—not effort. A thought arises? We let it go. A feeling, an image, even a sense of “God’s presence”? We release that too. Not because it’s bad, but because it’s not the point.

Apophatic prayer is a training in poverty of spirit—a willingness to sit in utter simplicity and non-demand.

In that sense, it reminds me not only of Buddhism, but of the Gospel of Mary too: by letting go of the self—the constructs, the cravings, the grasping—you don’t become nothing. You become free. You stop chasing form, sensation, thought, even meaning itself. And what remains is presence. Still, luminous, and already whole.

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But what about the darkness?

In the silence of apophatic prayer, many report encountering what feels like a deep darkness—not ominous or evil, but still, vast, and ungraspable. It's not a sensory experience, but the absence of all the usual frameworks: thought, language, image. What remains feels like a kind of resting prior to interpretation, before the mind attempts to name or categorize anything.

This "divine darkness" is a central theme in the apophatic tradition. Gregory of Nyssa described it as the soul's ascent into God, saying: "The true knowledge and vision of God consists in this—in seeing that He is invisible, because what we seek lies beyond all knowledge, being wholly separated by the darkness of incomprehensibility."

Likewise, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite wrote: "The divine darkness is the unapproachable light in which God dwells. Though unseen and beyond all comprehension, it is not entirely inaccessible—those who let go of all they know may, in unknowing, come to know beyond knowing."

In this context, the darkness isn’t the absence of God, but the sign that our egoic modes of knowing have been exhausted. And in that emptying, some begin to intuit what the Orthodox call the Uncreated Light—not through vision, but through stillness deeper than thought.

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And what about people chasing the light?

Here’s where we need clarity and caution:

Those who ramble through the Jesus Prayer hoping for visions or “created light” are setting themselves up for deception.

Even in the Orthodox Hesychast tradition, which honors the Jesus Prayer deeply, the masters constantly warned against seeking mystical phenomena. Gregory of Sinai, St. Symeon the New Theologian, and others were clear: chasing experiences can lead to prelest—spiritual delusion.

If you're praying to see something, you'll often see what you want—or what your ego invents in the silence. That’s not divine illumination. That’s egoic projection dressed in religious drag.

And the enemy is more than happy to show up in the form of “light” if it keeps you chasing visions instead of surrendering to God.

This is why the apophatic tradition says:

Even if you see Christ in glory—drop it. Return to your sacred word.

Because apophatic prayer isn’t about having an experience.
It’s about being emptied of the need for one.

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So where does the Uncreated Light fit in?

It’s not the goal. It’s not a feeling. It’s not the reward.

It’s what remains when everything else has been dropped.

You don’t see it.
You don’t touch it.
You become transparent to it.

And when it dawns—if it dawns—it will do so without effort, without drama, and without ego.

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Let those with eyes drop their need to see.
Let those with ears rest in silence.
God is here.
Even in the darkness.

Especially in the darkness.

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P.S. If you’re new to apophatic prayer and want to try it for yourself, you don’t need to make it complicated. Choose a short sacred word (like "peace," "love," or "yes") and sit in silence for 10–20 minutes. When thoughts come, gently return to your word. That’s it. No performance, no goal—just consent to God's presence and action within—or to the Divine Presence itself, however you understand it.

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If this reflection grounded you, challenged you, or gave you language for something you’ve sensed but never quite named—consider sharing it with someone who needs it.

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