The Cloud of Unknowing (Shambhala Pocket Library Book 19)

by Anonymous

Christian church, contemplative prayer was the goal of Christian spirituality, and now in our own time of transition and upheaval, five hundred years after the Great Reformation, we are returning to our roots.

Never think you’re holier or better than anyone else. Never confuse the worthiness of your calling with who you are. Don’t think that, just because you’re at the third, or singular level, you’re more important than others.

Lift up your heart to God1 with a gentle stirring2 of love. Focus on him alone. Want him, and not anything he’s made. Think on nothing but him. Don’t let anything else run through your mind and will. Here’s how. Forget what you know. Forget everything God made and everybody who exists and everything that’s going on in the world, until your thoughts and emotions aren’t focused on or reaching3 toward anything, not in a general way and not in any particular way. Let them be. For the moment, don’t care about anything.

The first time you practice contemplation, you’ll only experience a darkness, like a cloud of unknowing.5 You won’t know what this is. You’ll only know that in your will you feel a simple reaching out to God.6 You must also know that this darkness and this cloud will always be between you and your God, whatever you do. They will always keep you from seeing him clearly by the light of understanding in your intellect and will block you from feeling him fully in the sweetness of love in your emotions. So, be sure you make your home in this darkness. Stay there as long as you can, crying out to him over and over again, because you love him. It’s the closest you can get to God here on earth, by waiting in this darkness and in this cloud.

If humanity had never sinned, this work would not have stopped. You were made for contemplation, and everything in the universe conspires to help you with it. And contemplation will heal you.

Time is made for us; we’re not made for time.

the cloud of unknowing makes you feel alienated from God, that’s only because you’ve not yet put a cloud of forgetting between you and everything in creation. When I say “everything in creation,” I mean not only the creatures themselves but also everything they do and are, as well as the circumstances in which they find themselves. There are no exceptions. You must forget everything. Hide all created things, material and spiritual, good and bad, under the cloud of forgetting. Obviously, sometimes it is helpful and even necessary to analyze situations and people, but the work of contemplation finds such analysis of little use.

However, as long as you’re thinking about anything, it’s above you, an obstacle between you and God, and the more you have in your mind that is not God, the further you are from him. I also want to say with all due respect that when you’re doing the work of contemplation it does you little good to focus on the kindness and importance of God, or on any of these: our Lady, the saints, angels, or the joys of heaven. Although you might think that approach would strengthen your purpose, it won’t. Yes, we should remember God’s kindness and love and praise him for our blessings, but it’s much better to think on his naked being and to love and praise him for himself.

Even meditating on God’s love must be put down1

Obviously these thoughts are good and holy, and they’re required of anyone serious about contemplation. This is something of a paradox. For without countless sweet meditations on these very subjects—our agony, our shame, Christ’s Passion, God’s kindness, God’s unfailing goodness, and God’s worth—the contemplative person won’t advance. But the man or woman experienced in these meditations must quit them. Put them down and hold them far under the cloud of forgetting, if you want to penetrate the cloud of unknowing between you and God.

You only need a naked intent for God. When you long for him, that’s enough.

you want to gather this focus into one word, making it easier to grasp, select a little word of one syllable, not two. The shorter the word, the more it helps the work of the spirit. God or love works well. Pick one of these or any other word you like, as long as it is one syllable. Fasten it to your heart. Fix your mind on it permanently, so nothing can dislodge it. This word will protect you. It will be your shield and spear, whether you ride out into peace or conflict.4 Use it to beat on the dark cloud of unknowing above you. With it, knock down every thought, and they’ll lie down under the cloud of forgetting below you. Whenever an idea interrupts you to ask, “What do you want?” answer with this one word.

I have to say that obviously it’s a good thing because your ability to reason is a reflection of God. However, you can use it for good or evil. The thoughts that help you understand, with grace, your own frailties, Christ’s Passion, and God’s amazing blessings, are good. I’m not surprised that they deepen your devotion. But when these very same meditations become infected with pride and when the educated ego starts believing in its own scholarly expertise, students fail to become humble scholars and masters of divinity and devotion, becoming arrogant scholars instead, masters of vanity and lies, aligned with the devil.

if your mind is inflated by pride or seduced by worldly pleasures, positions, and honors, or if you crave wealth, status, and the flattery of others, your God-given ability to reason is serving evil.

This approach will seem odd at first. That’s also why when you advance in kindness to working in the darkness of the cloud of unknowing, you must not even let yourself be distracted by thoughts of God’s blessings and goodness, even though they are holy thoughts that make you feel good.

For your soul to be healthy, it most needs a blind stirring of love for God alone.

let God’s love draw you to him. His kindness will teach you how to forget everything else.

Having good, pure thoughts pop into your head spontaneously or deliberately is not evil. I never meant that. God forbid if anyone thought I did. No, I mean that these ideas, though wholly commendable, will get in the way of your praying contemplatively. They hurt more than they help during this work. When you are seeking God, you won’t rest until you rest in him; the imperfect meditation on one of his saints or angels will not satisfy.

compared to the blind stirring of love and its benefits, they seem puny indeed. Contemplative work is love at its best.

Take a look at humility and unselfish love. If you have these, do you need any others? No, you’ve got everything then.

I’ve noticed that ignorance often triggers pride.

Perfect humility is not a destination. Those who believe that they’ve “arrived” have merely found another way to wrap themselves up in filthy, stinking pride. So, set your heart on working toward perfect humility.

the best way to grow in humility is not through reflecting on our weaknesses but by remembering God’s goodness and love.

The more they love, the more they long to love.

God forbid that I should say anything derogatory in this book about any of God’s servants, whatever their stage of holiness, let alone about his special friend, Martha. In fact, we should excuse Martha for complaining. We must take into consideration the circumstances and how she spoke. She said what she said from ignorance; she simply didn’t know what Mary was doing.

When I consider the countless mistakes I’ve made out of not knowing something, I realize that for God to forgive me for these, I must find the love and compassion within me to forgive others of the same blunders. Otherwise, I’m certainly not treating them the way I wish they’d treat me.

Not quite oneness acim style but beautiful

When Martha demanded that our loving, omniscient Lord Jesus sit in judgment on Mary, he didn’t.

God always provides one of two things (without your help): either an abundance of what you need or the physical stamina and spiritual patience to endure its absence. What does it matter what we have? It’s all one to the true contemplative.

I call this a “naked intent” because it requires total detachment. The student apprenticed to perfection doesn’t ask to be released from suffering or to get a bigger reward. No, to put it briefly, the disciple of contemplative prayer only wants to know God better. Contemplatives ignore their own suffering or happiness, because they only want the will of the One they love to be fulfilled.

While engaged in this work, the mature contemplative has no special relationship with anyone in particular, whether family or stranger, friend or enemy, because everyone is family and no one is a stranger, and everyone is friend and no one is an enemy. The genuine lover of God takes this love even further. Those who cause contemplatives pain or stress are considered their very special friends, and contemplatives wish them every good thing, just as they do their closest friend.

Remember how your body reacts when your arm aches? The pain radiates, making you hurt all over in sympathy. But if your arm is fine, your whole body rejoices. The same is true with the spiritual arms and legs of the Church.

Don’t rush to judge anyone’s mistakes and don’t be a faultfinder. Only speak out if you feel the nudge of the Holy Spirit during contemplative prayer. Those who arrogate this responsibility to themselves find it’s terribly easy for things to go wrong. So beware of that. Judge yourself as you want—that’s between you and God or your spiritual director—but leave others alone.

If this work becomes too hard, you’ll need to develop a few spiritual tricks and feints and secret stratagems1 to help you deal with your incessant thoughts. Such wisdom is best learned from God through the experience of contemplative prayer than from any human teacher.

Try them out and improve on them, if you can do better.

every day you will encounter fresh temptations springing up from original sin, and you are responsible for beating them back with the awesome, sharp, double-edged sword of discernment. Through such experiences, you learn that this life offers no real security and no lasting rest.

if you’ve been given the blessing of contemplative prayer, you’ve also been given an aptitude for it. The aptitude doesn’t exist without the gift itself.

prayer and cut yourself off from needing to know things. Knowledge hinders, not helps you in contemplation. Be content feeling moved in a delightful, loving way by something mysterious and unknown, leaving you focused entirely on God, with no other thought than of him alone. Let your naked desire rest there.

When understood properly, prayer is nothing but an intense longing for God, nurturing everything good and removing anything evil.

Since every evil is found in sin, either as a consequence or as the sin itself, when we want to pray wholeheartedly to get rid of evil, we should say, think, or mean this little word—sin, nothing else. No other words are needed. On the other hand, if we pray intently to get anything good, we should cry out in word, thought, or longing nothing but this word—God, nothing else. No other words are needed; for God’s very nature is goodness, and he’s the source of everything good. Don’t spend time wondering why I chose these two words over all of the others. I looked into it and found none better. If I had, or if God had taught me different ones, I would have chosen them over these, but I can think of no shorter words that so well represent everything good or everything evil. Follow my example. Don’t analyze words at length because studying them isn’t the same as doing the work of contemplative prayer. Only grace gives this gift.

So, even though I have recommended these two words, by all means select only the words God nudges you toward. However, if God moves you to take my two, stick with t...

even the smallest sin separates us from God and prevents us from knowing true peace of soul.

Be wholly intent on God, and only God, so nothing ever goes through your mind and heart but God alone.

in contemplation you may throw caution to the wind. Indulge.

Loathe everything not God that crosses your mind or influences your will.

When you succeed in forgetting all creatures and their works and even your own life and all you’ve done, you will be left alone with God to experience a stark awareness of your own existence. But even this must go. Yes, you must lose the naked feeling of who you are. It must be destroyed, if you wish to experience the perfection of contemplation, or love.

to know that intellectual vanity robs a person of grace and only leads to mental, physical, or emotional injury.

don’t overtax yourself emotionally or physically. Choose to be enthusiastic instead. This discipline doesn’t require brute strength, but joy.

God forbid that I’d ever attempt to separate body and spirit, which God has joined together. Both serve him, as is right, and both are rewarded, too.

(or if you can find better instruction on this point, follow it).

A mature love has already had its dependency on such delights purified. When gentle emotions and tears come, an experienced love accepts them for the nourishment and comfort they provide the body’s senses, but it doesn’t grumble when they’re missing because it’s genuinely happy not to have them, if that’s God’s will.