The Cloud of Unknowing (Shambhala Pocket Library Book 19)

by Anonymous

Which of these ways is holier or dearer to God? Only God knows. I don’t.

Be careful not to interpret literally what I mean spiritually.

When necessary, you’ll have the discernment to read the temperaments and needs of everyone you meet. You’ll also develop a knack for identifying with and making yourself at home with anyone, even stubborn sinners, without losing your essential personhood or falling into sin yourself—to the amazement of all. And through God’s grace, your gentle spirit will draw others to the work of contemplation.

Sincere words are spoken simply.

These people criticize all people for their faults, as if they were really pastors, legally responsible for the care of others’ souls.2 They believe God requires this from them and that they dare not stop. Then they say that God’s love and a desire to help others moves them to point out others’ imperfections, but they lie. The fire of hell has ignited their brains and their imaginations.

They have not grounded themselves in the humble, blind experience of contemplative love, so they don’t know how good life can be.

They make God in the shape of their desires, covering him in expensive clothes and placing him on a throne, creating a mental image far more fantastic than any painting done of him on earth. They also give angels human shapes and different kinds of musical instruments—most odd!

Contemplative love has no up, down, left, right, front, or back. We experience it spiritually, unlimited by physical dimensions.

believe that if we humans were more spiritual, we wouldn’t need visions.

Spiritually speaking, heaven is as close down as up, as close behind as before, as quickly reached from one side as the other. In fact, anyone who longs for heaven is already there in spirit.

If you want to find your soul, look at what you love. That’s where your soul lives,

his humanity (which never was and never could be separated from his divinity),

Don’t take spiritual truths literally, even though they’re described with familiar words like up or down, in or out, behind or ahead, and on one side or another.

No matter how spiritual something is, if we want to discuss it—since speech is a physical act made by the tongue that is part of the body—obviously we must use physical words. But how do we understand these? Do we take them literally? No, we learn to understand them spiritually.

We must all learn to suffer well because each of us will experience the absence of pleasant things needed by the body and the presence of painful remorse, that unpleasant but beneficial godly sorrow that our spirits must embrace. We must also teach ourselves self-control for two reasons: so that we don’t lust after the wonderful necessities of life and so that we don’t rejoice too much in the absence of unpleasant but soul-nourishing godly sorrow.

when your mind is focused on nothing physical or spiritual, it’s solely engaged with God’s very essence. This is the work of contemplation,

When contemplation makes you one with God in spirit, love, and will, you’re “above” yourself because you’ve only reached that state by grace and not by your own efforts. You’re also “under” God then, even though contemplative prayer makes you one with God in spirit, no longer two. In this unity, which is the height of contemplation, you can be thought of as godlike, as Scripture says.1 Still, you’re below God because he’s naturally eternal and you’re not. God has no beginning, but there was a time when you didn’t even exist.

Our souls are joined to him in spirit with no separation, both here and in heaven’s joy, forever. This is how, though you’re one with him in grace, you’re still infinitely inferior to him in nature.

Make sure that your contemplative work is fully detached from the physical.

I would rather be nowhere physically, wrestling with this obscure nothing, than be a powerful, rich lord, able to go wherever I want, whenever I want, always amusing myself with every “something” that I own. So abandon the world’s “everywhere” and “something” in exchange for this infinitely more valuable nowhere and nothing. Don’t be bothered that your intellect is unable to comprehend it. I love it even more for its inscrutability. Its infinite worth makes it incomprehensible. Also remember that you can more easily feel this nothing than see

So who labels this “nothing”? That would be our outer self. Our inner self calls it “all,” because experiencing this “nothing” gives us an intuitive sense of all creation, both physical and spiritual, without paying special attention to any one thing.

In the past, writers followed the humble practice of not sharing their own opinions unless they supported their ideas with Scripture and with learned quotations from the Church Fathers, but now that practice has degenerated into arrogant erudition and clever grandstanding. You don’t need that, so I won’t do it. Instead, whoever has ears, let them hear,1 and whoever is stirred to believe, let them. There’s no other way.

In the Old Testament, the Ark of the Covenant symbolizes the grace of contemplation and, as the story illustrates, those who looked after the Ark then symbolize the contemplatives working in this grace today. The analogy of the Ark and contemplation is a good one because the Ark contained all of the jewels and relics of the temple, just as this little love focused on God in the cloud of unknowing contains all of the virtues of the soul, which is God’s spiritual temple.

If you think this type of praying doesn’t suit your temperament, abandon it and take another, with the help of wise counsel. Don’t feel guilty about changing.

The Old English word for “Savior” is Hælend, literally meaning, “the one who heals us and makes us whole.” Hælend comes from the same root as gehælen. Also, this root is found in the Old English “Hello”: Wes þu hal, literally, “May you be whole / hale / well.” So