The Cloud of Unknowing (Shambhala Pocket Library Book 19)

by Anonymous

You’ll experience four stages of maturity that I call the ordinary, the special, the singular, and the perfect.1 You can begin and complete the first three stages in this earthly life. Grace will help you start the fourth here also, but it will last forever in the heavenly joy of eternity.

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. Work at this diligently, as I’ve asked you to, and I know God’s mercy will lead you there.

this briefest moment of time is exactly how long it takes your will, that strong architect of your soul, to desire something and to act on that desire. In an hour, you experience the same number of aspirations and cravings as there are atoms in that space of time, and if you were restored by grace to the original purity of your soul, you’d be the master of every impulse. You’d never feel out of control, because your every desire would be directed toward the most desirable and highest good, who is God.

Nobody’s mind is powerful enough to grasp who God is. We can only know him by experiencing his love.

Every rational creature, every person, and every angel has two main strengths: the power to know and the power to love. God made both of these, but he’s not knowable through the first one. To the power of love, however, he is entirely known, because a loving soul is open to receive God’s abundance.

You were made for contemplation, and everything in the universe conspires to help you with it. And contemplation will heal you.

God, the giver of time, never gives us two moments simultaneously; instead, he gives them to us one after another. We never get the future. We only get the present moment. He does this to establish order in his creation and to keep cause and effect in place. Time is made for us; we’re not made for time.

When contemplation is genuine, it’s nothing but a sudden impulse coming out of nowhere and flying up to God like a spark from a burning coal.8 It’s awesome to count how many times your soul stirs like that in an hour, but, of these, you may only have one instance when you suddenly realize you’ve completely forgotten every attachment you have on earth. You’ll also notice that, because of our human frailty, each impulse rising to God immediately falls to earth in the form of a thought about something you’ve done or something that is still on your list to do. But so what? Right after that, it rises up again as fast as it did before.

Contemplation is quite different from daydreaming or a delusion or a strange superstition. These don’t come from a sincere and humble blind stirring of love, but from an arrogant, curious, and over-imaginative mind. The self-important, hyper-analytical intellect must always and in every way be squashed. Stomp it under foot, if you want to do the work of contemplation with integrity.

Don’t in any way approach contemplation with your intellect or your imagination.

When I say “darkness,” I mean the absence of knowing. Whatever you don’t know and whatever you’ve forgotten are “dark” to you, because you don’t see them with your spiritual eyes. For the same reason, by “cloud” I don’t mean a cloud in the sky, but a cloud of unknowing between you and God.

complete the cloud of unknowing with the cloud of forgetting. To the cloud of unknowing above you and between you and your God, add the cloud of forgetting beneath you, between you and creation.

When you reflect on something going on or try to figure someone out, you’re engaging in one type of spiritual vision—the eye of your soul opens and concentrates on an idea or person in the same way that an archer focuses on a target. 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.

Through God’s grace, our minds can explore, understand, and reflect on creation and even on God’s own works, but we can’t think our way to God.

Even meditating on God’s love must be put down1 and covered with a cloud of forgetting. Show your determination next. Let that joyful stirring of love make you resolute, and in its enthusiasm bravely step over meditation and reach up to penetrate the darkness above you. Then beat on that thick cloud of unknowing with the sharp arrow of longing and never stop loving, no matter what comes your way.

If you find yourself obsessed with one pressing down on you from above, trespassing between you and that darkness, and asking, “What are you looking for? What do you want?” tell it that you want only God—“I crave God. I seek him and nothing else.”

Then add, “And you’re in no position to understand him. So sit back down.1 Be still.”

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

If 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.

If you’re able to stick to your purpose, I’m positive the thought will go away. Why? When you refuse to let it feed on the kinds of sweet meditations that we mentioned earlier, it vanishes.

You’re watching your soul reason. When you wonder, “Is this good or evil?” 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.

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. This warning applies to everyone. Secular or religious, 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.

The active life is lower, the contemplative higher, and both have two stages, also a lower and a higher.2 These two lives are complementary and so bound together that, although each is quite distinct, neither can exist without the other. The higher stage of the active life is also the lower stage of the contemplative life. That’s why you can’t be truly active unless you participate in the contemplative life, and you can’t be fully contemplative unless you participate in the active life.

In the lower stage of the active life, you learn genuine acts of mercy and practice loving. In the higher stage of the active life (synonymous with the lower stage of contemplative living), your spirit becomes preoccupied with looking, and you start spending time in meditation.

But the higher stage of contemplation, as far as we can know it here on earth, is only darkness5 and the cloud of unknowing, and once we are in these, we find that loving nudges6 lead us into a blind gazing at the naked being of God alone.

The lower stage of active life requires extroversion and takes place between you and the world under you, so to speak, while the higher stage of the active (lower stage of the contemplative) becomes interior, and you start getting acquainted with yourself. But in the higher stage of the contemplative life, your interactions take place above you, between you and God. In this way, you transcend yourself, achieving by grace what you can’t do on your own—union with the God of love and freedom.

If you’re going to advance to the higher stage of the active life, temporarily stop engaging in its lower stage, just as you must suspend practice of the lower stage of the co...

So let go of every clever, persuasive thought. Put it down and cover it with a thick cloud of forgetting. No matter how sacred, no thought can ever promise to help you in the work of contemplative prayer, because only love—not knowledge—can help us reach God.

If you’re not careful, you will think you’re resting in this darkness, with nothing in your mind but God, until you look and see that your mind is actually not occupied in this darkness but is watching a clear picture of something associated with God, which is less than he is.

In love and longing, then, enter that cloud. What I mean is—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.

Not every thought is alike, however.

you are still responsible for striking down these thoughts as quickly as they come. If you don’t, your weak human nature is likely to succumb to them, as your secular heart remembers the good experiences and delights in their pleasure a second time, or recalls the bad experiences and gives in to resentment, complaining inside again.

But if you leave these thoughts alone there, you might as well be gluing them to your spiritual heart, which is your will, and then the attachment becomes a deadly sin.

But I do want you to evaluate every thought you have. Develop an awareness of how each one influences your behavior. If you catch a tempting idea when it first arises, you can stop it from leading you into sin. Work hard at mental vigilance.

Stay alert. Your first line of defense is paying attention to the sudden allure of each thought. There’s no way you can totally avoid missteps in this life, but that doesn’t mean you can relax your guard, either.

So if you want to stand and not fall into sin, never let go of your purpose and don’t let anything take away your longing for God. With the sharp spear of your love, never stop beating on the cloud of unknowing that is between you and your God. Don’t give up, for any reason, regardless of what happens. The work of contemplation is the only thing that destroys the foundation and the root of sin.

Contemplative work not only pulls out sin’s roots—it grows goodness in its place. All virtues are found in contemplation. Without it, people may have virtues, but they will always be shallow and twisted by self-interest.

Virtue is nothing more than a mature4 and deliberate affection plainly directed at God, for him alone.

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

Basically, humility is seeing yourself as you really are. It’s that simple.

But being aware of your imperfections is humility of the “imperfect” sort. “Perfect” humility comes when you experience God’s goodness and superabundant love.

God can suddenly allow that soul in a mortal body to feel completely taken out of itself, where all understanding and awareness of being vanish, and in this state of forgetfulness, the person is no longer concerned with categories like holy and sinful. For some, this ecstasy happens often; for others, rarely. Either way, it never lasts long, but during that brief moment the person is absolutely humble, knowing and feeling God alone.

Even though I call self-knowledge an “imperfect” humility, I value it highly.

Self-knowledge is the only way to get and keep the virtue of humility.

But when you get to know yourself better as the mortal human you are, your soul grows in humility, and you’ll know God as fully as possible on earth.

This spiritual discipline is better than any other. Here’s why. Through it, you become acquainted with perfect humility, when, by grace, you allow the hidden love of your pure heart to press against the dark cloud of unknowing between you and God. This impulse is perfect humility.

A little self-knowledge is not the ultimate goal. Don’t deceive yourself. 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 person who experiences it won’t want to sin, not then, nor for a long time after.

Some say that the best way to perfect humility is by meditating on our weaknesses and on the sins we have committed in the past.1 I want to refute this error.