Saturday, April 21, 2018

THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING – summary of the teaching



Lift up your heart with humble love; and mean God and not what you can get out of him. [3]

Hate to think of anything but God himself so that nothing occupies your mind or will but God himself. [3]

Try to forget all created things. Let them go and pay no attention to them.  Do not give up but work away. [3]

When you begin you find only darkness and a cloud of unknowing.  Reconcile yourself to wait in the darkness as long as necessary after him who you love. [3]

Strike that thick cloud of unknowing with the sharp dart of longing love, and on no account think of giving up.  [6]

He may well be loved but not thought. By love he may be caught and held, but by thought never. [6]

You are to reach out with a naked intention directed towards God and him alone.  Mean God who created you, and bought you, and graciously called you to this state of life. [7]

Let some such word as ‘God’ or ‘love’ or some other word given to you, be fixed to your heart so that it is always there, come what may. It will be your shield and spear in peace and war alike.  [7]

If God leads you to certain words my advice is not to let them go, that is, if you are using words at all in your prayer. [7]

If any thought should intrude itself in the darkness, asking what you are seeking, and what you are wanting, answer that it is God that you want: ‘Him I covet, him I seek, and him alone.’ [7]
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Just as this cloud of unknowing is, as it were, above you and between you and God, so you must put a cloud of forgetting between you and all creation. Everything must be hidden beneath this cloud of forgetting.  Indeed, if wed may say so reverently, when we are engaged in this work it profits little or nothing to think of even God’s kindness or worth, or of our Lady, or pf the saints and angels, or of the joys of heaven.  It may be good sometimes to think particularly of God’s kindness and worth, yet in the work before us it must be put down and covered with the cloud of forgetting. [5]
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When you have done all, you can to make the proper amendments laid down by Holy Church, then get to work quick sharp! [31]

If memories of your past actions keep coming between you and God, or any new thought or sinful impulse, you are resolutely to step over them because of your deep love for God.  Try to cover then with the thick cloud of forgetting.  And if it is really hard work you can use every dodge, scheme and spiritual stratagem you can find to put them away.  Do everything you can to act as if you did not know that these thoughts were strongly pushing in between you and God.  Try to look over their shoulders, seeking something else – which is God, shrouded in the cloud of unknowing. [31]

(freely translated by Fr. Robert Llewellyn form the Clifton Wolters translation)

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