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| ISBN-13: | 9781420900200 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Digireads.com Publishing |
| Publication date: | 10/04/2011 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 6 MB |
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CHAPTER 1
It seems to me, in my rough and ready way, that there are four states or kinds of Christian life, and they are these: Common, Special, Solitary, and Perfect. Three of them may be begun and ended in this life; the fourth, by the grace of God, may be begun here, but it goes on for ever in the bliss of Heaven! And just as you will notice that I have set these four in a certain sequence (Common, Special, Solitary, Perfect) so I think that our Lord in his great mercy has called you in the same order and in the same way, leading you on to himself by your heartfelt desire.
For you are well aware that, when you were in the Common state of the Christian life, living with your friends in the world, God, through his everlasting love (which made and fashioned you when you were nothing, and then, when you were lost with Adam, bought you with the price of his precious blood) would not allow you to live the kind of life that was so far away from him. In that most gracious way of his, he kindled your desire for himself, and bound you to him by the chain of such longing, and thus led you to that more Special life, a servant among his own special servants. He did this that you might learn to be more especially his and to live more spiritually than ever you could have done in the common state of life.
And there is more: it appears that he is not content to leave you just there — such is the love of his heart which he has always had for you — but in his own delightful and gracious way he has drawn you to this third stage, the Solitary. It is in this state that you will learn to take your first loving steps to the life of Perfection, the last stage of all.
CHAPTER 2
Pause for a moment, you wretched weakling, and take stock of yourself. Who are you, and what have you deserved, to be called like this by our Lord? How sluggish and slothful the soul that does not respond to Love's attraction and invitation!
At this stage, wretched man, you must keep an eye on your enemy. You must not think yourself any holier or better because of the worthiness of your calling, and because you live the solitary life. Rather the opposite: you are even more wretched and cursed unless you are doing your very best to live answerably to your calling, helped as you are by grace and direction. You ought to be all the more humble and loving to your spiritual husband who is Almighty God, King of Kings and Lord of Lords and yet has so humbly come down to your level, and so graciously chosen you out of his flock to be one of his 'specials', and has set you in rich pasture to be fed with the sweet food of his love, a foretaste of your inheritance in the Kingdom of Heaven.
So go on, I beg you, with all speed. Look forward, not backward. See what you still lack, not what you have already; for that is the quickest way of getting and keeping humility. Your whole life now must be one of longing, if you are to achieve perfection. And this longing must be in the depths of your will, put there by God, with your consent. But a word of warning: he is a jealous lover, and will brook no rival; he will not work in your will if he has not sole charge; he does not ask for help, he asks for you. His will is that you should look at him, and let him have his way. You must, however, guard your spiritual windows and doorways against enemy attacks. If you are willing to do this, you need only to lay hold upon God humbly in prayer, and he will soon help you. Lay hold of him then, and see how you fare. God is ready when you are, and is waiting for you.
But what am I to do, you say, and how am I to 'lay hold'?
CHAPTER 3
Lift up your heart to God with humble love: and mean God himself, and not what you get out of him. Indeed, hate to think of anything but God himself, so that nothing occupies your mind or will but only God. Try to forget all created things that he ever made, and the purpose behind them, so that your thought and longing do not turn or reach out to them either in general or in particular. Let them go, and pay no attention to them. It is the work of the soul that pleases God most. All saints and angels rejoice over it, and hasten to help it on with all their might. All the fiends, however, are furious at what you are doing, and try to defeat it in every conceivable way. Moreover, the whole of mankind is wonderfully helped by what you are doing, in ways you do not understand. Yes, the very souls in purgatory find their pain eased by virtue of your work. And in no better way can you yourself be made clean or virtuous than by attending to this. Yet it is the easiest work of all when the soul is helped by grace and has a conscious longing. And it can be achieved very quickly. Otherwise it is hard and beyond your powers.
Do not give up then, but work away at it till you have this longing. When you first begin, you find only darkness, and as it were a cloud of unknowing. You don't know what this means except that in your will you feel a simple steadfast intention reaching out towards God. Do what you will, this darkness and this cloud remain between you and God, and stop you both from seeing him in the clear light of rational understanding, and from experiencing his loving sweetness in your affection. Reconcile yourself to wait in this darkness as long as is necessary, but still go on longing after him whom you love. For if you are to feel him or to see him in this life, it must always be in this cloud, in this darkness. And if you will work hard at what I tell you, I believe that through God's mercy you will achieve this very thing.
CHAPTER 4
So that you may make no mistake, or go wrong in this matter, let me tell you a little more about it as I see it.
This work does not need a long time for its completion. Indeed, it is the shortest work that can be imagined! It is no longer, no shorter, than one atom, which as a philosopher of astronomy will tell you is the smallest division of time. It is so small that it cannot be analysed: it is almost beyond our grasp. Yet it is as long as the time of which it has been written, 'All the time that is given to thee, it shall be asked of thee how thou hast spent it.' And it is quite right that you should have to give account of it. It is neither shorter nor longer than a single impulse of your will, the chief part of your soul.
For there can be as many movements or desires of your will within the hour as there are atoms of time. If grace had restored your soul to the state of Adam's soul before the Fall, you would be in control of your every impulse. None would go astray, but all would reach out to the sovereign of all desires, the peak of all that can be willed, God himself.
For he comes down to our level, adapting his Godhead to our power to comprehend. Our soul has some affinity with him, of course, because we have been created in his image and likeness. Only he himself is completely and utterly sufficient to fulfil the will and longing of our souls. Nothing else can. The soul, when it is restored by grace, is made wholly sufficient to comprehend him fully by love. He cannot be comprehended by our intellect or any man's — or any angel's for that matter. For both we and they are created beings. But only to our intellect is he incomprehensible: not to our love.
All rational beings, angels and men, possess two faculties, the power of knowing and the power of loving. To the first, to the intellect, God who made them is forever unknowable, but to the second, to love, he is completely knowable, and that by every separate individual. So much so that one loving soul by itself, through its love, may know for itself him who is incomparably more than sufficient to fill all souls that exist. This is the everlasting miracle of love, for God always works in this fashion, and always will. Consider this, if by God's grace you are able to. To know it for oneself is endless bliss; its contrary is endless pain.
If any man were so refashioned by the grace of God that he heeded every impulse of his will, he would never be without some sense of the eternal sweetness, even in this life, nor without its full realization in the bliss of heaven. So do not be surprised if I urge you on. It is this very thing that man would be doing today if he had not sinned — as you will be hearing later. For this was man made, and all else was made to help him achieve this end. It is by this that man shall be restored. And it is because he does not heed that a man falls ever more deeply into sin, becoming ever more estranged from God. Yet on the other hand, it is by constantly heeding and attending to this very thing and nothing else that a man gets more free from sin, and nearer to God.
So be very careful how you spend time. There is nothing more precious. In the twinkling of an eye heaven may be won or lost. God shows that time is precious, for he never gives two moments of time side by side, but always in succession. To do otherwise he would have to alter the whole course of creation. Time is made for man, not man for time. And God, who orders nature, fitted time in with the nature of man — and man's natural impulses occur one at a time. Man will have no excuse before God at the Day of Judgement when he gives account of how he spent his time. He cannot say: 'Thou dost give two times at once, when I have but one impulse at the same moment.'
But now you are anxious, and say, 'What am I to do? If what you are saying is true, how am I to give account of each moment of time? Here am I, twenty-four years old, altogether heedless of time! Were I to amend straight away, you know perfectly well from what you have already written that neither in nature nor in grace are there any moments of time over and to spare with which I could make satisfaction for my misspent past. I have only those times which are coming to work on. And what is more, I know very well that because of my appalling weakness and dull-wittedness I should only be able to heed one impulse in a hundred. What a plight I am in! Help me, now, for the love of Jesus!'
How right you are to say 'for the love of Jesus'. For it is in the love of Jesus that you have your help. The nature of love is such that it shares everything. Love Jesus, and everything he has is yours. Because he is God, he is maker and giver of time. Because he is Man, he has given true heed to time. Because he is both God and Man he is the best judge of the spending of time. Unite yourself to him by love and trust, and by that union you will be joined both to him and to all who like yourself are united by love to him ... with our lady, St. Mary, who, full of grace, perfectly heeded every passing moment; with all the angels in heaven, who have never let time pass; and with all the saints in heaven and on earth, who by their love, and by Jesus' grace, take proper account of every moment.
This is a great comfort. Really understand it, and get profit therefrom. But let me emphasize this: I cannot see that anyone can claim fellowship in this matter with Jesus or his righteous Mother, his angels or his saints, unless he is doing everything in his power, with the help of grace, to attend to each moment of time ... so that he can be seen to be doing his part to strengthen the fellowship, however little it may be, as each of them, in his turn, is doing his.
So pay great attention to this marvellous work of grace within your soul. It is always a sudden impulse and comes without warning, springing up to God like some spark from the fire. An incredible number of such impulses arise in one brief hour in the soul who has a will to this work! In one such flash the soul may completely forget the created world outside. Yet almost as quickly it may relapse back to thoughts and memories of things done and undone — all because of our fallen nature. And as fast again it may rekindle.
This then, in brief, is how it works. It is obviously not make-believe, nor wrong thinking, nor fanciful opinion. These would not be the product of a devout and humble love, but the outcome of the pride and inventiveness of the imagination. If this work of grace is to be truly and genuinely understood, all such proud imaginings must ruthlessly be stamped out!
For whoever hears or reads about all this, and thinks that it is fundamentally an activity of the mind, and proceeds then to work it all out along these lines, is on quite the wrong track. He manufactures an experience that is neither spiritual nor physical. He is dangerously misled and in real peril. So much so, that unless God in his great goodness intervenes with a miracle of mercy and makes him stop and submit to the advice of those who really know, he will go mad, or suffer some other dreadful form of spiritual mischief and devilish deceit. Indeed, almost casually as it were, he may be lost eternally, body and soul. So for the love of God be careful, and do not attempt to achieve this experience intellectually. I tell you truly it cannot come this way. So leave it alone.
Do not think that because I call it a 'darkness' or a 'cloud' it is the sort of cloud you see in the sky, or the kind of darkness you know at home when the light is out. That kind of darkness or cloud you can picture in your mind's eye in the height of summer, just as in the depth of a winter's night you can picture a clear and shining light. I do not mean this at all. By 'darkness' I mean 'a lack of knowing'— just as anything that you do not know or may have forgotten may be said to be 'dark' to you, for you cannot see it with your inward eye. For this reason it is called 'a cloud', not of the sky, of course, but 'of unknowing', a cloud of unknowing between you and your God.
CHAPTER 5
If ever you are to come to this cloud and live and work in it, as I suggest, then just as this cloud of unknowing is as it were above you, between you and God, so you must also put a cloud of forgetting beneath you and all creation. We are apt to think that we are very far from God because of this cloud of unknowing between us and him, but surely it would be more correct to say that we are much farther from him if there is no cloud of forgetting between us and the whole created world. Whenever I say 'the whole created world' I always mean not only the individual creatures therein, but everything connected with them. There is no exception whatever, whether you think of them as physical or spiritual beings, or of their states or actions, or of their goodness or badness. In a word, everything must be hidden under this cloud of forgetting.
For though it is sometimes helpful to think of particular creatures, what they are and do, in this case it is virtually useless. For the act of remembering or thinking about what a thing is or does has a spiritual effect. Your soul's eye concentrates upon it, just as the marksman fixes his eye on his target. Let me say this: everything you think about, all the time you think about it, is 'above' you, between you and God. And you are that much farther from God if anything but God is in your mind.
Indeed, if we may say so reverently, when we are engaged on this work it profits little or nothing to think even of God's kindness or worth, or of our Lady, or of the saints or angels, or of the joys of heaven, if you think thereby by such meditation to strengthen your purpose. In this particular matter it will help not at all. For though it is good to think about the kindness of God, and to love him and praise him for it, it is far better to think about him as he is, and to love and praise him for himself.
CHAPTER 6
But now you will ask me, 'How am I to think of God himself, and what is he?' and I cannot answer you except to say 'I do not know!' For with this question you have brought me into the same darkness, the same cloud of unknowing where I want you to be! For though we through the grace of God can know fully about all other matters, and think about them — yes, even the very works of God himself — yet of God himself can no man think. Therefore I will leave on one side everything I can think, and choose for my love that thing which I cannot think! Why? Because he may well be loved, but not thought. By love he can be caught and held, but by thinking never. Therefore, though it may be good sometimes to think particularly about God's kindness and worth, and though it may be enlightening too, and a part of contemplation, yet in the work now before us it must be put down and covered with a cloud of forgetting. And you are to step over it resolutely and eagerly, with a devout and kindling love, and try to penetrate that darkness above you. Strike that thick cloud of unknowing with the sharp dart of longing love, and on no account whatever think of giving up.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Cloud of Unknowing"
by .
Copyright © 1978 Clifton Wolters.
Excerpted by permission of Dover Publications, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Notes 21
Introduction to The Cloud of Unknowing 27
Prayer 42
Prologue 43
Exhortation 45
1 The four stages of the Christian life and the call which came to one for whom the book was written 47
2 An urgent call to humility and the work of contemplation 49
3 The work of contemplation is the best of all 51
4 It can be quickly acquired, though not by knowledge or imagination 53
5 The Cloud of Forgetting must obliterate all things 58
6 What this book is about 60
7 How one has to deal with one's thoughts, particularly those arising from curiosity and natural intelligence 61
8 Questions arising: the suppression of intellectual curiosity and natural intelligence, and the distinction between the active and contemplative life 63
9 In contemplation all remembrance, even of the holiest things, is more hindrance than help 67
10 How to know if one's thoughts are sinful, and if so whether they are mortal or venial 69
11 Each thought and impulse must be evaluated, and recklessness in venial sin avoided 71
12 This work destroys sins, and produces virtue 72
13 Humility perfect and imperfect 74
14 Sinful man can only achieve perfect humility by way of imperfect humility 76
15 The confuting of those who claim that perfect humility comes through the awareness of one's sin 78
16 Through this work the converted sinner who is called to contemplation more quickly attains perfection, and God's forgiveness of sin 80
17 The true contemplative does not concern himself with the active life, nor with what is said or done to him, nor does he refute his detractors 82
18 To this day actives complain of contemplatives, as Martha did of Mary. Ignorance is the cause 84
19 The author's excuse for teaching that all contemplatives should fully exonerate actives who speak or work against them 85
20 The goodness of God Almighty who answers on behalf of those who will not leave loving him 87
21 The true exposition of this Gospel sentence 'Mary hath chosen the best part' 89
22 Christ's wonderful love for Mary, type of the converted sinner called to contemplation 91
23 God answers and provides for those who for love of him will not provide for themselves 93
24 What love is, and how it is truly and perfectly summed up in contemplation 95
25 At this time a perfect soul is not concerned with any one in particular 97
26 Contemplation is very hard work apart from God's special grace, or ordinary grace and long practice. What is the soul's part, and what God's, in contemplation 99
27 Who should engage in this work of grace 101
28 No one should presume to become a contemplative until his conscience has been duly cleansed from his sinful deeds 102
29 A man must continually exercise himself in this work, enduring its suffering and judging no one 103
30 Who can blame or judge the faults of others 104
31 How the beginner should deal with his thoughts and sinful impulses 105
32 Two spiritual stratagems which may help the beginner 106
33 A sinner is cleansed in this work from his particular sins, and their punishment, but has no real rest in this life 108
34 God gives his grace fully and directly; it may not be earned 110
35 The three things the contemplative beginner must practise: reading, thinking, and praying 113
36 A contemplative's meditations 115
37 His special prayers 116
38 Short prayer penetrates heaven 118
39 How the contemplative should pray, and what prayer is; what words are most suitable if a man prays vocally 120
40 In contemplation a soul heeds neither vice nor virtue 122
41 In everything save contemplation a man must use discretion 124
42 In this way, and in no other, may men be really discreet 125
43 A man must lose all knowledge and awareness of himself if he is to become a perfect contemplative 126
44 The soul's part in destroying this knowledge and self-awareness 128
45 Certain errors to be avoided 130
46 How to escape these errors, and to work rather with spiritual eagerness than with physical vigour 132
47 Purity of spirit; a soul shows his desire in one way to God, and in a quite different way to man 134
48 God is served with body and soul, and he rewards both; how to distinguish good consolations from evil 136
49 Perfection is essentially a matter of a good will; all consolations in this life are unessential 138
50 Pure love; some seldom experience consolations, but others often 139
51 We must be very careful not to understand literally what is meant spiritually, particularly the words in and up 141
52 How presumptuous young disciples understand in; the resultant errors 143
53 Various unfortunate consequences follow those who are false contemplatives 144
54 Contemplation makes a man wise and attractive, both in body and soul 146
55 The error of those who fervently and without due discretion reprove sin 148
56 Those who rely on their own intellectual resources, and on human knowledge rather than on the teaching of Holy Church, are deceived 150
57 How presumptuous young disciples misunderstand up; the resultant errors 151
58 St. Martin and St. Stephen are not to be taken as examples of literal looking upwards in prayer 153
59 Nor is the Ascension of Christ such an example. Time, place, and body must be forgotten in contemplation 156
60 The high way, and the quickest, to heaven is run by desire and not feet 158
61 All material things are subject to spiritual, and according to natural order are determined by them and not conversely 160
62 How to know when spiritual working is beneath, or outside, or level with, or within oneself, and when it is above one and under God 162
63 The faculties of the soul. Mind is the principal power, and embraces all the others 163
64 The two other principal faculties are reason and will; how sin has affected their working 164
65 Imagination is the first secondary faculty; how its working and obedience to reason has been affected by sin 165
66 Sensuality is the other secondary faculty; how its working and obedience to will has been affected by sin 166
67 A man who is ignorant of the soul's powers and their manner of working may easily be deceived in spiritual understanding; how a soul is made 'a god' through grace 167
68 Nowhere materially is everywhere spiritually; outwardly this work seems nothing 169
69 A man's outlook is wonderfully altered through the spiritual experience of this nothing in its nowhere 171
70 Just as we come most readily to spiritual knowledge through the cessation of our natural understanding, so we come to the highest knowledge of God possible by grace through the cessation of our spiritual understanding 173
71 Some only achieve perfect contemplation in ecstasy, and some may normally have it when they will 175
72 One contemplative may not judge another by his own experience 177
73 Moses, Bezaleel, and Aaron, in their concern for the Ark of the Covenant, are a helpful type of contemplation, which is prefigured by the Ark 178
74 The subject matter of this book is not to be read, heard, or spoken about, unless the soul is sympathetic and determined to put it into operation: the prologue's charge is repeated 180
75 Signs by which a man may prove whether or not he is called by God to contemplation 182
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