276°
Posted 20 hours ago

The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Works (Classic, Modern, Penguin)

£4.495£8.99Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

With this section, we have reached the climax of the work. I had rather be nowhere in this way bodily, he says, wrestling with that blind nothing, than to be so great a lord that I might, when I would, be everywhere bodily, merrily playing with all this something, as a lord with his own possession. Although this is a crucial apophatic moment, the author, by ruling out an imaginative meditation on the whole of creation, has already briefly engaged in it. But the passage is also an excellent example of the Cloud author's preference for brief allusion over imaginative dilation. Our outer man calls this absence of imagery nothing; but our inner man calls it everything. Moreover, despite the often opposing strands of the intellectual and the affective in the mystical tradition, the mind is explicitly at play here, for the contemplative is well taught by the All to grasp the reason ("kon skyle") of all things, bodily or spiritual, without special focus on any one thing by itself (lines 2314-15). This brief passage is reminiscent of the apotheosis of the intellect that Hugh of Balma describes as occurring after the affective union with God (see Introduction, p. 8). In Chapter Sixty-nine, he says that the "nothing" encountered is first a reflection of one's personal sins. Sometimes this nothing seems to be hell; then not hell but purgatory. Sometimes it seems to him that it is paradise because of the sweetness, comfort, joys, and virtues found there. Finally, it seems to be God Himself, for the peace and rest found there. But it is always a "cloude of unknowyng" (line 2341 Don’t speak out about another person unless you feel the nudge of the Holy Spirit during contemplative prayer. That without full special grace, or long use in common grace, the work of this book is right travailous; and in this work, which is the work of the soul helped by grace, and which is the work of only God

Hugh of Balma, thoroughly influenced by Gallus and perhaps the most immediate source of the Cloud, stresses the importance of the intellect in the first two stages of the mystical ascent, like virtually everyone else in the tradition. For both Gallus and Balma, sapientia is the highest achievement of the contemplative (Lees, p. 293), which they both identify with the portion chosen by Mary, the sister of Martha ( Cloud, line 927 ff.). Sapientia for Hugh of Balma is a "loving awareness of God which transcends the discursive knowledge achieved through the intellect" (Lees, p. 294). This wisdom rises in the affectivity, and no intelligence can thoroughly apprehend it. But even here the intellect is by no means excluded entirely, because in Balma's first mystical stage, the mind is in any event disposed to learn this true wisdom (Lees, p. 294). It is an awareness that seems to begin at least in the illuminative stage, when the soul by meditation "begins somewhat to be moved towards [God] by sending forth sparks" (Lees, p. 294, my translation; Cloud, line 385). In the unitive stage, however, he denies any effective initiative to the intellect whatsoever, and differs from Thomas Gallus in this respect. However, the emphasis on affectivity that so characterizes these two writers moves, somewhat paradoxically and surprisingly, to a final celebration of the mind.When we pray, we should not use many words. Instead, use just one word: sin, or God. Or whatever word God nudges you toward. In the Cloud, the very spirituality of the author endows the human body with a unique grace. God forbid, he says in Chapter Forty-eight, that he should part what God has coupled, the body and the spirit, which, together in service, are together in reward and the joy of heaven (lines 1687-90). Many exhortations occur which enjoin the reader to keep from straining the imagination or body in any way. In Chapter Twelve, for example, the importance of the central contemplative act markedly subordinates the role of bodily penance. The unpretentious affirmation of love, he insists, removes the ground and the root of sin much more effectively than fasting, abstaining from sleep, early rising, or uncomfortable beds. Again in Chapter Forty-five, the author points out that those who understand words in a bodily rather than in a spiritual way actually experience adverse repercussions in the senses themselves. Consequently they "streyne here veynes" (line 1594) or chafe their complexions into an unnatural heat and their bodily powers in such a crude and beastly way that they fall into a weariness and listless feebleness in body and soul. This is a false feeling which produces a false knowing (line 1608). Such an observation proffers a freedom to the reader who feels physically relieved and dispensed from meditational calisthenics or any "unordeynd streynyng of the fleschely herte" (line 1702). Such "fleschlines of bodely felyng" (lines 1627-28) injures the soul and festers in the imagination. By contrast, a competing term from Augustine - ratio superior, "the superior reason" - entailed a significantly different view of the mystical ascent, espoused especially by the twelfth-century Victorines, Hugh and Richard. Augustine believed that "an intellectual 'vision' of God is the goal of mystical contemplation" (TeSelle, p. 32). For Augustine, the superior reason is fulfilled by wisdom, just as the inferior reason is completed by knowledge. The wisdom that belongs to the upper part of reason is itself the image of God and contemplates the divine reasons. Later medieval writers refined these insights, but, although it undergoes subtle variations, Augustinian wisdom, or sapientia, persists. Human wisdom participates in Divine Wisdom, which, for Augustine, is God Himself ( De Trinitate, XV, 7, V). The Cloud of Unknowing, a masterpiece of simplicity that distills a complex mystical epistemology and discipline into engagingly readable prose, embodies a paradox. It offers a method by which the suitably disposed reader may practice an advanced and even austere form of contemplation - the divesting of the mind of all images and concepts through an encounter with a "nothing and a nowhere" that leads to the mysterious and unfathomable being of God Himself. Yet as the account of this exercise unfolds, the genial and hospitable tone of the author humanizes the austerity of the method and persuasively draws the reader into what Evelyn Underhill calls "the loving discernment of Reality" ( Sequence, p. 81).

How these young presumptuous disciples misunderstand this other word up; and of the deceits that follow thereon In this context, this book is a helpful guide for the desperate to truly regain their sense of the presence of God. This is such a deep book that is difficult to succintly put it into discrete terms. But here were my key takeaways: Beat with a sharp dart of longing love upon this cloud of unknowing which is between you and your God.

Of the wonderful love that Christ had to man in person of all sinners truly turned and called to the grace of contemplation

If we are ignorant of our soul’s powers, we will misinterpret spiritual instruction. We will misinterpret Contemplative Prayer. The Cloud of Unknowing is a Middle English spiritual guide, dating from the second half of the 14th century. The name of the author is not known, but he is thought to have been a monk from the east Midlands. In prayer we need both humility and patience. Humility is not just a sense of our sin taken separately ( which is almost never from God, if not simultaneously connected to God's surprising love for us). In real humility we know the extent that we are sordid, sad, weak creatures but no less the object of God's superabundant love, humbled by " the amazing glory and goodness of God." We need patience since " Grace is rarely in a rush! It touches and changes us bu usually not as soon or as suddenly as we like." The author of The Cloud wrote in the language of the common people because the book’s purpose is to give practical guidance for direct experience of God. Education or high social status is not required, only a sincere longing to encounter God. The author discourages those who are gossips, the overly scrupulous, and the merely curious from reading the book. “However,” says the writer in the foreword, “there are some presently engaged in the active life who are being prepared by grace to grasp the message of this book. I am thinking of those who feel the mysterious action of the Spirit in their inmost being stirring them to love. I do not say that they continually feel this stirring, as experienced contemplatives do, but now and again they taste something of contemplative love in the very core of their being. Should such folk read this book, I believe they will be greatly encouraged and reassured.” The father admonishes us to be careful in this work: Never strain mind or imagination, for truly one will not succeed in this way; leave these faculties at peace. It is best when the word chosen for contemplation is wholly interior, without a definite thought or actual sound. Let this little word (the father enjoins) represent to you God in all his fullness; let nothing except God hold sway in your mind and heart. One may be distracted by remembering some task undone or one may find that some disrupting thought is clouding one’s attention, the father comments—but, he advises, if one answers with the word chosen, if one resists intellectualizing about its meaning and, instead, holds the word before oneself in all its simplicity, one may escape distractions. Put all thoughts of other creatures—past, present, and future—under a “cloud of forgetting.” If in this way one strives to fix one’s love on him, forgetting all else, which is the work of contemplation, God in his goodness will provide a deep experience of himself. Christian Themes

Most popular

The author believes that the spiritual journey demands full self-awareness and honesty, a perpetual shadow-boxing with our own weaknesses and imperfections. While physical withdrawal from the world is not essential, letting go of attachments to people, expectations, and things is. This requires contemplative practice, a true spiritual discipline. Rather than teaching passivity, the path into the cloud of unknowing requires active intent, willingness, and practice—knowing enough to not need to know more, which ironically becomes a kind of endless, deeper knowing.

Second, is it on your mind all the time, attracting your attention more than any other spiritual discipline? God, it seems, cannot really be known, but only related to. Or, as the mystics would assert, we know God by loving God, by trusting God, by placing our hope in God. It is a non-possessive, non-objectified way of knowing. It is always I-Thou and never I-It, to use Martin Buber’s wonderfully insightful phrases. God allows us to know God only by loving God. God, in that sense, cannot be “thought” at all. [1]Johnston, William. The Mysticism of “The Cloud of Unknowing.” 1967. 4th ed. Foreword by Thomas Merton. New York: Fordham University Press, 2000. The author gives an extensive study of the mysticism of the period and also compares the teaching of The Cloud of Unknowing with that of Saint John of the Cross and other apophatic mystics. There is a good introduction by Thomas Merton. How a man shall have him in this work against all thoughts, and specially against all those that arise of his own curiosity, of cunning, and of natural wit An important concept in the Cloud - "the sovereinneste pointe" of the spirit or of contemplation (see lines 15; 36-37; 1371) - can suggest the richness of traditional elements present in the work, and can serve to focus both the continuities and the differences in the tradition of contemplation. The concept begins in Stoic philosophy as a reference to the "single faculty of the soul from which all others were held to derive" (Lees, p. 271) - to anotaton meros - the topmost part, the Latin equivalent of which is apex mentis, the summit of the mind. In association with what is considered to be this highest part, the intellectual and affective views of contemplative experience come into focus and interact. But in the main tradition followed by the Cloud, the intellect and the imagination, which initiate the human ascent to God, must be abandoned so that contemplation may proceed by negation, or the apophatic method.

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment