Wisdom from The Cloud of Unknowing:

A member of our practice community recently emailed and said:

‘After years and years and years of ‘trying’ to connect with God, Jesus, the Bible, through different churches, and feeling a miserable failure because I wasn’t feeling the same as everyone else around me seemed to be, I think I’ve actually found what it was that I was looking for. It was inside me all along. It’s such a wonderful discovery and an absolute revelation.’

Spiritual ‘feelings’

By coincidence (or perhaps it was spiritual synchronicity, or providence), I received this wonderful email just as I was completing my notes for a talk on the teaching of an extraordinary spiritual master, and some of what he has to say about spiritual ‘feelings.’

I emailed back, asking if I could include some of their words in the talk. They replied, ‘of course,’ and added: ‘The amount of times I have felt I was going backwards in my relentless attempt to go forwards when people said “The Lord has given me a word…” And now I feel I can relax and let it all unfold. Wonderful.’

I thanked them and wrote, ‘And never worry about ‘going backwards’ or going forwards. God is our being. It doesn’t get closer than that.’ ‘And so I understand,’ they replied. ‘What a wonderful thing to know!’

What struck me most in this exchange was the sense of relief. After years of trying, something has begun to relax. The need to try and ‘feel’ something, to ‘connect with God’ through a particular kind of tangible experience, has begun to fall away. In many ways, this is not just one person’s story. It reflects something much more widespread.

I’m sharing this with you from India, where many people come in search of spiritual experience, of a deeper felt connection with the divine. And yet, again and again, the quiet realisation emerges that what they are seeking is always present wherever they are, because God is part-and-parcel of who they are.

The Cloud: a practical guide for a young student

During my time in India, I’ve been studying and translating passages from the great fourteenth-century work The Cloud of Unknowing. Written as a practical guide for a young student, it is a text of great importance for the practice of meditation in the Christian tradition, what the anonymous author calls the ‘work’ of contemplation.

The author is very clearly a master of prayer, as well as a wonderful teacher. The pages of the Cloud sparkle with wisdom, as well as a good deal of wit. The author can be very direct, providing a strong word (a clip around the spiritual ear) when it’s needed. But he can also be very tender, loving and encouraging.

I’d like to share some of the author’s teaching from Chapters 45 and 46 of The Cloud. What he shares is very important. But how he shares it is equally important. As I read his words, he speaks to me in a way I have valued greatly in my own teachers, a blend of no-nonsense directness, tenderness and humour.

In Chapter 45, the author speaks about some traps of misunderstanding about meditation we can fall into. In Chapter 46, the author says how we can avoid these traps (which most, if not all, of us will fall into at some point!).

Chapter 45: falling into the various traps of spiritual understanding

The first thing the author says in Chapter 45 is just how easy it is for someone new to meditation to fall into various traps of misunderstanding. The ‘young disciple’ of the practice needs to take care, to take things steadily, and accept spiritual guidance. If you try to rush ahead too quickly, without guidance, you can exhaust yourself and fall into various traps of spiritual misunderstanding.

For example, he says, a beginner in the spiritual life hears it said that one should ‘lift up the heart to God and unceasingly desire to feel God’s love.’ The beginner does not understand these words spiritually, as they are meant to be understood, but in a physical way. They mistakenly think they should feel God’s love as some sort of tangible sensation. And so they torment themselves, seeking and straining after some sort of tangible sensation, a felt-in-the-body experience as proof that they are praying properly and all is going well.

Spiritual ‘experience’?

Despite the fact that most modern translations of The Cloud insert the word ‘experience’ into the text – and even worse, ‘spiritual experience’ – giving the impression that this is something we should seek, the author is very clear that we should not seek any sort of experience, spiritual or physical, but simply seek God. The heart of his teaching is simple: we are not trying to create an experience of God, but to lay ourselves open to God, who is beyond the grasp of mind and senses, but who can be known, as it were, ‘secretly’ by the heart, because God is the heart of who we are.

Importantly, the author links the tendency to seek spiritual ‘feelings’ or ‘experiences’ not simply to inexperience, but to pride. He has little or nothing to say about visions, wonders, or miraculous blasts of light-filled insight, except not to seek them, and to exercise great caution if something like that appears.

Let me remind you of this wonderful saying from the time of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, which speaks of the great humility of those who have spiritual understanding:

Back to Chapter 45. The Cloud author identifies two things that can happen to those who, as he puts it, ‘strain their veins and bodily strength’ seeking spiritual feelings or experiences, ‘signs and wonders’ (John 4:48).

Firstly, within a short time, they can become weary and despondent. If there are no observable spiritual fireworks, they may begin to fear they are failing in prayer. And this, he says, can lead them to look ‘outside themselves’ for some kind of ‘experience’ or feeling to console themselves.

Secondly, because they mistakenly believe that spiritual progress (being in the right place with God) should be felt in a certain way, they will try to ‘inflame’ their feelings, imagining all sorts of things. Blinding themselves spiritually, they may whip up a feeling and tell themselves it is the ‘fire of love’ created and kindled by the grace and goodness of the Holy Spirit.

If ever we find ourselves faced with such prideful thoughts, we might remember the words of the desert monk to the thought suggesting an angel had been sent by God to him: ‘Are you sure you weren’t sent to someone else?’

Chapter 46: advice on how to avoid these spiritual traps

After speaking in Chapter 45 about some of the traps of misunderstanding we can fall into, in Chapter 46 the Cloud author speaks about how we can avoid them. His words are so full of tender wisdom and gentle humour that I’d like to read some of this short chapter to you:

‘Therefore, for God’s love, take care in this work of contemplation not to strain your heart too roughly or out of measure; but work with skill rather than with brute force. For the more skilfully, the more humbly and spiritually; and the more roughly, the more physically and like a beast.

‘So take care, for any beast-like heart that presumes to touch the high mountain of this work will certainly be driven away with stones [hard challenges]. Stones are hard and dry in nature, and they hurt very painfully when they hit. In a similar way, rough straining is hard felt in our bodies and emotions, and has a dryness from lacking the dew of grace, and hurts the foolish mind painfully, and makes it fester in fantasy.

‘Be careful, then, of this beast-like roughness, and learn to love skilfully with a soft and gentle use of body and mind. Abide courteously, and humbly await the will of our Lord, and do not snatch over-hastily, like a greedy greyhound, no matter how hungry you are.

‘And, to put it playfully, I urge you to do your best to control the rough and immature stirrings of your spirit, just as though you did not want God to know how glad you would be to see him, and have him or feel him.

‘Perhaps you think this is spoken childishly and playfully. But I believe that whoever has the grace to do and feel as I say, would know God playing happily with them, like a father with their child, kissing and embracing, making everything well.’

In meditation, we are learning to pray, to love, to live – skilfully, softly, gently. Do not try to grasp hold of God like ‘a greedy greyhound,’ says The Cloud author. There is no need. Relax. Release. Trust that God is holding you, embracing you, ‘making everything well.’