Study Guide: The Cloud of Unknowing, Chapter 14

Chapter 14 is the second of three chapters (13-15) which Anonymous devotes to a sustained consideration of the role of humility (meekness, in Middle English) in our contemplative lives, telling us “why we must go through imperfect humility to reach perfect humility.” Building upon the distinction he made between imperfect and perfect humility in Chapter 13, he impresses upon us the necessity of going through imperfect humility in order to arrive at the perfect. We only get to the perfect (found in God) by means of experiencing the imperfect. 

We experience imperfect humility by getting to know ourselves as we truly are. Coming to such self-knowledge is backbreaking labor, but we embrace it because it is necessary if we are to experience God as best we can during this lifetime. To the degree that we allow ourselves to be meek imperfectly in self-knowledge, we arrive at a true knowledge and experience of God. Therefore, we will want to work hard on getting to know ourselves as much as possible. 

 Self-knowledge—an awareness of our imperfect humility--leads to perfect humility, and such self-knowledge is best discovered in “the singular worth of contemplative work.” Anonymous says that discovery is best made when we “allow the hidden love of [our] pure heart[s] to press against the dark cloud of unknowing between [us] and God.” Such a pressing and impulse is “perfect humility. It occurs without any special images or clear ideas.”

Although he doesn’t say so explicitly (he will do so later), Anonymous is alluding to what some now call Centering Prayer. In Centering Prayer we experience self-knowledge, let go of such knowledge about ourselves, and allow the grace of God-given love to take us into the Presence of God’s perfect humility. Commenting on Chapter 14 in The Loving Search for God, William A. Meninger wisely provides his readers a beautiful set of guidelines on how to do Centering Prayer.[1]  It’s by means of Centering Prayer, Meninger says, that we become acquainted with perfect humility by experiencing and passing through imperfect humility. Within contemplative quiet and stillness we come to self-knowledge, let go of such imperfect humility (that is, self-knowledge), and enter into the great unknowing of perfect humility with God. We move through the imperfect humility to God’s gift of perfect humility.

In the final paragraph of this chapter, Anonymous urges us to realize that any pride we might take in working toward self-knowledge and anything beyond is dangerous.  “Those who believe that they’ve ‘arrived’ have merely found another way to wrap themselves up in filthy, stinking pride.” 

How, then, do we avoid pride and proceed so as not to arrive?

[1] The Loving Search for God: Contemplative Prayer and The Cloud of Unknowing. (New York: Continuum, 1998), 16-18.  In 1974 Meninger developed the workshop on Contemplative Meditation (later known as Centering Prayer) which he now teaches worldwide along with workshops on Forgiveness, the Enneagram, Sacred Scriptures, and prayer. His method was further developed and promoted by two other monks of his abbey, Thomas Keating (his abbot at the time) and Basil Pennington.