Study Guide: The Cloud of Unknowing, Chapter 46

Chapter 46, “How to escape these hidden dangers and practice contemplation with a joyful spirit, rather than brute force” (105-106).

This is an important chapter, but not an easy one for those of us who live contemplatively.  So we will take it slowly.

In the first sentence, our Teacher says that, “for the love of God, [we are] to guard against these dangers.”  What dangers?  The ones he has described in the previous chapter,  dangers that arise when we strain our nervous systems, get ourselves overly pumped up, and physically abuse ourselves so that we can work up a feeling of self-importance.  When we act out with “undisciplined passions” and “smug minds” and have “a love of being praised” for our bravado, we are in dangerous territory.  Such behaviors are symptoms of “counterfeit” contemplation and “phony experience[s]” that lead to false knowledge.  Such people promote “pseudo-contemplative experiences”; and if we find ourselves engaging in such hucksterism, we are in serious spiritual trouble.  As Anonymous says in the first sentence, we are to “guard against these dangers” by not overtaxing ourselves emotionally or physically.

Our contemplative lives are to be lived out in quiet joy.  “As you increase the joy in your contemplative work, you also increase its humility and genuine spirituality, but if you force it, your efforts sink into a crude physicality.”  If you

go about with a “beastly heart” (that is, act roughly and aggressively) when approaching “the high mountain of contemplation” (that is, whatever is your Mount Sinai), you will be driven away with stones, just as in the New Testament “Letter to the Hebrews” it is said that when an animal “touches the mountain, it shall be stoned to death.”  Come to holy ground in humility.  Don’t snap and bark at others when you share your Christian life; instead, lay bare your interior life with a gentle and peaceful disposition.  Or as our Teacher puts it, “Instead of being stubborn as a mule, learn to love with gentleness and joy, kindness and good manners.”

If you find yourself getting snarly, Anonymous suggests you play a little game with God, “seriously.”  You play this game by pretending you don’t want what you want as much as you want it.”  When you feel yourself beginning to act beastly, pretend that you don’t want God to know how much you desire and feel Him!  There’s a strange logic in such pretending.  When you start to act like a hungry animal, the truth is that you are inwardly justifying your beastly behavior to show others how much to feel for God.  Inwardly you are justifying your animalistic posturing because you think you are right, right in your own eyes.  But you are not “right” in the deep sense of that word.  You are not relationally right with another person.  So do yourself a

favor and pretend and act as if you don’t want God to see such “un/right” snarly behavior.  “Hide all that,” Anonymous says.  Play down your emotional outbursting.  Then God, who is watching you, will play the “game” with you.  He will come as a father comes to his child, kissing you and embracing you.  Try it, Anonymous, says, and see if it works.  God likes it when you “hide” a part of yourself; then He and you get to play “hide and seek,” a wonderful game that God enjoys. 

How often do you let God "play" with you?