"…Neither is this Thou" (- C. Williams)

The decision to stand naked before the universe with hope is to enter the cloud of unknowing, which, for all we know, is an abyss of emptiness. Here I must assert strongly a disclaimer: I do not assume that I have experienced what St. John of the Cross described in The Cloud of Unknowing. I do not consider myself a mystic. Nevertheless, I have experienced in the course of meditation what could be called by St. John’s title. My cloud was the absence of assertion that results from the decision to have integrity, instead of certainty.

Stepping forward, self-divested of assertion, into a posture of receiving is a single movement. In it, we bear our anxiety unto peace. I know what I just wrote will seem strange: the decision made in anxiety is the open door to peace. With nothing to defend – no lurking preconsciousness of doubting questions to fuel exaggerated confidence – the nagging sense that we may be wrong is gone, and with it the denial of uncertainty that metastasizes into dogma.

So… disarmed, we are ready to receive.

What then do we experience in this symbolic “cloud” of our willing unknowing? In the mist we cannot see ahead at all. There are no thoughts of anything beyond us. There is no grandeur of the universe to overwhelm us. The cacophony of noise from without and from within is stilled. The quiet of our mind is welcome. We feel nothing but ourselves, and encounter the simple Cartesian reality, I Think Therefore I am.  We want to rest there forever.

But we cannot: we do not have the resources to exist for ourselves alone; we cannot sustain this peace without ceasing to be. Our attention is drawn gradually to the second truth: we are not alone even in ourselves. Our hearts are stirred by echoes of what was before and what is hiding within. The unconscious is freer to emerge and “breath” us forward. The cloud is mere tranquility, when what we need is presence. We are the product of relationships and communities. The second truth, the one beyond “Je pense,” is “because of Thou also, I am: Thou, and thou, and thou!”

Nevertheless, In the peace of unknowing we are strengthened for a more open return, less encumbered by the need to defend our security through the props of ego defenses and dogma. Of course, our self and the beliefs of our communities will still be present for us to attend to. However, now we do so by healthier and constructive means because we have disarmed.

When I decide to take the next “step,” beyond the cloud, I find in that moment the cloud is no longer there. There is an imaginative shift. It is a gentle reentry. There is a well flowered glen, with much to enjoy and to attract my attention. I wait, walking, receiving its variegated beauty. A way opens among the trees and flowering bushes. There is presence. The former One was a projection of my self; yes, it is I who am on the path, but integrated with me, and yet not, is another who accompanies me on the way. There is someOne more than myself alone. The One takes my hand and leads me out where I have not yet seen the way.

Freer on the journey, I now believe whatever I will conceive God to be, projection and reality, “Darkness and light are alike to Thee.”

DJB