The Work of Contemplation

Guest writer and CAC faculty member Cynthia Bourgeault continues reflecting on the classic, anonymous text of Christian mysticism, The Cloud of Unknowing.
As I mentioned yesterday, I approach The Cloud in a different way than it is typically understood. While reading a variety of translations of the Middle English is helpful, I find Ira Progoff’s version particularly eye-opening. Progoff brings a very different spiritual and intellectual perspective. More than any editor I know, he understands that The Cloud is not simply speaking about a devotional pathway or even a permanent mystical state, as this text is often assumed to be referring to. Rather the author’s “work” is the systematic restructuring of consciousness so that it is able to perceive from oneness—i.e., without dividing the perceptual field into subject/object or opposites. Progoff realizes that The Cloud is laying out a whole different pathway of knowing from the heart that eventually allows one to perceive holographically—the “whole picture” at once.
We can think about this shift in the familiar terms of computer programming. The Cloud lays out not so much a “system update” to our usual mode of perception but a whole new operating system! Rather than thinking about the spiritual path as moving deeper into an experience or feeling of union with God, The Cloud reveals an entire “restructuring” of our consciousness so that we no longer see through separation and difference.
To introduce the text, Progoff brilliantly summarizes both the overall goal and method laid out in The Cloud:
The normal tendency of consciousness is to move outward toward the environment in terms of sensory contacts, social feelings, ideological beliefs, emotional attachments, and so on. . . . The first requirement of the work described in The Cloud of Unknowing is then to call a halt to this squandering of energy by outward diffusion; and it undertakes to accomplish this by means of disciplined attention to the activities of the mind. [1]

Classical mystical theology similarly emphasizes “recollection” (not to be confused with remembering) as a state of being energetically collected into a greater sense of selfhood. The real work of contemplation is to discover that our normal way of operating—finding our sense of selfhood in differentiation and opposition to those around us (I am me because I am not you)—is full of “energy leaks”! As we learn to move away from identifying ourselves as individuals—separate from the whole—we begin to plug those leaks and instead perceive from a new operating system that sees from the whole. As contemporary mystic Beatrice Bruteau (1930-2014) wrote, “I AM / MAY YOU BE!” [2]

Gateway to Silence:
Fall fearless into love.

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Is God’s Will My Will?
By Oswald Chambers

This is the will of God, your sanctification… —1 Thessalonians 4:3
Sanctification is not a question of whether God is willing to sanctify me— is it my will? Am I willing to let God do in me everything that has been made possible through the atonement of the Cross of Christ? Am I willing to let Jesus become sanctification to me, and to let His life be exhibited in my human flesh? (see 1 Corinthians 1:30). Beware of saying, “Oh, I am longing to be sanctified.” No, you are not. Recognize your need, but stop longing and make it a matter of action. Receive Jesus Christ to become sanctification for you by absolute, unquestioning faith, and the great miracle of the atonement of Jesus will become real in you.
All that Jesus made possible becomes mine through the free and loving gift of God on the basis of what Christ accomplished on the cross. And my attitude as a saved and sanctified soul is that of profound, humble holiness (there is no such thing as proud holiness). It is a holiness based on agonizing repentance, a sense of inexpressible shame and degradation, and also on the amazing realization that the love of God demonstrated itself to me while I cared nothing about Him (see Romans 5:8). He completed everything for my salvation and sanctification. No wonder Paul said that nothing “shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39).
Sanctification makes me one with Jesus Christ, and in Him one with God, and it is accomplished only through the magnificent atonement of Christ. Never confuse the effect with the cause. The effect in me is obedience, service, and prayer, and is the outcome of inexpressible thanks and adoration for the miraculous sanctification that has been brought about in me because of the atonement through the Cross of Christ.

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