“Every word, every image used for God is a distortion more than a description.”
Anthony De Mello
Who’s the smartest person you know?
Are you drawn to them for their intellectual gifts? Repelled by them? Are they book smart, street smart, or do they enjoy some combination of the two?
We like smart people. We marvel at their ability to recall facts at will. We’re amazed at how they can expand our horizons with their observations and discoveries.
We value and measure others based on how smart we think they are. It’s one of the first things we insult in a person when we don’t like them.
It’s the way of the world and our celebration of the cerebral has gotten us very far. But it can only get us so far…
The nature of knowledge
Our society runs on knowledge. The arc of human history was shaped by the race for knowledge and its useful application. We’ve relied on it to streamline our profits, keep our bodies healthy, and inform the trajectory of society.
But what exactly is knowledge? Can it be defined with any precision? In Plato’s dialogue Theatetus, Socrates and a young student search in vain for a clear definition. By the end, knowledge is more defined by what it’s not rather than what it is.
Though we cannot adequately define knowledge, we thirst for it because we know that knowledge is power. It’s why Einstein to his dying day chased the elusive Theory of Everything. His goal was nothing less than to know the mind of God (i.e for Einstein, an orderly, rational, and elegant law of the universe).
Yet, for all the knowledge we’ve amassed, we sense that’s not all to the story. We sense there’s so much we don’t know. The best scientists and thinkers are honest about the limits of our knowledge.
However, not knowing is scary. In times of great change and upheaval, not knowing is not a luxury. So we cling to what we know. We draw conclusions quickly even when we have very little understanding of the topic at hand.
In many cases the truth of the principles we hold dear matter less than their ability to comfort us in times of chaos. But the comfort is fleeting and shallow because it cannot hold up to reality.
Forget what you know
The mystics throughout the ages have taken another route. While we seek to know in good times and cling to what we know in bad times, the mystics let go.
In the spiritual masterpiece, The Cloud of Unknowing, the anonymous author asserts that we cannot get to God, the ultimate source of all reality, through our rational and analytic minds, but by the process of unknowing. If you want to approach God, you must according to the author:
“Forget what you know. Forget everything God made and everybody who exists and everything that’s going on in the world, until your thoughts and emotions aren’t focused on or reaching toward anything, not in a general way and not in any particular way.”
Carmen Acevedo Butcher, translator of this modern rendering of the classic, reminds us that this approach was taken up by mystics throughout medieval England and Europe during a most tumultuous time in history — “…plague, ego-triggered wars, social inequality and disorder, a divided Church, and technological change…”
Sounds familiar?
A radical time of unknowing
We’re living through another radical time of unknowing. The mystics were wise in knowing that in times like this, our rational minds hurt us more than help us. We must lay down this rational mind in order to enter the mystical.
We must not seek merely to know the mind of God, but to know God by entering the world of radical unknowing. From this place of trust, insights and solutions to thorny and intractable problems will flow.
Stop clinging to what you know, even at the risk of not appearing smart to others. Even at the risk of stepping out of your zone of safety.
Once you do, you’ll realize how trivial these concerns are. You’ll realize that much of it is just useless and distracting noise.
I read the Cloud of Unknowing… probably before you were born! Well, you may have been a toddler! It’s profound work. I tried reading it a couple years ago, but either the translation was beyond my grasp, or my mind is no longer willing to struggle so hard. So, thanks for sharing the name of the translator of the book you read. What you shared has caused me to ponder on whether this practice might also be a remedy for stress and/or other mental maladies that afflict so many. If we can go to that Cloud of Unknowing for even 5 minutes a day, I mean really “get there”, I can’t help but think that it would make such a difference in our mental health. Maybe it would even reverse the trend of terrorism by way of mass shootings in our country today.
Haha…no wonder you couldn’t understand what you read back then cause you wouldn’t have been more than a toddler yourself 😉 In all seriousness though, yes very difficult to read in Old English. I stumbled upon this translation and it’s great! I totally agree that this practice can help us find the mental rest we’re all so desperately seeking. Our prized minds have become our greatest enemy. I pray for the day when people don’t feel like they have to resort to blowing their brains out and taking others with them to find rest.