The Cloud of Unknowing by William Johnston

Author:William Johnston
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9780385030977
Publisher: The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group
Published: 2012-01-11T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 45

A good exposition of certain snares that may befall the contemplative.

I must warn you that a young novice, unseasoned by experience in contemplation, is liable to great deception unless he is constantly alert and honest enough to seek reliable guidance. The peril is that he may destroy his physical strength and fall into mental aberrations through pride, sensuality, and conceited sophistry.

This is how deception may insinuate itself. A young man or woman newly set out on the contemplative way hears about the desire in which a man lifts up his heart to God, unceasingly longing to experience his love; he also hears about the sorrow I have just described. Vainly considering himself clever and sophisticated about the spiritual life, it is not long before he begins to interpret what he hears in literal, material terms, entirely missing the deeper spiritual meaning. And so he foolishly strains his physical and emotional resources beyond reason. Neglecting the inspiration of grace and excited by vanity and conceit, he strains his endurance so morbidly that in no time he is weary and enervated in body and spirit. Then he feels the necessity to alleviate the pressure he has created by seeking some empty material or physical compensation as a relaxation for mind and body.

Should he escape this, his spiritual blindness and the abuse he inflicts on his body in this pseudo-contemplation (for it can hardly be called spiritual) may lead him to arouse his passions unnaturally or work himself into a frenzy. And all this is the result of pseudo-spirituality and maltreating the body. It is instigated by his enemy, the fiend, who takes advantage of his pride, sensuality, and intellectual conceit to deceive him.

Yet unfortunately, these people believe that the excitement they feel is the fire of love kindled in their breasts by the Holy Spirit. From this deception and the like spring evils of every kind, much hypocrisy, heresy, and error. For this sort of pseudo-experience brings with it the false knowledge of the fiend’s school just as an authentic experience brings with it understanding of the truth taught by God. Believe me when I say that the devil has his contemplatives as surely as God has his.

The treachery of pseudo-experiences and false knowledge occurs in a myriad of guises and nuances according to the different mentalities and dispositions of those deceived, just as the real experience assumes many different subjective forms. But I will stop here. I do not want to burden you with more knowledge than you will need to keep you safe on your way. What will you gain from hearing how the evil one has deceived great clerics and those in different walks of life from your own? Nothing, I am sure. So I will describe only those snares you are liable to encounter as you toil at this work; I tell you so that you may be forewarned and avoid them.

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