The Two Devices

The author presents the two devices in chapter 32, for use whenever the little word and the cloud of forgetting aren’t enough to quiet a persistent thought: Device One — Look over their shoulder.

1. When thoughts press hard and you cannot push them down, stop pushing. Pretend you barely notice them.
2. Look past them, over their shoulders, as though you are searching for something else beyond them. “Look over their shoulders, seeking another thing — the which thing is God, enclosed in a cloud of unknowing.” (ch. 32, paraphrase of the standard text)
3. By directing your longing past the thoughts to God, you withdraw the attention that was feeding them. Deprived of your engagement, they lose their grip. Device Two — Cower beneath them and yield.
4. If even that fails — if the thoughts utterly overwhelm you — do the opposite of fighting. “When thou feelest that thou mayest on nowise put them down, cower down under them as a caitiff [coward] and a coward overcome in battle, and think it is but folly to strive any longer with them.” (ch. 32)
5. Give yourself up to God in the midst of your enemies. Surrender the struggle entirely; let yourself “fall” as if defeated, into God’s keeping. The author teaches that this self-abandonment — confessing you cannot do it yourself — is itself a profound act of humility and trust that draws God’s help.
6. Return, when you can, to the naked intent / little word — but without the strain that caused the jam. The pivot in both devices is identical: the harder you fight a thought, the more energy you give it. The way through is to unhook — by looking past it, or by laying down the fight. (Sourcing note: the “two ghostly devices,” “look over their shoulders,” and “cower down. as a coward overcome in battle” are the author’s own instructions in chapter 32; quotations from standard public-domain editions, lightly modernised. Faithful paraphrase elsewhere.)

Chapter 32 sits within The Cloud‘s practical middle section, where the c.1375 author coaches a beginner through the difficulties of the work he set out in chapters 3–7. The insight that struggle feeds distraction, and that release dissolves it, runs through the whole contemplative tradition (the Desert Fathers on logismoi, Hesychast counsel to “not converse” with thoughts) and re-emerges, secularised, in 20th–21st-century acceptance-based therapies (ACT’s defusion, mindfulness “let it pass like a cloud”) and in Coué’s law of reversed effort.

Cognitive defusion (ACT) — watching a thought as a passing mental event rather than a command; “looking over its shoulder” is a near-perfect medieval image of decentering.

• Acceptance / dropping the struggle (ACT, mindfulness) — ceasing to fight an inner experience is the established way to reduce its hold; the “cower and yield” device is textbook.
• “Let thoughts pass like clouds” (mindfulness) — non-engagement as the path through distraction.
• Hesychast “guard of the heart” — not entering into dialogue with intrusive thoughts.
• Coué’s law of reversed effort — forcing creates the opposite; release resolves.
• Surrender / “let go and let God” — the second device is a contemplative form of release.

Using the devices to fight harder. They are anti-effort. If “looking over the shoulder” becomes a new way to muscle thoughts away, you’ve missed it — it’s a gentle turning-past, not a shove.

• Confusing “cowering” with despair. The yield is trustful self-abandonment, not hopeless giving-up. It’s “I can’t, so I rest in God,” not “I’ve failed.”
• Suppressing genuine emotional material. These devices are for the churn of ordinary distraction in contemplation. A real grief, fear, or trauma surfacing is not a distraction to bury — attend to it properly (and outside this exercise).
• Skipping straight to device two. Try looking-over-the-shoulder first; reserve the full surrender for when nothing else works, as the author intends.
• Expecting permanent quiet. Thoughts return; you re-apply the device. That cycling is the skill.