The Two Clouds

The author lays it out in chapters 3–7:

1. Lift up your heart to God with a meek stirring of love — and mean God himself, not what you can get of him. The whole work begins as a simple, willed turning of love toward God. “Lift up thine heart unto God with a meek stirring of love; and mean Himself, and none of His goods.” (ch. 3) Want God, not his gifts, comforts, or any thought of him.
2. Accept that you stand in a “cloud of unknowing.” You will feel nothing but darkness, “as it were a cloud of unknowing” between you and God. This is not failure — it is the place itself. “When thou comest by thyself, think that thou hast. a cloud of unknowing betwixt thee and thy God.” (ch. 3) You cannot know God by mind; you can only love and pierce that darkness with longing.
3. Reach into the darkness with a sharp dart of longing love — and stay there. Beat against the cloud of unknowing with love; “smite upon that thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love.” (ch. 6) Do not retreat into thinking, however good the thought.
4. Lay a “cloud of forgetting” beneath you — over all creation. This is the second, deliberate act. Everything that is not God — created things, your knowledge, your memories, your very self — must be pressed down and out of mind. “Look that nothing live in thy working mind but a naked intent stretching unto God. that all the creatures that ever be made. be hid under the cloud of forgetting.” (ch. 5) Even thoughts of holy things, of Christ’s life, of your own sins, must in this exercise be put beneath the cloud, because any thought — however good — is still a barrier to image-free union.
5. When any thought rises, press it down under the cloud of forgetting. Not by violence, but firmly and repeatedly. “Tread them down. and cover them with a thick cloud of forgetting, as if they had never been.” Whenever they rise, put them down again — as often as needed.
6. Rest there, content not to know. The fruit is not a vision or a concept but a dark, peaceful, loving abiding — “a privy love put” upon God in the cloud. You are doing the work simply by being there with naked intent, between the two clouds. (Sourcing note: “cloud of unknowing,” “cloud of forgetting,” “meek stirring of love,” “sharp dart of longing love,” and “naked intent stretching unto God” are the author’s own terms and documented instructions; quotations from standard public-domain editions, lightly modernised.)

Written c. 1375 by an anonymous English contemplative (likely a Carthusian), the book transmits Dionysian apophatic theology — the via negativa, knowing God by negation — into vernacular English practice.

Its lineage runs from Pseudo-Dionysius (Mystical Theology) and Gregory of Nyssa’s “divine darkness” forward to St John of the Cross (“dark night,” nada), Meister Eckhart’s detachment, and modern Centering Prayer. The “two clouds” structure is its unique, vivid contribution.

Apophatic / negative theology (Pseudo-Dionysius, John of the Cross) — approaching God by stripping all images and concepts; the “cloud of unknowing” is the same darkness as John’s “dark night.”

• Open-monitoring / objectless meditation (secular & Buddhist) — resting in awareness without fixing on content; structurally parallel to abiding between the clouds.
• Shikantaza / “just sitting” (Zen) — sitting in alert, contentless presence, releasing thoughts as they arise.
• Centering Prayer (Keating) — consent to God’s presence beyond thought; explicitly draws on The Cloud.
• Self-inquiry / “I am” abiding (Advaita) — resting prior to the conceptual mind.

Trying to “empty the mind” by force. The cloud of forgetting is laid by gentle, repeated release, not by straining to think nothing — which only produces more thought.

• Mistaking the darkness for failure. The author is emphatic: feeling nothing, “in a cloud,” is the work, not a sign you’ve failed.
• Smuggling in good thoughts. Even holy thoughts (Christ’s passion, your sins) belong under the cloud during this specific exercise — the author says so. Not because they’re bad, but because any image blocks image-free union here.
• Seeking experiences or lights. Naked intent wants God, not phenomena. Chasing visions derails it.
• Skipping the love. This is not blank mindfulness — it is loving unknowing, a “meek stirring of love.” Drop the longing and it becomes mere mental blankness.