Surrender · “Let Go to Receive”
The Quiet
To stop the active effort of contemplation and shift into ‘wise passivity’ — ceasing striving, releasing images and grasping, and resting open and self-abandoned in a dark, imageless stillness Underhill calls the Quiet.
In 5 lines: Only after your attention is steady, make the one allowed effort — to stop effort. “Let yourself go,” become wisely passive (alert but unforcing), and release images, words, and seeking. Dwell meekly in the bare dark, doors open, asking nothing. Receive whatever comes; don’t grasp. Approach gently — and if it turns frightening, ground and stop.
What it is
Underhill’s path moves from effort to surrender. Recollection and the first forms of contemplation are active — gathering and pouring out the attention. But she insists there is a further turn that cannot be achieved by effort at all, only allowed: a shift into “wise passivity.” Here you “let yourself go; cease all conscious, anxious striving and pushing,” release the images and the very wish to do anything, and rest “meekly” in what the mystics call the Quiet (also “the Divine Dark,” “the Desert of God”).
It is the contemplative equivalent of unclenching: “a pure bare going forth,” “your doors flung wide open,” “asking nothing, seeking nothing,” willing to “die into” or “melt into the Whole.” Underhill is precise that this is the point where the practitioner can no longer make anything happen — the soul’s own work (“watering the garden”) gives way to waiting on what it cannot command (“the rain”).
The practice, then, is the disciplined art of stopping — of holding a state that is “wisely passive” without either striving or going slack. (The Inner Creates the Outer surrender, riding on the attention The Inner Creates the Outer has already steadied.)
The Method
From Practical Mysticism, ch. IX (faithfully described, short quotes only). This is entered only after recollection and onlooking have made the attention reasonably steady:
- Arrive already gathered. Begin from recollection: the body still, the attention collected, the mind quieted. The Quiet is not a starting technique; it is what active contemplation hands over into.
- Stop striving — deliberately. Make the one “effort” that is allowed: the effort to “cease all conscious, anxious striving and pushing.” Let go of trying to concentrate, trying to feel, trying to attain. “Let yourself go.”
- Become wisely passive. “Your state, then, should now be wisely passive” — not slack, not asleep, but alert and unforcing. Open and waiting rather than reaching.
- Release images and seeking. Let go of pictures, words, petitions, and goals: “asking nothing, seeking nothing.” This is the apophatic move — resting in a “darkness and quietude” rather than in any content.
- Dwell there meekly. “Finding yourself in this place of darkness and quietude … you are to dwell there meekly.” Don’t try to brighten it, fill it, or escape it; remain.
- Open the doors and abandon the self. Hold “your doors flung wide open towards God,” consent to “a pure bare going forth,” and accept “your own complete impotence” — willing to “die into,” “melt into the Whole.” The self stops being the manager.
- Receive, don’t grasp. Whatever comes (or doesn’t) is received, not seized — the soul waiting on “the rain” it cannot produce. End gently; re-ground before returning to activity. (Sourcing note: the bolded/quoted phrases — “let yourself go; cease all conscious, anxious striving and pushing,” “wisely passive,” “asking nothing, seeking nothing,” “pure bare going forth,” “doors flung wide open,” “dwell there meekly,” “complete impotence,” “die into / melt into the Whole,” and the garden/rain image — are Underhill’s wording from ch. IX; the rest is faithful paraphrase.)
Source & Lineage
Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941), the leading English interpreter of the mystics, set this “third form of contemplation” at the far end of her practical scheme (recollection → purgation → the three contemplations → the Quiet → union).
She is transmitting the apophatic / negative way: the Cloud of Unknowing‘s “naked intent,” the “Divine Dark” of Dionysius and the Rhineland mystics, Teresa of Ávila’s and John of the Cross’s Orison of Quiet and passive nights, and the self-abandonment of à Kempis and Kabir whom she quotes.
The Traditions' versions
Cloud of Unknowing — naked intent / forgetting — resting blank toward God beneath a “cloud of forgetting.”
- Teresa of Ávila — Prayer of Quiet — the will rests in God while effort ceases. → (related)
- John of the Cross — dark night / passive contemplation — God works as the soul stops striving.
- Centering Prayer — consent to God’s presence and action; let go of thoughts via a sacred word.
- Non-directive / “open monitoring” meditation — effortless, choiceless resting awareness.
- Taoist wu wei and quietist surrender — accomplishing by non-striving, letting the deeper movement act.
Common refinements
Trying to do the Quiet. The defining error: striving to be passive is still striving. The only effort is to release effort — then wait.
- Going slack / drifting to sleep. “Wisely passive” is alert and unforcing, not dozing. If you keep nodding off, you’ve collapsed into drowsiness, not rested in the Quiet.
- Filling the dark. The temptation is to summon images, words, or feelings to escape the emptiness. Underhill says dwell there meekly — let it be bare.
- Entering it cold. This is not a beginner’s opener. Without prior recollection the mind has nothing steady to rest from, and the bare passivity can tip into restlessness or anxiety.
- Chasing a “union” experience. Grasping for the culminating experience is exactly the grasping the practice asks you to drop.
- Ignoring distress signals. If the imageless dark turns frightening or dissociative, stop, open the eyes, ground in the senses, and seek guidance — do not push through.