Memories can have a negative effect, even become sources for the deadly sins of anger, pride, sloth, envy, avarice, gluttony and lust. During prayer many thoughts may come, but these can be harmful. Words such as ‘God’ or ‘Spirit’ can be clung to as a way of keeping all other thoughts about the created order at bay. Later, when these aids have been used, the contemplative is better prepared to be still and silent in the presence of God, using a single word to help focus attention. Any dirty marks on the face should be washed by confession. Study of the Word of God is essential, since it is like a mirror, in which we see the face of our conscience. This is not to say, however, that the contemplative has no need of knowledge at all. What then does the contemplative think of during meditation? How can one think of and strive for that which is unknown? The author’s answer is: ‘I do not know!’ Feeding the neophyte with images would immediately destroy the foundation of his or her striving for God. To live in this cloud, there has to be a ‘cloud of forgetting’ between the person and the created order. The person is reaching out for the one who is unknown. This darkness is not a state of mind, something akin to depression, but rather a state of a lack of knowledge. This is nothing more than the beginnings of a reaching towards God. To undertake this contemplative path involves ‘forgetting all created things’, and the contemplative will find ‘only darkness, as it were, a cloud of unknowing’. And this is a work for those who think that they have that call, and are willing to respond humbly, and desire to love God with their whole heart. The first sense we get from reading the book is that the call to the contemplative life is just that: a call. Whilst the author is reliant on his Scholastic and Dionysian background for his theoretical framework, his work is concerned mainly with the practice of contemplation. It is this which concerns the author of The Cloud.
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