by the true, loving will of your heart

For silence is not God, nor speaking; 

fasting is not God, nor eating; 

solitude is not God, nor company; 

nor any other pair of opposites.  

He is hidden between them, 

and cannot be found by anything your soul does, 

but only by the love of your heart. 

He cannot be known by reason, 

he cannot be thought, caught, or sought by understanding.  

But he can be loved and chosen by the true, loving will of your heart.

~ The Cloud of Unknowing

Written anonymously, this practical, unemotional book of instruction focuses on stripping away all earthly ways of knowing, of passing through the cloud of forgetting and piercing the cloud of unknowing that exists between himself and God.  Widely read in the fourteen century for its beauty in aiding a contemplative experience, The Cloud, is better known than the later work, The Book of Privy Counseling which also clearly written by one who has trodden the mystical path himself and offers others a helping hand.

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