The clear teal knowing that is God

For the past few weeks I've been reading The Cloud of Unknowing; partly because I missed a retreat on it due to my surgery, and partly because it felt like it was time to immerse myself in it -- it kept coming up in conversations with friends.

My initial response to the book was fairly negative: I found I resented the language which set God "outside" -- above, separate, something to strive toward which might or might not reach back -- but it clearly had other aspects which had much to teach me. So, since I was reading it, I thought I should endeavor to practice it as well.

And this morning, imagining again the cloud of unknowing that hides the face of God, and imagining again the cloud of forgetting, beneath which I resolutely thrust all other thoughts of people,places, things and activities which distract me from this brief time spent focusing on God, I found I was overcome by a coughing fit.

At this point I would like to step away from this subject for a moment to mention that my older daughter and I are both synaesthetes. Synaesthesia is a non-threatening neurological condition that lowers the barriers between the senses – causing concepts to have, say, colour or taste. We know for sure that both of us are subject to grapheme-color synaesthesia, which is to say that, for both of us, letters, words and numbers have characteristic colors. We haven't spent a lot of time exploring it, but we do both dream in color, and we both have other ways in which the physical senses cross over: tastes have color, or colors have characteristic sounds or scents.

I mention this because it is the most probable explanation for what happened next. Because, when I began coughing, I felt it was the clouds of unknowing and forgetting that were creating the tickle in my throat; it felt very much like the feeling I get in our local theater when they turn on the fog machine. Exploring this feeling, I realized that, for me, clouds have a beige-y gray sort of color; they are more opaque than translucent, and in mentally surrounding myself with these clouds I was not, in fact, reaching out for divinity, but instead cutting myself off from divinity.

So I mentally blew away the clouds, and returned to a previous mental image. (I know, I'm supposed to be completely empty in meditation. But as a highly visual person I find that to be virtually impossible; the cloud (and this is one reason I was pursuing it) was the closest I've come to successfully clearing out any other images that might surface or absorb me when I sit.)

Immediately, as soon as I restored my former image, I could feel my breathing passages open up. I am not sure I can describe how this image works, but somehow there is a clear deep blue-green color, like the Puget Sound on a still clear day, that is God above and around me. And with every breath I take, that color fills me, to become God within me.

Which is a miracle in itself -- and one I celebrate at some level every time I sit. Because I can still remember a time not all that long ago when "within" was a mass of snakes, or ropes, or dust, or mud, or tangled detritus, with no room for the clear teal awareness that is God. (Thank you, Bev Gaines, for helping me discover that and do the appropriate housecleaning!)

Which is to say, I guess, that the Cloud of Unknowing just doesn't work for me. I will continue reading the book, and draw from it what I can. But clearly I need to breathe. And the Divine is as essential to me as life and breath; I can no longer function in an environment where God is perceived as totally Other, apart, remote, unreachable, and unknowable.

Which probably explains why some traditional religious language and customs make me want to run screaming from the church. Sometimes, in some churches, listening to some liturgies or some preachers -- sometimes I just can't breathe.

So yes, I will continue to strive, to reach out, or up, or down -- and sometimes, as in this image, it's not quite clear which direction that is -- to the clear teal knowing that is God. And if there are clouds drifting across that picture, that's okay, too. My job is just to continue breathing it all in.