Paths to Contemplation - Post 11

The Way of Darkness and the Way of Light


    Of course God is neither dark nor light.  But we have no words to describe God so we do the best we can with what we can know by means of our unaided intellects.  The Ways of Darkness and of Light portray in an imperfect way means by which the soul approaches God.  The Way of Darkness(the apophatic way, or the via negativa, the negative way) has been dominant in Western spirituality, while the Way of Light(the kataphatic way, or via positiva, the positive way) has been dominant in Eastern Orthodoxy.  Both point toward means to enter contemplative prayer.

    The Way of Darkness is grounded in the truth that no verbal descriptions, no images, no sounds – in short, nothing that we can either create or sense with our natural faculties – is, or can be, God.  To experience God directly, we must put away all thoughts and feelings and enter into what one anonymous writer called the “cloud of unknowing.”  We enter the cloud of unknowing by passing through the “cloud of forgetting,” leaving behind all mental constructs, emptying our minds, creating a darkness, a void, into which God can enter.  Obviously, given the dynamic nature of our intellects, it is no easy task to create this cloud of unknowing.  But, as we shall see, there are techniques that have been developed to try to do just that.

    The Way of Light is grounded in the truth that God is ineffable light –  using the term “light” here as a metaphor to express something that is essentially inexpressible.  The Psalmist and other holy writers remind us that God’s glory is reflected at least dimly in creation, much as the light of the moon is merely a reflection of sunlight falling on the moon’s surface.  Therefore by the use of appropriate objects and images, and exercises directed at seeing God’s reflection in these objects and images, we will open our minds to the direct experience of God, should God choose to grant that experience to us.

    Icons in Eastern Orthodoxy, which are believed to be windows through which one can look to glimpse the reality that underlies what the icon represents, not to mention the strongly sensual beauty of the Orthodox Liturgy, are examples of the Way of Light. 
    One should not conclude, however, that the Way of Light is not found in Western spirituality, or that the Way of Darkness is unknown in Eastern Orthodoxy.  Some Western spiritualities, such as Ignatian and Franciscan, are kataphatic(the Way of Light), and the Jesus Prayer, so integral a part of  Orthodox spirituality, may well be considered apophatic(the Way of Darkness). 

    With this brief introduction to the nature of contemplative prayer and the two basic approaches thereto, we move on to techniques of active contemplation.