The Song of the Cloud of Unknowing: a Manual in Verse for Teaching the Contemplative Life, and a Help for Guided Meditation

This anonymous work was originally written as a manual for teaching meditation and the contemplative life to medieval monks and nuns. Recent interest in meditation practice and centering prayer have led to a re-appraisal, discovering the possibility of psychotherapeutic benefits from studying the medieval text, by helping readers to understand pride as a distortion of truth and an impediment to wholistic living, and "meekness" as a path to health. Now for the first time this influential text has been rewritten in rhymed, measured poetry for use in guided meditation and other forms of self- realization.