Yet do not misunderstand my words, I did not say that you must desire to un-be, for that is madness and blasphemy against God. I said that you must desire to lose the knowledge and experience of self. This is essential if you are to experience God's love as fully as possible in this life. You must realize and experience for yourself that unless you lose self you will never reach your goal. For wherever you are, in whatever you do, or howsoever you try, that elemental sense of your own blind being will remain between you and your God. It is possible, of course, that God may intervene at times and fill you with a transient experience of himself. Yet outside these moments this naked awareness of your blind being will continually weigh you down and be as a barrier between you and your God... It is then that you will realize how heavy and painful is the burden of self.
~ the Cloud of Unknowing
