The Gift of Knowledge is the introduction into the Night of Sense, which is the radical placing in perspective of our emotional programs for happiness. It loosens the drive to achieve happiness through the symbols of security and survival, power and control, affection and esteem or through the values we assimilated from our cultural conditioning.

The exercise of Seven Gifts of the Spirit called the Beatitudes are the inner resurrections that take place as a result of the purification and humiliation of the false self. Perhaps the initial Gift that we come in contact with in the practice of Centering Prayer is the Gift of Knowledge, which is the knowledge of creatures in relation to God. This knowledge is precisely what we do not have as we emerge from our childhood with our various ways of coping with traumatic experiences. The Gift of Knowledge impresses upon us intuitively (that is, not through the reasoning process but intuitively as the fruit of prayer) that only God can satisfy Usually this does not come as a sudden revelation but as a result of the gradual diminishing of our emotional programs for happiness and over identification with our cultural conditioning.

Our needs for security and survival, affection and esteem, and power and control are stimulated by the symbols of the culture in which we live. When we give ourselves to prayer and submission to God's will, those programs for happiness shift into a new place--to a new building, you might say But the same tenants remain. In other words, as a consequence of conversion, security comes to mean consolation in prayer; esteem and affection may mean the esteem of our peers, who think that we are holy people; power and control may mean that we have occasional aspirations to be a pastor of a parish, the abbot of a community, or the bishop of a diocese.

Such aspirations are what is meant by "the world" that St. John in his gospel condemns. It is not the world itself that is to be avoided; for the world desperately needs our help. It is our worldly dispositions that are the problem that is, our emotional programs for unlimited security, affection and esteem, and power and control, along with our over-identification with our cultural conditioning.

As we practice Centering Prayer, we begin to get insight into the dynamics of our unconscious. Perhaps through the Enneagram, the Myers-Briggs, or some other self-help program we become aware of our temperamental biases and personality traits. All this valuable information is useful, but it does not go far enough--because temperament and habit are all rooted in the unconscious, and our best efforts on the conscious level can only moderate them. The Spirit comes to our aid to the degree that we sincerely give ourselves to God and make ourselves compliant to the Divine Therapist. Then the unfolding of self-knowledge takes place in which we see the dynamics of the false self interfering and mixing with the motivations of our good deeds.

For instance, we may find ourselves in some worthy ministry while at the same time experiencing some interior uneasiness. In actual fact we may be running away from ourselves or being called by God to greater solitude and silence. Again, we may use our ministry in a workaholic kind of way Since we are being "workaholics for God," it is hard to discern that our motives are mixed with selfishness and worldliness.

The Spirit comes to our help not to condemn us, but always to encourage us. The Spirit impresses upon us the fact that reality is not the way we see it. We normally see reality through the prism of the desires of our emotional programs for happiness that are rooted in our primitive instinctual needs. Anything that enters the orbit or gravitational field of our basic desires for happiness is judged in terms of whether it serves or does not serve that basic drive or demand. There is nothing wrong with the basic instincts as such. They become distorted or exaggerated in infancy and childhood when these needs are not adequately met.

The Spirit impresses upon us that only God can satisfy our longing for happiness. Notice what this realization does to the false self and to the emotional programs. It tells them in an undeniable way that they are not going to work. If you have spent a significant part of your life with a certain idea of happiness, you will now know interiorly, intuitively, and with certitude that there is no hope of finding happiness there, at least to the degree you had hoped for. What, then, is going to happen to all the programs? They become radically relativized. Now we know they will only bring us a limited amount of satisfaction, not the absolute happiness we had counted on and which turned them into substitutes for God. The net result is that we go through a period of mourning. Whenever you lose anything you love or count on, it is natural to go into a period of mourning.

The Night of Sense usually occurs after enjoying an enriching relationship with God or with Jesus. The scriptures open up for us; we enjoy receiving the Eucharist, spiritual reading, or making retreats. We are attracted to prayer, both private and liturgical. We may even have moments of special consolation or insight. All of a sudden, or gradually, we perceive that our satisfaction in spiritual things was mixed with our emotional programs for happiness. At the same time, the things of God that we once found satisfying become insipid and dull. We grind out rosaries, stations of the cross, visits to the Blessed Sacrament. We dig in our heels and hang on to the pew so we don't leave during Sunday mass. Scripture becomes like reading the telephone book. We feel we are going backwards in the spiritual life. We may even feel that all the good we had experienced is gone forever.

These are some of the signs that the Night of Sense is overtaking us. It is a great mercy of God, because without the relativizing of our emotional programs for happiness, we would go right on looking for happiness under various religious or spiritual disguises. We would be the same old self, only with a new "store front," so to speak--a little more respectable than the one we had before.

The Gift of Knowledge reveals to us that God alone can satisfy and that the pleasures and satisfactions of life are only stepping-stones to happiness. They all have limitations, and to seek to draw from them absolute happiness is not only naive, but just won't work. We have a motive now within us to let go of those emotional programs for happiness, and thus the false self begins to show cracks, and through the cracks come deep self-knowledge and the awareness of the dynamics of our unconscious. We begin to see how these programs interfere with our relationships with other people, with ourselves, and with God.

The Gift of Knowledge is the right ordering of creation in relation to God. It is not a denial of the good things of creation, though it may feel as if we are losing everything. in actual fact, we are gaining the true knowledge of the purpose of creatures, which is to aid and support us in discovering God's presence in everything.

Along with this revelation, which is the major work of the Gift of Knowledge, is the awareness of God in creatures, even in the tiniest of creatures. St. Francis of Assisi offers the most famous example of finding God in everything. It was a gift that Bernie O'Shea also had (see Chapter Eight in my book Invitation to Love). Bernie was charmed with daisies, clouds, and indeed, all of nature. He found God everywhere in creation. The Gift of Knowledge enables one to perceive the presence of God even in the humblest of things. It also gives rise to the symbols of the liturgy that are especially meaningful. The symbols of liturgical practice put one in touch with the divine mysteries they contain. It is not in bypassing the symbols, the liturgy, and the rituals, but by going through them that one comes to the mystery to which they are pointing. The Gift of Knowledge suggests persevering in our devotional and liturgical practice and sacramental life during the Night of Sense when, to our natural feelings and senses, they do not seem to be providing any benefit.

The Gift of Knowledge is the first of the contemplative gifts of the Holy Spirit. It initiates the Night of Sense. It is not designed to cause us affliction but to enlighten us by relativizing the emotional programs we thought would bring us happiness. The Night of Sense is painful for that reason and not because God is punishing us for our sins. The Spirit of God hastens to assist whatever efforts we make to let go of the emotional programs for happiness.

The Gift of Knowledge also prompts us to let go of our over-identification with our group or roles in life. Examples of this are liberally laid out in the Gospels where we see Jesus acting to undermine the social presuppositions of the people of his time. This was the problem of the Pharisees. They presented themselves as representatives of God when, in actual fact, their observance was worldly and furthering under religious guise the same old programs that people not in religious garb were using to climb the social or political ladders.

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Excerpted from Fruits and Gift of the Spirit by Fr. Thomas Keating

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