Here are some poems I love on the via negativa, finding God in absence. For more posts on this look here:Rumi:
I have lived on the lip
Of insanity, wanting to know reasons,
Knocking on a door. It opens,
I’ve been knocking from the inside!
-Rumi (trans. Coleman Barks & John Moyne)
Silesius:
God, whose love and joy
Are present everywhere,
Can’t come to visit you
Unless you aren’t there.
-Angelus Silesius (trans. Stephan Mitchell)
Lao Tzu:
The Tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal name.
The unnamable is the eternal real.
Naming is the origin
Of all particular things
.Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.
Yet mystery and manifestations
Arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.
-Lao-Tzu (trans. Stephan Mitchell)
A couple quotes from The Unveiling of Love by Sufi Sheikh Muzaffer Ozak Al-Jerrahi:
(On affection toward God) …it is possible by letting oneself fall like a drop into the ocean.
As for those who are annihilated in God, it is absolute certainty that they will exist forever.
The last quotes are borderline negative/affirmative way, but they are so beautiful...