#thomaskeating

Centering Prayer is a method designed to facilitate the development of contemplative prayer by preparing our faculties to receive this gift. . . . It is at the same time a relationship with God and a discipline to foster that relationship. This method of prayer is a movement beyond conversation with Christ to communion with Him. [1]

Centering Prayer is based on the wisdom saying of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:6): “If you want to pray, enter your inner room, close the door and pray to your Father in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” Notice that “Father” refers to a personal relationship, whether you call it father, mother, brother, soul-friend, spouse or anything else.

The first step in Centering Prayer is to enter your inner room, which is symbolized by the heart in most traditions; that is, your innermost self beyond the senses and beyond thinking. . . .

Second, “close the door,” symbolizing your intention of letting go of all thoughts, preoccupations, memories and plans during this time. As soon as you are overtaken by thoughts, which is inevitable in the beginning, return to your original intention to let go of all thinking. You can do this in a very simple and extremely gently way, like saying a sacred word briefly, noticing your breath, or turning to God with a brief glance of faith in His presence.

Finally, you pray in secret to the Father who speaks to you beyond words and who invites you to ever deeper silence. . . .

The steps I have just mentioned are guidelines. Instead of using a word or noticing your breath, you can also use a sacred image to return to. These symbols do not establish you in interior silence; they simply reaffirm your original intention to be in God’s presence and to be open to the divine action. . . . The fruit of this prayer is not something you produce. You simply reduce the obstacles by providing an interior environment in which the Spirit can speak without words in the inmost depths of your being.

As you practice Centering Prayer, you begin to experience the value of inner silence, which reveals the true self. The presence of God can also be experienced through the love of nature, deep friendship, conjugal love, generous service of others, or the discoveries of genuine science. There are many roads leading to the awakening of the original endowment that God has given every human being, of which the gift of contemplation is one. Contemplation . . . is a gift that has already been given. You have got it! What you have to do is to allow it to awaken within you.

Whenever your heart space, your mind space, and your body space are all present and accounted for at the same time, you can experience pure presence, a moment of deep inner connection with the pure, gratuitous Being of anything and everything. It will often be experienced as a quiet leap of joy in the heart.

Contemplation is an exercise in openness, in keeping all three spaces open long enough for you to notice other hidden material. When you can do that, you are content with the present moment and can then wait upon futures you know will be given by grace. This is “full-access knowing”—not irrational, but intuitive, rational, and trans-rational all at once.

The supreme work of spirituality, which makes presence possible, is keeping the heart space open (which is the result of conscious love), keeping a “right mind” (which is the work of contemplation or meditation), and keeping the body alive with contentment and without attachment to its past woundings (which is often the work of healing). In that state, you are neither resisting nor clinging, and you can experience something genuinely new.

Those who can keep all three spaces open at the same time will know the Presence they need to know. That’s the only prerequisite for true prayer. People who can simply be present will know what they need to know—the Presence that connects everything to everything. This way of knowing has little to do with belonging to any particular denomination or religion.

Jesus modeled and taught contemplative prayer. He invited us to “go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret” (Matthew 6:6). Our beloved Father Thomas Keating (1923–2018), who recently passed away, explained how such prayer helps us access the joy of experiential union with God:

In Jesus’ formula for waking up to who we are, he suggests entering this inner room. Then he says shut the door, meaning stop the interior dialogue. Get free or detached from our over-identifications with our thoughts, experiences, past life, future hopes. It doesn’t mean leaving anything behind, but changing your attitude to everything, so it’s a non-possessive attitude, which is the nature of [God] or the Beloved, or the Ultimate Reality. . . .

[We are] in the process of awakening to the divine image within us, the supernatural organism where faith, hope, and charity, the divine indwelling, and the fruits and the gifts of the Spirit are sitting, so to speak, in our ontological unconscious, gathering dust, waiting to be used. And they can’t come into full action until our over-identification with the false self and its programs for happiness that can’t possibly work have been reduced.

So life, then, is constant death and resurrection at every moment. We die to our own will and enter the present moment by consenting to whatever it is, either by accepting it or doing something that the Spirit suggests to improve the situation. This divine enlightening process sometimes gives us an Aha! experience

Centering prayer is a method of silent prayer... in which we experience the presence of God within us, closer than breathing, closer than thinking, closer than consciousness itself. This method of prayer is both a relationship with God and a discipline to foster that relationship. -Thomas Keating

So often we are addicted to our minds, our egoic thoughts, concerned about survival and success and our false selves. From this egoic mind, we have repetitive, programmatic thought patterns. Centering prayer is an invitation to wake up to being and connecting to the giver of life eternal.

Our minds divide and separate. We often see in binaries, black and white, right or wrong, 1’s and 0’s. This mind cannot connect us to God. It’s the binary mind that leaves us separated, alienated and lonely. All is one in God. Through Christ everything is connected and one. Col. 1

Centering prayer is a discipline to drop ourselves out of our minds into our hearts. The goal is to detach and disconnect from our thoughts. It is a spiritual practice that takes us beyond words.