Our Centering Prayer group meets on Tuesdays at 10 AM in the New Life Room. All are welcome to join us. This Centering Prayer blog is written by one of our facilitators.
Seeing in Secret
posted January 4, 2024
Jesus said: “And when you pray, go into your inner room and close the door and pray to your Father in secret and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” Matthew 6:6
What does it mean to “pray to your father in secret” or “your Father who sees in secret”? How will he reward us? This instruction from Christ seems to be his way of telling us how to practically implement the command from Psalm 46:10: “Be still and know that I am God.”
The word secret can mean “behind closed doors” or “in hushed tones,” but it can also mean “mysterious or unknown.” When we follow Jesus’s instructions to close the door of our mind, set ourselves apart from the activity and routine of the day, God is exposed: He offers his presence, He is known to us.
When we stop our doing and thinking, God emerges from our depths. He is the deep water into which we can not peer when the surface is roiled by the chaotic waves and white caps. But once the water’s surface becomes calm, we see inward and downward into the depths of our soul. It is like peering down into the well of your soul and seeing your reflection peering up at us. And then as we gaze into the reflection, we realize it is not our reflection, but it is the reality of God – God with our face.
In contemplation, we are rewarded by God’s presence. We experience God; He is known…yet He is not known. What is revealed is still a mystery, which compels us to seek God even more. And the more we discover God, the more we become known to ourselves. We experience ourselves in a way we never could if not for the inner silence and stillness into which we have allowed ourselves to sink.
What Is Centering Prayer?
posted February 2, 2023
An act of surrender.
Surrendering myself to God
Who is at the center of my being.
God is present at the core of my soul.
When I center myself
I am taking off my mask
My outer shell, my costume, my protection
What people see.
I am acknowledging God’s presence within me.
I am consenting to God’s action within me.
I am denying my false self of its hyped identity.
In that I begin to sense the real me, my true self.
I am being only who God created me to be.
It is hard
Because as I surrender
I take off another layer.
I feel naked.
Unprotected.
I don’t want to take off my costume
Because I am afraid of what I might be
Under all the layers
With which I have adorned myself.
God wants me to see my true self.
He wants me to see who He created me to be.
He wants me to know the real person at my core.
When I see that real person
I see Him
I know Him.
I love Him.
And I love myself.
He and I are one
And I cannot love the one and not the other.
Centering Prayer awakens me to who I really am.
I am His reproduction.
He has reproduced Himself within me.
I am His child
A little Christ.
And I realize
So is everyone else.
And a desire overtakes me:
I want them to realize it, too.
The Heavens and the Earth
posted November 1, 2022
“Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.” Genesis 2:1 (NIV)
“… in all their vast array.” It is that vast array that is the source of my spiritual wonder. How infinite, how varied, how majestic, how beautiful, how eternal, how intimately woven together, how dependent on every other part, how unified. I marvel at all those incomprehensible aspects! That marveling is my contemplation. As one infinitesimal part of that vast array, my desire is to rest in the hands of the Creator, the One who completed the heavens and the earth.
Beholding the Mystery
posted March 21, 2022
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.” – Albert Einstein
What makes contemplative prayer, and specifically Centering Prayer, unique among other types of prayer is that it is receptive rather than active. Instead of prayer being our voice, emerging from our mind, Centering Prayer is our mind, body, and heart, integrated together as a receiver, tuned to One frequency. Together they act as an instrument like a radio telescope, intercepting radio waves and producing an image, or like a stretched string that vibrates from air blowing over it, generating a musical tone. These are passive instruments, reacting in response to a local phenomenon: a vacuum of radiating electromagnetic waves or an atmosphere of moving air molecules.
This frame of being is so different from what we are accustomed to as the act of praying, that we want to dismiss it, reject it as inconsistent with our understanding of ourselves and our view of reality. Our minds, because they are in control during active prayer, give us a feeling of power. Active prayer satisfies our minds’ desire for control, to be in charge and secure. However, this receptive type of prayer requires us to be vulnerable and open and accepting, to surrender control.
What happens when we receive? What are we receiving? How can our heart receive? How can our body receive? We “know” how our mind receives because we are conscious of knowing. Our mind takes over when it hears or receives a new thought. The mind categorizes, evaluates, applies, stores, assigns value, leverages, and does a thousand other things with that thought. It is our consciousness at work.
With contemplative prayer, none of that happens. We are simply receiving a gift unconsciously. Our experience of it is at a subconscious level. If it rises to a conscious level, then it becomes active thought.
Einstein was such a unique scientific genius because he wanted to know all about the universe, but he also understood that we could not know it all, that mystery is the way of reality. The more we come to know, the more we uncover more unknowns—things not only unknown, but unknowable. As science progresses, the known expands, but the unknown expands even more so.
Einstein accepted that not only is mystery the essence of our reality, but that it is the crux of beauty as well. Thus, it is for our benefit that the core of reality be unknown, for if we could understand an existential phenomenon, its beauty would be diminished or lost. Our seeking is a desire to know the Creator who gave us this desire. We can take joy from experiencing, from seeing and perceiving reality, and be willing to accept that we can never comprehend it fully, or if we could, we would no longer behold it as worthy of our attention, awe, or praise.
At some stage of our seeking to know reality, our seeking is transformed into a willingness to understand things at a level that the mind is not able to comprehend. Instead, comprehension becomes an act of unknowing, an act of faith, an acceptance that something is true, real, and beautiful, though it is beyond our ability to understand it, define it, imitate it, or recreate it.
That is why the more we seek to know and understand the Creator and His creation, the more we come to be satisfied with simply standing in awe and reverence of both—just receiving the Gift. Whether you see yourself as a nuclear physicist, a poet, a pastor, or a painter, we all learn—in due time—to just gape in wonder at all that we are and all that we experience.
Beholding the Mystery
posted October 12th, 2021
Consciousness is a window onto the Mystery of God. The more we look through that window, the more we realize how incomprehensible is the Mystery. It is in this gazing that we become more and more awed by the Mystery. If we seldom look into the face of the Mystery, we have no appreciation for it, no respect for its magnificence. But if we allow ourselves to be consumed in rapt attention, we are overwhelmed by a sense of reverence for this infinite, ineffable Mystery.
The experience is like that of looking at a star through a telescoping lens, zooming in with higher and higher magnification desiring to see more than a point of light, and for hours and days and weeks and months and years of staring into this looking glass… until one day, the point of light becomes diffuse and then resolves into an elliptical galaxy and then into a dense cluster of millions of distinct stars surrounded by red and blue and golden clouds of dust rarified by the intensity of starlight, and with this comes the growing appreciation for this sight, so distant, so beautiful, so intense, so incomprehensible, so unattainable, so mesmerizing that you can not look away. Your gaze is held there, willingly, consumed in the looking and in the seeing, not comprehending anything, lost in yourself, feeling connected to this Mystery in a way you can’t understand, knowing an unexplainable peace and full acceptance of yourself in the midst of the Mystery.
This is why we enter the inner room each day and surrender our consciousness to the Mystery…
Praying in Secret
posted March 25th, 2021
“When you pray, go into your inner room and close the door, and pray to your Father in secret, and your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you.” Matthew 6:6.
What does it mean in this verse to “pray…in secret”?
Given the preceding phrase about entering an inner room and closing the door, we could conclude that to pray in secret means to go into a private place, alone, where no else sees you. But secret can also mean hidden or unexplained. In many ways, prayer is a mystery, as God is a mystery. To pray in secret could mean “be with God” in a hidden and unexplained manner. In other words, being alone, we are alone from others, but present with God in some extraordinary way than when we are present with others. It is this seclusion that may open us to an experience of God that we do not understand or cannot explain.
The purpose of Centering Prayer is let go of ourselves so that we can receive God’s presence. The very act of letting go of our thoughts is an invitation for God to make his presence known. In fact, when we speak about knowing God, it is not knowing like knowing another person or knowing a subject; indeed, knowing God is simply acknowledging or being aware of His presence.
In our prayer of preparation that we say before beginning Centering Prayer, we “consent to God’s presence”. It is as if prayer is just that–being present with God. God is always present, but we rarely are. By going into the inner [private] room and closing the door, what we are doing is being alone with God, and not for the purpose of making our requests be known, which seems to be most people’s most common type of prayer, but to be with God, to be aware of His presence, to consent or surrender ourselves and our will to God.
The Perpetual Thinker
posted March 23rd, 2020
In Centering Prayer, we are trained to let our thoughts come and go. Not to try to stop thoughts, which is fruitless, but when they come, to let them go. This requires an awareness that we are having a thought. This very process of having a thought and simultaneously thinking, let it go, is a demonstration that we have—in our ordinary consciousness—two levels of awareness. The one level is our intentional conversation or monologue with ourself, in which one thought leads to another thought and that leads to the next thought and this continues throughout the day. One line of thinking, one topic or subject may end and another begin, but unless we are tired or sleeping, we keep this monologue going non-stop. But there is another level of awareness, a higher one that hovers over the “continual thought generator,” that may stop or alter the direction of flow of the perpetual thinker.
In Centering Prayer, we are training our perpetual thinker to come to rest, or at least slow down, using our higher awareness to “ride herd”, slowing the thoughts down, coaxing them to lay down and find rest. Inevitably, one of the herd gets up and tries to run, but again, the herder comes over and says, “Let’s rest some more.”
In my mind, the wild thoughts begin to wind down when I focus on my breathing, hearing the alternating pattern of inhaling and exhaling, or place my awareness just below my eyes, briefly seeing the back of my lower eyelids, sometimes even noticing one of the floaters in my left eye. Father Thomas Keating suggests a way to enter into rest as you begin a period of Centering Prayer by placing your attention on the air moving across your upper lip for 4 or 5 breaths, then focusing your awareness on a spot a couple of inches behind your eyes for another 4 or 5 breaths, and then shifting your attention to a spot a couple of inches above your solar plexus for a similar number of breaths. By focusing your awareness on these specific locations of your body over one or two minutes, your mind begins to slow down.
When I enter into a period without thoughts, I may be aware of a blankness in front of me, or more often, some abstract vision like a curtain of colors or a forest of lines and patches of light and shadow, or a landscape with large swaths of earth tones. Each time, the specific vision is different, but there are similarities of patterns. Sometimes, I go deeper and there is no vision, just a gaze into nothingness, perhaps what some authors describe as a “sacred gaze”, which is not engaging to the mind. Ultimately, a new thought will bubble up through this haze or blankness, but its disturbance of this serenity is obvious and my sacred word gently brings me back to the stillness of the mind.
Returning to the herd and herder metaphor, it’s when the herd as a whole has settled down and even the wild ones have entered into rest, that the herder, instead of actively watching, can also rest. Then my consciousness is at rest in God and fully receptive to His healing presence.
Facing Your Nemesis
posted January 27th, 2020
What is it like to sit alone with your thoughts? Is it enjoyable or frightening, boring or exciting, routine or transforming? Do you beat yourself up, gloat on your victories, plan for your next undertaking, pray for your loved ones, feel overwhelmed about your challenges? Do you ever wish you could just tuck all your thoughts under your pillow and just lie on your bed at night without a thought or care in the world? That is the gift that God offers to you.
Jesus tells us, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:30). He offers to take our thoughts that weigh us down and to let us live free from the strife we bring ourselves through our undue worries and cares about the world. Our minds are a gift from God and the mind is capable of incredible workings, but it also can become our nemesis, shutting us in, working at cross purposes to our desire, keeping us from wholeness and wellbeing.
Nemesis was the Greek goddess of retributive justice. A nemesis inflicts retribution or vengeance. A nemesis is a formidably and usually victorious rival or opponent. In Centering Prayer, we learn to change the playing field that our nemesis is so good at playing on. We let our thoughts go, we detach our consciousness from our thoughts. We don’t allow our thoughts to take us anywhere, regardless of our value judgment about the thought. No determining that it is good or bad, right or wrong. It is just a thought and we release it without hesitation; we turn it away as soon as it shows up our our doorstep. We don’t try to stop them from coming. Everyone knows such an effort is counterproductive. That is one contest the mind always wins. But when the thoughts come, and they always will, we don’t open the door, we turn them away like an unwanted door-to-door salesman.
It is quite freeing, telling your opponent that you want to take a break from playing their game. Instead of entering the playing field, you are just going to find a park bench and relax. And so you find a quiet place, shut your eyes, and just let your thoughts go by. You don’t resist them, but neither do you retain them. They go by like leaves floating by on the river, one by one, letting each of them go. “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him” (Psalm 37:7).
Sometimes life feels like one contest after another, and it is exhausting. We just look forward to hitting the pillow each night to take a break from it all. But that is when the mind can become hyperactive, analyzing all that you did or should have done or not have done, said or should have said or should not have said, what you need to do tomorrow or the next day, or next week, or next month, or next year. You just want to disengage. That is what Centering Prayer does — it teaches us how to disengage our mind from our agenda. And that gives God the opportunity to dive deep into our unconsciousness with His healings and balm of wholeness. “Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him” (Psalm 62:5).
We do not understand this process but Jesus told us that we are to trust this, and ultimately we experience the fruit that he promises when we obey his command: “When you pray, go into your inner room and close the door, and pray to your Father in secret, and your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you” (Matthew 6:6).
Becoming Poor
posted December 2nd, 2019
The act of Centering Prayer subtlety changes our way of perceiving, our way of understanding, our way of being. It teaches us to let go, to become non-possessive…of everything. It leads us down the path of self-emptying. You begin to truly realize and accept that your self-satisfaction does not rest on possessing power, esteem, or security. It is a liberation of the soul from these things we previously believed were necessities, not only for life, but for religion.
The practice of Centering Prayer slowly but effectively bestows on us the freedom of dying to oneself. In letting go of our thoughts, our self-centered perspectives, and our will, we begin to see our True Self, once deeply buried beneath all of this material that we believed was essential to a happy existence. We begin for the first time in our lives, perhaps, to truly understand what it means to be blessed by being poor in spirit.
It seems that God gives us a desire and an open mind to seek a new way of relating to Him, and we enter into this newness with expectant hearts, wanting more of something that is missing, and then we find ourselves being stripped of our certainties, understandings, and comfortable ways. Some may abandon the journey and flee because of the unsettledness that has come upon them. But through faith others proceed, wanting and watching to see God do a new thing, risking that it might take them somewhere they were not wanting to go.
And that is always at the heart of the journey toward God…giving up control of yourself, your life, and letting your Creator have His way with you. It feels like losing, it feels like dying, it feels like giving away all that you have worked so hard to create so you would be happy. But that is why Jesus said that those who do not have, who have given away, who have allowed themselves to be stripped down to their naked core, are the ones who are blessed. The practice of Centering Prayer helps to prepare us to receive this blessing.
A Chair for the Mind
posted November 7th, 2019
Centering Prayer is a chair to our consciousness. The chair is a device designed to give the body rest, without encouraging sleep. During daily activities, our bodies are usually upright: standing, walking, running, working. At night they are supine, asleep, unconscious. But the chair enables us to sit and rest, not having to support and balance our full weight in a standing position. It is as if the chair, a construct of men, enables a neutral, or third position, in which the body is capable of achieving something more than if it were restricted to either standing or lying. The body gains a new way of being by being able to sit and be still.
In the same way, Centering Prayer serves as a third position for the mind. In waking mode, the mind is active, moving, working. In the unconscious mode, asleep, the mind is resting, being restored, and unaware and unresponsive to its surroundings. Centering Prayer enables the mind to sit down and rest, yet not fall into the total rest of sleep. In this third mode, the consciousness puts aside its routine thoughts, and rests in its natural posture, awake but not working. The mind gains a new way of being by experiencing an interior stillness.
In this way of being, we receive the gift of God’s presence, the reward that Jesus speaks of in Matthew 6:6. “But when you pray, go into your inner room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret, will reward you.”
Why Give Up?
posted August 6th, 2019
In Centering Prayer, a practice that prepares us for contemplation (what Thomas Merton called “spiritual wonder”), we sit in stillness surrendering our thoughts, giving them up as soon as they bubble up. If you think of your thoughts as essential to living, then it is a lot like dying. We fall into the belief that thinking is like breathing—if we stop we will die. And, in a way, we are surrendering our life, giving it to God.
Why would you want to stop thinking? Give up your right to live? “My thoughts define me. If I’m conscious but not thinking, then what good am I? Why would I purposefully or willingly do that to myself?” Being silent in your head is like punishment, no different than sending your 2-year-old to time out…”go sit and face the corner and don’t talk or play, just sit there.” A child might well consider Centering Prayer to be an adult timeout, as punishment for something they did that was wrong.
So for a lot of people, Centering Prayer might seem like dying or punishment. But practicing contemplative prayer is actually giving ourselves a gift. It is the only time that we give our consciousness a rest. We say to our mind “You don’t have to do anything for the next 20 minutes. Just be still and quiet…rest.” Doesn’t that sound like a treat? Giving your mind permission to take a break from the constant demands put upon it?
It’s just so different from what we have learned from our culture. I doubt that you had a parent tell you “Never allow your mind to stop thinking.” Although we may not have been taught to not think, everything we do in life seems to involve—to require— thinking. Even when our activities cease or we relax, we daydream or think about everything under the sun. We just never allow our brains to stop and shift into neutral, until we fall asleep, into unconsciousness.
So it’s not a surprise that we would rebel against the idea of giving up our thoughts. It would be like surrendering in a battle you knew you could win. Why would I consent to surrender when I don’t have to? And that’s the point. We are consenting to God, willingly giving up our right to ourself. Consenting to His presence and action within us. Letting go and letting God in, simply because He tells us to: “Be still and know that I am God.”
Many people when they first try Centering Prayer usually say something like, “I can’t do this. My mind won’t stop thinking, no matter how much I try, the thoughts keep coming.” And that’s normal and inevitable; we are not trying to stop from having thoughts, we are simply acknowledging them and then letting them drift away.
Beginning the practice of Centering Prayer may seem like trying to tame a wild animal. The mind is doing what comes naturally and it must learn a new behavior, a new way of acting. It takes practice, it takes surrendering your will, and even after it becomes a habit that you are accustomed to doing, the ego will rise up and say “I am in charge here, and I don’t have to do this.” But our desire to know God, to please God, leads us to surrender our ego and continue.
People new to the practice might say “This is just plain silly. I am wasting 20 minutes of my time being totally nonproductive. I can do a lot more good for God by not wasting time just sitting here doing nothing. I could be using this time praying with words or thinking good thoughts or planning good things.” Our culture has trained us very well. We will resist anything that tells us we are lazy, we are wasting our precious time, we are being unproductive, we are giving up our rational mind.
So why should you give up your time, your mind, your life for this method of prayer? Because Jesus says to give up your right to yourself, to go into your quiet, interior space and offer yourself to your Father. And in you doing this, He will reward you with His presence (Luke 9:23, Matthew 6:6, my paraphrase).
Mindfulness
posted May 28, 2019
Mindfulness seems to have become a popular notion, if not practice, in America. What is it? One definition (from Greater Good Magazine) is “maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment, through a gentle, nurturing lens.” More simply, mindfulness is living in the moment.
It seems our mind always has to be holding something…a thought. Many, or most, of our thoughts focus on the past (remembering, reliving, analyzing our experiences) or the future (imagining, planning, worrying, hoping, preparing for possible future experiences). These thoughts are often judgmental or analytical. An important element of mindfulness is that it involves acceptance of thoughts and feelings without judgment. In being mindful, we focus on what we are sensing in the present moment rather than rehashing the past or imagining the future.
When we stop our mind from this backward- and forward-looking and focus on the present, we tend to unite our mind with our body. When we are gazing into the past or the future, it is as if our mind has left our body and travelled back or forward in time, leaving our body stranded without its mind in the present. But when we are mindful of the moment, the present, our body begins to inform our mind of itself and the environment and activity around it. Sights, sounds, sensations, fragrances…we find a rich melange of stimuli that bathe our bodies with a sumptuous experience.
In yoga, the instructor sometimes offers essential oils, like lavender or lemongrass, to place on your wrists or neck. These pleasant aromas arouse an awareness of the moment, the position of your body or the placement of your limbs relative to your nose or face. Your awareness of your posture is enhanced.
In Centering Prayer, which can be described as a form of mindfulness or meditation, we sit still with eyes closed for 20 minutes, letting go of our thoughts. We do not enter a trance or lose conscious awareness. Instead, the practice of Centering Prayer, as well as yoga, heightens your awareness of your body and your environment. They teach you to pay attention to the moment and to the place that your body is. Your mind, your body, and your surroundings are connected, engaged, in union.
Since I began practicing Centering Prayer, I have become aware of sensations in my body that I formerly was not sensitive to or aware of. I feel the soles of my feet on the floor, the weight of my body pressing my buttocks against the seat of the chair, the dull ache of my wrists from chronic tendonitis, my hands resting in my lap. Over time, my hands, while resting on my thighs, seem to meld themselves to my legs to the degree that I no longer know where my hands end and my legs begin. My hands and legs feel as if they are simultaneously occupying the same space. It is very odd sensation, but as I sit and feel this, I know I am mindful of the present moment. My mind is nowhere but in the present.
With my eyes closed, my hearing is sensitized. My mind is registering every sound that comes to my ears. Birds singing, the refrigerator humming, the gurgle of water from the aquarium, a jet roaring through the sky, the drone of distant traffic, dogs barking, a clock ticking, and the ever present ringing in my ears from hearing loss. I hear these sounds, but I let them drift out of mind.
My eyes, though closed, still see light—an amazing amount of light that filters through my closed eyelids. My closed eyes are not the dark veil that I formerly surmised! In fact, one time, when direct sunlight came through the windows into the room as clouds uncovered the sun, it was so bright to my closed eyes that I concluded God’s Presence was in the room. It was an ethereal, transcendent experience, and I did not spoil it by opening my eyes. I simply enjoyed it.
In quiet and stillness, awareness of my breathing is heightened. In fact, attention to breathing is the best place to let the mind rest. We are breathing every moment of our lives, and to become mindful of our breathing, is to attest to the essence of life, your life. Breathing is life giving, it signifies our connection to the atmosphere, our need for air, something we can’t see but nonetheless we know it is there and is something we cannot live without. Breathing is analogous to believing in God’s presence. Both are essential to living. The Holy Spirit is the breath of God that gives us life. Being mindful of breathing is being mindful of God’s presence in us.
You Are Not as Rational as You Think
posted April 1, 2019
Sometimes our dreams scare us. We call those kind of dreams nightmares. Dreaming is evidence of our mind’s creativity, but it also demonstrates that our conscious mind is not always in charge. That might be scary to some, especially to those who always want to exert control. But even in our waking time when our conscious self seems to be in control, modern psychology tells us that 90% of the decisions we make and actions we take are motivated (controlled) by the unconscious. So even in our non-sleeping periods, our conscious minds are not in control most of the time!
Of course, we do not realize that we are not in control. Numerous studies show that, if asked why we did a particular thing – what motivated us – we will provide a rational reason for our action. We are very good at coming up with plausible explanations that justify our behavior. Only, they often have nothing to do with why we acted in the way we did—because we really don’t know the true motivator, we are just attempting to prove that we are rational beings who are in control of our bodies.
Once we accept this as our real condition, we may desire to better understand our unconscious motivations and try to influence them for our own betterment. But we can’t consciously “think” our unconsciousness into a better state. And that is where practicing contemplative consciousness can help us.
In contemplation, we give up on the conscious trying to order the unconsciousness around and let God’s Spirit work in our unconsciousness, healing our wounds, undoing our harmful motivations, and allowing our consciousness to begin to see the body, mind, and soul in its true, God-created and integrated state (what Thomas Keating calls the “True Self”).
Until we are enlightened, we are improvising. We are taking whatever we have and we are making our best use of it—to survive, to excel, to sustain. That is what we are doing when we rationalize our behavior and try to justify our actions, regardless of whether we actively think or speak our rationale. But once we see the False Self for its ego-driven ways and the True Self as our authentic God-likeness, we find a fresh perspective that enables us to move from improvisation to actualization. We have a completely different framework for seeing ourselves, with all our weaknesses and false motivations exposed and all of our God-given abilities and strengths revealed. Thus, through contemplative consciousness, we can live fully animated by God as He created us to be.
Sensing God
posted December 3rd, 2018
I want to not only seek God, but I want to perceive Him, be aware of Him, meet Him, be with Him, know Him, commune with Him. I do not see God with my eyes or hear Him with my ears. Then how do I perceive Him, get to know Him? He reveals Himself to us through our spiritual senses.
Spiritual awareness is different than ordinary awareness. Cynthia Bourgeault describes our ordinary awareness as our self-reflexive ego thinking about differences and distinctions between ourselves and our surroundings, whereas spiritual awareness comes from an innate perception of kinship, of belonging to everything around us, like a coral polyp that is part of a coral reef, connected to and surrounded by millions of other coral polyps.
Each of us is part of a whole, not an isolated individual. Father Thomas Keating says that it is our over-reliance on thinking that prevents us from perceiving ourselves as parts of the whole. Learning to turn off our thinking is the purpose of Centering Prayer. In Centering Prayer we surrender our thoughts and ourselves to God. And in turning down the volume on our thinking, we begin to hear a choir of innumerable voices, with an incredibly beautiful harmony that enlivens us. The surprising thing is that it is coming from within us. We slowly begin to realize that this central, life-giving harmony has been here, within us, all along, but we could not perceive it because of the overwhelming strength of our ego with its continuous cacophony of chants and shouts – ”ME, ME, ME, ME!”
When our spiritual senses become attuned to this interior harmony, we come to understand ourselves as parts of a whole, and we find within ourselves a new peace. Our ego’s relentless pursuit to be the center of our attention gives way to an acceptance of being part of something bigger than ourselves, in fact, in being part of everything, in being in God and God in us. God is in me, He is at my center, He is my soul, my innermost being. I sense His presence and I am aware of the harmony of the Whole.
Knowing Without Thinking
posted September 15th, 2018
In Centering Prayer, we aim to fulfill the command “Be still and know that I am God.” We sit in stillness and quiet for 20 minutes, letting go of our thoughts and consenting to God’s presence in us. Someone asked, “Why 20 minutes? What is special about that duration?” The answer is that 20 minutes is the time it takes for the average person’s mind to come to rest, for thinking to begin to slow down.
We are so married to our thoughts, to thinking, that we equate living with thinking and so we might believe that to stop thinking is to stop living. Likewise, we come to a false understanding of “knowing,” believing that knowing is only achieved by thinking. We see knowing as capturing knowledge, like snaring a wild animal in a trap. But knowing God is not like that. God is elusive, like a wild animal that you know is out there, but that you never see, let alone trap. Knowing is not capturing. Knowing is becoming one with God, communing with the Spirit of God.
And that is what contemplation is, knowing without capturing. Centering Prayer is a method that trains us to begin to let go of our dependency on thinking in order to know God. Father Thomas Keating says that Centering Prayer is a journey into the unknown, a training in letting go of thoughts, desires, words, and eventually oneself.
We do not understand the inner workings of our own minds. But we do observe certain things about our minds that help us to gain insights. The activity of our mind changes levels depending on the time of day and what we are engaged in. We go unconscious when we go to sleep. When we are awake, not sleeping, we are conscious. However, there is a brief period when we are going from our waking, thinking frame of mind, and dropping into the unconscious state. In this brief time, our thoughts totally subside and we perceive a timeless solitude before we sink into sleep. In Centering Prayer, we are seeking this peaceful stillness of our minds while conscious.
Someone compared Centering Prayer as rebooting our mind. If you own a computer, you’ve probably learned that sometimes your computer “locks up” and to get it to work properly, it must be rebooted or restarted. The advice I have always gotten from computer specialists is to turn off the computer and wait 30 seconds before starting it again. When I’ve asked, “Why 30 seconds?” the response has been something like, “That’s enough time to let all the electrons come to rest in the hard drive and the circuitry and for everything to be reset.”
So the 20 minute period for Centering Prayer is what the contemplation experts (the mystics, monks, and nuns) have determined to be the minimum time for most people to reach a resting state for their minds. Centering Prayer may not be for everyone, but many who try it and give it more than just a few days find that this daily practice fosters a whole different attitude toward one’s feelings and puts them in a different frame of reference.
If you have interest in trying or learning more about Centering Prayer, come join us at our weekly Centering Prayer time at 10:30 am on Tuesdays in the Youth House behind the church.
Embracing Those Unstoppable Thoughts
posted April 30th, 2018
In Centering Prayer, we surrender our thoughts to God. Thoughts are inevitable and normal, so it’s not as if we are trying to have no thoughts. We simply turn them over to God and release them from our mind. When we become engaged with a thought, we silently say a word, called a prayer word or sacred word, as a symbol or sign of our intent to consent to God’s presence and action within us.
Many newcomers to Centering Prayer, including myself, find that their minds are too unruly, that thoughts invade and won’t go away or settle down. And many conclude, therefore, that they are not suited for Centering Prayer, or Centering Prayer is not suited to them. This is a mistaken judgment.
Thoughts are not only normal and inevitable, but they are integral to Centering Prayer. It is the very act of having a thought that allows one to surrender it to God and consent to His presence and action within us. Turning from a thought back to God signals your intent, your desire, to let God’s presence take command of your mind, body, and spirit. Silently offering up the sacred word in the face of a thought is an act of surrender.
If our minds were so well-behaved that we could eliminate our thoughts through our self-will, why would we need Centering Prayer? We would already be centered on God. So the more we struggle with “those unruly minds” or “those unstoppable thoughts”, the more we have need for a method like Centering Prayer to let God enter into and have His way with our conscious mind.
Our intent in the practice of Centering Prayer is to prepare ourselves for contemplation, to enter into union with God. We are not so much taming our mind, as we are surrendering our mind. So our prayer of preparation says it all: “May my sacred word, which I will use whenever I become engaged with any thought, be a sign and symbol of my intention to consent to your divine presence and action within.”
The Fruit of Centering Prayer
posted January 16th, 2018
Centering Prayer is prayer without words. There is no fulfillment from speaking or thinking words of adoration, confession, thanksgiving, intercession, or supplication as during our other prayer times. Centering Prayer doesn’t replace our word prayers, but it deepens our relationship with God. In Centering Prayer our minds are attentive to The Trinity within us, but we can not judge how effective a particular prayer period was. Instead, we must look for the fruit of Centering Prayer in our ordinary daily life.
Jesus told the disciples in the garden of Gethsemane, “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing but the body is weak.” (Matthew 26:41). In this command, Jesus is warning the disciples that prayer is needed to give them strength, not during the time of prayer, but during other times when they are tempted to disobey his commands. In this particular moment, they failed at his request to “Stay here and keep watch with me” by falling asleep. But his command to “watch and pray” meant that we need to be attentive to the presence of God within and listen. We tend to think pray means talk, and we forget that praying is a conversation with God, about cultivating our relationship with God, and that requires hearing from God. Hearing from God requires listening, not talking.
When we “watch and pray” as we do in Centering Prayer, we receive healing and strength, which are revealed not at the conclusion of our prayer, but during the living out of our ordinary lives. We witness fruit in our lives in ever-expanding ways. Early in our practice of Centering Prayer, we may not even make the connection between the good things happening in our lives and our Centering Prayer practice, but eventually the Spirit makes it very plain to see that our consenting to God’s presence and action within us is yielding fruit in our day-to-day lives.
Recently our Centering Prayer group that has been practicing faithfully for about a year shared with each other the beneficial changes they have experienced in their lives since we began in Centering Prayer. These are some of those fruits:
· “I appreciate silence more.”
· “I don’t judge people like I used to.”
· “I drive better.”
· “I am giving more of myself.”
Centering Prayer groups are growing because, as people discover and begin practicing Centering Prayer, they are seeing changes happening in the lives, and they are finding a growing desire and strength in following and obeying Christ. They discover the truth in what Jesus commanded “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.”
Come join our “Introduction to Centering Prayer” class on Sunday mornings at 10:45 a.m. in the Youth House and discover a way of relating to God that is simple and fulfilling.
If you believe in prayer, then invest yourself in prayer!
Doug
Are You Receiving Your Updates?
posted December 18th, 2017
Your smartphone automatically downloads and installs updates to its operating system and apps on a regular basis. These may be patches or solutions to issues that have been identified since the original program or the previous update were installed. Without these modifications, the operating system or app may not function properly and will produce errors that can be very frustrating to you the user.
These updates may happen daily or weekly or less frequently, but you probably aren’t aware that they are happening. These downloads only happen when your phone is turned on and connected wirelessly to the internet. They don’t happen while you are using the app. They usually happen while you sleep or while you are not actively using your phone.
You can think of Centering Prayer as God’s way of updating your internal program, otherwise known as your spirit. While we are going through life, there may be spiritual wounds we suffer, injuries that we are not fully aware of, perhaps inflicted unintentionally by others. Or we be using a behavior modeled after a poor role model. We may be hiding from things that we are afraid of facing. We may have been deeply scarred by a long-ago event. The scar is still there, but we don’t even remember what caused it because we forced ourself to erase it from our memory. We may have sins in our past that we are so ashamed of that we have buried them rather than confess them. Our spirit may harbor past injuries, festering wounds, and all sorts of unhealthy interior conditions of which we are not conscious.
God wants to work His healing and regeneration in our unconscious being, but He needs us to open ourselves to Him. Like our smartphones, we have to be turned on in order for the “updates” to be downloaded.
In Centering Prayer, we are in our conscious mode, our power button is turned on, but we are not actively using our apps (our apps have names like Thoughts, Impressions, Worries, Plans, Reflections, Concerns, Anxieties, Ideas, Images). In Centering Prayer, we are opening ourselves to the action of the Holy Spirit, who is like our smartphones’ connection to the internet; we are connecting to our Source.
In Centering Prayer, we are letting go of our conscious thinking and letting God search our soul to find buried wounds, festering sores, ragged scars, unhealthy perspectives, and hidden worries. As God touches our soul and feels these wounds, He is healing them and covering them with a balm; He is correcting those blemishes in our conscious thinking. He is providing patches for problems we were not aware of. He is making His forgiveness known to our souls. He is creating a complete work, redeeming us, readying us for our missions, giving us a confidence we were missing, and enabling us to trust Him in all things. When all of our apps are fixed, then we are sanctified.
Like our phones, we don’t even know that these updates or fixes are happening, we just start to see that life happens easier, we feel more secure, more confident that we are living life aligned with God’s will for us. Maybe it would be good if God sent us a notification telling us when an update has been completed, but in a way He does. It comes when somebody says to you, “I don’t know what has happened to you, but you seem different/more relaxed/less angry/quieter” (whatever the positive outcome is to your particular ailment or hurt).
Centering Prayer is not something that is easily explained. Like the mysteries of God, we can’t fathom what is happening to us, but nonetheless we experience something happening and we know that it is good and so we keep seeking and simply let the mystery work in us.
If you think you might be missing your “updates,” come join our 6-week Introduction to Centering Prayer, beginning in January. Contact Doug Heatwole (850-631-7273) or Virginia Beckham (850-206-4223) to sign up or receive more information.
Learning to Walk in Centering Prayer
posted on December 18th, 2017
Learning to do Centering Prayer is like learning to walk. When I was learning to walk, I did it without knowing why. I took my first steps because I could, because my parents and perhaps others (e.g., grandparents, brother) encouraged me to walk. It was natural. I was made to walk. To begin walking was the next step in my progression of development. It was the middle step in crawl-walk-run. When I began to walk, I didn’t know why I was doing it. I did not question why. I just did it.
And so it has been with Centering Prayer. I did not really know why I started it, but I was encouraged by Virginia Beckham. She had been doing Centering Prayer for perhaps six months and introduced me to it, giving me a brochure from Contemplative Outreach. I started doing Centering Prayer, following the four steps described in the brochure. I was encouraged by someone who is already doing it, it seemed like a natural thing to do, and so I began. That was 11 months ago.
Continuing with the analogy to learning to walk, I am still in the infancy of doing Centering Prayer, still wobbling along, a bit like a drunken sailor, as my wife and I used to say when our children were learning to walk. It has become part of daily morning devotion time, but not yet an afternoon routine. I know that to advance and receive the full benefit of Centering Prayer, I must make the second time each day a part my habits.
I did not know why I started Centering Prayer, only that others have been doing it for a long time. There has been contemplative prayer tradition since the beginning of the church, and it seemed like a natural next step in my spiritual development.
I am still developing my Centering Prayer muscles, continuing to be encouraged by others from the Contemplative Outreach of Pensacola (COP) chapter and the Introduction to Centering Prayer workshop that I took this past Lenten season with Carol Lewis, coordinator of COP.
I am learning that Centering Prayer comes through the supernatural working of God and that my sense of having to master or accomplish this prayer is indicative of a misplaced, egotistical desire or ambition. I am learning a new way of being, but like walking, it takes time to develop a muscle memory and letting go so that the work is done by God and not by me. I know that one day I will be walking with God in Centering Prayer, oblivious to the act of walking.
We will be offering a 6-week Introduction to Centering Prayer class beginning in January. If you have interest or questions, please contact me or Virginia Beckham.
In His Hands,
Doug
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