Centering Prayer
“A naked intent toward God, the desire for him alone, is enough.”
“He is your being and in him you are what you are.”
– The Cloud of Unknowing and Book of Privy Counsel; 7:36-38, 34-35
Centering Prayer is a method of silent prayer based on an anonymous 14th Century text called The Cloud of Unknowing, and has roots even further back in the writings of the Desert Fathers of Egyptian Monasticism. In The Cloud of Unknowing, the spiritual advisor describes a type of contemplative prayer in which one seeks to open themselves to the presence of God “beyond thought.” He believes that this "contemplative work of love" is the way to authentic inner transformation – and thereby the spiritual fruits of inner peace, purity, and joy.
When practicing Centering Prayer, the goal is to calm the mind so that one can simply enter and remain in the presence of God, who is experienced within, at the deepest level of one's being. The method is designed to help take the practitioner to this deeper level of awareness, moving beyond the distracting and often chaotic stream of surface-level thoughts which are experienced in day-to-day life. In its deepest form, the prayer is apophatic, having no "content" and making no use of words, symbols, images, or ideas. The practice is often conceptualized as "resting in God."
Method
The method of Centering Prayer is unique when compared to some meditation techniques in that instead of working with the power of attention, the mind’s ability to focus intensely on one object, Centering Prayer works with intention – the willingness or desire to be open to the presence of God.
Thomas Keating – a Trappist monk and recent popularizer of the practice – describes the method as follows:
1. Choose a sacred word as the symbol of your intention to consent to God’s presence and action within. The author of The Cloud of Unknowing recommends a short, one-syllable word such as “God,” or “love.”
2. Sitting comfortably and with eyes closed, settle briefly and silently introduce the sacred word as the symbol of your consent to God’s presence and action within.
3. When you become aware of thoughts, return ever-so-gently to the sacred word.
Thus one simply sits, introduces their sacred word, eventually gets caught up in their thoughts, and then uses the word to release each thought, returning again and again to an openness to God. By this process the mind quiets, and eventually becomes stilled. What happens in that stillness, “beyond thought,” is open to a variety of interpretations.
The Divine Therapy
Different authors have different conceptual models for understanding what happens during Centering Prayer. One of the most famous models is Thomas Keating's Divine Therapy.
Keating's understanding of the Divine Therapy begins with the assumption that we all come to our practice with some form of emotional trauma in our past. For Keating, these traumas stem from anything that has threatened or wounded us in an area of our core psychological needs. As we experience wounding in these areas (for Keating, our core psychological needs are summarized in the categories of power/control, esteem/affection, and security/survival), we develop attachments to people, places, and situations which bring us comfort, and aversions to people, places, and situations which lead to discomfort in the light of these wounds.
This collection of attachments and aversions results in what Keating calls "emotional programs for happiness."
A typical example:
A young child overhears his father saying, "I wish he was more like his brother," which attacks his core psychological need for esteem/affection. The incident then becomes buried in the boy's subconscious. He may not even remember the incident in adulthood, but, on a subconscious level, part of him continues to want to imitate his brother to achieve his father's affection. The emotional program for happiness of "needing to be like my brother" becomes a deep part of who he is. As a result, he develops attachments to things which make him more like his brother, and aversions to things which make him different. These attachments and aversions, at least in part, continue to drive his behavior throughout life.
On this model, each person has a host of emotional programs for happiness running at the same time, each based on our unique traumas. These programs create anxieties as we interact with the world, and may even conflict with each other.
When one enters into deep states of meditation through Centering Prayer, Keating believes that these traumas are released from the subconscious and ultimately healed by God. He calls this process the Archaeological Dig. Thus, by the ongoing practice of Centering Prayer, one finds emotional healing as their core psychological needs become fulfilled in the presence of God.
Keating's Divine Therapy is one of several ways to conceptualize the effects of Centering Prayer. The translation of traditional "spiritual development language" into psychological terms makes this model popular and accessible to a wide audience. Others may interpret Centering Prayer as leading a practitioner through the traditional purgative, illuminative, and unitive spiritual stages and refer to the apex apophatic meditative experience as “Union with God.” Still others may view the technique from agnostic or other viewpoints and refrain from using any theological language at all. As with all contemplative practices, intellectual conceptualizations remain tentative and one's understanding of the prayer may change over time.
Natural Effects
Whether or not one chooses to use theological language to interpret Centering Prayer, there are several natural effects which many practitioners report after taking up the practice:
1. Control of the Mind: During Centering Prayer, one learns to recognize thought patterns and let them go, always coming back to God using the sacred word. Instead of being carried away by thought chains and ruminations, the ability to choose one’s thoughts is developed and more control is gained over the mind. This ability continues to varying degrees in the course of day to day life.
2. Distance Between Core Identity and Thoughts: When developing the practice of recognizing thoughts and letting them go, a natural distance opens between "You" and your thoughts. You are not your thoughts. You have thoughts. This realization leads to an expanded sense of self.
3. Less Worry and Anxiety: This expanded sense of self and increasing ability to control the mind, coupled with the feeling of an inner-calm during periods of meditation, generally leads to less worry and anxiety in day to day life. During Centering Prayer, one experiences that "everything is okay" despite outward circumstances. This feeling can continue to varying degrees during day to day activities. This effect, however, can come and go. Periods of intense inner turmoil, conceivably the result of what Keating calls "the unloading of the subconscious," are also often part of the Path of Centering Prayer.
4. Non-Attachment: Because core personal identity is no longer identified completely with experienced thoughts, one can become less attached to the content of those thoughts. Personal opinions, desires, and cravings can be held more loosely and lose some of their force or power. Felt personal needs and desires can be experienced as "lighter."
5. Present Moment Awareness: Practicing the skill of returning to the most important thing (God) during prayer naturally leads to returning to the most important thing (our tasks in the present moment) in daily life. Being trapped in one's thoughts a little less leads to living in the moment a little more. Using one’s sacred word to “re-center” in the midst of daily living can also lead to an increased focus on continually performing the appropriate task at hand with full attention.
The natural effects of Centering Prayer overlap significantly with other forms of meditation.
The Cloud of Unknowing
The following are several extended excerpts from The Cloud of Unknowing and Book of Privy Counsel, from which Centering Prayer is based:
Contemplation, The Cloud of Unknowing, United to God
“A book on Contemplation called The Cloud of Unknowing, which is about that cloud within which one is united to God.”
– The Cloud of Unknowing, Title
The Contemplative Work of the Spirit
“This is what you are to do: lift your heart up to the Lord, with a gentle stirring of love desiring him for his own sake and not for his gifts. Center all your attention and desire on him and let this be the sole concern of your mind and heart. Do all in your power to forget everything else, keeping your thoughts and desires free from any involvement with any of God’s creatures or their affairs whether in general or particular. Perhaps this will seem like an irresponsible attitude, but I tell you, let them all be; pay no attention to them.
What I am describing here is the contemplative work of the spirit. It is this which gives God the greatest delight. For when you fix your love on him, forgetting all else, the saints and angels rejoice and hasten to assist you in every way – though the devils will rage and ceaselessly conspire to thwart you. Your fellow men are marvelously enriched by this work of yours, even if you may not fully understand how; the souls in purgatory are touched, for their suffering is eased by the effects of this work; and, of course, your own spirit is purified and strengthened by this contemplative work more than by all others put together. Yet for all this, when God’s grace arouses you to enthusiasm, it becomes the lightest sort of work there is and one most willingly done. Without his grace, however, it is very difficult and almost, I should say, quite beyond you.
And so diligently persevere until you feel joy in it. For in the beginning it is usual to feel nothing but a kind of darkness about your mind, or as it were, a cloud of unknowing. You will seem to know nothing and to feel nothing except a naked intent toward God in the depths of your being. Try as you might, this darkness and this cloud will remain between you and your God. You will feel frustrated, for your mind will be unable to grasp him, and your heart will not relish the delight of his love. But learn to be at home in this darkness. Return to it as often as you can, letting your spirit cry out to him whom you love. For if, in this life, you hope to feel and see God as he is in himself it must be within this darkness and this cloud. But if you strive to fix your love on him forgetting all else, which is the work of contemplation I have urged you to begin, I am confident that God in his goodness will bring you to a deep experience of himself.”
Be Passive: "Let That Mysterious Grace Move in Your Spirit"
“…become increasingly faithful to this work until it becomes your whole life. To put it more simply, let that mysterious grace move in your spirit as it will and follow wherever it leads you. Let it be the active doer and you the passive receiver. Do not meddle with it, but let it be for fear you spoil it entirely. Your part is to be as wood to a carpenter or a home to a dweller. Remain blind during this time cutting away all desire to know, for knowledge is a hindrance here. Be content to feel this mysterious grace sweetly awaken in the depths of your spirit. Forget everything but God and fix on him your naked desire…”
– The Cloud of Unknowing, 34
Active and Contemplative Life, Higher and Lower Degrees
“Let me begin by saying that in the Church there are two kinds of life, the active and the contemplative. The active life is lower, and the contemplative life is higher. Within the active life there are two degrees, a lower and a higher, and within the contemplative life there are also two degrees, a lower and a higher. But these two lives are so complementary that although they are quite different from one another, neither can exist completely independent of the other. For the higher degree of the active life flows into the lower degree of the contemplative life so that, no matter how active a person may be, he is also at the same time partially contemplative; and when he is as fully contemplative as he can be in this life, he remains to some extent active also.
The active life is such that it begins and ends on earth. The contemplative life, however, may indeed begin on earth but it will continue without end into eternity. This is because the contemplative life is Mary’s part which shall never be taken away. The active life is troubled and busy about many things but the contemplative life sits in peace with the one thing necessary.
In the lower degree of the active life a person does well to busy himself with good deeds and the works of mercy. In the higher degree of the active life (which merges with the lower degree of the contemplative life) he begins to meditate on the things of the spirit. This is when he ought to ponder with sorrow the sinfulness of man so as to enter into the Passion of Christ and the sufferings of his saints with pity and compassion. It is a time when one grows in appreciation of God’s kindness and his gifts, and begins to praise and thank him for the wonderful ways he works in all his creation. But in the higher degree of contemplation – such as we know it in this life – all is darkness and a cloud of unknowing. Here one turns to God with a burning desire for himself alone and rests in blind awareness of his naked being.
The activities of the lower degree of the active life in themselves leave much of a man’s natural human potential untapped. At this stage he lives, as it were, outside himself or beneath himself. As he advances to the higher degree of the active life (which merges with the lower degree of the contemplative life) he becomes increasingly interior, living more from the depths of himself and becoming, therefore, more fully human. But in the higher degree of the contemplative life, he transcends himself because he achieves by grace what is beyond him by nature. For now he is bound to God spiritually in a communion of love and desire. Experience teaches that it is necessary to set aside for a time the works of the lower degree of the active life in order to go on to the higher degree of the active life, which, as we said, flows into the lower degree of the contemplative life. In the same way there comes a time when it is necessary to set aside these works also in order to go on to the higher degree of the contemplative life.”
Self-Forgetfulness
“Be careful to empty your mind and heart of everything except God during the time of this work. Reject the knowledge and experience of everything less than God, treading it all down beneath the cloud of forgetting. And now also you must learn to forget not only every creature and its deeds but yourself as well, along with whatever you may have accomplished in God’s service. For a true lover not only cherishes his beloved more than himself but in a certain sense he becomes oblivious of himself on account of the one he loves…
And so reject the thought and experience of all created things but most especially learn to forget yourself, for all your knowledge and experience depends upon the knowledge and feeling of yourself. All else is easily forgotten in comparison to one’s own self. See if experience does not prove me right. Long after you have successfully forgotten every creature and its works, you will find that a naked knowing and feeling of your own being still remains between you and your God. And believe me, you will not be perfect in love until this, too, is destroyed.”
– The Cloud of Unknowing, 43
A Spiritual Ocean
“But when the joyful enthusiasm which seizes you as you read or hear about contemplation is really the touch of God calling you to a higher life of grace, you will notice very different effects. So abounding will it be that it will follow you to bed at night and rise with you in the morning. It will pursue you through the day in everything you do, intruding into your usual daily devotions like a barrier between you and them. Moreover it will seem to occur simultaneously with that blind desire which, in the meantime, quietly grows in intensity. The enthusiasm and the desire will seem to be part of each other; so much so, that you will think it is only one desire you feel, though you will be at a loss to say just precisely what it is that you long for. Your whole personality will be transformed, your countenance will radiate an inner beauty, and for as long as you feel it nothing will sadden you. A thousand miles would you run to speak with another who you knew really felt it, and yet when you got there find yourself speechless. Let others say what they will, your only joy would be to speak of it. Your words will be few, but so fruitful and full of fire that the little you say will hold a world of wisdom (though it may seem nonsense to those still unable to transcend the limits of reason). Your silence will be peaceful, your speech helpful, and your prayer secret in the depths of your being. Your self-esteem will be natural and unspoiled by conceit, your way with others gentle, and your laughter merry, as you take delight in everything with the joy of a child. How dearly you will love to sit apart by yourself, knowing that others, not sharing your desire and attraction, would only hinder you. Gone will be all desire to read or hear books, for your only desire will be to hear of it. Thus the mounting desire for contemplation and the joyful enthusiasm that seizes you when you read or hear of it meet and become one. These two signs (one interior and one exterior) agree, and you may rely on them as proof that God is calling you to enter within and begin a more intense life of grace.
You will learn that all I have written of these two signs and their wonderful effects is true. And yet, after you have experienced one, or perhaps all of them, a day will come when they disappear, leaving you, as it were, barren; or, as it will probably seem to you then, worse than barren. Gone will be your new fervor, but gone, too, your ability to meditate as you had long done before. What then? You will feel as if you had fallen somewhere between the two ways having neither, yet grappling for both. And so it will be; but do not be too discouraged. Suffer it humbly and wait patiently for our Lord to do as he will. For now you are on what I might call a sort of spiritual ocean, in voyage from the life of the flesh to life in the spirit.
Great storms and temptations shall doubtlessly arise during this journey, leaving you bewildered and wondering which way to turn for help, for your affection will feel deprived of both your ordinary grace and your special grace. Yet I say again: fear not. Even though you think you have great reason to fear, do not panic. Instead, keep in your heart a loving trust in our Lord, or at any rate, do so as best you can under the circumstances. Truly, he is not far away and perhaps at any moment he will turn to you touching you more intensely than ever in the past with a quickening of the contemplative grace. Then for as long as it remains, you will think you are healed and that all is well. But when you least expect, it will be gone again, and again you will feel abandoned in your ship, blown hither and yon, you know not where. Still, do not lose heart. I promise you he will return and soon. In his own time he will come. Mightily and more wonderfully than ever before he will come to your rescue and relieve your anguish. As often as he goes, he will come back. And if you will manfully suffer it all with gentle love, each coming will be more marvelous and more joyful than the last. Remember, all he does, he does with wise intent…”
– The Book of Privy Counsel, 19-20
For Centering Prayer workshops, retreats, groups and events, visit Contemplative Outreach or find your local State Chapter.