As part of my study of prayer, I decided to try the contemplative prayer discipline called Centering Prayer. Centering Prayer, as defined by the folks at Contemplative Outreach (the organization founded by the original developers of the method) is “A receptive method of Christian silent prayer that prepares us to receive the gift of contemplative prayer, prayer in which we experience God’s presence within us, closer than breathing, closer than thinking, closer than consciousness itself.”
Cool, right? I found contemplative prayer really appealing — it was a natural extension of my on-again, off-again meditation practice and seemed to avoid the performative aspects of prayer that left me feeling a little squicky. In fact, one of the Scriptural passages Fr. Thomas Keating consistently refers to is Matthew 6:6: “But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret” (NASV). Note this translation has a slightly different flavour than the NRSV translation the tagger will pop up, but it’s an important one – Fr. Keating interprets the concept of “inner room” as a mental construct (as opposed to say, a physical closet).
Centering Prayer has four guidelines to follow during your practice:
- Choose a sacred word as the symbol of your intention to consent to God’s presence and action within.
- 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.
- When engaged with your thoughts, return ever-so-gently to the sacred word.
- At the end of the prayer period, remain in silence with eyes closed for a couple of minutes.
Guideline 1: Choose a sacred word as the symbol of your intention to consent to God’s presence and action within.
OK I know what you’re thinking! Sacred word? There are “sacred” words? What word is the right word? And you’re going to hate the answer — there IS no objectively correct sacred word. The word is just a symbol — meaning it could really be anything as long as YOU know when you say that word it means you’re connecting to God.
The important thing to realize is that there isn’t anything inherently magical about the word itself. You do have to give it time to “take hold” and become that symbol for you, so it’s strongly recommended that you give any particular word at least a month of regular practice. Specifically, don’t be tempted to choose a different word every day based on what you want to pray for. If you want to pray for patience, or healing, or any other specific thing, do that! But that’s not Centering Prayer, which is, as the definition above states, receptive. No telling God what to do!
Guideline 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.
So if the sacred word can be anything, why does there have to be a word at all? Because, and I think this is a simple point with incredible depth, we must consent to God’s presence, and the sacred word is a way of ensuring we do that consciously. Let me ask you this, especially if you came into Christianity having viewed only the social media version, did you think consent was real high on the list of priorities? Well I don’t know what anybody else thinks but it doesn’t even take a particularly careful reading of Scripture to see the importance of consent to God (Hint: Why was the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil even in the Garden? Probably this should be it’s own post). This is the aspect of Centering Prayer I found most beautiful and powerful, because I felt like I was getting at the heart of what a relationship with God really meant.
This guideline also speaks to physical posture: in a nutshell, get comfortable but not so comfortable you fall asleep. Although as Fr. Carl Arico says during one of the instructional videos in the Centering Prayer course I took: “Don’t beat yourself up if you fall asleep either. Who says God likes you better awake?”
Guideline 3: When engaged with your thoughts, return ever-so-gently to the sacred word.
So, if you’ve had ANY experience with meditation of any kind before, you’ll know that there’s a non-trivial part of that time that is you trying to convince your runaway brain to sit DOWN for a minute dammit! My own personal experience is that particular facet of any contemplative practice never really goes away, you just become more comfortable with it occurring.
Because the real issue, of course, is not that you are HAVING thoughts. You will always HAVE thoughts. There’s an existing neurological model for a large-scale brain structure called your default mode network. Its whole job is to do things like moral reasoning, determining just and unjust result of an action, social evaluations, etc (more complete list in the Wiki article I linked). Anyway, apparently its favourite time to get on with all those Default Mode Network To-Do items is when you are at passive rest (i.e. meditation or contemplative prayer is a really solid time for your DMN to take a joy ride). Also, and this is a completely unscientific statement, I feel like my personal DMN is kind of a jerk. Like, buddy, if we need to sort through incoming info do we gotta take the worst interpretation?
So what to do? One of the most practical things I found when I was learning Centering Prayer is that there was zero expectation that you “empty your mind” (note, I’m not actually certain enough of the theory of other contemplative traditions to say whether the “emptying of the mind” is actually a goal or if I’ve just heard that colloquially — feel free to correct me in the comments!). The statement is actually that the thoughts are not only expected but a necessary part of the discipline: They happen, and we learn over time to allow them to simply come and go in the background like a train, or Muzak in the supermarket. The tool to disengage from a thought is the sacred word, so in some sense the thing you are practicing here isn’t absolute focus. It’s continual, conscious consent to God.
Guideline 4: At the end of the prayer period, remain in silence with eyes closed for a couple of minutes.
This is primarily so you don’t jar yourself out of the meditative state, which can get quite deep. I’ve been saying the Lord’s Prayer here, but you really don’t have to say or do anything! If you did get very relaxed in your body, give yourself time to come out of it as if it was a deep sleep — wiggle fingers and toes, blink eyes open, and use slow, small movements at first.
I’ve been practicing for the last couple of months (with varying consistency, but not too bad) and at this point I find I rarely drop into that deep meditative state. It’s a different kind of focus than in the meditation I’ve done before, where I would focus on the breath, or a symbol. The “focus” in Centering Prayer is dynamic; you consent via the sacred word. This has proved to be qualitatively different than, say, focusing on the sacred word itself: Once you follow Guideline 3 you let the sacred word go as well (until you need it again). Anyway, the result is that at least so far, I’m not accessing that “float” feeling you get when you deeply meditate. I don’t think this is bad, or that it will be true for always. It’s just where I’m at, and that’s where God will meet me.
A couple of notes on frequency, environment and preparation
I am presently doing two 20 minute Centering Prayer sessions per day. This is what was recommended in the online course I took, and I am feeling like it is mostly doable. I tend to be very consistent with my morning session, and less consistent with my evening session, which I try to do right after work. I was trying to do it before sleeping, but, well, I fell asleep. So I’m trying it as part of a post-work transition routine. But to be clear, there is no rule here. My kids are presently 11 and 15, and attempting to get two 20 minute stretches of quiet when they were 1 and 5 would have been extremely difficult if not impossible most days. But I’m pretty sure God wants to connect with new parents or other folks who live lives with a lot of chaos, and isn’t going to be all “ONLY 15 MINUTES EVERY OTHER DAY? HOW DARE YOU??” *cue lightning bolts*.
On the flipside of that, if you think you don’t have 20 minutes twice a day, but you’ve got an hour for Facebook, maybe start by being curious about what actually feeds your soul. I know personally that a lot of the things I did “to relax”, weren’t actually having the desired result (curse you Candy Crush). And hey, maybe the answer is “Facebook.” But you know, at least ask the question in case you’re surprised by the answer.
Environment-wise, really the only thing that has to be quiet is you. Practically, of course, that’s easier if your environment has some calm, and I’m finding there’s also something powerful about committing to finding space and time for this prayer. I’m trying to build a relationship, and I would find space and time for a human relationship. It helps to solidify the concept in my head.
To prepare for the prayer, you don’t really have to do anything besides sit your butt down and get at ‘er. I did that the first six weeks or so I was practicing, but I found I was able to get more into the “flow” of letting thoughts come and go if I spent 5-10 minutes in a more active focus state. I don’t think your active focus has to be Christian or even spiritual in nature, but it’s not uncommon for Scripture verses to be used for this “pre-focus”, lectio divina style (Contemplative Outreach has some resources here).
If you’re interested in more guidance to get started, for my review of the Sounds True course on Centering Prayer you can go here.
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