What is Centering Prayer

What is Centering Prayer « Holistic Lifestyles Radio

What is Centering Prayer

by Holistic Lifestyles Radio on May.11, 2011, under Home

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Centering prayer as a discipline is designed to withdraw our attention from the ordinary flow of our thoughts. We tend to identify ourselves with that flow. But there is a deeper part of ourselves.

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This prayer opens our awareness to the spiritual level of our being. This level might be compared to a great river on which our memories, images, feelings, inner experiences, and the awareness of outward things are resting.

Many people are so identified with the ordinary flow of their thoughts and feelings that they are not aware of the source from which these mental objects are emerging. Like boats or debris floating along the surface of a river, our thoughts and feelings must be resting on something.

They are resting on the inner stream of consciousness, which is our participation in God’s being. That level is not immediately evident to ordinary consciousness. Since we are not in immediate contact with that level, we have to do something to develop our awareness of it. It is the level of our being that makes us most human. The values that we find there are more delightful than the values that float along the surface of the psyche.

We need to refresh ourselves at this deep level every day. Just as we need exercise, food, rest and sleep, so also we need moments of interior silence because they bring the deepest kind of refreshment. pg 35 Open Mind, Open Heart, Thomas Keating.