Father Keating on the Misuse of Centering Prayer
Part Four
You’re Never Alone — Meeting Your Spirit Guides
What if I told you that Centering Prayer is insufficient? What if I told you that Father Thomas Keating, prominent advocate and creator of Centering Prayer himself, said that it was not enough?
He says that this practice is inadequate for Christians if it is not accompanied by a prayer practice of a personal relationship with Jesus. In this article, I want to explore Father Keating’s two admonitions for using Centering Prayer in an integral way that is not limiting. The first is widely known, while the other is little known.
Centering Prayer
For those not familiar with Centering Prayer, its beauty is that you don’t have to talk—or even think. That’s the point. You sit quietly in the formless presence of God. What a relief to cease mental chatter or activity of any kind! We can literally do what the psalmist recommends “Be still and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10).
Father Thomas Keating is the spiritual giant who helped originate this method in the late 1970s and has taught it to millions. Centering Prayer is probably the single-most prevalent meditative prayer approach practiced by evolving Christians today.
Father Keating describes Centering Prayer this way:
“The centering prayer method is simple: Find a quiet place to pray alone. Sit in silence with the intention of being in God’s presence. When you become aware of any thoughts or feelings, turn away from them and focus on a “sacred word” of your choosing. Let go of every kind of thought during prayer, even the most devout thoughts.”
He famously said, “If Mary appears to you, tell her you are busy.” As Father Keating has further framed it, Centering Prayer focuses not on communion with God but union with God. The goal is transcendence.
Richard Rohr describes his version of Centering Prayer as contemplative prayer. He says,
“Contemplative prayer is entering a deeper silence and letting go of our habitual thoughts, sensations, and feelings in order to connect to a truth greater than ourselves. This is largely a practice of disidentification with your own compulsive thoughts and obsessive feelings. I always say when I teach contemplation, ‘Most people do not see things as they are; most people see things as they are.’ They see it through their own agendas, and it doesn’t lead to very broad seeing.
In religious language, we’re handing over to God all the negative, fearful, angry thoughts that try to grab hold of us. Now, when that stream of consciousness clears out—and it does with some regularity—it’s always a wonderful sense of openness to the divine, to whatever God wants to say. Because, basically, you’re not in the way.”
The popularity of Centering Prayer
Centering Prayer’s popularity can partly be seen as a reaction against the lack of spiritual depth of much traditional prayer. It has the potential to move people into deeper states of consciousness, usually after a significant amount of practice.
Another reason for the popularity of Centering Prayer may be that it is the only acceptable form of Christian prayer among postmoderns. They have often rejected personal, devotional prayer to Jesus and other unique manifestations of God’s presence, such as Mary and other spirit presences. As I pointed out in Part Two, this personal, relational prayer reminds them too much of the traditional Christianity they have either been abused by or found less and less helpful as they have evolved. So a postmodern can “pray” and bypass the awkward feeling of “talking to Jesus.”
In general, Transcendental Meditation, Insight Meditation, and many Eastern practices avoid second-person subtle realm practices to such an extent that they limit their usefulness in accessing spiritual presences. This is also true of Centering Prayer when used as one’s only meditative prayer practice.
KEATING’S INTEGRAL APPROACH TO PRAYER — PRAY IN MORE THAN ONE WAY
“Centering Prayer is not meant to replace other kinds of prayers, rather it casts a new light and depth of meaning on them.”
Centering Prayer is wonderful — unless it is your only form of meditative prayer practice. Then it becomes extremely limiting in terms of communion (as differentiated from union) with God, Jesus, and other spiritual presences.
I have noticed that the dedicated advocates of Centering Prayer and its teachers that I have encountered often seem to have replaced all other practices of prayer with Centering Prayer. According to Father Keating, this is a misuse of Centering Prayer. His first corrective to Centering Prayer as one’s only practice is clear and direct: Pray in more than one way.
The following second corrective is so little known it might be classified as “unknown” since, to my knowledge, it was never a part of Father Keating’s public teaching.
KEATING’S INTEGRAL APPROACH TO PRAYER – TALK TO JESUS
Father Thomas’ encouragement to his friend and student
Two years ago, a close friend of Father Keating, whom he mentored for several years, consulted me about a personal situation he was experiencing. In the course of our conversation, I introduced him to a prayer practice where one acknowledges the presence of Jesus and relates to him as one would a close friend. This kind of personal relationship with Jesus was entirely new to my friend and somewhat disturbing.
Shortly before Keating transitioned, he visited with Father Keating and asked him about this “disturbing” practice of talking to Jesus. The context of my friend’s question is that Father Thomas considered what he calls the “Cosmic Christ” to be the divine essence itself encountered in Centering Prayer. He recorded their conversation and gave me a copy of the recording. Here is a transcript of part of that conversation:
My friend: Is it okay to talk to Jesus when I pray in addition to doing Centering Prayer?
Father Keating: “Remember, if Jesus is just as human as he is divine, you can get a little too much into Cosmic Christ unless you keep a relationship personal with Jesus in his glorified humanity. When I talk to him, I ask him for his advice in all my decisions. I don’t think you leave devotion to Jesus behind in going into the Cosmic Jesus.
What helps you best is that you can have your cosmic relationship with Christ [Centering Prayer] without distinguishing it from your human relationship [a personal relationship with Jesus]. They go on together. And you move from one to the other. As long as you have to live in this world, what are you going to do when you are not in prayer? Christ lives in you in the details of your life. I think that’s what he wants to do. ‘Without me, you can do nothing,’ he said. How can you do that without getting acquainted with some of the ways he functions?
So it’s like a very advanced state of consciousness. You know where you are in solitude and constant contact with God at the super-rational level. But you have to live in this world – you have to come back down. What are you going to do? You want to be able to move back and forth according to circumstances. So I find talking with Jesus is a way to keep your mind in a recollect state all the time. As it gets deeper, you just do it automatically.”
My friend: “What’s different between addressing our Mother and Jesus? How do you know when to address our Mother Mary versus addressing Jesus?”
Father Keating: “Oh, they are about the same. Do what you like. They work together. You don’t have to visualize Jesus, but sometimes he manifests himself. He touches us, and it feels like an embrace. You don’t have to depend on it – that’s the main thing. You can have any experience you like if you are detached from it.”
If I had not audibly heard Father Keating say this on the recording, I might not have believed it. Keating’s public teaching about prayer appears to be exclusively focused on Centering Prayer. And, as I said, I am not aware of any other context where he shared what he did about talking with Jesus to my friend. Although this is his counsel to an individual, it seems impossible that he did not mean it as his own personal practice and his encouragement to other Christians to follow.
I have had many conversations with those who practice or teach Centering Prayer about Keating’s encouragement to do both Centering Prayer and talk to Jesus (and Mary!). So, perhaps it is understandable that they have all said, to a person, that they had never heard of that, and it is not what they advocate. They often become defensive, talking about “Christ’s presence is all we need” kind of theology. I asked them why Keating did not seem to talk much about this kind of personal prayer. They had no answer, nor do I. It may be that Keating decided only to teach Centering Prayer to make it more widely known by making it his sole focus.
I am sure to get lots of internet advice about this from Centering Prayer advocates here. So let me be clear that I am not diminishing Centering Prayer. I am only pointing out that the transpersonal presence of the Cosmic Christ encountered in Centering Prayer and other meditative prayer forms is not the same as the personal presence of Jesus. We need both. Father Keating agrees.
If you find yourself experiencing the Infinite Face of God Beyond You, the transpersonal Cosmic Christ, or however you name the divine presence in Centering Prayer, then by all means continue that practice. Simply add Whole-Body Mystical Awakening or other practices where you connect with the motherly/fatherly personal presence of God, the Living Jesus, Mary, and other spirit companions.
Using only one practice that intentionally excludes the presence of the living Jesus is not going to help you connect personally with Jesus or other guides. Centering Prayer as one’s only mediative prayer practice also ignores the collective, transforming energy fields of groups that intentionally engage spiritually in awakened consciousness with one another while in meditative prayer.
The words of Father Thomas about integrative prayer to my friend are beautifully clear and unequivocally to the point. My hope is that every advocate of Centering Prayer will embrace them and practice them.
I encourage all Christians to follow the Apostle Paul’s brilliant personal and theological path and many other mystics down through the centuries and today by doing two things in relationship to Jesus, the Christ. First, have a personal, intimate, conversational relationship with Jesus as your friend and guide. Second, let your mind and heart be blown wide open by the beauty and awe of the universal, cosmic Christ, “by whom all things were created through him and for him, and through him, God was pleased to reconcile all things in heaven and earth” (Col 4:16-20).
I conclude by again pointing out Father Keating’s admonition to move beyond the limiting use of only practicing Centering Prayer. Here, again, are this spiritual master’s words about the practice he advocates:
“You can get a little too much into Cosmic Christ, unless you keep a relationship personal with Jesus in his glorified humanity. When I talk to him, I ask him for his advice in all my decisions. I don’t think you leave devotion to Jesus behind in going into the Cosmic Jesus.”
Experience a welcoming and opening to the personal Jesus now through this guided meditation:
“What helps you best is that you can have your cosmic relationship with Christ without distinguishing it from your human relationship —keep a relationship personal with Jesus in his glorified humanity. They go on together.”
Next week, I will describe the seven steps and five languages I have found helpful in connecting with our spirit companions.
If you’d like to engage further with these ideas and concepts, you’re invited to our next series discussion on September 18th at 11am CT. We’ll talk together about these first four parts of this series of articles on spirit guides. Sign up below to receive the invite:
(If you’ve already signed up for previous series discussion, you don’t neet to sign up again)