Centering Prayer

But when you pray, go to your room, shut the door, and pray to your Father who is present in that secret place. Your Father who sees what you do in secret will reward you. -Matthew 6:6 (CEB)

Centering prayer is descending with the mind into the heart to meet with God there. The inner room of your heart is the secret place where God is always waiting to connect with you.

Movements in this practice

• Become still. Find inner silence and pay attention to your breath.

• Become aware of God's loving gaze upon you.

• Lay down any stray thoughts that come. Palms-up-palms-down can be a helpful practice. Another helpful practice is to have a word or image that you return to as your mind wanders.

• Place any image or knowledge of God behind "the cloud of unknowing" and simply hurl your love at the cloud. It can be helpful to imagine focusing your love like a beam. In your imagination, break open the part of your body where you feel love and exercise your love like a muscle.

• When finished, spend some time in silence, return to your senses gently.

Resources to help with the practice

Palms-up-Palms-Down:

Begin in a posture of receiving with your palms open and facing up. If a stray thought comes to your mind, turn your palms over in a gesture of laying it down. Acknowledge the thought, let it go, and return to receiving.

The Cloud of Unknowing

A 14th-century mystic wrote a classic called The Cloud of Unknowing. In it, we are invited to take all the things we know about God and place them in our imaginations behind the cloud of unknowing. If even a good image comes to mind, like Christ on the cross, we look over his shoulder back to the cloud. We do nothing but hurl our love like darts at the cloud.

Father Thomas Keating describes the method of Centering prayer

Open Mind, Open Heart