“I want to integrate my Centering Prayer with my life.”
How do you do that?
For starters, you make a decision to practice Centering Prayer.
DAILY
Better yet, twice per day.
You KEEP at it.
Even if you do not want to practice, you do it anyhow.
Remember, during Centering Prayer we open to the PRESENCE and ACTIONS of God within.
We let go of our agenda and sit with God.
Over time as you continue to practice, Centering Prayer seems to integrate with your life.
How?
Others notice you are more calm.
Others notice a new light in your eye.
Others notice that you just seem to have something they want and do not have.
Others enjoy being in your presence.
You notice an inner calm.
You notice you are better able to discern what actions you need to take and those you can let go of.
You notice an excitement for life that you did not have before.
You notice you are more tolerant of people that you previously were not.
You notice you are more accepting of the present moment and what it entails.
If you keep at your practice, it will integrate itself into your life.
That is how it works!
Go Further:
An Ocean of Light: Contemplation, Transformation, and Liberation by Martin Laird
Be Still and Listen: Experience the Presence of God in Your Life by Amos Smith
Mindful Silence: The Heart of Christian Contemplation by Phileena Heuertz
Jesus the Teacher Within by Laurence Freeman
The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe by Richard Rohr
Enjoy my past review of The Wisdom Jesus by Cynthia Bourgeault.
Try Audible and Get Two Free Audiobooks – This is a great way to listen to books with your cell phone while you drive, walk or relax at home. I frequently listen in my car during my commute to and from work. I’m a proud affiliate.
Contemplative Light offers courses on contemplative practices (Christian Meditation, Centering Prayer, The Examen, Lectio Divina, The Jesus Prayer), the Christian mystics (ancient and current) and spiritual writing. Peruse their wonderful offerings.
The Gift of Life by Thomas Keating, Mary Anne Best, Susan Rush: This course will explore the gift of life in all its phases, even those of diminishment and death, as phrases of evolution and transformation in and through Christ. It is based on the recent DVD series with Fr. Thomas Keating, The Gift of Life: Death & Dying, Life & Living.
A Simple Immediacy: Desert Wisdom for Advent by Cynthia Bourgeault: The Desert Fathers and Mothers of the fourth and fifth centuries are arguably the first Wisdom School in Christian history. At first in trickles and then in waves, they fled into the deserts of Egypt and Syria to escape the increasing imperialization of the Christian Church and to live in a simple immediacy with the Risen Christ. In the process, they generated an extraordinary body of practical teachings on the spiritual practices underlying this life of deeper awareness and mystical union.
Wisdom for Living: The Parables of Jesus by Thomas Keating, Contemplative Outreach: When rightly understood, the parables help us to see how extraordinary a wisdom teacher Jesus really was, and how revolutionary, in the best sense of the word, was the content of what he taught and to which he bore witness by his life and death.
Centering Prayer Course: A Training Course for Opening to the Presence of God – Centering Prayer is a silent prayer practice that can move you toward a profound relationship with the Spirit of God within. It is a way of praying that opens the door to the Divine Indwelling—the ground of our being. With Centering Prayer, Father Thomas Keating and his colleagues Gail Fitzpatrick-Hopler and Father Carl Arico present the first online course in this method for deepening your intimacy with God and ultimately consenting to the presence and action of the Divine in all aspects of your life.
The Monk Manual is a quarterly planner inspired by monks and designed to help you live a fuller life. By combining best practices in psychology, productivity and spiritual growth the Monk Manual provides a daily system upon which you can build an intentional daily life.
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