When should you practice Centering Prayer?
Listen to what your life tells you.
Are you a morning person?
You seem to get your best work done in the morning.
Take your first sit before you begin your day.
Does it take you a while to feel awake and moving?
How about before lunch?
Sit and then eat your lunch.
You have had a long day.
You need to decompress.
Sit before dinner.
What is my point?
Listen to what your life tells you.
Structure your silent sits around the ebbs and flows of your life.
If life changes, change when you do your sits.
Don’t stop your sits.
Just move them where they best belong.
P.S. Need some help with your practice? Contact me about my coaching. I can help you.
Go Further:
A Taste of Silence: Centering Prayer and the Contemplative Journey by Carl J Arico
Holy Silence by J. Brent Bill
The Loving Search for God: Contemplative Prayer and the Cloud of Unknowing by William Meninger
Invitation to Love 20th Anniversary Edition: The Way of Christian Contemplation by Thomas Keating
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Enjoy my newest video: Centering Prayer and Letting Go.
I just updated my Resource page with new books and e-courses. Feel free to peruse.
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The Wisdom Jesus by Cynthia Bourgeault: Jesus first and foremost is a Wisdom teacher, grounded in the universal traditions of spiritual transformation, and the first teacher of non-dual consciousness the West had ever seen. Almost two thousand years ahead of his time, he stands in the lineage of the great Jewish prophets, the master “cardiologist” entrusted with implementing the promise made to the prophet Ezekiel: “I will take away your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”
Contemplative Discernment by Fr. Carl Arico, Pamela Begeman, Gail Fitzpatrick-Hopler: A contemplative practice of discernment is not about decision-making, although this may be an eventual outcome. Rather, contemplative discernment is receptive in nature, a process of opening to receive clues about who we are in God. We focus on ever-deepening levels of relationship and trust in God’s will for us. We learn how to listen deeply to our motivations and sort through and purify any mixed motivations. As this relationship deepens, we learn to allow the love of God to motivate our actions and manifest through us. We discover what it means to truly pray “not my will, but Thy will.”
Soulful Aging by Thomas Moore: As everyone knows, we are growing older all the time. But growing older is not the same as aging. Many people seem to grow older without going through the challenging life processes that make you a real person of substance and character. That kind of aging requires saying yes to the opportunities and difficult issues that life presents.
Contemplative Light offers courses on contemplative practices, the Christian mystics and spiritual writing. Peruse their offerings.
Authentic Orthodox prayer ropes and bracelets are handmade by monks in the Orthodox monastaries reciting a prayer for every knot they tie.
Drawing from the wisdom of monastic life, modern psychology and best practices in personal productivity, the Monk Manual provides a daily system that will help you find clarity, purpose, wisdom, and peace in the moments that make up your life.
