Centering Prayer at my parish

[beng]

mhansen:

The Church appears to defend it as well. From the CCC:

460 The Word became flesh to make us “partakers of the divine nature. For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God. For the Son of God became man so that we might become God. The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods.”

I just had surgery and won’t have the use of my left arm for a while, so typing is tough. I’ll leave it at this, and you can think of it what you will.

Peace,
Mike

I thought you will never read the thread again? Anyone beg you to stay?

Now, the CCC, look for the word “partaker” and “sharers”. The CCC show how God dwells in us because of the power and redemption of Christ. This happens at baptism. Notice that everytime we commit mortal sin the Spirit is no longer within us and we are cut off from the sonship which we gained from Christ.

NONE OF THE ABOVE MAKE US DIVINE!!!

Nice stuff from Eastern Catholic

The central emphasis of Eastern Catholic spirituality is on the important belief is that we are called “to become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4), not merely to be ‘saved’ from sin. We truly do become filled with the Holy and Gracious Life of the Triune God at Baptism, and do become true children of God.

This participation in the divine nature is commonly called “divinization” or “deification.” We are invited to live the very life of God, to be intimately related to God, to be united to Christ, and to have the Holy Spirit dwell within us! The Church Fathers saw this as the reason for Christ’s coming: “God became man so that man might become God.” (St. Athanasius).

Can’t say it better.

 

[beng]

mhansen:

I’d be more careful of the use of the word “heresy” if I were you. As it shows in my above post, this is most certainly a teaching found in the CCC. Besides, heresy is such an ugly word.

Peace,
Mike

The CCC doesn’t use the verse and concept as they are used by CP.

 

[beng]

Exposing CP at the source (CP Magazine)

 

[AlanFromWichita]

beng:

The CCC doesn’t use the verse and concept as they are used by CP.

How, precisely, does CP use the verse and concept, and what exact distinction would you make between it and the CCC passage? I need something authoritative on this; not just another reference to an article written by a person thoroughly biased against CP.

Barring that, what are your own personal opinions on what CP teaches about the matter? You must have smoe since you know they are different than the CCC. Do not use my quote because I did not claim to speak authoritatively for CP on that issue.

Alan

 

[beng]

nevermind

 

[beng]

AlanFromWichita:

How, precisely, does CP use the verse and concept, and what exact distinction would you make between it and the CCC passage? I need something authoritative on this; not just another reference to an article written by a person thoroughly biased against CP.

You are the one who defend CP point of view of human being divine. Read first page.

Barring that, what are your own personal opinions on what CP teaches about the matter? You must have smoe since you know they are different than the CCC. Do not use my quote because I did not claim to speak authoritatively for CP on that issue.

Alan

I’ll dig it up.

Are you ready to leave CP and denounce it?

 

[beng]

Interview with “Fr.” Thomas Keating (TK)

CB: Did your experience with Zen inform your Christian faith?

TK: Yes, it enriched it. I read the Gospel from a different perspective and saw the truth of Zen in much of the Gospel. Buddhism is a very advanced religion. Roshi Sasaki, who is still functioning at 89 in Mount Baldy in Los Angeles, thought that Zen could help Christians become better Christians. He saw-and I would certainly adhere to his insight-that there is a certain Zen quality in all religions. It is a fundamental religious attitude. Centering prayer is very rich but quite diffuse and tends to put the emphasis on grace in a way that perhaps needs to be balanced by the Zen attitude, which is that we have to do something, too. Actually, St. Ignatius expressed it well when he said, “Act as if everything depended on you, and trust as if everything depended on God.” Well, how do you do that? That is a koan. You could spend a lifetime trying to figure out how to do that. What the world religions all have in common is [the fact that] transcendence is the name of the game. This means first having a self and then surrendering it, opening oneself to union with God, which is a gift.

Unbelievable.

 

[beng]

More heresy. It’s about Human divinity.

TK: That is what it is. [God is] infinitely transcendent and infinitely immanent. That is the extraordinary part: God couldn’t be closer, closer even than consciousness. But the Christian articulation of that mystery is a little different from [that of] the East. The Christian would say you are not God, whereas the Vedic tradition says that you become God. I think we may be talking about the same experience of divine union, but our belief system requires us to say that you may be so united to God that you can’t distinguish yourself from Him but that He nevertheless remains ontologically-that is, metaphysically-distinct. That theological disagreement could simply be the result of having an experience and trying to articulate the inexplicable according to your particular belief system.

So although it sounds different, it may be the same thing. But we don’t have enough experience to say that for sure. We have to have a lot more people in that state and be at a good stage of dialogue to precisely understand each other’s terms. We started a little group called the Snowmass Interreligious Conference, where teachers from various spiritual traditions got together and just talked about what helped them the most. This gave us a chance to see a religion through somebody else’s eyes, someone who has really been through it and now embodies it.

How the hell can he say that the two concept (God is in us and we are God) could be the same thing? Where did he learn his Catholicism??? IT’S OBVIOUSLY SO DIFFERENT!

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Exposing CP at the source (CP Magazine)

Ho, hum. Same old, same old.

Not as a defense, but FYI, I will just touch a couple examples so you can see that this person is also spinning the issue. I’m beginning to think there is as much spinning on centering prayer as there is on the war in Iraq.

First, this author takes exception to the idea of CP letting go of thoughts and sensations. The rebuttal, in part:
In Catholic contemplative practice, we bring all of ourselves to God and enter into conversation or communion, bringing everything with us to lay at His Feet. All manner of worries, concerns and thoughts are stepping stones to sanctity as we enter into conversation about them with Him.
Contemplative practice enters into conversation about our worries and concerns? Let’s see what the CCC says:
CCC 2717:
Contemplative prayer is silence, the “symbol of the world to come” or “silent love.” Words in this kind of prayer are not speeches; they are like kindling that feeds the fire of love. In this silence, unbearable to the “outer” man, the Father speaks to us his incarnate Word, who suffered, died, and rose; in this silence the Spirit of adoption enables us to share in the prayer of Jesus.
Silence, not conversation about worries.
2724:
Contemplative prayer is the simple expression of the mystery of prayer. It is a gaze of faith fixed on Jesus, an attentiveness to the Word of God, a silent love. It achieves real union with the prayer of Christ to the extent that it makes us share in his mystery.
Again, silence and a gaze of faith.

Next!

Using any word to “conjure up” the divine opens one to self-hypnosis and the possibility of perseverating on the object of meditation, not on the contemplation of Our Lord or the meditation of the virtues or events of His Life.

This automatically discredits the whole article. Anyone who thinks CP assumes to “conjure up” the divine using a word is misinformed at best, malicious at worse.

An extreme example of the occult power of visualization and mentalization occurred several years ago. At one New Age workshop given by Robert Munroe where participants were trained to go out of their bodies while they slept, eager students were encouraged to first visualize placing all their distractions and cares into a trunk and then lock the trunk. This way they would be freed from earthly bonds. Unfortunately, a very beautiful woman also attending the workshop, (then located in a closed sleeping room nearby), reported that during repeated nightmarish attempts to go “out-of-body”, she found herself being locked in a trunk and unable to get out.)

Oh, please. I watched the movie “Dumbo” and the mouse hallucinated pink elephants. What on earth does that have to do with CP? By the same logic as this excerpt, I should be afraid of being haunted by pink elephants if I engage in CP.

CP does not involve any kind of visualizations; completely the contrary. This sounds like that exercise where the nun was telling someoneto visualize Jesus hugging them. That is not CP.

I dismiss the article in its entirety. It has no credibility.

Alan

 

[AlanFromWichita]

beng:

Centering prayer is very rich but quite diffuse and tends to put the emphasis on grace in a way that perhaps needs to be balanced by the Zen attitude, which is that we have to do something, too.

OK, so he’s saying CP is not Zen. So?

I know. If I do CP then perhaps I need to balance it with some Zen. I think maybe I should listen to some audio recordings about Zen, such as by Alan Watts, and see what I’m missing.

Alan

 

[AlanFromWichita]

beng:

How the hell can he say that the two concept (God is in us and we are God) could be the same thing? Where did he learn his Catholicism??? IT’S OBVIOUSLY SO DIFFERENT!

OK, so Keating is saying that we, as Catholics, cannot say the same thing as they do. We say we have divine union, they say they become God. Since we don’t yet know the intricacies of how they think, we don’t know whether this is substantially or experientially the same thing using different ways to describe it.

Many people say “you are what you eat.” Does that mean I’m a cow or a fish? No, so does that mean it’s wrong? It depends. You could take “you are what you eat” to mean that certain essential elements of a cow or fish have been used to create that which is my body. I would have to know more about eastern languages to know whether “becoming God” implies a similar context.

Alan

 

[AlanFromWichita]

beng:

Are you ready to leave CP and denounce it?

Actually, I pretty much had quit CP for the last couple years. Inspired by this argument, though, I started reading the Cloud of the Unknowing again and that got me all excited again about contemplation, and about CP.

So Wednesday night I went back to the weekly meeting of CP and Lectio. It seemed a bit more boring than I remembered, but then again there is no guarantee of spiritual consolations in any given session. I may not make it every week, but I certainly will be making more of an effort now.

Alan

 

[beng]

AlanFromWichita:

Ho, hum. Same old, same old.

Not as a defense, but FYI, I will just touch a couple examples so you can see that this person is also spinning the issue. I’m beginning to think there is as much spinning on centering prayer as there is on the war in Iraq.
Please. Has it ever occur to you that your believe is not the same as CP?

Here’s more article showing CP’s errors:

dotm.org/ctrprayjonnette.htm

Part One. Part two

First, this author takes exception to the idea of CP letting go of thoughts and sensations. The rebuttal, in part:

In Catholic contemplative practice, we bring all of ourselves to God and enter into conversation or communion, bringing everything with us to lay at His Feet. All manner of worries, concerns and thoughts are stepping stones to sanctity as we enter into conversation about them with Him.

Contemplative practice enters into conversation about our worries and concerns? Let’s see what the CCC says:

CCC 2717
Contemplative prayer is silence, the “symbol of the world to come” or “silent love.” Words in this kind of prayer are not speeches; they are like kindling that feeds the fire of love. In this silence, unbearable to the “outer” man, the Father speaks to us his incarnate Word, who suffered, died, and rose; in this silence the Spirit of adoption enables us to share in the prayer of Jesus.

Silence, not conversation about worries.
By conversation, he means utter words. Please don’t be so naive. Do you think he means that we should converse with God loud and clear?

2724
Contemplative prayer is the simple expression of the mystery of prayer. It is a gaze of faith fixed on Jesus, an attentiveness to the Word of God, a silent love. It achieves real union with the prayer of Christ to the extent that it makes us share in his mystery.

Again, silence and a gaze of faith.
Re-read explanation above.

Btw, Let’s seperate between Centering Prayer and Contemplative prayer. Because it seems that Centering prayer is not the contemplative prayer found in the Catholic faith.

Next!

Using any word to “conjure up” the divine opens one to self-hypnosis and the possibility of perseverating on the object of meditation, not on the contemplation of Our Lord or the meditation of the virtues or events of His Life.

This automatically discredits the whole article. Anyone who thinks CP assumes to “conjure up” the divine using a word is misinformed at best, malicious at worse.
Again, stop panting a broad brush. And it is A FACT that CP used the so called “Sacred Word” (Mantra) in order to CENTERED their prayer.

cont below

 

[beng]

An extreme example of the occult power of visualization and mentalization occurred several years ago. At one New Age workshop given by Robert Munroe where participants were trained to go out of their bodies while they slept, eager students were encouraged to first visualize placing all their distractions and cares into a trunk and then lock the trunk. This way they would be freed from earthly bonds. Unfortunately, a very beautiful woman also attending the workshop, (then located in a closed sleeping room nearby), reported that during repeated nightmarish attempts to go “out-of-body”, she found herself being locked in a trunk and unable to get out.)

Oh, please. I watched the movie “Dumbo” and the mouse hallucinated pink elephants. What on earth does that have to do with CP? By the same logic as this excerpt, I should be afraid of being haunted by pink elephants if I engage in CP.

CP does not involve any kind of visualizations; completely the contrary. This sounds like that exercise where the nun was telling someoneto visualize Jesus hugging them. That is not CP.

I dismiss the article in its entirety. It has no credibility.

Alan
He said “extreme example”. For non-exreme version maybe you should read Keating’s guideline:

Physical Symptoms:
We may notice slight pains, itches, or twitches in various parts of the body or a generalized restlessness. These are usually due to the untying of emotional knots in the body.
We may also notice heaviness or lightness in the extremities. This is usually due to a deep level of spiritual attentiveness.

“Untying emotional knots” Is this for real?

 

[beng]

AlanFromWichita:

OK, so he’s saying CP is not Zen. So?

I know. If I do CP then perhaps I need to balance it with some Zen. I think maybe I should listen to some audio recordings about Zen, such as by Alan Watts, and see what I’m missing.

Alan

YOU AND KEATING WANT TO BALANCE CHRISTIANITY WITH PAGAN CONCEPT!!

Please come to your senses.

 

[beng]

AlanFromWichita:

OK, so Keating is saying that we, as Catholics, cannot say the same thing as they do. We say we have divine union, they say they become God. Since we don’t yet know the intricacies of how they think, we don’t know whether this is substantially or experientially the same thing using different ways to describe it.

Many people say “you are what you eat.” Does that mean I’m a cow or a fish? No, so does that mean it’s wrong? It depends. You could take “you are what you eat” to mean that certain essential elements of a cow or fish have been used to create that which is my body. I would have to know more about eastern languages to know whether “becoming God” implies a similar context.

Alan

The fact that Keating even think that there might be similiarity is ridiculous.

 

[beng]

AlanFromWichita:

Actually, I pretty much had quit CP for the last couple years. Inspired by this argument, though, I started reading the Cloud of the Unknowing again and that got me all excited again about contemplation, and about CP.

So Wednesday night I went back to the weekly meeting of CP and Lectio. It seemed a bit more boring than I remembered, but then again there is no guarantee of spiritual consolations in any given session. I may not make it every week, but I certainly will be making more of an effort now.

Alan

Are you having one of those leftover teenage rebellius attitude? “I’ll jump to the cliff just because you said not to” meantality?

 

[mhansen]

beng:

I thought you will never read the thread again? Anyone beg you to stay?

Now, the CCC, look for the word “partaker” and “sharers”. The CCC show how God dwells in us because of the power and redemption of Christ. This happens at baptism. Notice that everytime we commit mortal sin the Spirit is no longer within us and we are cut off from the sonship which we gained from Christ.

NONE OF THE ABOVE MAKE US DIVINE!!!

No, I came back for another dose of your immense Christian Love. I didn’t have to wait long, I see.

You have an uncanny ability to interpret and twist anything to suit your need to be right. “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.” Sure sounds like divinity to me. As someone stated, “If it walks like a duck…”

St. John of the Cross, Doctor of the Church, surely knows this subject better than you and I. Let me share with you some excerpts from The Spiritual Canticle:

Stanza 32.4 “By the eyes of the Bridegroom she refers to God’s mercy: He descends in mercy on the soul, impressing and infusing his love and grace in her, making her beautiful and lifting her so high as to make her a partaker of his very divinity.”

Stanza 39.4 "For, granted that God favors her by union with the Most Blessed Trinity, in which she becomes *deiform and God *through participation, how could it be incredible that she also understand, know, and love - or better that this be done in her - in the Trinity, together with it, as does the Trinity itself! (emphasis mine)

Stanza 39.6 "Accordingly, souls possess the same goods by participation that the Son possesses by nature. As a result they are *truly gods by participation, equals and companions of God. *(emphasis mine)

Again, if it walks like a duck…

And finally, an endorsement of the works of St. John of the Cross, from the Holy Father himself:

“I myself felt especially drawn by the experience and teaching of St. John of the Cross. From the first years of my priestly formation I found in him a safe guide along the paths of faith.”

Peace,
Mike

 

[beng]

mhansen:

No, I came back for another dose of your immense Christian Love. I didn’t have to wait long, I see.

The same Christian filled love that made you falsely accused me?

You have an uncanny ability to interpret and twist anything to suit your need to be right. “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.” Sure sounds like divinity to me. As someone stated, “If it walks like a duck…”

It has been explain. And thinking that human is divine is a heresy.

St. John of the Cross, Doctor of the Church, surely knows this subject better than you and I. Let me share with you some excerpts from The Spiritual Canticle:

Stanza 32.4 “By the eyes of the Bridegroom she refers to God’s mercy: He descends in mercy on the soul, impressing and infusing his love and grace in her, making her beautiful and lifting her so high as to make her a partaker of his very divinity.”

“… PARTAKER of his very divinity”.

Stanza 39.4 "For, granted that God favors her by union with the Most Blessed Trinity, in which she becomes *deiform and God *through participation, how could it be incredible that she also understand, know, and love - or better that this be done in her - in the Trinity, together with it, as does the Trinity itself! (emphasis mine)

“…through PARTICIPATION”

Stanza 39.6 "Accordingly, souls possess the same goods by participation that the Son possesses by nature. As a result they are *truly gods by participation, equals and companions of God. *(emphasis mine)

“… PARTICIPATION”

Again, if it walks like a duck…

And finally, an endorsement of the works of St. John of the Cross, from the Holy Father himself:

“I myself felt especially drawn by the experience and teaching of St. John of the Cross. From the first years of my priestly formation I found in him a safe guide along the paths of faith.”

Peace,
Mike

Sorry, even the work of St John of The Cross, doesn’t say what you wanna say. You are not divine. Only God is.

So, you’ve decided to stay in the thread before you decided against staying in the thread? Sounds very Kerry to me.

 

[mhansen]

beng:

“…through PARTICIPATION”

“… PARTICIPATION”

Sorry, even the work of St John of The Cross, doesn’t say what you wanna say. You are not divine. Only God is.

So, you’ve decided to stay in the thread before you decided against staying in the thread? Sounds very Kerry to me.

Yes, participation. Participation in contemplative prayer and what it effects – union with God. Whether we attain this divinity before, during, or after we begin to participate is moot for those of us who do participate. It’s a theological “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” argument. Even you can’t argue that this divinity is there. It’s written in black and white, in both the CCC and St. John of the Cross, to name two. As much as you try to dispute it, you simply can’t. You may believe you can, but you can’t.

What’s this hangup you have about me staying in the thread? Does it bother you that much? Are you that miserable that you have to bring it up in every post? Do you feel that you have to be in control of every situation that you confront?

“Sounds very Kerry?” What? I don’t even know what to say to something so ridiculous. The election is over. Let it go.

Peace,
Mike