Centering Prayer is dangerous!

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I have two very good CON articles regarding Centering Prayer. Both explain why Eastern Meditation and Catholic Contemplation cannot mix.

saint-mike.org/library/Occult/CenteringPrayer.html

and

dotm.org/decelles-1.htm

It is the opinion of many that the Centering Prayer movement being promoted by the Trappist Monk, Thomas Keating, is based on either a misinterpretation of early church writings, or is based upon an error that was practiced and then recorded by members of the early church.

A lot of people, including children (and also myself), saw demonic entities after doing Centering Prayer. PLEASE, for the safety of your own soul DO NOT employ this method as a “shortcut” to Contemplation. After practicing Centering for two weeks, I started hallucinating, and I didn’t see God or Angels or Saints! I saw BAD things. This quick and easy path leads to a spiritual cliff. It is a good example of fool’s gold.

The real gold of Contemplation is going to an Adoration Chapel, kneeling, and staring at the Risen Christ in the host. You look at Him, and He looks back at you. If you are then chosen for Contemplation, He will let you know!

Few are meant to be Contemplatives, and it is up to God, not us, to choose whether we are destined for this level of perfection.

God bless!

I’m interested in your thoughts in this matter.
 
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GoldenArrow:
I have two very good CON articles regarding Centering Prayer. Both explain why Eastern Meditation and Catholic Contemplation cannot mix.

saint-mike.org/library/Occult/CenteringPrayer.html

and

dotm.org/decelles-1.htm
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I am sorry to say but neither of these articles look like they come from reputable sources.
 
There are plenty of Catholic devotions that aren’t based on “recent discoveries of ancient practices”. There are tons of devotions that have been tested and endorsed by the Saints- I think there is enough diversity there that anyone can find something that helps them if they look hard enough, they truly want to find something Catholic that helps them, and they pray about it.
 
www.cellofpeace.com/cp_method.htm This site will givwe you a good overview. It is used in many religious communities along with Lexio Divina.

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Be kind, for everyone that you meet is fighting a harder battle.
Plato (428-348 B.C.)
 
If the idea is centered on oneself and not God, then yes it is dangerous. I’m so bad at meditation I couldn’t say one way or another.
 
I use a basic form of centering prayer frequently. It simply involves repeating a Bible verse or word to meditate on, often the name of Jesus. My mind is often busy with songs and various thoughts going through, even though I seek silence frequently. Centering prayer helps me find that quiet to really hear God.

A rather liberal nun once told me that centering prayer was about “praying to the divine within.” Now I know we are all temples to the Holy Spirit, but that was way out of my comfort zone. I never felt right about that, even though I was interested in contemplation. I’ve since read more on the topic and discussed it with my spiritual director, who discussed CP with me as relayed in my above paragraph.
 
Code: 
Ok, how about an article from Catholic Answers?
LOL! Thanks, Scott.

And thanks for the other article. I’ve bookmarked them both.
 
Scott Waddell:
Ok, how about an article from Catholic Answers? THE DANGER OF CENTERING PRAYER

Scott
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I only read the first third of it, but unfortunately it had some of the same claims I’ve heard others make about CP. Another problem is there are CP “wannabe” groups who practice CP, but are not certified by Contemplative Outreach, therefore some of them have in fact misled Catholics on the matter. Just as what happens with the Church herself, these renegade groups have taught things incompletely or inaccurately, and these have falsely been attributed to CP.

For one thing, if anyone goes to a CP meeting and is told we are trying to get to the “center of ourselves” than I immediately become suspicious as to whether this person is properly trained because we do no such thing. We try to “lose” ourselves, in the way that Christ said we must deny our very selves. The whole idea is to achieve inner silence, simply sitting still (often during adoration) with eyes closed.

The “mantra” claim is also problematic, for a “mantra” has meaning whereas the “sacred word” which is what is called “mantra” by those who don’t understand CP fully, does not. It has no meaning. It is simply a device to communicate willingness to gently “let go” of thoughts and concerns as they go through the mind.

After all, imagine how hard it would be for a beginner to just say, “now just sit there quietly with your eyes closed and think of nothing at all.” Yeah, right, like anybody can do that, so this is a device to help. That’s what the “sacred” word is for, in my own words (not official) I consider them a way to “distract” ourselves away from the thoughts that naturally arise in our minds. The word may in fact be “Jesus” or “mercy” or whatever, but what it really means when you think it, is that you have recognized your thoughts have strayed and you are no longer silent, so the word is a signal of willingness to let go of that thought and simply sit quietly, thus inviting the Lord to union. This is why the word is “sacred” because it conveys your attempt to let go of worldly thoughts and reaffirm your willingness to invite the Lord into your silent prayer. Technically, the “sacred word” doesn’t even have to be a word, so long as it is something that is not so interesting that when we think it then we start pondering it. If it were a mantra, then we would be actually trying to ponder it.

Alan
 
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Jabronie:
What is “Centering Prayer?”
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Basically, you sit there quietly for some 20 minutes maybe with your eyes closed and try to clear your mind of thoughts.

That’s the answer. Now I’m going to brace myself for the inevitable attacks with the following:

A lot of people do it during adoration, for a wonderful experience which can bring contemplative prayer, itself a gift from God that is true union with Christ.
CCC 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.
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At this point, some would cry foul because they think I’m equating contemplative prayer with centering prayer. They will say that even according the Cloud of the Unknowing, contemplative prayer is not a technique and centering prayer is. If you think that’s a problem, then ask me because I know there’s a difference and really, it’s OK that there is. You don’t “do” contemplative prayer per se, but you “do” devotions that invite contemplative prayer, one of which is CP.

Alan
 
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goravens:
I use a basic form of centering prayer frequently. It simply involves repeating a Bible verse or word to meditate on, often the name of Jesus. My mind is often busy with songs and various thoughts going through, even though I seek silence frequently. Centering prayer helps me find that quiet to really hear God.
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That sounds a little like Lectio Divina, which contains several levels of intimacy with the divine, rather than actual “CP” in the way Keating et al describe it. The key word here is “meditate” which is active rather than passive like CP is intended to be.

It doesn’t sound exactly like Lectio either, but it sounds like it’s something that’s working well for you.
A rather liberal nun once told me that centering prayer was about “praying to the divine within.” Now I know we are all temples to the Holy Spirit, but that was way out of my comfort zone. I never felt right about that, even though I was interested in contemplation. I’ve since read more on the topic and discussed it with my spiritual director, who discussed CP with me as relayed in my above paragraph.
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That’s a bit out of my comfort zone too, because it makes it sound like we are doing some type of “active” prayer, when really we are only “resting in God.” So in a way, we are allowing the Divine Within to speak in groans normally not heard by a mind preoccupied with many things.

The way she put it, I think I know what she was trying to say. It just makes it sound like we’re saying prayers to some little guy inside our stomach or something, or I can see how that could come across. I’d guess she was either speaking colloquially or was not well trained. You did say she was “rather liberal” so I take that to mean she had a tendency to see and/or explain things her own way.

Funny thing that liberalism can effect CP-related teachings the same way as Church teachings it would seem. I’m sure she had only the best of intent, and the CP probably was good for her even if she couldn’t articulate it in words.

Alan
 
My awareness of Centering infiltrating the Catholic Church began in an off-site prayer group, led by a nice Carmelite Sister. Before we began, she hit a gong (a small metal bowl on a pillow hit by a stick) that made a loud harmonic sound. She crossed her legs Indian Style, placed her hands on her knees, and said, “Now, let us Center Ourselves.” I didn’t participate. I watched. They all sat there for two or three minutes in silence. I felt REALLY uncomfortable, and just said Hail Mary’s in silence.

I later asked this Sister what she meant by “centering ourselves,” and if it had any relationship to Zen Meditation (which is the type of Centering Prayer I did when I started hallucinating). She said that she based her Centering Prayer on the teachings of Thomas Keating. She would focus on one religious word, quiet her mind of all thought, and then try to, “access the God within.” YIKES! Outside my comfort zone!

From my point of view, this sounded like a veiled form of Zen Meditation, right down to the music and Buddist Yoga position!

In Zen Meditation, you cross your legs and place your hands at your side, (Indian style sitting or the typical Yoga position if you are flexible enough), empty the mind of all thought, focus on a word, a “mantra” and then pick a spot in the CENTER (hence, the term Centering Prayer) of your body, usually at your navel, and focus all the spiritual energy contained in your aura, into that spot. You are to Center your energy with your mind and concentrate it at one spot in your body. Often this is accompanied by music or a harmonic sound similar to the “gong” thing I mentioned earlier.

I actually am very good at Centering Prayer! Within five minutes, I can step outside space and time, and I can sit in this state for hours and not even realize it. Scary!

When I started seeing stuff, I immediately stopped! Never, ever did it again.

I feel that true Centering Prayer is nothing more than self-hypnosis. If you’re hypnotized, your free will is in a sort of dream-like state, like suspended animation, SO … how can the state of the Will in such a state be pleasing to God? God wants the full consent of our free will, and if we’re in a hypnotic state, where our will is not in full control, how can prayer in such a state lead you closer to God??

On the other hand, in true Contemplation (one form being where one is staring at a Host in a monstrance), one is fully conscious, and if fully conscious one’s full will is 100% active. You are in a passo-active state, where you LOOK at Him and He LOOKs back at you, and you actively exchange love between you and your Creator. You don’t need to say anything. You sort of … pray with your heart, for love simply IS.

I feel that in order to achieve the highest level of Earthly Spirituality, one must have FULL consciousness and FULL assent of the free will and FULL consignment of it to God’s Will.

(As a related aside: I also practice the Divine Will devotion, and according to the Divine Will writings, the absolute highest Earthly state is one step beyond the last step of St John of the Cross’s Conformity, a state called “Living in the Divine Will,” a constant passo-active and/or active state of prayer where the Human Will and the Divine Will are in such perfect harmony that the Human Will goes into a perpetual state of fasting and the Will of God, in effect, becomes so dominant that it becomes like your own Will. Your Will becomes one with the Cross. Your love, then becomes His love, and in this manner, you are more Christ-like… But that’s another subject altogether. Like Texans say, “It’s a whole other country!” HA! By the way: I’m not there yet! I am finding that to “Live in the Divine Will” one must be fully Purgated, able to do simple prayer, and essentially near or at the last step of St John of the Cross’s Conformity to God’s Will. I’m in the late Purgative stages of St. John’s Conformity and am “living in the shadow of the Divine Will,” as Louisa Picarretta’s readers would say).

Anyway, back to the subject …

I don’t think that the highest level of Earthly Spirituality can be reached in a state where the Free Will is not 100% active. Praying in a Centering state is not unlike praying while dreaming, or praying after you’ve smoked Opium or praying while Drunk.How can praying in an altered state be pleasing to God? Hypnosis is an altered state.

Love is a choice. The Catechism teaches that we love God with our Wills. If our Will is not at full capacity, then we can’t fully express our love for Him, right? Centering Prayer does not release us; it binds us. It binds our Wills and; hence, it binds our love.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t the big mystics fully conscious during their ectasies?
 
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GoldenArrow:
From my point of view, this sounded like a veiled form of Zen Meditation, right down to the music and Buddist Yoga position!
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It doesn’t sound very orthodox. She is saying several things that make me suspect her connection with Keating was unofficial.

First thing is, I’ve never heard of using the lotus position thing. For me that would be very uncomfortable. CP suggests one sits in a comfortable position, like in a decent chair. Maybe for her it was, but the comment about trying to “access” God bothers me because one does not “access” God, but “invites” God at best. With the amount of training required to run prayer groups officially connected with Keating, if she said those things I doubt she had any qualifications.
In Zen Meditation, you cross your legs and place your hands at your side, (Indian style sitting or the typical Yoga position if you are flexible enough), empty the mind of all thought, focus on a word, a “mantra” and then pick a spot in the CENTER (hence, the term Centering Prayer) of your body, usually at your navel, and focus all the spiritual energy contained in your aura, into that spot. You are to Center your energy with your mind and concentrate it at one spot in your body. Often this is accompanied by music or a harmonic sound similar to the “gong” thing I mentioned earlier.
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Holy cow! I don’t know what that was, but I assure you it has nothing to do with “centering prayer” as taught by Keating et al.
I actually am very good at Centering Prayer! Within five minutes, I can step outside space and time, and I can sit in this state for hours and not even realize it. Scary!
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I’m not sure whether you’re being sarcastic here or not. I’m assuming you are making a characature of your experiences?
When I started seeing stuff, I immediately stopped! Never, ever did it again.
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Sounds like a wise move. That was no more “centering prayer” than the “liberal Catholic Church” is the “Roman Catholic Church.”

The rest of your post I will consider whether to address, because what you have described here is not CP, and you have quite a bit of information here to go through, combining your experiences and opinions with some facts from the Church, but drawing partially off this false view of CP.

The hardest part for me is how to address it without six pages of verbage. :o

Alan
 
Spirit Daily has an article today on Centering prayer:
When Centering Prayer meets the Vatican.
Go to www.spiritdaily.com and click on the Centering Prayer story. It also contains some thoughts of the pope on this subject.
To be at once exceedingly weathy and good is impossible.
Plato (428-348 B.C.)
 
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plato3:
Spirit Daily has an article today on Centering prayer:
When Centering Prayer meets the Vatican.
Go to www.spiritdaily.com and click on the Centering Prayer story. It also contains some thoughts of the pope on this subject.
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Thank you for the story links. I have really wanted to hear the Vatican speak directly about this, even though I know the Cistercian Abbot General did speak to an assembly several years ago directly about it.

The problem I had was right in the first paragraph:
According to its advocates, anyone, at any stage in the Christian life, can use centering prayer with spectacular results.
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This is so uninformed that I could not see any point in reading further.
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There may be some wackos out there who say that, but anyone who “promises” results from Centering Prayer for any given person is a liar, and if Keating has ever said that I challenge someone to tell me where because I’m not going to Go Find It because it’s not there.
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To “promise” results from CP, or any prayer for that matter, is to presume to Tell God What To Do.
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Nobody with a real clue about CP will say that, and an author that blithely attributes this claim to “its advocates” is irresponsible and not worth the bandwidth to convey his article.
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Alan
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Please keep reading the article; notice the author says advocates of centering prayer say… The article itself goes on to explain why this is a dangerous point of view.
 
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GoldenArrow:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t the big mystics fully conscious during their ectasies?
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The great mystics (St. John, St. Teresa etc) spoke of contemplative prayer like “spiritual sleep.” They described the state of the soul at these times (will, memory and intellect) in terms like this: absorbed, suspended, annihilated, passive etc. So the analogy to sleep seems somewhat appropriate.

St. Teresa described all of this in her book “Interior Castle.” She speaks of 7 stages of prayer she called mansions. As I understand it, mansions 4-6 speak of the varying types of contemplative prayer which, again in my understanding of her, describes the relative depth of the souls absorbtion during prayer. Using the sleep analogy again, it might look something like this:
  • The Prayer of Quiet (4th mansion) is to the spiritual realm what a light, restless sleep is in the physical realm. Our will has been absorbed by God . . . yet distractions (i.e. thoughts) persist. Part of the soul (the will) is in union with God . . . but another part (the intellect) is “tossing and turning.”
  • The Prayer of Union and ecstacies/raptures (5th & 6th mansions) are much deeper and totally absorbed - roughly equivilant to a very deep, sound sleep using the sleep analogy. The Saints speak of this as the experience of a complete and total loss of self. The will, memory and intellect are all brought into union with God.
Please don’t anyone misunderstand me. Contemplative prayer and sleep are not in any way the same . . . but I do think the analogy of sleep helps to describe the experience of contemplative prayer for those not familiar with it.

Dave.

BTW - I think St. Teresa’s Interior Castle helps explain the whole “debate” over CP. For those God has brought to contemplative prayer (mansions 4 and above), things like CP might have a certain value to some individuals. For those in the lower mansions (1 - 3) - which is probably most of us 🙂 - CP probably seems very foriegn and unnatural.
 
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GoldenArrow:
A lot of people, including children (and also myself), saw demonic entities after doing Centering Prayer. PLEASE, for the safety of your own soul DO NOT employ this method as a “shortcut” to Contemplation. After practicing Centering for two weeks, I started hallucinating, and I didn’t see God or Angels or Saints! I saw BAD things. This quick and easy path leads to a spiritual cliff. It is a good example of fool’s gold.
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While I don’t doubt what you saw, I do doubt the path that led you to see these things. Maybe it wasn’t Centering Prayer that you were practicing at all. Maybe you have an over-active imagination, or got ahold of some bad mushrooms. In my experience, meditating on the Divine, in any form, does not lead to the experiences you vaguely describe. I say vaguely, because the word “BAD” doesn’t tell me much. It just tells me you made a judgment about something you “saw.”

The similarities between CP and what is described in “The Cloud of Unknowing” are unmistakable. However, “The Cloud” is saw by most as sound, but CP isn’t for some reason. I think anything that is “new” (even if it really isn’t) is automatically condemned by those who “know better.” People like to think God quit talking 2000 years ago, or that we’re not good enough for Him to actually talk to us, or share experiences with us, but I beg to differ.

If CP, or any other form of prayer doesn’t work for you, I’m sorry to hear that. For every one of you, however, there is a thousand that it does work for.

Mike
 
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