The Dangers of Centering Prayer

[Weeorphan]

Thanks all, for the critique of my comments. Most stimulating.

Buzzcut: Thanks for sparing me the tedium of explaning the Catechism’s plain message about divine union with God. Keep up the good work.

DBT: Obviously, your concern about varied levels of understanding on these forums is evidenced by YinYangMom. I hesitate to judge her as ‘elemetary’ in understanding, but the fact is, many who read these posts come with different degrees of knowledge, some elementary and some advanced. I try to weave analogies and parables into my own exegesis for just that reason. But inevitably the spoiler comes along. Nasty business, this sort of thing. Spin meisters abound at every meeting I hold.

Then enters on stage the twisting of words, such as my 'beckoning visions of God" versus beckoning God for visions which has a totally different meaning. Those anxious to criticize for whatever motive, actually twist the words in their head, to read what they want to read in support of their preconceived perceptions. Let me make clear, that God does the beckoning with attractive visions of the Immortal Beloved, if He should choose to do so, and not at our beckoning. How easy to misinterpret if we have the motive to do so. Such is the subtle mischief of the human mind gone awry.

Let me drive home this point. You will observe the extremely different meanings derived from the simple statement:

“I never said she was crazy”.

If you read a heavy accent on ‘I’, and digest its impact, then proceed to accent the next word in a second reading, ‘never’, and so forth, you will discover different nuances with every one of the six accents. We digress into Cognitve Psycholgy, the realm of perception versus reality, a vast study in itself, that has bearing on what takes place in these forums to a large degree.

All of which brings me to Joysong:

I commend you for your scope of knowledge on these matters, and though I(we) know nothing of your background, it is obvious you have erudition in abundance.
Certainly, for lack of living masters, we should depend on the saintly register of approved doctors in the Church. The Magisterium is the Church’s great legacy and ensuring power. However, take care not to clutter your brain and thus trip over your doctoral trappings and suffocate your soul under piles of parchment. I believe you have done more than sufficient reading. I perceive much more effort shoud be made by you practicing the arduous climb, made so much easier if you were to drop that excess baggage.

Your discerning my ‘spirit’ in these matters is also commendable. But if St Teresa were alive in the flesh today, would you use the same filters and screens? As I pointed out, in her day she was castigated by her well meaning peers, nearly burned at the stake. Would you have been among her rabid persecutors? Something to think about.

We humans like to worship the past, and speculate about the future, but when a living master comes along, how is it we fail to perceive him or her as such? It’s as if we suffer a blind spot when we look directly at a star in the surrounding darkness. The Light comes into the world and the world knows it not. So is the case with any living master, of which Fr. Thomas Keating, OSB, is most assuredly one. Make an effort to meet him at one of his seminars around the US. You will be graced by his presence.

 

[Joysong]

Weeorphan,

Clearly, you are overlooking the worthy links from St. John of the Cross, who refutes every experience you stated in post #14 as inducement for us to leap into the risks of CP:

“I bear witness in my foretastes of paradisal bliss, of private revelations, and visions of God.”

Again, your words … “God does the beckoning with attractive visions of the Immortal Beloved” …
Whether or not YinYang’s repetition of them was verbatim, is irrelevant, since your own words continue to point to your secret delight in all of these spiritual manifestations. They also leave no room for error that it might not be God, huh?

Weeorphan:

However, take care not to clutter your brain and thus trip over your doctoral trappings and suffocate your soul under piles of parchment. I believe you have done more than sufficient reading. I perceive (how so?) much more effort should be made by you practicing the arduous climb, made so much easier if you were to drop that excess baggage.

Where in my posts have you discerned that I have NOT practiced the arduous climb, and that I have NO experiential knowledge of what I speak? Doesn’t it seem odd to you that I entertain myself reading difficult works such as these, for no other reason than to “rabidly” persecute the advocates of CP? Your choice of words continues to amaze me, for I do not detect a spirit of charity, which should be easily demonstrated by a person of your vast mystical prayer experience.

I hoped you would soften a bit after Dave’s kind gesture toward you so that the discussion would not deteriorate, but since I continue to detect a contentious spirit at work, I bid you goodbye.

Carole

 

[Augustine]

springbreeze:

Just a quick note about avoidance of distractions in prayer. I believe this to be a damaging thing to do. If there are distractions we should look to them and realise that our Lord is using them as a tool to show us what we are attached to and address that.

Indeed and it goes straight to St. Therese’s saying that “everything is a grace”. And as she said, distractions are mostly about important things to us, and, as you said, something to ponder why Our Lord allowed that distraction at that moment. Can one not see that Our Lord was not allowing the “dialog” to be interrupt, but rather to be enhanced?

 

[Augustine]

Weeorphan:

But if St Teresa were alive in the flesh today, would you use the same filters and screens? As I pointed out, in her day she was castigated by her well meaning peers, nearly burned at the stake. Would you have been among her rabid persecutors?

However, it’d require a leap of faith to believe that every contested practice or teaching will be embraced in the future by the Church. After all, in extremis, one could maliciously say the same about abortion.

Let me just repeat the cautionary statement present in so many financial ads, which I think applies here:
Past performance is not a guarantee of future returns.

 

[buzzcut]

Weeorphan, thank you for bringing your refreshing clarity into this discussion. After reading your post, I feel that I have been like one who studies the map, takes one step forward, and then stops to study the map again. This is something I need to remedy.

 

[Joysong]

Weeorphan:

But if St Teresa were alive in the flesh today, would you use the same filters and screens? As I pointed out, in her day she was castigated by her well meaning peers, nearly burned at the stake. Would you have been among her rabid persecutors?

Augustine:
However, it’d require a leap of faith to believe that every contested practice or teaching will be embraced in the future by the Church. After all, in extremis, one could maliciously say the same about abortion.

Excellent, Augustine,

What Weeorphan fails to mention about St. Theresa is that she was persecuted for returning to gospel values of the Carmelite desert fathers in reforming her Order. The nuns of the mitigated observance felt they were being outstripped by one who wanted to be *holier than thou, *and it raised their indignation rather furiously. The most vehement objection was to her inspiration to found her convents in poverty.

I don’t see anything of gospel value in the idea of centering, or else, as YinYang mentioned indirectly, Christ would have taught it to His disciples. St. Peter had some strong words to say about this, when he set aside as less important, the extraordinary vision of the Transfiguration that he had received, to bring our focus, instead, on the purity of faith as taught by the prophets.

St. Teresa was not imprisoned, and no attempts were made to burn her at the stake. Nor was there a notable objection to her writings on mystical prayer, as the implications by Weeorphan suggest.

We need to read his statement as hearsay.

http://forum.catholic.com/images/smilies/smile.gif Carole

 

[DBT]

I just spent 8 very wonderful hours in the presence of the cloistered nuns and visiting friars of Carmel today. I find it very timely to this thread that Father began his discussion on St. John’s Spiritual Canticle with a brief admonishment about the dangers of becoming attached to “spiritual junkfood” – visions, revalations, locutions and the like. He did a quick overview of St. John’s Ascent, Book 2 chapter 17. Carole, I kid you not.

At the end of this day of many delights a professed member of Carmel, whom I don’t even know, came right up to me – looked me in the eye and said: “Dave, the devil is angry.” When I came back here to this forum and read the mischief in some of the recent posts, I have to admit a chill went right up my spine.

Weeorphan, is this the type of discussion you want to have around here? Seems like your pushing for it.

I for one say this type of discussion is exactly what should not happen around here. Oh sure, this kind of talk would probably draw people out of the woodwork to see what was going on. And just like Father said, they’d all be looking for a quick fix of spiritual candy and keys to hidden treasures.

I’m a neophyte in all this . . . but the facts of what I said are entirely true. But I am experienced enough to know that I shouldn’t trust my interpretation of things. For those with no experience at all, I can’t imagine at all what they might think or do with this kind of talk.

Weeorphan, be careful.

 

[DBT]

Weeorphan:

DBT: Obviously, your concern about varied levels of understanding on these forums is evidenced by YinYangMom. I hesitate to judge her as ‘elemetary’ in understanding

Or “obviously not.” I wrote post #74 with no knowledge of what YingYangMom wrote. My comments were not directed toward her in any way. They were simply a general statement of concern directed toward you and where you seem to be wanting to go with things. My apologies to you YingYangMom if you interpreted it this way as well.

And isn’t this “misunderstanding” just one more example of the type of problems that would occur as we travel down the slippery slope of “personal experience” that I tried to show in my little real-life story in the previous post?

I for one say let the Doctors and Saints be our guides through all of this. Even I don’t want to listen to the “Gospel According To Dave.”

 

[Joysong]

Happy Feast Day, all,

Dear Dave,

I find it very timely to this thread that Father began his discussion on St. John’s Spiritual Canticle with a brief admonishment about the dangers of becoming attached to “spiritual junkfood” – (I love his expression, Dave! ) visions, revelations, locutions and the like. He did a quick overview of St. John’s Ascent, Book 2 chapter 17. Carole, I kid you not.

Very providential timing, and it just speaks to me once again that God will confirm His messages to us, sometimes in three’s, as He did with St. Peter’s vision of the sheet (three times). This is to emphasize the importance of the teaching.

I remembered Jesus’s painful words in Jn. 15:22, “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin. But now they have no excuse for their sin.” When solid teachings such as I posted in links from our saintly Doctor, St. John, are bypassed in favor of “spiritual junkfood,” I would echo Jesus’s sad heart, “now they have no excuse.” (Not implying hereby that this is a sin, but a persistent attraction to error that will bear its own sad fruit)

Until I was more preoccupied with this thread, I had intended to post excerpts from chapter 9 of the Imitation in the thread on St. Therese, where it states, “It is good to hear every man’s counsel; not to agree with it, when reason demands agreement, is a sign of great isolation of mind and of much inward pride.”

And yes, I believe your friend was right! — the devil was foaming at the mouth in a furious rage!

 

[DBT]

Happy Feast Day to all as well!

Just one final comment for I think I’m running out of things to say on this thread . . . unless things take a turn in another direction.

Buzz, I wonder what it must feel like being in your shoes knowing there’s such a public “battle” being waged over you. Or are you even aware of it? You must be a very special soul indeed, my friend.

Today I complete my Consecration to Mary . . . a preparation I undertook to help me better recieve the Brown Scapular later this year.

Please know, Buzz, that I have commended you to our Blessed Mother and her Immaculate Heart this day as my Consecration intention.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about contemplation, which you so ardently desire Buzz, is this: It’s not about me . . . it’s about others. Hence the special meaning and inspiration of my prayer.

May God richly bless you Buzz and grant you the wishes of your heart. I know His will will be done.

Your friend,
Dave.

 

[buzzcut]

My goodness DBT now I’m embarrassed. I didn’t see this as a public battle over me personally. I wouldn’t say that contemplation is what I want … I’d say that what I want is to know and love God. But I have different people telling me different things as to how to go about this. There is the “additive” prayer of St Teresa. Then there is the “subtractive” prayer of Fr Thomas Keating. And then St John of the Cross implies that both are necessary, in that order. DBT your #56 makes the most clear and unequivocal sense to me. It’s time for me to stop thinking and start praying.

 

[Joysong]

Dear Buzzcut,

My goodness DBT now I’m embarrassed. http://forum.catholic.com/images/smilies/redface.gif I didn’t see this as a public battle over me personally.

Don’t be embarrassed, Buzz — we really love you, and because we are all ‘one bread one body,’ when one member suffers, all suffer! Your post #84 was the only sad part of my day on a most beautiful feast. More than Dave, I or anyone else, does Christ want us all to be united in one true faith.

I’m much in tune with Jesus’s priestly prayer at the last supper, since they were our daily mass readings of late. One verse I mention here, is when Jesus prayed, “Not for the world do I pray, but for those whom you have given Me, because they are THINE.” (Jn. 17:9) You might say that you are one whom the Lord has given us, precisely because you are HIS. And as HIS, we are going to be pained whenever we see one of our own in spiritual danger.

What a beautiful offering Dave made for your intention! I join him, and already have prayed, that you will be steadfast in the simple ways of our faith, protected from the latest fads that are as yet only that — spurious novelties.

Also your friend,
Carole

 

[DBT]

buzzcut:

I wouldn’t say that contemplation is what I want … I’d say that what I want is to know and love God.

One and the same my friend

If it is God’s will, I can think of no better teacher than Mary.

 

[Weeorphan]

Thanks, Buzzcut, for your ‘refreshing clarity’ message on #84. It took much charitable courage to contradict the erudite ‘piety’ of some on this thread who seriously belabor the illusion that their excess memorizing of dusty tomes on contemplative prayer is equivalent to actually trudging up the mountain. Nothing can substitute for the actual practice of daily prayer, nor any masterful book thoroughly prepare one for the hazards of the climb.

In dropping such excess baggage, how much easier the climb. As it is, they ultimately fail to progress in the ascent, being so heavily burdened, – and they attempt to keep others from doing so, merely because misery likes company.

Please note, that If my words sting, it is their antiseptic value, not my lack of charity. From my many years of experience, it would have been uncharitable of me to not have shared my clarity of insight.

Buzzcut: You know what to do; you’ve read and studied enough to clutter your brain. Close the books for a season and pray unceasingly. Like a determined musician, practice, practice practice till you become a virtuoso of the human mind. Neither genius, nor talent, nor book learning,… Nothing can replace persistance in secret charity, chastity and prayer.

 

[springbreeze]

Dear friends

Just a few thoughts that occurred to me…

It is spiritually unhealthy to be attached to any method of prayer or devotion above the loving of the Lord and our brothers and sisters remaining always in His presence by the dark trust of faith.

I have seen souls sighing and swooning under spiritual delights, delighting more in those than in the Lord who loves them and grants such gifts. I have seen these devotions/prayer methods that these delights are gifted in become the central focus of faith for some souls. I have seen their gaze firmly focused in a prayer book, or interiorly in the ‘centre’ of their being, or face lifted up to statue and all these focuses becoming the focus of their faith and practice of it, than practising the presence of God continually. Such fervent focusing is not required, nor preperation needed for prayer when life is a prayer, the mind, heart and spirit always being in friendship, companionship and in the company of God. There are great errors and dangers in such focusing on certain habits of prayer and devotions.

A life of prayer is continual recollection of God and loving Him in this recollection.

If a soul becomes overly preoccupied with methods of prayer and devotions, focusing on centering, prayer books and Rosary beads that soul will stunt it’s spiritual growth, remaining reliant on such practices instead of on God and remaining infantile in faith.

Where then is the structure of faith that leads to spiritual growth?

The practice of the Sacraments, a life immersed in Sacred Scripture, the practise of silence, the practice of the Presence of God and unceasing prayer.

God isn’t hard to find, you speak and He is there, He speaks and you listen, you are silent together in that inflowing and outflowing of love between you and God…this is prayer. God is the focus and not the method of finding God.

We as human like comfort zones, we do not like to feel uncomfortable, we especially do not like to feel ‘nothing’ we like to feel comforted and comfortable, but as we know there is no progress in the comfort zone, there is nothing to stretch us and we stagnate in the treachery of our own comfort. I have said in another thread…cast your nets out into the deep. If you cast your nets out into the deep you do not need ANYTHING but trust in God, He will lead you and His Saints will also guide you, thank God for St Teresa of Avila! In the deep you will feel afraid and uncertain, you will most certainly feel abandoned, but these are feelings and not actualities. You are never abandoned by God, He is always with you, therefore wade out into the deep, into deep prayer and you will find you need no method, all you will need is FAITH.

God Bless you and much love and peace to you

Teresa

 

[Joysong]

Thanks for those reflections, Teresa,

It is always good to remember our roots and the teachings of our saints who trod the road before us and show the way to God. One of our members began a thread in this section that today is Pope John Paul’s birthday. How good it is to think of him and reverence his example of spending many hours before the Blessed Sacrament in contemplative prayer. Nor can we overlook his sacramental life and the liturgy, thinking prayer is alone sufficient.

I shudder to think that anyone would accuse him of hiding behind the Vatican’s dusty tomes, as if knowledge itself were an evil that prevented one from ascending to God! In the supreme office of his authority, we were blessed to have many encyclicals written by him that will continue to teach the faithful through coming generations. We all know this did not come solely from book learning, but through lived experience of “knowing” God, as well.

As I ponder St. Jerome who translated the bible, and St. Thomas Aquinas, saintly Doctor of the Summa, St. Paul, and others of giant stature, I praise God that these holy men were inspired to translate their knowledge of God in writing, solely for our benefit. What a wonderful gift of God’s love!

Carole

 

[springbreeze]

Joysong:

Thanks for those reflections, Teresa,

It is always good to remember our roots and the teachings of our saints who trod the road before us and show the way to God. One of our members began a thread in this section that today is Pope John Paul’s birthday. How good it is to think of him and reverence his example of spending many hours before the Blessed Sacrament in contemplative prayer. Nor can we overlook his sacramental life and the liturgy, thinking prayer is alone sufficient.

I shudder to think that anyone would accuse him of hiding behind the Vatican’s dusty tomes, as if knowledge itself were an evil that prevented one from ascending to God! In the supreme office of his authority, we were blessed to have many encyclicals written by him that will continue to teach the faithful through coming generations. We all know this did not come solely from book learning, but through lived experience of “knowing” God, as well.

As I ponder St. Jerome who translated the bible, and St. Thomas Aquinas, saintly Doctor of the Summa, St. Paul, and others of giant stature, I praise God that these holy men were inspired to translate their knowledge of God in writing, solely for our benefit. What a wonderful gift of God’s love!

Carole

Dear Carole

Quite correct.

Cling to the Church and to the Eucharist, the two pillars and certainty of faith.

God Bless you and much love and peace to you

Teresa

 

[Angel7]

Is Centering Prayer Mortal sin?! I heard some arguements about it but I didn’t think it was this serious. I went to confession this Saturday, but I didn’t Centering prayer was sinful. Is this Mortal sin?!

 

[Klara_Collins]

Centering Prayer is such an intense topic that cannot be reasonably discussed here in the Forums, so it has become a *banned *topic.

Thanks for understanding.

Thread Closed.

Klara