Centering Prayer: Step 1) on the Path to Direct Experience of the Sacred

This begins our review of seven states of consciousness which lead like a Path to healing, anesthetic bliss, with an account of the first state of consciousness, Centering Prayer.

The first state of consciousness is generated by a process now called Centering Prayer (Keating Open Mind Open Heart), although in centuries past its name was contemplatio. This is a Christian form of meditation, which entered Christianity from the 6^th c. Syrian writings of Pseudo-Dionysius. 

The process of Centering Prayer is quite simple. Find a place of stillness and peace; a forest glade, a garden, a silent room after midnight when the world sleeps. You can have gentle music playing if you like. There sit comfortably so your body does not call out to you to move.

Then listen to your own inner talk. It is composed of thoughts and thoughts about the thoughts. Here is how you short-circuit it to reach inner silence. You will have a thought. Do not think about that thought. Don’t follow it up or explore its implications. Don't reject it or start thinking about how you don't want to think about that. Just accept it and let it float away.

There will be a moment of stillness. Then another thought will occur to you. Handle it the same way. Don’t follow it up. Don't fight it either, because resisting requires other thoughts. Just accept it and let it float away.

Reduce your mental activity to that one repeated act: just accept it and let it float away. The repetition has a lulling, hypnotic effect on the brain.

If a thought is particularly persistent, repeat a prearranged word mentally to drown it out. The word can be anything that has a peaceful, safe affect for you – Abba (Father) or Love are good words to use, but in fact the repetition of any word will short circuit the thinking process so your brain lets the thought go. The peaceful affect just helps the brain relax and stop babbling.

As you keep doing this, gradually your brain will catch on that you aren’t interesting in thinking right now; that it can rest. The flow of thoughts it generates will slow down, and then stop altogether. You enter a place of silence, in which you are still perceiving the world around you, but not reacting to your perceptions. Reality just flows through you like an empty channel.

You have entered a state of Empty Mind, the second of the seven states of consciousness leading towards bliss. Hold on it for a while. Keep your eyes open, so you still perceive the world. But do not react to it. Just be there. Feel the tensions flow out of you when you do not maintain them by constant mental commentary. It is a peaceful garden within yourself that you can enter any time, even for a few minutes at work. It heals stress, renegotiates anger, makes you stronger for grief. 

Without tension, stress, anger and grief,  you are much less aware of the separations between objects, people and places. In the Empty Mind state of consciousness generated by Centering Prayer, a shadowy new way of seeing the world seems to drift in and out of focus -- as if it were all One Thing, not many things. You have a strange sense of belonging to a great Community which includes all things, through which whether living or dead there penetrates a living, sentient Spirit. The closer your Empty Mind takes you to this all-penetrating, angelic Presence the sweeter and more blissful your Emptiness becomes. But thinking brings up separations, and the sweetness fades away.

This is the gift of Centering Prayer -- not only the inner peace it brings, but also this joyous, oceanic sense of the cosmic Oneness of all things. Men such as Richarde Bucke, Gopi Krishna and Ravindra Kumar believe that the human species is evolving into a type of being that can connect with that healing Oneness at will. By practicing Centering Prayer you are evolving yourself into a higher being with that angelic power, right here and now, rather than waiting thirty thousand years for Nature to do it for your distant descendants.

Check out the next blogs, which will review Empty Mind, the second state of consciousness on the path to bliss. For more detail, my book What Happened to Happiness?, refers the seven states of consciousness to their descriptions in thirteen ancient traditions.