Posted by Phil on October 28, 1998 at 08:07:58:
The following is from the innerexplorations.com web site, and was written by Jim Arraj. I think it has the potential to spark some interaction.
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Questions About Centering Prayer
Centering Prayer is one of the most wide-spread and laudable
attempts today to introduce people to the life of prayer and
dispose them for contemplative prayer.
But it is precisely because Centering Prayer is doing such
important work that we would like to address these open
questions to the world-wide Centering Prayer community in a
spirit of gentle inquiry with the hope that any dialogue that
results will only strengthen this movement.
1. Should people be introduced rather indiscriminately to
Centering Prayer, as seems to happen, without an assessment
of their experience of more discursive forms of meditation?
Could they not benefit from exercising themselves in forms of
meditation where they use their senses, imagination, intellect,
memory and will in a more active fashion, and only later turn
to Centering Prayer? If Centering Prayer is a preparation for
contemplation, isn't meditation a valuable preparation, as
well?
2. What kind of prayer is Centering Prayer? St. John of the
Cross describes two fundamental kinds of prayer: meditation,
which is the use of our natural faculties of sense, imagination,
intellect, memory and will, and contemplation, by which he
means infused contemplation, which is a gift of God and which
we cannot do at will. According to this distinction, Centering
Prayer is a simplified form of meditation, and not
contemplative prayer according to St. John of the Cross. It is
also, therefore, an active form of prayer rather than a passive
reception, and it makes use of our natural faculties in what St.
John of the Cross would call a discursive fashion. But would
Centering Prayer practitioners agree with this description?
3. In the practice of Centering Prayer there appears to be a
deliberate and conscious reduction of the discursive activity of
the faculties, but according to the psychology of Jung, the
psyche, which embraces the conscious and unconscious, is a
closed energy system. If energy disappears from one place it
will appear in another. Energy, therefore, excluded from
consciousness by the deliberate process of simplification that
takes place in Centering Prayer, should appear in the
unconscious. Would the process of Centering Prayer, therefore
lead to an activation of the unconscious? Will this activation
show itself, for example, in kundalini-like symptoms - that is,
currents of energy, the appearance of lights and sounds, etc. -
or show itself in the three temptations described by St. John of
the Cross, that is, scrupulosity, sexual obsessions and
temptations to blasphemy, or in other manifestations? How
does the Centering Prayer movement deal with these kinds of
things when they happen?
4. The Centering Prayer movement talks about the Divine
therapist, that is, God as therapist, and the unloading of the
unconscious, and thus leaves the impression that certain
psychological effects are an integral part of the Centering
Prayer process. But is such psychological work really a direct
part of the life of prayer? Couldn't something like the
unloading of the unconscious be an effect due to the exclusion
of conscious psychic energy as described in the previous
question? Shouldn't we make a clear distinction between the
goal of psychological work and the goal of spiritual work? In
short, isn't it possible that some of the psychological
dimension of Centering Prayer practice is actually "provoked"
by the Centering Prayer method, itself?
5. The Centering Prayer movement seems to have been
significantly influenced by Eastern forms of meditation,
especially Zen. It has, for example, intensive prayer retreats
which appear to be modeled on Zen sesshins. But does
Christian prayer lend itself to intensive retreats like Zen does?
Are the two really aiming at the same goals? Can the reduction
of discursive activity in Christian prayer be subject to the
means used in a Zen sesshin?
6. What is the relationship between Centering Prayer and
infused contemplation? Centering Prayer has often been
described as a preparation for infused contemplation, which is
how St. John of the Cross described what he calls meditation.
But the Centering Prayer movement sometimes leaves the
impression that many of its habitual practitioners have moved
from Centering Prayer as a preparation for contemplation to
infused contemplation, itself, even though they are still calling
it Centering Prayer. Is this what the Centering Prayer
movement actually believes? How does it square this view of
Centering Prayer with what St. John of the Cross teaches about
the nature of infused contemplation?
In the spirit of Christian dialogue we invite your responses.