Posted by Diane Colbert on November 01, 1998 at 03:55:26:
I tried to do this as a followup but could not figure out how-I'll have to research this. I enjoyed and related to the post on Centering Prayer. I began CP 8 years ago,on my own, but I had 20 years of meditation experience,from TM to chanting, to insight, to taoist energy meditation. I believe, from my own experience that it helped prepare me for contemplative prayer, but I found myself using less the sacred word as saying "I will love the Lord my God with all my heart, all my soul, all my strength and all my mind" and going into my heart with my love for God and staying there, using a energy or kinesthetic reminder of light,but more my love for God. I believe CP led me to this, Fr. Keating mentions using image if words are not to your taste. I was blessed, during Phil St.Romains retreat Spiritual Road to Serenity, with the gift of infused contemplation,a state which lasted 2 months, and now returns occasionally in a more subtle form. But I found a big difference between infused contemplation and CP, I was not in control during contemplation, I could not have directed or stopped the energy or what was happening. Since that experience, and reading more of St. John, St Theresa's Interior Castle, and The Cloud of Unknowing, I do not call what I do now CP. I still begin with the prayer to give my all to God but then- there is a quote from The book of Privy Counseling which describes what I practice:"My dear friend in God, go beyond your intellect's endless and involved investigations and worship the Lord your God with your whole being. Offer HIm your very self in simple wholeness, all that you are and just as you are, without concentrating on any particular aspect of your being...For with your attention centered on the blind awareness of your naked being united to God's, you will go about your daily rounds, eating and drinking, sleeping and waking, going and coming, speaking and listening, lying down and rising up, standing and kneeling, running and riding, working and resting. In the midst of it all,you will be offering to God continually each day the most precious gift you can make. This work will be at the heart of everything you do, whether active or contemplative."
This is my goal for my life, and how I begin my prayer.
I am very interested in the Jungian and christian spirituality connection mentioned by the author of the original post on this topic, I would love to read more about it.
I also have distanted myself somewhat from CP, and please do not take this as a criticism, but I have felt, in my heart, in readings about and from some practioners of this method, a lack in true love and generousity of the spirit. I have felt a sense very similar to what I felt in Eastern traditions. IMHO and I do not mean to insult ANYONE. So, I am left with out a real name for what I do, except offer myself to God, as in the above quote. Peace Diane