Centering Prayer

Centering Prayer is a Christian contemplative practice developed in the 1970s by three Trappist (Cistercian) monks at St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts: Thomas Keating (1923–2018), William Meninger (b. 1932), and M. Basil Pennington (1931–2005). It emerged from the post-Vatican II opening of Catholic life, widespread interest in Eastern meditation, and a sense that Christians had lost touch with their own contemplative heritage. Keating wanted to recover and make accessible the Western mystical tradition — not esoteric knowledge for monks but a living practice available to all.

The practice is rooted in the anonymous 14th-century English mystical text The Cloud of Unknowing, which instructs the contemplative to place a “cloud of forgetting” between themselves and all created things, and to reach toward God through a “cloud of unknowing” — beyond concepts, images, and thoughts. The author recommends using a single short word as a gesture of returning intention when distracted. This is the direct antecedent of Centering Prayer’s “sacred word.”

The broader lineage includes the Desert Fathers and Mothers (Evagrius Ponticus’s apatheia and pure prayer), John Cassian (Conferences), the Rhineland mystics (Meister Eckhart’s Gelassenheit — releasement), John of the Cross (the dark night), and Teresa of Avila (the Interior Castle).

The Four Guidelines

1. Choose a sacred word — one or two syllables: God, Jesus, Abba, love, mercy, peace, silence, faith, trust, let go. The word is chosen once and kept. It is not a mantra — it is not repeated continuously. It is a gesture of intention.

2. Sit comfortably with eyes closed, silently introducing the sacred word as the symbol of consent to God’s presence and action within.

3. When engaged with thoughts, return ever-so-gently to the sacred word. “Thoughts” here means any perception — thoughts, feelings, images, memories, sensations. The sacred word is not used to suppress thoughts but to signal a return to consent.

4. At the end of the prayer period, remain in silence with eyes closed for a couple of minutes to integrate the contemplative awareness into ordinary consciousness.

The recommended practice is 20 minutes, twice daily — morning and evening.

What Centering Prayer Is Not

Keating was careful to distinguish it from several things it resembles:

• Not concentration: When you notice you’ve drifted into thoughts, you return gently — but during the prayer itself, the word may be present only faintly or not at all. The goal is not to hold the word in mind but to consent to presence.
• Not relaxation technique: Though relaxation may occur, it is not the purpose. The purpose is relationship.
• Not emptying the mind: Thoughts will continue. The practice is the cultivation of a different relationship to them, not the elimination of thought.

The Welcoming Prayer

A complementary practice developed by Mary Mrozowski. When an emotional reaction arises in daily life: (1) feel and sink into the feeling, (2) welcome it (“Welcome, anger”), and (3) let go — “I let go of my desire for security/affection/control.” This extends contemplative awareness into active life.

Philosophical Grounding

Tillich’s Ground of Being. Paul Tillich’s understanding of God as the “ground of being” — not a being among beings but the depth and ground of all that is — resonates with Centering Prayer’s theology. When Keating speaks of “consenting to God’s presence and action within,” this is not consent to encounter a separate entity but a turning toward the ground of one’s own being. Tillich’s “God beyond God” — the God who appears when the God of conventional theism has dissolved — describes the territory Centering Prayer inhabits. See The Self.

Buber and I-Thou. The relational structure of Centering Prayer connects to Buber’s I-Thou. The practice presupposes a Thou — one does not center into a void but into relationship. Yet this Thou is not objectified; the sacred word is precisely not an image or concept of God but a gesture toward the ungraspable Other.

Eckhart’s Gelassenheit. Meister Eckhart’s concept of Gelassenheit (releasement, letting-go, detachment) is the deepest philosophical root. One must release even the concept of God to encounter God: “I pray God to rid me of God.” This radical apophaticism — knowing God by unknowing — is enacted in Centering Prayer’s gesture of releasing all thoughts to rest in bare presence.

Keating’s “Divine Therapy.” In regular practice, the deep rest of contemplative prayer begins to “unload the unconscious” — stored emotional material from early life surfaces. This framework has significant parallels with Internal Family Systems: Keating’s “emotional programs for happiness” (needs for security, affection, power) map onto what Schwartz would call “exiles” and their “burdens.” The unburdening process in IFS is structurally similar to what Keating describes as the dismantling of the false self system.

Relationship to Other Practices

Zazen (shikantaza): The closest structural parallel. Both are practices of simply being present, releasing attachment to thoughts, trusting the process. Both resist instrumentalization. Keating was aware of the parallel and in dialogue with Buddhist teachers. The key difference is theological.

Lectio Divina: Keating understood Centering Prayer as the contemplatio stage extracted and formalized as its own practice. Together, they form a complete contemplative arc: Lectio Divina moves from word to silence; Centering Prayer begins in silence.

Somatic Experiencing: The “unloading” process includes physical discharge — trembling, heat, waves of sensation — that parallels SE’s understanding of trauma release.

Focusing: Both involve a quality of gentle, receptive inner attention. Gendlin’s “felt sense” shares territory with the pre-conceptual awareness cultivated in Centering Prayer.

Key Figures

• Thomas Keating (1923–2018) — primary developer; author of Open Mind, Open Heart; founded Contemplative Outreach
• M. Basil Pennington (1931–2005) — co-developer; author of Centering Prayer
• William Meninger (b. 1932) — co-developer; drew initial connection to The Cloud of Unknowing
• Cynthia Bourgeault — contemporary teacher; bridges Centering Prayer with the Fourth Way and embodied practice

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Musical parallels: Arvo Pärt’s tintinnabuli works create an acoustic environment analogous to what centering prayer cultivates: the stripping away of everything unnecessary until what remains is a kind of presence that is prior to thought. Hildegard von Bingen’s contemplative monastic life and her account of creative reception — waiting in a posture of availability for what seeks expression — are among the oldest Christian expressions of the same orientation.

See also: Contemplative Practice · Lectio Divina · Zazen · Focusing · Internal Family Systems · Somatic Experiencing · The Self · Relational Ground · The Imaginal · Paul Tillich · Martin Buber