Let us relate the experience of Centering Prayer to the contemplative gifts of the Holy Spirit, which are three: Knowledge, Understanding, and Wisdom. Those who do this practice regularly will notice at times that they have at least two tracks going on simultaneously in their minds. There is the ordinary flow of thoughts passing along the surface of consciousness, somewhat reduced from the ordinary hustle and bustle of daily life, but nonetheless confronting us when we try to be silent. Interior silence is always relative, especially in the beginning. Because we are aware of various thoughts and perceptions going by, we introduce a sacred symbol (e.g., a sacred word) as an expression of our consent to God's presence and action within us. Emotionally charged thoughts are attractive or repulsive and stir up desires or aversions in the unconscious as well as in our habitual ways of reacting to reality.

The three basic instinctual needs of human nature are survival and security, power and control, and affection and esteem. Thoughts or perceptions that appeal to one of those instinctual needs may pull us out of our original consent to God's presence and action within us. It is as if we open the door of our private room and start to come out. When one or more of these instinctual needs has been withheld in early childhood, we tend to repress them into the unconscious or to develop compensatory means of surviving or of reducing the pain of frustration. If we are interested in a big way in security symbols and along comes the thought or image of a nice new car, house, or insurance policy, we may feel a spontaneous interest to reflect on this material. If we consent to the attraction, we are pulled out of our original intention to consent to God's presence. Since the time of prayer isn't over yet, we must begin the process again by shutting the door-and maybe bolting it this time. Then we gently reintroduce the sacred symbol we have chosen to express our original intention.

We need to be prompt but gentle in returning to the sacred symbol whenever we notice we are getting interested in some thought, and especially when we find we are immersed in one of them. We never succumb to self-recrimination. Simply, without attending in any way to what we have been thinking, we return at once to our private room by the gentle movement of the sacred symbol that manifests our intention to be in the presence of God and totally open to God's will.

A friendly attitude toward unwanted thoughts is helpful in order to put up with the constant solicitation going on in our imagination or memory. We have spent a lifetime with unruly habits of thinking and self reflection, so it will take us a few months, to say the least, to get used to this new way of relating to God, not through our rational faculties, but, as Abba Isaac suggests, by offering God our hearts, the symbol in the Old Testament of our inmost being.

To repeat, it is our hearts that we are offering to God in Centering Prayer, hearts that are pleading for the Holy Spirit and, at the same time, putting up with the weakness of human nature and our own personal melodrama, for the love of God. As we return to the sacred symbol again and again, we gradually become aware that we are cultivating the spiritual level of our awareness. In this sense, every time we move from a thought into the place of interior silence we are renewing our love for God. We do not judge our prayer by how many thoughts we have, however much we are bombarded by them. Rather, we judge it by how promptly we go back ever so gently to our sacred symbol. Thus we may have made hundreds of acts of the love of God in the course of a single period of Centering Prayer! The Gifts of the Holy Spirit grow in direct proportion to the depth and sincerity of our love.

We can't go wrong with this practice, except in the following two ways. One is deliberately to engage in some interesting thought, perception, or feeling; the other is to get up and leave. The latter seems to be the favorite response of people who never quite get rooted in this practice. When we are rooted in the practice, we cannot not do it. This is precisely one of the signs of the Gift of Knowledge at work in us. We no longer have to find time to do the prayer; the prayer finds us, so to speak. Doing Centering Prayer twice a day becomes second nature. That is the direct work of the Spirit.

An even more certain sign of the work of the Gift of Knowledge arises when, during prayer, along with the thoughts going by and our occasional or even frequent pursuit of them, a third level emerges. This track distinguishes itself from the first two by our awareness of not wanting any thoughts, or, more precisely, of simply being aware that we do not want them. In other words, on the superficial level of consciousness there seems to be an interior built-in detachment from following the thoughts and perceptions going by.

When this awareness is in place, we no longer need the sacred symbol to reaffirm our intention because secretly, as Abba Isaac would say, we are established in our request for the Holy Spirit; we simply want God and nothing else. We are delicately aware of a disinclination for any kind of thought or perception that comes by. Notice I say "disinclination"--not a resistance to some kind of thought (which would be a choice) but the freedom to ignore or disregard all thoughts. This again is a fruit of the Gift of Knowledge that is strengthening our weakness.

The value of being with God during this particular time of prayer is perceived to be so precious that there is no inclination to pursue any thought; or, if there is, one quickly drops it. The Spirit, through the Gift of Knowledge, is gently attracting our spiritual will without our knowing it. We are practicing very subtle but real interior acts that come from the spiritual level of our being.

To sum up, when we experience ordinary thoughts, we gently return to our sacred symbol. But we are also aware at times that God has grasped our will in such a way that we do not want to do anything but stay in his presence. The latter is manifested by an ease in letting go of thoughts or perceptions as they arise.

There is a fourth level in Centering Prayer that you may have experienced. This occurs when you let go of all self conscious effort to remain in the presence of God and there is little or no self-reflection. On the other levels you may have occasional thoughts like "prayer is going well today" or "I'm very peaceful." In the gift of divine union, the Spirit, through the Gift of Wisdom, grasps our imagination and reflective apparatus and suspends them temporarily, so that we may be filled with the divine presence without any hindrance from our fragile nature and the false self. This is like a kiss. One is totally absorbed in the delight of God's presence. At times there is no reflection of self at all. The wise practitioner of contemplative prayer will not try to prolong this experience, but simply welcome it with gratitude. In this prayer there is no room for pride, because one sees intuitively that only God matters. There is nothing to be proud about. The Spirit initiates us into the reality of who God is--immense, humble, tender, close.

The Gift of Wisdom is communicated in contemplative prayer and brings it to perfection. It is also the source of inspired ministry. We can do the best we can--help other people in different ways--but the Gift of Wisdom enables us to help people in God's way, or to be an instrument through which God directly speaks to people's hearts, always with a view of initiating them into contemplative prayer that opens them more and more to the presence and action of God within them.

The contemplative Gifts of the Spirit are active within us from the moment that we seriously begin to do a regular practice of Centering Prayer. The Spirit then begins to communicate the Gifts of Knowledge, Understanding, and Wisdom. The Gifts are interrelated, as we saw, like the fingers of your hand. Each finger has a special shape and capacity Each is important and useful, but they all work together. If one grows, they all grow The contemplative Gifts of the Spirit are God's way of grasping our entire being so that the whole of us may belong to God: body, soul, and spirit.

The active Gifts of the Spirit--Fear of the Lord, Fortitude, Piety, and Counsel--are just as important and necessary. They are designed to enable us to be contemplatives in action, to bring the contemplative experience that we have had in deep prayer into all our activities and indeed in ever greater detail.

Let's take a look now at the effects of Centering Prayer. Obviously the effects are going to be different depending on the tracks that we have experienced during the prayer and how often. To get people started on this journey, we need to encourage them in the beginning to return to their sacred symbol almost continuously; but always gently, always open to the fact that there may be a few moments in which they may be drawn into interior silence. Since our imagination is so habituated to non-stop thinking, it takes a while for the human organism to readjust to a kind of thinking that is simply aware of thinking, but without thinking about the content's of one's thoughts.

Little by little the influence of the Gift of Understanding manifests itself by introducing us into the Night of Spirit. Spiritual consolations cease and we feel plunged into an abyss of spiritual darkness bordering on feelings of alienation from God. The divine light reveals our bottomless weakness and powerlessness in the face of God's apparent withdrawal. Great doubts regarding faith and trust may arise. The desire to return to moments of union, which we enjoyed in the previous track, causes an acute sense of loss and grief. St. John of the Cross teaches that the pains of the Night are the result of the infusion of divine love, which confronts and dissolves everything in us that is opposed to the love of God. The theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity are liberated from the human props on which they have overly depended.

There is a fifth track of Centering Prayer beyond the level of occasional experiences of union and the anguish of the Night of Spirit. In this fifth track one is totally immersed in the presence or absence of God. This level is the work of the Gift of Understanding and the purification of the unconscious. It is not relational in the sense of conversation or even in the sense of communion, but is a presence in everything we do, even in our thoughts and perceptions during prayer. It is simply the awareness of God experienced but not reflected upon. This awareness is so subtle and so present that it accompanies us into daily life. Until that happens we need to make daily efforts to be constantly reminded of the presence of God.

St. Therese of Lisieux taught that to pick up a pin for love can convert a soul. Why not pick up two pins? Or why not have the same loving intention when you brush your teeth, take a walk, have a cup of tea? We can do everything in our daily life with this same intention.

The conviction of being greatly loved by God grows through the Seven Gifts. There is no use moaning because you have too many jobs, too many children, or old folks to take care of. Right where you are, the Spirit's Gift of Piety is suggesting how to transform the situation into a moment of union with God. I don't believe you can do it without a daily practice of contemplative prayer in order to immerse yourself in the reality of the mercy of God's Presence within, which we call the Divine Indwelling. The Divine Indwelling has always been one of the great truths of faith, but it needs to be emphasized over and over again in our day. It is the radical source of the spiritual life. God's personal presence is sheer gift. This presence is transmitted to us in Baptism, reinforced in Confirmation, and greatly enhanced in every reception of Holy Communion.

If we emphasize what God is doing for us, as we do in Centering Prayer, we start the spiritual journey from a different place than has been traditional in the past. We begin the journey not with ourselves and what we are going to do for God, but with God and what God is doing for us. We consent to God's presence, letting God decide what he wants us to do. God seems to want to find out what it is like to live human life in us, and each of us is the only person who can ever give him that joy. Hence our dignity is incomparable. We are invited to give God the chance to experience God in our humanity, in our difficulties; in our weaknesses, in our addictions, in our sins. Jesus chose to be part of everyone's life experience, whatever that is, and to raise everyone up to divine union.

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Excerpted from Fruits and Gift of the Spirit by Fr. Thomas Keating

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