As the Spirit becomes predominant in our prayer, the use of the sacred word or sacred symbol during the time of Centering Prayer becomes less and less necessary or important. As long as we find that we are attracted to thoughts or feelings going by on the level of our memory or imagination, we freely make use of the sacred word not to push the thoughts away, but to reaffirm our original intention of consenting to God's presence. Some people who are visually oriented prefer to use a sacred symbol such as an image of oneself resting in the arms of God or of being under the loving gaze of God. Following the breath is another accepted practice, with particular appeal for those already introduced to breath practices in Eastern methods of meditation. But again, note that in Centering Prayer one does not pay attention to these symbols, but uses them only as the expression of our intention. As with the sacred word, they are used to focus intention, not as objects of attention and still less of concentration.

The sacred word or sacred symbol is something like the focusing apparatus on a video camera. If I were panning an audience, I would have to adjust the lens a bit for those up front, but those in the middle would then get fuzzy. To pan those in the middle I would have to adjust the lens again to get them in focus, and once again for those in the rear.

In the above analogy we are talking about physical clarity, but I am thinking in a different context here. The focusing process that the sacred word serves is not to bring a particular face, object, or symbol into focus in the imagination, but to focus our intention when it gets fuzzy. Intention is the most important factor in any contemplative prayer practice, but especially in Centering Prayer, in which our only activity consists in maintaining our intention to consent to God's presence and action during the time of prayer.

The intention becomes fuzzy when we are pulled back to our ordinary level of awareness by attraction or aversion to some thought, feeling, or impression. Usually this happens because that thought has stimulated one of the emotional programs for happiness in the unconscious. We all have them; they are a legacy of our childhood and infancy. Even after we have consciously rejected a childish attitude or behavior for the sake of the gospel, the influence of the emotional program may still be present in the unconscious--as for example, if one has a great emotional investment in the security symbols of a particular culture. The pain of our insecurity may have been so unbearable in early childhood that we repressed into the unconscious the very memory of the privation. But the unconscious remembers. The emotions are energy, and they don't go away if repressed. They are stored in the body. The body is the storehouse of emotional energy that is not adequately processed. As a result, one develops blockages to the healthy flow of energy in the body and nervous system. This reinforces the need for compensatory activity to hide the pain. Addictions are the ultimate way of distracting oneself from the emotional pain one is unwilling to face.

The spiritual journey from this aspect is a course in growing up and becoming liberated from childhood fixations at emotional levels that have become disruptive of our adult life and that interfere with our relationships. The journey is a form of divine psychotherapy in which God tries to heal us on every level, beginning normally with the body and the emotions.

For each level of emotional intensity there is a corresponding set of almost endless commentaries that are prerecorded in our memory bank. When a strong emotion is aroused, one is instantly besieged by a surge of commentaries, all of which take one farther and farther out of the peace, calm, and detachment that contemplation requires. That is why we need to have a focusing apparatus when our consent to God's presence and action begins to get fuzzy because of thoughts going by on the surface of our awareness that stimulate the programs in the unconscious. In Centering Prayer terminology, we liken these thoughts to boats passing by on the surface of a river (see Diagram 3).

Diagram 3

It is not our attention that needs adjusting, because attention is secondary in Centering Prayer. We are not attending to a particular thought or object, or even to the sacred word as would be the case in a mantric kind of prayer. Our attention is a general and loving awareness of the presence of God. The actual work of Centering Prayer is consenting to God's presence and in doing so letting go of the present moment with its psychological content. If a thought or feeling stirs unconscious programs along with their commentaries, then before we "get on the boat," we return to the sacred word. With time, patience, and many failures, we develop the habit of letting go of thoughts promptly--not by thinking about the fact that we are thinking, but simply by returning ever-so-gently to the sacred word. If you find yourself on a boat, just get off. There should be no self-recriminations, no sighs, no annoyance that you have had a thought. Any such reflection is another thought, another boat.

This prayer recommends itself as a prayer of great simplicity, a simplicity characteristic of childhood, which is to be present to the present moment and to forget what happened before. That is why the mood changes of children are so striking. They go from tears to laughter in an instant. Just the consent to return to the sacred word is all the activity that is required in Centering Prayer. Any analyzing, commentaries, guilt feelings, or recriminations are more distracting than the original thought. The original thought may simply have been a plan for the future or a memory. It is not nearly as effective in taking you out of interior silence as a feeling or an emotionally charged thought such as shame or guilt.

In this prayer we need to develop a certain joyful acceptance of our thoughts. We can't avoid them all. If we could, we would already be perfect in contemplation. I presume if that were the case, you would not now be reading this book. If you are like 99.9 percent of the human race, this is a process that is going to take some time and may not even be completed in this lifetime.

Contemplative prayer is a kind of purgatory. Purgatory in Catholic theology is a state in which we complete the journey to divine union in the next life if we have not quite finished it here. Every bit of progress means an enormous benefit for us and for everyone else in the human race. To be on this journey is really the greatest contribution one can make to the human family. This journey does not just involve what happens in prayer; rather, what happens in prayer enables us to live daily life as a continuation of the purification process. The ups and downs of daily life, including its very everydayness, are the arena in which the Christian journey takes place. God is in solidarity with our lives and deaths, just as they are. Perfection does not consist in feeling perfect or being perfect, but in doing what we are supposed to do without noticing it: loving people without taking any credit. Just doing it.

To sum up, we use the sacred word only as a focusing apparatus to bring our intention into full clarity, whenever, because of the weakness of human nature and the fact that the emotional programs for happiness in the unconscious are still active, we need some means of returning to our original intention--that is, consent to God's presence and action within us. With regular practice, we develop a certain ease in promptly letting go. We then enter into the cloud of unknowing, which develops through repeated small acts of consent. This means that we have dismantled the emotional programs sufficiently that we are alert to when they intrude and can return to our original intention much more promptly and, indeed, without necessarily returning to the sacred word or sacred symbol.

The movement established by introducing the sacred word as the symbol of our intention to be open to God's presence and action brings us little by little to the spiritual level of our being, or, to use another analogy, to a general attentiveness to the river of consciousness itself rather than to what is passing along the surface of the river. The sacred word is simply the symbol of our intentionality. There is no special word, therefore, that is better than another, except that some words should be avoided because they spark an association of ideas and the tendency to think about other matters. In this prayer we are developing the capacity to wait upon God with loving attentiveness. The loving character is expressed by fidelity to the practice and patience while doing it.

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Excerpted from Intimacy with God by Fr. Thomas Keating

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