Will and Intention in Contemplative Prayer

By Father Thomas Keating
Reprinted from the Spring 1994 Contemplative Outreach Newsletter

Part II

    The sacred word 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. For 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 simile we are talking about physical clarity. I am using it in another context there. 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 stimulated by one of the emotional programs for happiness. Even after one has consciously rejected it for the sake of the values of the gospel, it may still be present in the unconscious. For example, one may have a great emotional investment in the security symbols of a particular culture. The pain of one's insecurity may have been so painful in early childhood that one 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 get stored in the body. The body is the storehouse of emotional energy that was not adequately processed. As a result, one develops blockages to the healthy flow of energies in the body and nervous system. This only reinforces the need for compensatory activity to hide the pain. Addictions are the ultimate way of distracting oneself from 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 with the body and the emotions.

    For each level of emotional intensity there is a corresponding set of almost endless commentaries that are pre-recorded. When a strong emotion goes off, 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 intention, our consent to God's presence and action, begins to get fuzzy because of boats (thoughts) going by on the surface of our awareness that attract or stimulate the programs in the unconscious.

    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 we would be the case in a mantric kid of prayer. Our attention is a general and loving awareness of the presence of God. The actual work of Centering Prayer is ever-so-gently, without effort, consenting to God and letting go of the present moment with its psychological content. If some other thought or feeling causes the unconscious programs to get stimulated along with their commentaries, then before one gets on the boat, one returns to the sacred word. In this way, one develops with time, patience, and may failures, the habit of letting go of thought promptly, not by thinking about the fact that one is 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 distraction. Any such reflection is another thought, another boat.

    This prayer recommends itself as a prayer of great simplicity, a simplicity that is 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 the child are so striking. They go from tears to laughter. 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 jolly acceptance of our thoughts. We can't avoid them all. If we could avoid them all, we would already be perfect in contemplation. I presume if that were the case, you would not now be reading this paper. If you are like 99.9% of the human race, this is a process that is going to take some time and may not even be completed in this lifetime. But cheer up. Every bit of progress is a bonus for the next life.

    Contemplative prayer is a kind of purgatory. Purgatory is a state in which we complete the contemplative journey in the next life if we may not have 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, but what happens in prayer enables one to live daily life as a continuation of the purification process. The ups and downs of daily life, including its very everydayness, is 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 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 go off 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 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 set off 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 when doing it.

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Excerpted from Intimacy with God by Thomas Keating