In this week's episode I talk about how God uses centering prayer, i.e., silent meditative prayer, to transform us. I take you on a deep dive into how to respond to the thoughts you encounter when you sit in silence. In particular, I discuss the "evil" or "distracting" thoughts that will most trouble you if you practice consistently. I hope that it serves you powerfully.
My latest book Centering Prayer: Sitting Quietly in God's Presence Can Change Your Life (Paraclete Press) is now available in paperback and ebook formats. Buy from Amazon: https://amzn.to/3AroGYf or directly from Paraclete Press: www.paracletepress.com
Connect with Brian Russell:
Sign up for Brian's email updates: www.centeringprayerbook.com
Twitter: @briandrussell
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Coaching for Pastors: www.deepdivespirituality.com
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Brian Russell’s Book on the Missional Interpretation of Scripture:
(Re)Aligning with God: Reading Scripture for Church and World https://amzn.to/3qln258
Links to Amazon are affiliate links. Dr. Russell receives a small payment if you order resources through these links. There is no additional cost to you. Thank you for supporting the podcast through your purchases.
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Showing posts with label contemplative prayer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label contemplative prayer. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 28, 2021
Wednesday, February 17, 2021
Episode 46 Fr. Murchadh Ó Madagáin on Centering Prayer: Is it Christian?
In this episode, Fr. Murchadh Ó Madagáin, author of Centering Prayer and the Healing of the Unconscious takes us on a deep dive into the practice of centering prayer. Specifically he addresses a question that often comes his way, "Is centering prayer a truly Christian practice?" The answer is "Yes." Listen in and discover a rich prayer practice that has deep roots in the church and one that can help you grow deeper into the grace and love of God.
Books by Murchadh Ó Madagáin
Centering Prayer and Healing of the Unconscious https://amzn.to/3tQoI9i
By the Word of Their Testimony: The Journey of a Priest https://amzn.to/3dbCA7U
Books recommended by Fr. Murchadh
Keating, Invitation to Love: The Way of Christian Contemplation https://amzn.to/3ptQnt5
Mother Teresa Come Be My Light https://amzn.to/2ZnVUXN
Watkins, The Warning: Testimonies and Prophecies of the Illumination of Conscience https://amzn.to/3aqyp6G
Connecting with Fr. Murchadh Ó Madagáin
Also, all masses are live-streamed, if anyone wants to join us online, or hear homilies live/recorded: www.facebook.com/stvincentftmyers.org
Connect with Brian Russell:
Information about Brian’s Fall 2021 book Centering Prayer: How Sitting Quietly in God’s Presence Can Change Your Life www.centeringprayerbook.com
Twitter: @briandrussell
Instagram: @yourprofessorforlife
Coaching for Pastors: www.deepdivespirituality.com
Business and Life Coaching: www.drbrianrussellcoaching.com
Brian Russell’s Book on the Missional Interpretation of Scripture:
(Re)Aligning with God: Reading Scripture for Church and World https://amzn.to/3qln258
Links to Amazon are affiliate links. Dr. Russell receives a small payment if you order resources through these links. There is no additional cost to you. Thank you for supporting the podcast through your purchases.
Saturday, August 3, 2019
Centering Prayer, Deep Surrender, and the Way of Jesus
The process of surrender in centering prayer is critical to the taming of our need for control. When we pray, we commit to sitting in solitude with God. This is a form of self-denial. Recall Jesus’ summary of the essence of discipleship: “If any want to come after me, let them deny themselves, take up their cross, and continually follow me” (Matt 16:24 cf. Mark 8:34 Luke 9:27). The focus of discipleship is on consciously following Jesus. Jesus’ words in Matt 16:24 serve ably as a model for centering prayer.
Intending the Things of God
In Matt 16:21, Jesus had laid out the necessity of his journey to Jerusalem. There Jesus would experience suffering, death, but also resurrection. In response to this revelation (16:22), Peter attempted to rebuke Jesus by saying, “May this never happen, Lord!” Jesus responded to Peter with “Get behind me Satan. For you have not set your mind on the things of God but on the things of humanity.” In other words, Peter struggled because he assumed that his plans, desires, and will should govern the actions of Jesus his Lord.
This is not to say that our goals and ideas have no value. As we live in the world, we will continually take decisions and actions. But the process of growth in grace involves removing the idolatry and injustice out of our decisions. The challenge of the spiritual life is that, when we learn about the mind of Christ, we discover that our truest humanity resides in living fully as the person whom God created us to be. The irony is that we are often the greatest impediment to our growth. Our false self attempts to block access to discovering who we are at the deepest level.
To set our mind on the things of humanity means that it is our will and talents that remain in control of our destiny. It is the full flourishing of our flesh apart from reliance on the Holy Spirit (cf. Rom 8:1–17).
To set our minds on the things of God involves realigning continually with the will of God. Our guide is Jesus. Centering prayer allows us to practice this ongoing surrender of the will.
Invitation to Surrender
16:24 begins with an invitation: “If anyone wishes to come after me….” Jesus calls would be followers to set an intention. Decide and commit to go in the way of Jesus. Jesus calls us to a person–the Son of God. When we take the decision to sit in solitude, we are answering the call of Jesus.
What does this intention or decision involve? It involves surrender to a new mode of being. In centering prayer we do not set the agenda. In fact there is no agenda. The moment we seek one we have gone the way of Peter and set our mind on the ways of humanity.
Centering Prayer and the Meaning of Surrender
What does surrender look like? Jesus uses three phrases in 16:24: deny self, take up cross, and continually follow me.
Deny self. This is not merely a call to a disciplined life involving deprivation. It is more radical. To deny self means to orient fully to the way of Jesus so that the cross shapes our goals, desires, rights, and privileges. In centering prayer, this means a steadfast recognition that my stray thoughts, emotional baggage, and even brilliant insights must give way to being present with God.
Take up the cross. In the ancient world, the cross was a terrifying symbol. Crucifixion was gruesome, humiliating, and meant certain death. To take up one’s cross meant literally lifting the wood upon which one would soon die and walking under its weight to the place of your death. A person taking up the cross was a dead man or woman walking. In solitude, we come to God empty handed in the surrendered posture of one whose life is over. This frees us from both past and future in order to be with God in the moment.
Continually follow me. If the first two phrases involve a letting go of one’s rights, privileges, past, and future, Jesus’ final phrase points to the pathway for the present. Disciples follow Jesus moment by moment. This was true during Jesus’ earthly ministry. It remained true for the Christians to whom Matthew was writing in the first century. Jesus’ words are still vital for us in the 21st century. Discipleship involves a deep ongoing relationship with Jesus. This is why Jesus came to earth. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is Immanuel “God with us” (1:23). In Matt 18:20, Jesus promises, “For where there are two or three gathered in my name, there I am in their midst.” In Matthew 28:20b, the risen Jesus declares, “Behold, I myself am with you all the days until the end of the age.”
Centering Prayer and the Practice of Surrender
In prayer, denying self and taking up the cross serve as the means of purging our rights to ourselves. Whatever thoughts, feelings, desires, dreams, goals, visions, triumphant memories, or nightmarish recollections arise in solitude, we surrender them and continually follow Jesus. This means using our prayer word to realign ourselves with our Lord.
Imagine yourself taking a walk with Jesus. He leads you down a path. You hear birds singing so you look up for a moment. You then turn your gaze back to Jesus. Then you get an idea for a project at work followed by a worry that you don’t have enough time to accomplish your goals for the day. You catch yourself and again return to the master. A few moments later you reach a point in the path that triggers a painful memory of great loss. Yet again you turn to Jesus. Martin Luther’s dictum comes to mind in this process: “You can’t prevent a bird from landing in your tree but you don’t have to allow it to build a nest.”
Recognize that the process of centering prayer is to continually return to the Lord. Period. Thoughts are thoughts. Feelings are feelings. Memories are memories. The call to discipleship challenges us to turn away from self and follow Jesus. This is the way of prayer too. The question is trust: Do I trust God enough to release my attachments to whatever the hamster wheel inside my head offers up?
Merton writes on the need for continual surrender, “to have a will that is always ready to fold back within itself and draw all the powers of the soul down from its deepest center to rest in silent expectancy for the coming of God, poised in tranquil and effortless concentration upon the point of my dependence on him;…”
There is a dynamic tension between surrender and our role in the surrender. Merton’s words capture it well. It is not that our will disappears. Our will remains. Its intentions have become aligned with the divine will. The Lord’s prayer becomes reality in our inner world, “on earth [in me] as it is in heaven.”
In fact, the process of recentering is the critical discipline that opens us up to God’s presence and grace. There is no contemplative moments apart from the our conscious return to God every time that we find ourselves lost in a stream of thoughts. This is how souls are made. It is a moment by moment journey.
© 2019
Brian D. Russell
Interested in learning more about centering prayer. Check out
Brian's YouTube Channel for a series of videos on centering
prayer:
Wednesday, June 26, 2019
The Four Rs of Centering Prayer: Advice for Managing our Thoughts
The classic advice from Thomas Keating and Cynthia Bourgeault on managing our stream of thoughts in Centering Prayer is this:
Resist no thought.
Retain no thought.
React to no thought.
Return ever so gently to the sacred word.
These “Four R’s” are full of wisdom. They remind us of the core principle of centering prayer–the surrender of our thoughts and our return to the intention to sit in silence before God. We cannot control our thoughts. They may be beautiful; they may be embarrassing; they may be random. Regardless, when we recognize that they’ve grabbed our attention, we release them and return to the silence with our sacred word.
Resist no thought.
Recognize that we spend most of our days lost in loops of thought. Our minds bounce endlessly from one thought to another. Buddhists call this the “monkey mind.” To practice centering prayer does not mean fighting against thinking. The goal is not to erase our minds. This is impossible. You will likely have hundreds if not thousands of thoughts during a centering prayer session. The key is recognizing when this happens and surrendering it. This leads to the next “R”.
Retain no thought.
In centering prayer, we release our thoughts whenever we find ourselves paying attention to one. This is easy if it’s a random thought about dinner or about a bug buzzing in your ear. However, if you generate a helpful solution to a problem you’ve struggled with, it is harder to let go. But let go we must. Good or bad or neutral–we surrender each thought and return to the silence.
React to no thought.
Thoughts are just thoughts. We have little control of what moves into our conscious mind. You may encounter beautiful thoughts or disturbing ones. A painful memory may emerge from the depths of your soul. You may get caught up in a fantasy. Regardless the practice centering prayer involves our commitment to make no judgments regarding our thoughts. Instead, we release them to God.
Return ever so gently to the sacred word.
The elegance of centering prayer is its simplicity. It’s all about our intention to spend time with God in silence. The sacred word serves as a means of breaking our attention to thoughts, words, images, and feelings so that we can return to the silence.
To learn more about centering prayer, check out this brief video introduction: Centering Prayer: the Basics
Saturday, June 8, 2019
Centering Prayer as Appreciation
Often my centering prayer sessions don’t seem to accomplish much. My mind continually bounces around. I rehearse past hurts. I think about my task list. I make plans for today’s meetings. I gain ideas for projects. I have little sense of the presence of God. In a word, I’m distracted.
Yet perhaps these are actually the best days. After all, centering prayer is not about me and my thoughts. It’s about entering a space outside of my control where I may encounter the living God. The sessions, when my brain interrupts incessantly, become opportunities to learn anew about surrender. In these moments I release whatever captures my attention and return to a posture of waiting. This may happen dozens of times in a 15–20 minute time of centering prayer. Yet each recitation of my prayer word serves as an occasion for training in faithfulness and love.
Jesus' Model
When Jesus was hungry in the wilderness, the tempter pointed to the presence of an abundant number of stones (Matt 4:1–4). He suggested that Jesus use his power to turn them to bread. Jesus reminded the tempter, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
Jesus’ hunger was real. He had just completed a forty day fast. Yet he released it by reciting Scripture as a way of moving away from temptation.
The tempter then presents Jesus with two additional tests. As in the first scene, Jesus quotes Scripture and stays focused on God’s mission. It is no coincidence that angels appear and attend to Jesus’ needs (4:11).
The Practice of Self-Denial and Surrender to Silence
Centering prayer teaches us a similar process of self-denial. Don’t mistake this for masochism or crass asceticism. God is not cruel. God is love. The greatest hindrance to our spiritual transformation is ourselves. The process of self-denial prepares us for the deep work that God desires to do in us. Jesus recognized this and modeled a way forward.
Our thoughts are the obstacles that distract us from the work God desires to do in us in solitude. But we must not fight our thoughts. This would be our work. Instead, we calmly use our prayer word “Jesus” to recenter.
A friend recently asked me if sessions full of distraction frustrated me. The truth of the matter is they do not at all frustrate me. Instead they are the days where I learn the most.
Don’t get me wrong. My soul loves the moments of deep contemplation where I become lost in God’s love. It is transformational to experience and receive God’s unconditional acceptance. It, however, is also transformational to learn continually the lessons taught by silent surrender.
On those days when I’m constantly lost in thought, I learn to focus on appreciation rather than expectation. I remember that centering prayer is not a tactic for engaging God. It is a way of being in which I consciously surrender in love and gratitude to God. I let go of all things that may hinder me including the expectation that I’ll encounter God during my time of prayer.
Releasing thoughts is an act of faith. I trust that God has my best interests at heart. Therefore, my future does not depend on avoiding being lost in a continuous stream of thoughts or even in my ability to recollect the thoughts I released in prayer.
Appreciation and Growth
After such sessions, I’ve learned to appreciate the silence. By releasing the expectation of automatically encountering God in each session, I’ve found that growth happens. The prayer time is not about me after all. It is not a work. It is rest in the presence of God. Just as the biblical sabbath envisions life apart from work, centering prayer is an invitation to let go of all human busyness and activity to rest in God.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. Amen.
If you are interested in learning more about centering prayer, here is an introductory video:
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