Coaching practices for Apophatic Prayer Practice
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Apophatic Prayer Practice, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- My prayer has gone completely dry
- All my pictures of God
- I jumped straight into the deepest, most advanced form of contemplative prayer because it sounded profound, and now I just sit there feeling lost and like nothing is happening
- When I try to pray it turns into thinking about God
- When I pray I fall back on memorized, safe phrases that don’t touch what’s really in me
Practices that may help
- Bearing the darkness of not-knowing
Tolerate the felt absence of light, experience, or consolation during the practice.
The Cloud of Unknowing: Contemplation Beyond Concepts - Apophatic prayer: releasing images of God
Let go of all mental images and concepts of God to rest in what transcends concepts.
Contemplative Prayer: The Inner Journey - Understanding who this practice is for
Recognize that the Cloud’s method is not for beginners — it requires prior formation.
The Cloud of Unknowing: Contemplation Beyond Concepts - The naked intent: directing love without images
Reach toward God with a bare, loving intention stripped of all thought and image.
The Cloud of Unknowing: Contemplation Beyond Concepts - Oratio: praying in response to what arose
Let what the text touched in you become a prayer — honest, spontaneous, personal.
Lectio Divina: Sacred Reading - Pressing thoughts into the cloud of forgetting
Put every thought — including holy ones — beneath you, pressing them out of awareness.
The Cloud of Unknowing: Contemplation Beyond Concepts - Contemplatio: resting in wordless presence
Release words and rest in simple, open presence — the fruit and culmination of the practice.
Lectio Divina: Sacred Reading - Practice the Examen daily and briefly
Do a short Examen most days rather than a long one occasionally.
The Ignatian Examen: Five Movements of Daily Review - Carrying contemplative consent into daily activity
Let the quality of openness and consent from the sit carry into how you move through the day.
Centering Prayer: The Method of Thomas Keating - Contemplation opening to universal compassion
Let interior transformation express outward as deeper care for others, not withdrawal from them.
Contemplative Prayer: The Inner Journey
Related concerns
- Apophatic Prayer
Let go of all mental images and concepts of God to rest in what transcends concepts.
Apophatic prayer: releasing images of God
- Apophatic Prayer Practices
Let go of all mental images and concepts of God to rest in what transcends concepts.
- Apophatic Prayer Preparation
Recognize that the Cloud’s method is not for beginners — it requires prior formation.
Understanding who this practice is for
- Spontaneous Prayer Practice
Let what the text touched in you become a prayer — honest, spontaneous, personal.
Oratio: praying in response to what arose
- Dry Prayer Practice
Tolerate the felt absence of light, experience, or consolation during the practice.
Bearing the darkness of not-knowing
- Contemplative Prayer Readiness
Release words and rest in simple, open presence — the fruit and culmination of the practice.
Contemplatio: resting in wordless presence
Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.