Coaching practices for Centering Prayer the Method of Thomas Keating Before Bed
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Centering Prayer the Method of Thomas Keating Before Bed, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I find a real stillness in my prayer time and then snap right back into the same reactive, defended person the moment I get up
- My silent prayer keeps drifting
- Since I started sitting in silence, old buried feelings and memories keep welling up during and after, and it unnerves me
- When I try to pray in silence my mind floods with thoughts, and I end up grabbing the "holy" ones and fighting off the distracting ones
- I love sitting with scripture and I love silent prayer, but I do them as two separate things and they feel a little disconnected
Practices that may help
- Centering Prayer: The Method of Thomas Keating
Centering Prayer is a contemporary Christian contemplative practice developed by Thomas Keating, William Meninger, and Basil Pennington in the 1970s, drawing on The Cloud of Unknowing and the Desert Father tradition. The method is simple: sit in silence for 20 minutes, use a sacred word as a gentle intention to consent to God’s presence, and release all thoughts as they arise. It is a devotional practice; some components parallel studied meditation mechanisms, but centering prayer as a whole has not been evaluated in controlled trials. - 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 - Sitting for twenty minutes, twice daily
Commit to 20 minutes, twice a day — the practice period Keating recommends for transformation to occur.
Centering Prayer: The Method of Thomas Keating - Allowing the "divine therapy" — psychological healing through practice
Expect that regular centering prayer surfaces buried emotional material, and allow it.
Centering Prayer: The Method of Thomas Keating - Releasing all thoughts without judgment
Let every thought — pleasant or unpleasant, trivial or profound — pass without engaging it.
Centering Prayer: The Method of Thomas Keating - Combining lectio divina with centering prayer
Use a brief lectio as preparation that deepens the consent you bring to centering prayer.
Centering Prayer: The Method of Thomas Keating - Choosing and using a sacred word
Select one simple word as your symbol of consent to God’s presence and action within.
Centering Prayer: The Method of Thomas Keating - The mixed life: contemplation alongside action
Practice the Cloud’s method within an active life — Keating and Merton both affirm it is possible.
The Cloud of Unknowing: Contemplation Beyond Concepts - 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
Related concerns
- Centering Prayer Duration
Centering Prayer is a contemporary Christian contemplative practice developed by Thomas Keating, William Meninger, and Basil Pennington in the 1970s, drawing on The Cloud of Unknowing and the Desert Father tradition. The method is simple: sit in silence for 20 minutes, use a sacred word as a gentle intention to consent to God’s presence, and release all thoughts as they arise. It is a devotional practice; some components parallel studied meditation mechanisms, but centering prayer as a whole has not been evaluated in controlled trials.
- How To Practice Centering Prayer
Centering Prayer is a contemporary Christian contemplative practice developed by Thomas Keating, William Meninger, and Basil Pennington in the 1970s, drawing on The Cloud of Unknowing and the Desert Father tradition. The method is simple: sit in silence for 20 minutes, use a sacred word as a gentle intention to consent to God’s presence, and release all thoughts as they arise. It is a devotional practice; some components parallel studied meditation mechanisms, but centering prayer as a whole has not been evaluated in controlled trials.
- Releasing Thoughts Centering Prayer
Let every thought — pleasant or unpleasant, trivial or profound — pass without engaging it.
Releasing all thoughts without judgment
- Thomas Keating Centering Prayer
Centering Prayer is a contemporary Christian contemplative practice developed by Thomas Keating, William Meninger, and Basil Pennington in the 1970s, drawing on The Cloud of Unknowing and the Desert Father tradition. The method is simple: sit in silence for 20 minutes, use a sacred word as a gentle intention to consent to God’s presence, and release all thoughts as they arise. It is a devotional practice; some components parallel studied meditation mechanisms, but centering prayer as a whole has not been evaluated in controlled trials.
- Centering Prayer And Healing
Expect that regular centering prayer surfaces buried emotional material, and allow it.
Allowing the "divine therapy" — psychological healing through practice
- Centering Prayer Fruits
Let the quality of openness and consent from the sit carry into how you move through the day.
Carrying contemplative consent into daily activity
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