Coaching practices for Contemplative Silence Practice

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Contemplative Silence Practice, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• My days are wall-to-wall noise, inside and out, and I can’t find the quiet to pray the way I want to
• After I’ve read and reflected and prayed, I jump straight back into the noise of the day because just sitting in silence feels like doing nothing
• 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
• My contemplation keeps sprawling into long mental speeches and I lose the thread
• The endless narration about me

Practices that may help

1. Entering and sitting in silence
   Create interior and exterior silence — the necessary soil for contemplative prayer to grow.
   Contemplative Prayer: The Inner Journey
2. Contemplatio: resting in wordless presence
   Release words and rest in simple, open presence — the fruit and culmination of the practice.
   Lectio Divina: Sacred Reading
3. Contemplative Prayer: The Inner Journey
   Contemplative prayer is a Christian tradition of silent, receptive prayer that moves beyond words and petition toward direct communion with God — what Thomas Merton called "a gaze of faith " resting in God’s presence. It draws on monastic traditions spanning the Desert Fathers through medieval mystics. As a spiritual practice its aims are devotional; components like stillness and silence overlap with studied meditation mechanisms, but contemplative prayer as a whole has not been evaluated in controlled trials.
4. 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
5. Using a short word in prayer
   Choose a single syllable word — "God" or "love" — and use it like a dart of longing.
   The Cloud of Unknowing: Contemplation Beyond Concepts
6. Contemplation, prayer, or meditation toward the larger
   Use a contemplative practice to dissolve, briefly, the boundary of the self.
   Self-Transcendence: Beyond the Self
7. Resting in the gap between thoughts
   Notice the small silences between thoughts and let attention settle there.
   The Power of Now, In Practice
8. 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
9. 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
10. Moving from reading into wordless presence
    Let sacred reading gradually release into silence rather than remaining an intellectual activity.
    Contemplative Prayer: The Inner Journey

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