Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening Quotes

“RESIST no thought; RETAIN no thought; REACT to no thought; RETURN to the sacred word.”
― Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening

“Beginning in infancy (or even before) each of us, in response to perceived threats to our well-being, develops a false self: a set of protective behaviors driven at root by a sense of need and lack. The essence of the false self is driven, addictive energy, consisting of tremendous emotional investment in compensatory "emotional programs for happiness," as Keating calls them.”
― Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening

“It’s very, very simple. You sit, either in a chair or on a prayer stool or mat, and allow your heart to open toward that invisible but always present Origin of all that exists.”
― Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening

“Somewhere in those depths of silence I came upon my first experiences of God as a loving presence that was always near, and prayer as a simple trust in that presence.”
― Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening

“And so meditation rests on the wager that if you can simply break the tyranny of your ordinary awareness, the rest will begin to unfold itself. At first when you begin a practice of meditation, it feels like a place you go to. You may think of it as “my inner sanctuary” or “my place apart with God.” But as the practice becomes more and more established in you so that this inner sanctuary begins to flow out into your life, it becomes more and more a place you come from.”
― Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening

“Beneath the surface there is a deeper and vastly more authentic Self, but its presence is usually veiled by the clamor of the smaller “I” with its”
― Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening

“Jesus taught from the conviction that we human beings are victims of a tragic case of mistaken identity. The person I normally take myself to be—that busy, anxious little “I” so preoccupied with its goals, fears, desires, and issues—is never even remotely the whole of who I am, and to seek the fulfillment of my life at this level means to miss out on the bigger life. This is why, according to his teaching, the one who tries to keep his “life” (i.e., the small one) will lose it, and the one who is willing to lose it will find the real thing.”
― Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening

“What goes on in those silent depths during the time of Centering Prayer is no one’s business, not even your own; it is between your innermost being and God; that place where, as St. Augustine once said, “God is closer to your soul than you are yourself.” Your own subjective experience of the prayer may be that nothing happened—except for the more-or-less continuous motion of letting go of thoughts. But in the depths of your being, in fact, plenty has been going on, and things are quietly but firmly being rearranged. That interior rearrangement—or to give it its rightful name, that interior awakening—is the real business of Centering Prayer,”
― Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening

“The practice of meditation is indeed an authentic experience of dying to self ... it is like a "mini-death," at least from the perspective of the ego ... We let go of our self-talk, our interior dialogue, our fears, wants, needs, preferences, daydreams, and fantasies. These all become just "thoughts," and we learn to let them go. ... In this sense, meditation is a mini-rehearsal for the hour of our own death, in which the same thing will happen. There is a moment when the ego is not longer able to hold us together, and our identity is cast to the mercy of Being itself. This is the existential experience of "losing one's life." ...

Just as in meditation we participate in the death of Christ, we also participate in [Christ's] resurrection. At the end of those twenty minutes or so of sitting, when the bell has rung, we are still here! For twenty minutes we have not been holding ourselves in life, and yet life remains. Something has held us and carried us. And this same something, we gradually come to trust, will hold and carry us at the hour of our death. To ... really know this is the beginning of resurrection life.”
― Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening

“it’s difficult to put words around an experience that is deeply personal and intuitive. But in general, you’re in the right ballpark if you sense your aim as “to be totally open to God.” Totally available, all the way down to that innermost point of your being; deeper than your thinking, deeper than your feelings, deeper than your memories and desires, deeper than your usual psychological sense of yourself—even deeper than your presence! For ultimately, what will go on in this prayer is “in secret”
― Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening

“Ephesians 3:16–19 (NIV), which is really the charter of contemplative prayer: I pray that out of his glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled with the very nature of God.”
― Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening

“Only from the level of spiritual awareness do you begin to see and trust that all is held in the divine Mercy. But once grounded in that certainty, you can begin to reach out to the world with the same wonderful, generous vulnerability that we see in Christ.”
― Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening

“At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our son-ship. It is like a pure diamond blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it, we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely. I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.3”
― Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening

“contemplative prayer is simply a wordless, trusting opening of self to the divine presence. Far from being advanced, it is about the simplest form of prayer there is. Children recognize it instantly—as I did—perhaps because, as the sixteenth-century mystic John of the Cross intimates, “Silence is God’s first language.”1”
― Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening

“Prayer is not a request for God’s favors. True, it has been used to obtain the satisfaction of personal desires. It has even been adopted to reinforce prejudices, justify violence, and create barriers between people and between countries. But genuine prayer is based on recognizing the Origin of all that exists, and opening ourselves to it. . . . In prayer we acknowledge God as the supreme source from which flows all strength, all goodness, all existence, acknowledging that we have our being, life itself from this supreme Power. One can then communicate with this Source, worship it, and ultimately place one’s very center in it. Piero Ferrucci, Ineffable Grace (p. 254)”
― Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening

“Centering Prayer is aimed at healing the violence in ourselves and purifying the unconscious of its hidden and flawed motivation that reduces and can even cancel out the effectiveness of the external works of mercy, justice, and peace.”
― Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening

“In prayer we acknowledge God as the suprenie source from which flows all strength, all goodness, all existence, acknowledging that we have our being, lift, itself from this supreme Power. One can then communicate with this Source, worship it, and ultirmatelil place one"s eery center in it.”
― Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening