What Is Contemplative Prayer?Contemplative Prayer (or Centering Prayer) is a type of mystical meditation leading into an altered state of consciousness. Contemplative Prayer is also known as Centering Prayer, Listening Prayer, Breath Prayer, and Prayer of the Heart. Contemplative Prayer is often used as a spiritual 'discipline' or a 'formation' practice and is one of the many mystical practices that are not taught in the Bible yet continue to be practiced within the movement called Contemplative Spirituality or the Spiritual Formation movements.
Where did Contemplative Prayer Originate?Father Thomas Keating, the abbot of St. Joseph’s Abbey, couldn’t help noticing the attraction that the exotic religious practices of the East held for many young Roman Catholics. To him, as a Trappist monk, meditation was second nature. He invited the great Zen master Roshi Sasaki to lead retreats at the abbey. And surely, he thought, there must be a precedent within the church for making such simple but powerful spiritual techniques available to laypeople. His Trappist brother Father William Meninger found it in one day in 1974, in a dusty copy of a 14th-century guide to contemplative meditation. “The Cloud of Unknowing.” Drawing on that work, as well as the writings of the contemplatives Saint John of the Cross and Saint Teresa of Avila, the two monks began teaching a form of Christian Meditation that grew into the worldwide phenomenon known as centering prayer. Twice a day for 20 minutes, practitioners fond a quiet place to sit with their eyes closed and surrender their minds to God. Source- Newsweek, Aug 29, 2005 (Jerry Adler) In Search Of The Spiritual by Jerry Adler
Is Contemplative Prayer Biblical?Contemplative Prayer is NOT Biblical Prayer, Rather it is a type of mystical meditation leading into an altered state of consciousness. It goes beyond thought, providing an experiential union with so-called God or with nature producing body sensations, feelings, images, and reflections. Both Centering Prayer and Contemplative Prayer are based on 'experience' rather than “sound doctrine”. People want something they can experience or be swept of their feet. Jesus said: Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. - Matthew 7:13-14 KJV
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