The Path of Centering Prayer: Deepening Your Experience of God

by David Frenette, Thomas Keating (Foreword)

In the teachings of Jesus, there are prayers, and then there is prayer ―the silent, loving communion with the divine, beyond words or ritual. With Father Thomas Keating’s book Open Mind, Open Heart , hundreds of thousands discovered the transformative power of Centering Prayer as a form of Christian meditation. Now, with The Path of Centering Prayer , Keating’s senior student, friend, and advisor David Frenette reveals the profound depths of this practice, making it easier for meditators to deepen their connection with God.

Beginning and experienced practitioners alike will benefit from this fresh voice, at once eloquent and clear, as they

The key insights and principles of centering prayer
• Guided instruction in the sacred word, sacred breath, and sacred glance practices
• Gentleness and the way of letting go and letting be
• Experiencing a deeper sense of God in meditation and in everyday life
• Many other contemplative practices and teachings founded upon the wisdom of Fathers Thomas Keating and Thomas Merton
Has your spiritual path grown routine or unfulfilling, or is it at a crossroads for new discovery? For all Christians who seek to move closer into the presence of the divine, The Path of Centering Prayer offers guidance in this rewarding and time-honored meditation practice, to help break through obstacles and illuminate the way.

Genres: Spirituality, Prayer, Nonfiction, Christian, Meditation, Christianity

264 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2012

Reviews

[Elizabeth Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm so relieved to have finished this book. Frenette's work was recommended to me as good guidance for deepening my centering prayer practice, and it is, really--I've taken his advice into my silent time and it helps. I plan to return and reread chapters as my practice reaches new stages.

But I want to scream because this book, like so many good, wise, spiritual books, is completely devoid of personality and color and humor and embodied sensory detail. Frenette's website is called "Incarnational Contemplation," a conjoining of terms I truly love and have adopted as the name of my path, but he has yet to learn how to express in writing an incarnate contemplative experience and this diminishes the transmission of his ideas. I wish he'd take a writing class from Teresa of Avila.

Pure awareness is the effect in consciousness of eternity breaking into time.
--David Frenette, The Path of Centering Prayer 50

The English word attachment comes from the old French word attachier, which means “to be nailed to.” Actually, thoughts are not an obstacle in contemplation—only the thoughts to which you are nailed.
--David Frenette, The Path of Centering Prayer 165

[Laurie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book on centering prayer. It is divided into two parts. The first part is more of a how-to section and the second part emphasizes how the guidelines of centering prayer apply to living a contemplative life. The author points out in his introduction that readers can read either section first. They are to be taken hand-in-hand. I found this to be very true. I read the book through to the end, but the second part made me want to go back and read the first again. I had several aha's. I'll be referring to this book often. There was a lot to chew on

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

I may have had an easier time with this book had Frenette replaced the word “God” with “Isness”, “Life,” or “Reality.” But Frenette is writing for a Christian audience and so it goes. He does see God as “the transcendent mystery of life” and the practice of Centering Prayer as assenting to mystery, to God’s presence and action within. Trusting God, life, reality to guide you is key to this practice.
Who or what God is changes for us and we are intending to open to the dynamic mystery with don’t know mind, from a place of rest. We are to rest even from seeking God, rest from trying so hard, indeed letting rest itself come to us. We find God, Life, Reality in every thing that happens to us, in every involuntary feeling we have. “Perfect prayer is not about realizing yourself; perfect prayer is about God realizing God-self---the Trinity---in you.”
Christ consciousness is letting go of separateness from God, from others, from all of life. “The greatest hindrance to realizing your union with God is the thought that you are separate from God.”
There is finally just God living in God. No effort is needed. “Pure love involves receiving a reality that already exists in you.”
Retreats or classes on contemplative practices “are more about helping you to recognize how you naturally rest in God rather than showing you a failsafe strategy for
achieving God’s peace.”
Well worth the effort involved, those with an interest in contemplative practice will find much to deepen their insight.

[Rich Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

“This book looks at ways to deepen your centering prayer practice in order to help orient you to receive the gift of contemplation.”

Book Structure

The Path of Centering Prayer is nicely divided into two parts:

Part I – Deepening Your Centering Prayer Practice
Part II – Contemplative Attitudes

Let me share my five takeaways from this wonderful book.

The Sacred Word

“The sacred word is often a more natural way of practicing centering prayer for auditory learners.”

“The sacred breath is often a more helpful symbol for kinesthetic learners.”

“The sacred glance is often a more helpful symbol for visual learners.”

Everyone seems to learn in a different manner. I started my practice with the use of a sacred word. While I read a Richard Rohr meditation, I came across a beautiful Jesus icon. I began to use this interior image as my sacred word and have continued to do so to this day. I center with my eyes closed.

My sixteen year old daughter practices centering prayer with me. She is fearful that she will fall asleep so I taught her the sacred glance. With her eyes open, she stares at a spot three to five feet in front of her during our silent sits.

I encourage you to find the appropriate sacred symbol as your intention to open to the presence and action of God.

Purification

“The most important thing that is purified in contemplation is your sense of being separate from God.”

I sit with Jesus. When I arise from my sit, I do not leave Jesus. I like to think that I sit with Jesus so I can walk with Jesus in my everyday life. I am never separate from God. Jesus is my constant companion and partner.

Gentleness

“Gentleness is necessary for the deepening of centering prayer.”

“Let contemplation come effortlessly to you, as a continual gift out of the gifting nature of God.”

“Contemplation is effortless in the same way that the falling of snow is effortless.”

“In contemplative practice, you gradually find that you are drawn into letting your effort burn away, letting it evaporate in the radiant light of God’s gentleness.”

“The presence of God is continually acting in you, but very gently.”

“How does it look when the contemplative attitudes of gentleness and effortlessness begin to surface in life?”

God is a gentle and loving presence. God is very patient. God’s patience is evident by the amount of time that transpired between the birth of the universe, the creation of the earth and finally the Incarnation of God in human form: Jesus.

I can take this same gentle, effortless and patient attitude from my silent sit and use it in my everyday life: work, home and in the community. It is a paradox. I seem to be much more productive when I act in an effortless, gentle and patient manner.

This effortless, gentle and patient disposition is a wonderful gift of contemplative prayer!

Let Go

“Letting go is at the heart of centering prayer.”

“As centering prayer deepens, letting go yields to letting be—being in God’s Being.”

“The contemplative attitudes of letting go and letting be open you to God’s nature, which is love.”

“Letting go and letting be in life mean letting God become the source of every moment, every relationship, and every activity.”

“You learn to float in God in prayer in order to swim with God in life.”

During centering prayer I move from letting go to letting be. I allow myself to rest in God’s presence. I trust that all I need at this very minute is to be held and engulfed by the loving arms of God who is Love.

I can take this same attitude with me into my non silent times of the day. If I am anxious or worried, I will take a silent pause, let go and rest in God’s Being. When I am stuck on a problem at work, I will pause, let the problem go, and rest for a minute in God’s Love.

As David mentions, we learn to float in God in prayer in order to swim with God in life. Our silent sits serve as valuable practices for our daily life encounters. My silent sits teach me how to live each day!

Embrace Your Emotions

“By resisting emotions, you also resist the transforming action of God.”

“Embracing is an active contemplative attitude that helps you shift into a deep perspective of faith.”

“Feelings are a gift, a part of human experience to be embraced.”

“In other words, one of the best ways of letting go of an emotion is simply to feel it.”

I remember my first sit after my father passed away. As I began my prayer time, I sobbed and allowed myself to grieve. I utilized my sacred icon to open to the presence and action of God within. I continued to cry, let go, and open to the presence and action of God within over and over and over again. Finally I rested in God who is Love and transcends my emotions.

Next Steps

“Let one of these attitudes stay with you, as a gift that you take back with you into your practice, to guide you more deeply into contemplative relationship with God. The greatest gift on the contemplative path is God. May you realize your life in God’s dance. May you embrace and be embraced by your own true partner.”

“The contemplative path brings you first from seeing God as a thought of yours to the experience that God is beyond thoughts, then to the greater mystery of realizing yourself as a thought in the mind, being, and emergent life of God.”

Pick one or two of the contemplative attitudes mentioned in Part II of this book and allow it to move from your prayer time and penetrate your everyday life.

As you deepen your centering prayer practice your life and God’s life will be more and more intertwined!

I will continue to come back to this powerful book. I encourage you to read The Path of Centering Prayer.

[Jo Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book that is meant to be read several times in order to take in all the information. I so with the author had put at least chapters 9 and 10 first. My yellow highlighter started marking many parts in those chapters. I found the initial parts of the book difficult to get through. Finally, meaning came towards the end.

[Catharine · Rating 4 out of 5]

After having read it through once to get a feel for the material included, it will, I believe, be a good handbook to which to return. Discusses several different phases/seasons/techniques that apply at different times. Probably also useful as a resource when teaching Centering Prayer.

[Lory Hess]

I read about half of this in December 2021 and decided I was not advanced enough in my Centering Prayer practice yet to really benefit from it. So I hope to come back to it later when I might be able to relate more to the descriptions, rather than just taking them in as cognitive content.

[Agatha Glowacki · Rating 4 out of 5]

great intro to CP

[Niels · Rating 2 out of 5]

Way to heady for me.

[Amos Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read at least a dozen books on Centering Prayer and this is the deepest. Frenette is one of Thomas Keating closest students of Centering Prayer—he was with Keating on some his first Centering Prayer retreats. Frenette must make Keating proud. This is self-evident in the forward written by Keating. Here is a student who has taken Centering Prayer to the next level. Frenette not only understands the deepest states of Centering Prayer experientially (distinctions between union where there is still awareness of a self and full union where there is no awareness of self). He also has a facility with language that surpasses many practitioners of Centering Prayer. I hope that Frenette writes more books because we need his depth of consciousness and his nondual awareness within Christian Tradition to help awaken it from the inside.

I love how Frenette, like his teacher Keating, uses the rich and inexhaustible depths within Christian tradition as a resource for understanding the heights and depths of awareness in prayer. Frenette doesn’t feel the need to dig outside of Christian tradition. He digs one well, the Christian well deeper and deeper and deeper, until he arrives at wellsprings of water, which will quench the thirst of the most committed students of Centering Prayer.

This is a book that I have poured over and underlined. It is one that will be placed at the top of my bookshelf and which I will read again and again. I can’t recommend this book enough, especially for the adept student of Centering Prayer, who practiced for years.

Now when a wild eyed long-term student of Tibetan Buddhism who is also fascinated with Christian Mysticism talks to me (one did two weeks ago), I will have a book to recommend! I admire Frenette’s commitment to prayer and his beautiful examination of the depths of silent prayer within Christian tradition!

-Amos Smith (author of Healing The Divide: Recovering Christianity's Mystic Roots)

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Centering Prayer is a monologistic (one word) method of contemplative prayer. This book gives an overview of the practice, what the author has learned from personal experience and on retreat with his mentor, Father Thomas Keating. Part I of the book describes centering prayer and ways to deepen in the practice (if you are practitioner who is stuck). Part II focuses on postures of prayer: consent, opening and recognizing, simplicity, gentleness, letting go and letting be, resting, embracing and being embraced, integrating life and contemplation.

I am not a regular practitioner of centering prayer, though I am interested in cultivating a constant awareness of the divine in prayer, and have attempted to enter into this type of prayer (there is an app for that). I appreciate what Frenette said about the posture and attitudes that enable true contemplation, though his description of the method of centering prayer, still felt opaque to me. And he quotes Keating so much I wondered if I should just read his book instead.

[Contemplative Outreach Hawaii · Rating 4 out of 5]

Suggested for those continuing a practice of Centering Prayer. David Frenette says in his introduction "Although designed to show advanced practitioners how to deepen their Centering Prayer practice, The Path to Centering Prayer can also be used by beginners looking to establish such a practice. The book offers guidance in this practice, to help break through obstacles and illuminate the way.

Some Centering Prayer groups read this book in their weekly group meetings and participates found it helpful in supporting and enhancing their daily Centering Prayer practice.

David Frenette attended the first intensive Centering Prayer retreat that Fr. Thomas Keating offered at the Lama Foundation in San Cristobal, New Mexico in 1983, and has been an involved member with Contemplative Outreach in many ways ever since.

[Paul Cassidy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been reading this on and off for a while. Chapters that were useful attracted me and those that were not distracted me. So I see that as a blessing. Some relevant advice to where I am now. And to my deepening awareness of the presence of God and what that means I terms of developing the non dual mind and sense of God being all. I’d say this is not for the beginner. But for the person who is on the Centering journey but needs some insight and help along the path. Gave it a 5 because there are some insights I would not have had otherwise. “Remember, in centering prayer you are saying yes both to God’s presence and God’s action. God’s action includes the purification and transformation of your idea of who God is, your felt ability to say yes to God, and sometimes even your capacity to pray.”

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book on Centering Prayer is clearly valuable, and will require more than one reading. A substantial portion went over my head the first time through. I don't know if this is attributable to the author's style or just where I am in my practice/development. In contrast, Cynthia Bourgeault's _Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening_ struck me as crystal clear, deeply wise, and immediately accessible. I'm not able to assess yet what accounts for the difference.

[Sue · Rating 2 out of 5]

Finding this rather tedious and repetitive (attempt at being hypnotic?) so far. However, I am not willing to put it in my abandoned list just yet. I read a little at a time, hoping the gist of it may become meaningful to me as I go along. Quiet and solace in prayer is definitely a good thing, but the "how to" of it isn't yet compelling to me.

[Anne Marie]

The only thing I did not understand is why people didn't know this spiritually and naturally. I am very happy to see these techniques are used and valued. Change happens when you just pray with intent, and with your own words. As God says, Pray consistently. Make it become habit instead of negative thinking. You will see your life change for the better.

[Frances · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book for people who ask is this all there is to Christianity. The monks from the desert hermits to today follow the path to contemplative prayer and this is how to get started and grow deeper.

[Cheryl Buhre · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not an easy read. I started over many times because I was determined to learn what centering prayer was about it. I am glad I continued to plow through it. Because of multiple stops and starts it took me two years to complete the book.

[Josephine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intense, dense and informative

[Tim Mansfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

The only book about the advanced practice of Centering Prayer. David has practiced for over 25 years and the depth of his experience shows in this excellent book.