Surrender · “Let Go to Receive”
The Welcoming Practice
To train the moment-to-moment reflex of letting go (kenosis) in the thick of ordinary life — meeting each rising reaction by relaxing the grip rather than clinging or clenching — so that ‘releasing’ becomes a habituated gesture, not just a meditation-cushion event.
In 5 lines: In the middle of ordinary life, catch the instant a reaction grips you — the tightening of anger, anxiety, wanting. Feel it briefly without clinging or clenching. Then make the small inner gesture of letting go — Bourgeault’s kenosis, self-emptying. Drop back into the moment, lower-maintenance, and do it again, thousands of times, till release is your default. It’s a practice, an action — not passivity.
What it is
Cynthia Bourgeault teaches the Welcoming Practice as the “active-mode” twin of Centering Prayer — a way to carry contemplation’s inner gesture off the cushion and into the friction of daily life. Where Thomas Keating’s Centering Prayer trains letting go of thoughts in silent sitting, Bourgeault’s emphasis is the witnessing, releasing reflex applied moment by moment to whatever rises — irritation in traffic, a sting of rejection, a surge of craving.
Her distinctive frame is kenosis (from Philippians 2, Christ’s “self-emptying”): she calls Centering Prayer “kenosis in meditation form,” and the Welcoming Practice is that same self-emptying let-go made a lived, habituated gesture. She is insistent on a point of vocabulary: this is a practice, not a prayer — to keep the stress on the action of letting go rather than passive acquiescence to circumstance.
The fruit, she says, shows in daily life: practitioners become “more flexible, lower maintenance, less insistent” — the small ego-grip loosening across thousands of ordinary moments. (The Inner Creates the Outer read inwardly: attention catches the contraction the instant it forms, and releases it.)
The Method
As Bourgeault teaches it (faithfully described, not reproduced):
- Catch the contraction in real time. In the middle of ordinary activity, notice the instant a reaction grips you — the flash of anger, anxiety, wanting, defensiveness — usually felt as a tightening in the body. The skill is early detection, mid-life, not afterward in retrospect.
- Feel it without clinging or clenching. Briefly let the reaction be there as sensation. Don’t repress it and don’t run the story; just witness the contraction.
- Let go — the kenotic gesture. Make the small inner motion of releasing — the same “letting go” trained in Centering Prayer, now aimed at this live reaction. Bourgeault frames it as kenosis: a self-emptying, an un-clenching of the grasping self.
- Use the release formula if helpful. As in the wider Welcoming lineage, you can let go of the underlying demands — for security, for esteem/affection, for control — but Bourgeault’s stress is less on reciting words and more on the felt, repeated gesture of release itself.
- Return, lower-maintenance, to the moment. Drop back into the activity with the grip loosened. Don’t dwell on having done it well; the point is to keep re-making the gesture, thousands of times, until letting go becomes the default response.
- Treat it as a practice, not passivity. Bourgeault is emphatic: this is an action you take, not resignation to circumstance. You may still need to respond or act outwardly — you’ve simply released the egoic contraction first.
Source & Lineage
Cynthia Bourgeault (b. 1947) is an Episcopal priest, retreat leader (The Contemplative Society), and a leading teacher within the Centering Prayer movement founded by Thomas Keating, with whom she worked closely.
Her books Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening (2004) and The Heart of Centering Prayer (2016) frame the whole path through kenosis (Christic self-emptying) and Christian nonduality, deepening Keating’s method with the Welcoming Practice as its daily-life arm.
She thus shares the lineage of Keating (Centering Prayer) and the Welcoming Prayer taught by Rohr/Mrozowski, but gives it a distinctive kenotic, gesture-of-release emphasis.; cf.
Common refinements
Confusing it with passive acquiescence. Bourgeault’s whole vocabulary fight is here: it’s a practice (action), not surrender to circumstance. You release the inner grip and then respond as needed.
- Treating it as identical to Centering Prayer. Centering Prayer is the silent-sitting cushion form (letting go of thoughts); the Welcoming Practice is its daily-life, in-the-moment application to live reactions. Use the right tool for the setting.
- Reciting words mechanically. The formula can help, but Bourgeault’s accent is on the felt gesture of release; don’t let it become rote.
- Suppression in disguise. Letting go is not stuffing the feeling down; it’s witnessing the contraction and un-clenching it. If you’re white-knuckling “I let go,” you’re still clenching.