Stillness · “Stillness Reveals”
Centering Prayer
To consent to God’s presence and action within by gently releasing every thought via a ‘sacred word,’ resting in silent, imageless openness.
Keating’s Centering Prayer in 4 steps: (1) Choose a short sacred word as the symbol of your consent to God’s presence and action.
(2) Sitting comfortably, eyes closed, settle and gently introduce the word.
(3) Whenever you notice you’ve engaged a thought — sensation, feeling, image, reflection — return ever-so-gently to the sacred word.
(4) End in silence for a couple of minutes. ~20 minutes, twice daily.
What it is
Centering Prayer is the method Thomas Keating codified to teach Christians the church’s own ancient tradition of silent, wordless prayer. Crucially, it is not concentration, visualization, or petition, and the sacred word is not a mantra.
It is a prayer of consent: you sit in silence and consent to God’s presence and action within you, using a single sacred word only as a gesture of letting go whenever you notice you have become engaged with a thought.
Keating’s whole reframing turns on this word “consent” — the work is not effort or attention-holding but a repeated, gentle yielding. It operationalizes stillness (The Inner Creates the Outer), release-to-receive (The Inner Creates the Outer), resting in the present (Everything Happens in the Now), and the inward turn of attention (The Inner Creates the Outer).
(Distinct file note: the generic covers the method as co-developed by Keating with Meninger and Pennington and its Cloud of Unknowing roots. This file isolates Keating’s own four guidelines and his “prayer of consent” framing as published in Open Mind, Open Heart.)
The Method
Keating’s four guidelines (faithfully described from Open Mind, Open Heart and Contemplative Outreach’s The Method of Centering Prayer):
- Choose a sacred word as the symbol of your intention to consent to God’s presence and action within. A short word chosen prayerfully — e.g. God, Jesus, Abba, Father, Mary, peace, love, trust, silence — kept the same throughout the period (and ideally across sessions). It is a symbol of consent, not something to think about or analyse.
- Sitting comfortably and with eyes closed, settle briefly and silently introduce the sacred word. Keating’s image: introduce it as gently “as laying a feather on a piece of cotton.”
- When engaged with your thoughts, return ever-so-gently to the sacred word. Keating defines “thought” broadly — “body sensations, feelings, images, and reflections,” even spiritual experiences. You do not fight or banish thoughts; the moment you notice you are caught in one, you reintroduce the sacred word as a gesture of letting go and re-consenting. His rule of thumb: resist no thought, retain no thought, react to no thought; just return to the word.
- At the end of the prayer period, remain in silence with eyes closed for a couple of minutes. Keating suggests slowly praying the Lord’s Prayer interiorly to transition gently back. Dose: two periods of about 20 minutes daily (morning and evening) is the standard he taught. (Sourcing note: the four guidelines and the “feather on cotton” image reflect Keating’s published teaching, attributed; the protocol is faithfully described, not reproduced.)
Source & Lineage
Centering Prayer was developed at St. Joseph’s Abbey (Spencer, Massachusetts) in the mid-1970s by Trappist monks William Meninger, Basil Pennington, and Thomas Keating (1923–2018).
Keating became its principal teacher and theologian, publishing Open Mind, Open Heart (1986) and co-founding Contemplative Outreach (1984) to spread the method and Lectio Divina worldwide.
Its roots are the Christian apophatic tradition: the anonymous 14th-c. The Cloud of Unknowing, the Desert Fathers and John Cassian (a single repeated phrase), and John of the Cross (union beyond images).
Common refinements
Turning the sacred word into a mantra. It is reintroduced only when you notice you are engaged with a thought — not repeated continuously. Constant repetition makes it a concentration practice.
- Fighting or analysing thoughts. Engaging a thought, even to push it away, keeps you in it; just return to the word.
- Chasing peace or insight. The aim is consent, not relaxation or problem-solving; chasing experiences is a subtle grasping.
- Reading “nothing happened” as failure. Apophatic prayer often feels dry or dark; faithful sitting is the success.
- Quitting when feelings surge. Surfacing emotion (“unloading”) is expected — sit gently with it, within the safety limits below.