Book Reviews
Open Mind, Open Heart, by Thomas Keating, Continuum, 9780826418890, pp 190
Reviewed by Maggie Helass
MY 20th Anniversary Edition of this book vaunts ‘half a million English copies sold’.Which indicates a healthy revival of Christian mysticism, and possibly heralds a reversal of the exodus of spiritually- minded westerners to Eastern religion since the 1960s.
Thomas Keating, Cistercian monk, former abbot and spiritual advisor, is the father of the Centering Prayer Movement, which during the past thirty years has attempted to recover Christian contemplative prayer from its long exile.
Mysticism has been regarded with suspicion in the churches since the end of the Middle Ages, when its proponents St John of the Cross,Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich, among others, described in detail the pathways of contemplative prayer.
Centering Prayer is a method which exhumes contemplative prayer from the treasury of medieval monasteries, and restores this spiritual tradition to ordinary people – where it belongs.
Unfortunately we are like starving
people when it comes to
spiritual things
This is a work book, intended to show the ways to establish oneself in the contemplative dimension of the Gospel – that is, to be born anew into a transformed state of consciousness.
Descriptions of the method of Centering Prayer make use of modern psychological insights in order to throw light on dangers to the psyche which may be encountered along the way – which are amply but archaically described in the spiritual classics.
The practice of Centering Prayer involves the revival of our spiritual faculties, much attenuated by disuse; the gentle but firm unmasking of the false self, to which we are all inordinately attached; and a slow initiation into silence – God’s first language.
“As you persevere you will gradually develop new habits and new capacities, one of which is the ability to be conscious of two levels of awareness at the same time,” Keating writes.
St Benedict’s Monastery at Snowmass, Colorado, has hosted retreats on Centering Prayer for three decades, and this edition of the book features some frequently asked questions from retreatants, which are particularly useful in translating an ancient discipline into the 21st Century.
In Centering Prayer the chief act of the will is not effort but consent. Transformation is com- pletely God’s work. This is a frightening prospect for westerners weaned on ideas of independence and control.
There are consolations along the way, but even these have to be jettisoned. “Unfortunately, we are like starving people when it comes to spiritual things,” writes Keating, “and we hang on to spir- itual consolation for dear life. It is precisely that possessive attitude that prevents us from enjoying the simplicity and childlike delight of the experi- ence”.
The fruits of contemplative prayer are not found in prayer itself but in daily life: “Your capacity to keep giving all day long will increase. You will be able to adjust to difficult circumstances and even to live with impossible situations.” This promise unmistakably bears the more acerbic message of the Gospel, rather than its commodification.
Keating writes: “Not contemplative prayer, but the contemplative state is the purpose of our practice… the permanent and abiding awareness of God that comes through the mysterious restructuring of consciousness”.
Centering Prayer is an exercise in letting go of everything including one’s self identity. It is not for the faint-hearted, but it leads to integration and healing at a profound level of consciousness.
“Eventually you will reach the centre of your human poverty and powerlessness and feel happy to be there.” This mirrors the gospel imperative to give up one’s life in order to find it.
A useful section on what Centering Prayer is not relates the discipline to current movements including alternative therapies, paranormal phenomenae, and the charismatic movement in the churches.
An overview of the development of contemplative prayer in the Christian tradition shows how spontaneous and affective prayer fell out of favour, and how our Cartesian-Newtonian devotion to the rational process further eroded our capacity for this form of prayer.
‘Guidelines for Christian life, growth and transformation’ wraps up this valuable little modern classic.
I wish this book had been around when I set out on my own spiritual path. It would have saved me many alarums and excursions.
