The Contemplative Journey: Volume 2

From infancy, Father Keating teaches, we accumulate emotional layers, or programs, as a result of traumatic experiences. The practice of Centering Prayer engages directly with the unconscious and loosens old traumas that hinder your spiritual development. This form of divine therapy draws from a contemplative method that has brought profound inner transformation into the lives of thousands of practitioners.

Two internationally known spiritual guides explore integrating our inner and outer journeys. They challenge us to confront our inner and social violence and bring it to healing and transformation in a sacred and ecumenical context. Rohr and Keating each give insights on awakening to God's friendship, coming to know God and ourselves, growing in love through centering prayer, facing evil around us and our demons within us as well as opening our deep selves to divine therapy which heals our wounds.

The 13th-century mystic Meister Eckhart was the most brilliant Christian scholar of his day, but he was also legendary for the way that he opened listeners to the direct experience of God during his public talks. Today, his written wisdom remains alive as ever, ready to illuminate us. With Meister Eckhart's Living Wisdom, James Finley, one of today's best-known teachers of the Christian contemplative tradition, invites us into Eckhart's insights in the same way that this luminary teacher delighted in sharing them.

New Seeds of Comtemplation is one of Thomas Merton's most widely read and best loved books. Christians and non-Christians alike have joined in praising it as a notable successor in the meditative tradition of St. John of the Cross, the Cloud of Unknowing, and the medieval mystics, while others have compared Merton's reflections to those of Thoreau.

In his best-selling book Falling Upward, Richard Rohr talked about ego (or the False Self) and how it gets in the way of spiritual maturity. But if there's a False Self, is there also a True Self? What is it? How is it found? Why does it matter? And what does it have to do with the spiritual journey? This book likens True Self to a diamond, buried deep within us, formed under the intense pressure of our lives, that must be searched for, uncovered, separated from all the debris of ego that surrounds it.

Franciscan priest Richard Rohr feels that there is no more challenging spiritual issue than the “problem of the self". Most of contemporary spiritual teaching, he believes, is still trying to inspire and fortify the private self, the autonomous "I". Even much church work is trying to evangelize and sacramentalize what many would call "the false self." Basic transformation is not expected, but merely a new set of beliefs and practices or loyal membership in a new group.

The Trinity is supposed to be the central doctrine grounding Christianity, yet we're often told that we shouldn't attempt to understand it because it's a mystery. But what if we breached that mystery? How might it transform our relationship with God?

In 1967 Thomas Merton traveled to Thailand, seeking to further the Buddhist-Christian dialogue that was his passion. This beloved Trappist monk and explorer of the inner life died unexpectedly on that trip but not before writing a final letter to his brothers at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. In the letter Merton wrote that he now realized that everything he had been searching for could be found at his own hermitage, within the Christian tradition.

First presented at a series of popular retreats, this full audio program takes a participatory approach to Merton's most useful teachings, helping us to discover our true self...to disappear into God; to be submerged into his peace; to be lost in the secret of his face, as Merton said, through daily practices including contemplation, prayer, and faith. In the end we find ourselves in what the Taoist sage Chuang Tzu called the Palace of Nowhere, where all the many things are one.

We often think of saints as rare individuals whose gifts far exceed our own, and St. Francis is no exception. But for Fr. Richard Rohr, a prolific author and renowned speaker, the life and teachings of this beloved figure offer an authentic spirituality we can all embody.

If you put aside what you think you know about Jesus and approach the Gospels as though for the first time, something remarkable happens: Jesus emerges as a teacher of the transformation of consciousness. Cynthia Bourgeault is a masterful guide to Jesus' vision and to the traditional contemplative practices you can use to experience the heart of his teachings for yourself.

A single purpose lies at the heart of all the great religious traditions: awakening to the astonishing reality of the true nature of ourselves and the universe. At the same time, through centuries of cultural accretion and focus on myth and ritual as ends in themselves, this core insight has become obscured. Here Ken Wilber provides a path for reenvisioning a religion of the future that acknowledges the evolution of humanity in every realm while remaining faithful to that original spiritual vision.

In the first half of life, we are naturally preoccupied with establishing ourselves; climbing, achieving, and performing. But as we grow older and encounter challenges and mistakes, we need to see ourselves in a different and more life-giving way. This message of falling down - that is in fact moving upward - is the most resisted and counterintuitive of messages in the world's religions. Falling Upward offers a new paradigm for understanding one of the most profound of life's mysteries: how those who have fallen down are the only ones who understand "up".

Teresa of Avila's Interior Castle is one of the most celebrated books ever written by a mystic on abiding in union with Christ. Writing in obedience to the requests of two of her superiors, the humble 16th century Spanish sister protests "...for the love of God, let me get on with my spinning and go to choir...like the other sisters...I am not meant for writing; I have neither the health nor the wits for it."

Centering prayer is the path to a wonderful and radical new way of seeing the world. It is not, as is sometimes thought, simply an act of devotional piety, nor is it a Christianized form of other meditation methods. Cynthia Bourgeault here cuts through the misconceptions to show that centering prayer is in fact a pioneering development within the Christian contemplative tradition.