Customer Reviews

Centering Prayer and the Healing of the Unconscious

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The author takes the basic tenents of Centering Prayer and Contemplative Prayer to create a valuable discussion of the role of the unconscious in the development of the authentic or true self. For those with psychological backgrounds, a stumbling block to understanding the work of Father Thomas Keating/Centering Prayer may be the challenge of finding a conceptual paradign that integrates the complexity of the operation of the human mind with one's spiritual quest to commune with and respond to the Divine. Father O'madagain suceeds in explaining how one's troublesome uncounscious motivations and actions can be revealed and potentially healed through Centering Prayer leading to Contemplative spirituality. This book is of interest to those who know the work of Father Keating and will entice those who have yet to acquaint themselves with his work. Best of all is the integration of the unconscious into the search for the authentic self.

I have read numerous books on centering prayer by Thomas Keating, Basil Pennington, William Meninger and many other over the last 10 years and have discussed them with an interested group. I just finished reading "Centering Prayer And The Healing Of The Unconscious" last night. It is one of the best books that I have ever read on Centering Prayer. I would suggest it to anyone who may be on the spiritual journey whether they know it or not.

I found this book good. But the topics seemed to skip around. Sometimes the author would talk about psychological topics, sometimes introduce the philosophy and practice of CP. I found the sections of apologetics for CP to be pretty important. It's too bad how CP seems to bring up great suspicion with certain Catholics. The comparative religious sections comparing CP to TM and zazen were great. It helped show me why my practice of zazen dried up a year or two ago, and I was drawn into changing my practice, and why I have been drawn to the esoterism of the west more and more. I think that this book still lacked a coherent psychological study of the mechanism of the healing of the unconscious. I would like to see a Christian who is a psychologist or psychotherapist study this matter. Someone with specific psychological training.
One big reservation I had, is that the author seemed to be speaking to orthodox Catholics specifically. He would speak of an issue and talk about what the "Church" teaches specifically. There was a note in the end of the book about how Ken Wilber's model is based on man evolving from simpler life forms, and the author said that this is of course not what the Church teaches. This reminds me of how Meister Eckhart got in trouble for saying that Genesis was never supposed to be taken literally.