Join us online for Centering Prayer Meditation m May 5pm via zoom with Kathryn Pile. ALL WELCOME!
Dear Meditators
This week we start a new series of meditations taken from Cynthia Bourgeault’s book, The Heart of Centering Prayer, where we’ll contemplate aspects of heart meditation that she clearly articulates from the ancient teachings of ‘Put your mind in your heart’ as opposed to hearing with contemporary ears and filters, heart equating with emotions..
This week, with its words on The Way of the Heart…
These words are intentional. It’s a time to experience where and if any word or phrase stands out for you. Take what you need of them into your silence as your centering prayer.
According to the great wisdom traditions of the West (Christian, Jewish, Islamic), the heart is first and foremost an organ of spiritual perception. Its primary function is to look beyond the obvious, the boundaried surface of things, and see into a deeper reality emerging from some unknown profundity, which plays lightly upon the surface of this life without being caught there. St Paul talked about this other kind of perceptivity with the term ‘faith.’ What it designates is not leaping into the dark, but a subtle seeing in the dark, a kind of spiritual night vision, that allows one to see with inner certainty that elusive golden thread glimpsed from with in actually does lead somewhere.
And again she says, we have faculties we are not using. Beyond the limited analytical intellect is a vast realm of mind that includes psychic and extrasensory abilities, wisdom, a sense of unity, aesthetic, qualitative and creative faculties, image forming and symbolic capabilities. They comprise a mind, moreover in spontaneous connection to the cosmic mind. This total mind we call ‘heart.’
As you begin to relax now in body and mind, slow your breathing, and enter your meditation, centering your prayer on your focused, sensitive, energized, and refined heart attunement, hear the words straight from Jesus (Matthew 5.8) “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” Sit in God’s presence and be purified.
Love and every blessing
Kathryn
Cynthia Bourgeault, The Heart of Centering Prayer, p 53-65.
We are using this app to assist.
https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/centering-prayer-mobile-app
Remember to watch an introduction to Centering Prayer Meditation with Kathryn. You can see it here
Let us know how you are finding this time – we always like to hear from you😊
Peace and health at this time
Irene & Damien