The Human Condition
by Thomas Keating
One of the founders of the
Centering Prayer movement, Thomas Keating offers a reflection on
contemplative prayer, the human search for happiness and our need to
explore the inner world. The spiritual search for God, he says, is also
the search for ourselves. Drawing from Christian mystical tradition,
Eastern and Orthodox religions, contemporary psychology, and the recovery
model, Keating shows how the practice of contemplation can become a
process of psychological and spiritual transformation. And as we move into
a global culture, this process is of greater importance than ever. He
begins with the great questions of self-knowledge: "Who are you?
Where are you hiding?" The seemingly fruitless search for human
happiness hinges on the answers to these: "Where am I in relation to
God, myself and others?" and "Whoever I think I am, I am
not." The contemplative journey is "divine therapy" for the
illness of the human condition, a way to open up gradually to our own
wounded unconscious. It is an excuse in letting go of the false self,
which is the only self we know, and in realizing that God is the only true
security. Divine love is the full affirmation of who we are. Writing with
simplicity and depth, Keating brings common sense, extraordinary
enlightenment, and fifty years of experience to the topic and the practice
of discovering the presence of God.
Introduction
to the book. In 1997, Father Thomas Keating became the
fifth person to deliver the Harold M. Wit Lecture on Living a Spiritual
Life in the Contemporary Age at Harvard Divinity School. Born in New York
City in 1923, Father Keating entered the Cistercian Order in 1944 in
Valley Falls, Rhode Island. Fourteen years later he was appointed superior
of St. Benedict's Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado, and in 1961 he was
elected abbot of St. Joseph's Abbey, a large Cistercian monastery in
Spenser, Massachusetts. After two decades in Spenser, he returned in 1981
to Snowmass, where he established a program of intensive ten-day retreats
in the practice that he calls Centering Prayer, a contemporary form of
Christian contemplative tradition. Father Keating is one of the architects
of the Centering Prayer movement and of Contemplative Outreach, a support
system for those on the contemplative path. He is also a former chairman
of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue, which sponsors exchanges between
monks and nuns of the world's religions; a member of the International
Committee for Peace Council, which fosters dialogue and cooperation among
the world's religions; and a member of the Snowmass Interreligious
Conference, a group of teachers from the world's religions who meet yearly
to share their experience of the spiritual journey in their respective
traditions. He is the author of several best-selling books on the
contemplative tradition, including Open Mind Open Heart, The Mystery of
Christ, Invitation to Love, and Intimacy with God. When he visited Harvard
Divinity School, Father Keating delivered two lectures and led a service
of Centering Prayer in the chapel of Andover Hall. In an era when the co
modification of spirituality in America seems inescapable, his presence
and message were genuinely inspiring and encouraging. Thus he fulfilled
the desire of Harold M. Wit, who established the lecture series in 1988,
to bring to Harvard "unusual individuals who radiate in their
thought, word, and being those spiritual qualities and values that have
been so inspiring and encouraging to me along my path." The
publication of these lectures gives me the chance once again to
acknowledge with gratitude Harold Wit, a generous benefactor of Harvard
Divinity School, and to thank Thomas Keating for bringing together in
these lectures the Christian contemplative tradition with insights from
contemporary psychology. May his lectures serve as a guide to "true
peace, sane counsel, and spiritual comfort in God," in the words of
The Cloud of the Unknowing, the fourteenth-century English spiritual
classic on which Centering Prayer is largely based. Ronald
F Thiemann Harvard Divinity School Cambridge, Massachusetts
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