All spiritual traditions have developed apophatic spiritual practices. While the practices themselves are quite diverse, as we’ve seen in these posts, the intent of each remains the same; to awaken us to the observer-self we carry within ourselves.
All the practices follow the same thrust. We sit still. We quiet body consciousness. We learn to unclench our muscles and make relaxation once again, a normal posture. We tend to warehouse undigested mental and emotional experiences in our bodies. The apophatic practices teach us to release the clenching, to release the mental and emotional experiences that we handle in the clenching.
And these practices teach us to quiet our ego consciousness as well. We learn to watch our minds instead of being our minds. We learn to stand outside of our thoughts and watch ourselves have them.
Meditation is our core apophatic practices, and centering prayer the most practiced form of meditation.
In the last post, I linked you to a brief reading on examen of consciousness. Today, here are some links to help you understand centering prayer meditation.
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>> A couple of powerpoint lectures on centering prayer
>> A brief reading on centering prayer
>> A notebook of apophatic readings