Centering Prayer and Sacred Breath

A member of my Centering Prayer group asked a good question about using the breath (versus a word) as one's "sacred symbol" during this silent meditative practice. (The sacred symbol is a word, breath, or inward glance that's returned to after one notices they've gotten caught up in actively thinking about something). Drawing on what I have learned over the years from guides like Thomas Keating, David Frenette, Cynthia Bourgeault, and others -- here is my response to her question. I hope it helps to clarify. 

Q: The whole discussion [we had about] using the breath...............there is a very subtle distinction of using the breath to escape our thoughts … or the practice of CP which sees the thoughts and then dismisses them; returning again and again to God.  Even returning to the breath is not what we want (that is my understanding); although it's helpful to get out of a mind maze.  We just want to be surrendered and open............yes?

A: Centering Prayer (CP) does hold a distinction between “returning to or noticing the breath” as a sacred symbol (an alternative to using a sacred word) versus actively following the breath. When the breath is a sacred symbol, it is used the same way as the sacred word is used: as an aid in returning to your intention to consent to God’s presence and action, i.e., to surrender. Then, once intention is re-established, the symbol doesn’t need to be continually repeated. Following the breath would bring “thoughts” and a kind of focus and concentration into the practice – and it would no longer be considered Centering Prayer. It could make a fine meditation practice, for sure – it’s just not CP as Keating taught it. And Keating might even suggest a “following the breath” practice as an optional companion “active” practice to CP – but he would hold that it is not the same thing as CP itself. He would likely say, “you might do this before or after your Centering Prayer.”

Christian Meditation, at least as I learned it when I tried it out years ago, is a mantric practice that includes the breath. One repeats the mantra “Maranantha,” (translation: “Come, Lord Jesus”) continually, inhaling on the first syllable (“Ma”), exhaling on the second syllable (“ra”), inhaling on the third syllable (“na”), & exhaling on the final syllable (“tha”). The current guide for the Christian Meditation lineage, Fr. Laurence Freeman, was good friends with Keating, and there are a few recorded dialogues with the two of them admitting that while CM & CP are distinct practices, they “lead to the same place.” CM is a focused, concentrative practice, while CP is a receptive, surrender practice. Concentrative practices, they both claim, become more receptive over time. (With CM, I heard, one notices over time that the mantra disappears of its own accord). Some people are more temperamentally inclined to concentrative practices, at least initially. I noticed that when my mind was especially busy and chattery, having the anchor of a mantric word-breath practice was very stabilizing.

Richard Rohr has also suggested using “Yahweh” as a kind of sacred meditative breath-word – inhaling on Yah and exhaling on Weh…. And then there’s James Finley, who suggested expressing “I love you” to God while exhaling, then receiving from God the same phrase “I love you” while inhaling.

Anyway, I have gone on and on…!  But these are fine questions to ask and good distinctions to make: ideas to take seriously and also to hold lightly, with good cheer, as Freeman and Laurence and Rohr have done in their dialogues with one another.

--Mary W.