In the next several newsletters, I will share quotations and paraphrases from one of my root teachers, Thomas Keating, whose approach is at the heart of RCMR5 –

[From an early age] our self-image, self-worth, begins to be identified with the false self that arises from our complicated emotional development.

Our false self develops from instincts that have been deprived or damaged into programs for compensation, then into energy centers which are motives around which our actions and thoughts revolve. These energy centers have, as their center, the selfish drive or demand or “should” for compensatory experiences that are translated, roughly, as seeking more and better pleasure out of life, more and better security symbols, and more and more power and control over situations, other people. And this syndrome of attitudes is thoroughly established as a value system in the unconscious and is encouraged in our conscious life by most cultures.

Just look at advertising. It usually appeals to one of those three energy centers: power, pleasure, security, or the attitudes of the local culture. So, with this in mind then, if we could take a vacation from the thought system of our ordinary waking psychological experience [such as through centering prayer] it would be therapeutic.

–Thomas Keating

In the next several newsletters, I will share quotations and paraphrases from one of my root teachers, Thomas Keating, whose approach is at the heart of RCMR5 –

The False Self System consists of the instinctual need for security that the infant has, and the instinctual need for pleasure and for independence, in some degree, for controlling the environment that the child experiences.

This instinctual need develops a little later in the child’s development, more or less at two to four years of age.  Instead of these instincts developing normally and being integrated into the next levels of human developing consciousness, they frequently become fixations.

And the body and mind continue to grow according to the pattern of the blueprint in the brain, but the emotional area of the previous level of consciousness remains intact or fixated in a certain attitude of making demands to compensate for perceived deprivations.  These demands involve compensation for real or imaginary privations of the instinctual need in question, whether it was security, power, control, affection, esteem, or pleasure.

–Thomas Keating

In the next several newsletters, I will share quotations and paraphrases from one of my root teachers, Thomas Keating, whose approach is at the heart of RCMR5 –

Now the practice of this tradition which we call Centering Prayer consists, oddly enough, in taking a vacation from ourselves.

If you go to Miami or Alaska or wherever you like to go for your vacation, you take yourself with you. And the self that we know best is the False Self System that has developed from early childhood into the age of reason.

The False Self has been somewhat damaged or distorted [and never healed] by the vicissitudes of early childhood. This is especially true of experiences of a traumatic emotional type. 

At an early age, we’re not able to handle or to integrate traumatic experiences with the resources we had, into the rest of our daily life. And so we repressed these traumas. The residue of that damage remains in our nervous system as stress or tension or blocks to the free flow of the natural and divine energies that are unconscious and our psyches possess.

[Centering Prayer or “divine therapy” as Keating often called it, addresses these traumas and eventually heals them.]

-Thomas Keating

In the next several newsletters, I will share quotations and paraphrases from one of my root teachers, Thomas Keating, whose approach is at the heart of RCMR5 –

Let us now turn your attention to the value of contemplative prayer and practice as an indispensable means for developing the contemplative dimension of the Gospel and those dispositions that we just recorded as the self-in-God and God-in-us.

This is the essential starting point in regard to a mature attitude and a spontaneous and energetic attitude as we commence the spiritual journey.

Centering Prayer is really a term to describe the traditional meaning of contemplation. The word “contemplation” has received many meanings in recent times and so Centering Prayer is intended to be an effort to identify one meaning of that traditional and classical term. And that meaning is its original meaning as “resting in God,” as that gradual evolution of acquaintanceship and friendship with God that moves to the maturity of communion.

Contemplation is a deeper level of relating to God than conversation or thinking about him. It is being with God and resting in him beyond concepts, however good, and beyond particular acts, except to wait upon God in loving attention during the parameters in which one devotes oneself to this prayer interview or encounter.

–Thomas Keating

In the next several newsletters, I will share quotations and paraphrases from one of my root teachers, Thomas Keating, whose approach is at the heart of RCMR5:

An attitude toward God that is very easily communicated to the child who can’t make a lot of distinctions is that God is a judge, with his gavel raised, always about to come down with a final judgment of “guilty.”

Once again, God is presented with overtones of fear, to which the primitive psychology of the child who already fears the unknown, the darkness, the bogeyman, and the images of television of these space creatures which are hazardous–these are the things that are awakened and easily attached to the idea of God.

Then you get the idea of God with an emotional charge to it or resonances that are like a parasite idea. So that whenever one thinks of God, off goes the parasite idea, the corollary in the emotional judgment says: “This God, whatever they say about him in church, is dangerous. I heard about him when I was an emotional and fragile child and I know him as a tyrant, as a policeman, and as a judge ready to condemn me to hell forever even though  I’m only a child.”

This [ideas of God] is not only a caricature…it’s a monster! And we need to erase it totally from our emotions. 

–Thomas Keating

In the next several newsletters, I will share quotations and paraphrases from one of my root teachers, Thomas Keating, whose approach is at the heart of RCMR5:

We can’t just blame our religious educators [rewards in this life and the life to come for doing the right thing]. They received their information from a previous generation. And there are historical situations that brought about this gradual reshaping of the model Scripture into a model that was influenced by philosophy and culture and presuppositions of the time.

What happens to someone who is not worried about guarantees for the future? Obviously they’re somebody who trusts in God and who knows that if they do what they can to love and serve God and serve their neighbor right now that God is going to take care of their future. And they don’t want a future that isn’t what God wants for them. So why bother about it? And they look to find God more and more in the present moment which is the only place he [God] can be found.

Since God is eternal, he’s not a future being–he’s present now. And our discipline should concentrate on the work that is to be done now to develop a mature Christian attitude and relationship to the Ultimate Reality whom Jesus reveals as Abba; that is, the God of infinite compassion, who is passionately…concerned and present to the human family which manifests his inner life more than any other aspect of creation.

So God is, especially by the Incarnation, manifesting his identification with the human condition. hence our attitude toward him has to be governed by that revelation and not by some philosophy or some scientific discovery which might change in the next generation.

–Thomas Keating

In the next several newsletters, I will share quotations and paraphrases from one of my root teachers, Thomas Keating, whose approach is at the heart of RCMR5:

In The Western Model of God [God outside of self and self outside of God], we even had the idea that God must reward us now. And this blissful piece of ignorance or misreading of the Gospel is what justifies some of our other brothers to claim that one of the rewards of practicing the Gospel is that you’ll be well-to-do and rich and that you won’t have to worry about anything, and that trials don’t happen to those who serve God. This is the teaching.

I don’t know what book of Scripture says that. But anyway, this idea that if we initiate good works, like give alms to people generously, then God should reward us–but preferably here and now as well as in heaven–by a nice property, a nice house, a great professional success, marvels in our ministry, et cetera. As far as I can see, the Scriptural Model offers no such promises…

In fact, in the Beatitudes, which is God’s idea, or at least the idea of happiness that Jesus puts before us, the happiest people are those who are persecuted, and the poor in spirit who have nothing, and above all those willing to suffer affliction for God’s sake are the example of the people whom God is most interested in.

Just pick up the Psalms anywhere. The hero of the Psalms is obviously the person who suffers affliction for the sake of God or another, and this–the needy, the poor, the oppressed, the afflicted–is constantly the concern of the Psalmist, and the Psalmist as expressing the divine concern for the welfare, the protection, the deliverance of the poor. So how you can get riches as a reward for something out of the Gospel is something beyond me!

–Thomas Keating

In the next several newsletters, I will share quotations and paraphrases from one of my root teachers, Thomas Keating, whose approach is at the heart of RCMR5.

Who initiates good works? In the “Western Model,” it was the self-outside-of-God.

In the “Scriptural Model,” it’s the self-in-God and the Spirit of God in us [who initiates good works].  As Paul says: “You are the temple of the Spirit” who dwells in you as the living and dynamic source of inspiration, who is communicating the gifts by which we can translate the divine will and love into daily activities on a whole range of different activities from prayer to action to service.

And now the emphasis is on listening and responding to the Spirit rather than our own bright ideas and initiation all kinds of projects that we then expect God to back up which he never thought up in the first place. Hence this is extremely important. So now in the context of Scripture recovered since Vatican II, we learn to listen to the Word of God and not try to tell the Word of God, so to speak, what we’re going to do and he darn well better reward us.

In the Scriptural Model, the emphasis is not on the reward of the self, in this life or the next, but on the effort and journey to unite ourselves and to love God here and now, right now, and to serve other in need, and to love our neighbor as ourselves, now. So notice again, the focus is about 180 degrees different…totally opposite, almost, from the other [Western Model]. 

–Thomas Keating

In the next several newsletters, I will share quotations and paraphrases from one of my root teachers, Thomas Keating, whose approach is at the heart of RCMR5.

OK, now let’s look at the “Scriptural Model” [as opposed to the Western Model that we have explored the last three weeks].

Now the Scriptural Model which was recovered through the efforts of many Christian scholars prior to Vatican II, but received an emphatic endorsement in the great documents of Vatican II. This return has enabled us to recapture once again the basic Gospel teaching and its values from the pure source. In other words, we don’t have to depend on somebody’s homilies or on translations of the Gospel.

The best translations of the Gospel now put us in closer contact with the word of God than any generation since the Apostles. Because we now have, through the scholarly process of examining the cultural background, the meaning of words, the evolution of cultures… we now have a better understanding of what the mind of the scriptural author was when they wrote these various passages; and the possibility now of daily, constantly encountering the word of God in the most authentic texts that are possible with all the resources of hermeneutics and modern scholarship. 

So, what does this [Scriptural] model turn out the be? It is almost 180 degrees in the opposite direction from the “Western Model” with which most of us were afflicted. 

And what does Scripture say? It says that interior motivation is more important than the external acts that we perform; just the opposite of the “Western Model” which puts emphasis in the other direction. 

–Thomas Keating

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In the next several newsletters, I will share quotations and paraphrases from one of my root teachers, Thomas Keating, whose approach is at the heart of RCMR5.

The Western Model of God [self-outside-of-God and God-outside-of-self] espoused the idea of external works and piling up certain merits in order to require God, it would seem, to give us his reward in heaven. And so this is the mentality that seems to have gone with what would represent, in those days, a good Catholic [Christian] life. 

Well, you can touch off the various points: to get to church on Sunda and Holy Days of Obligation; to fast and abstain on the appointed days (every Friday); to contribute to the support of the pastors; not to marry non-Catholics [non-Christians], to go to the Eucharist once a year and confession prior to that; and, perhaps, if you are very devout, to join the Altar Society or the Holy Name Society; and then be sure to call the priest on time so that you could receive the last rites, pass into glory, and to receive your stockpile of merits which you have accrued numerically, you might say.

Now this, of course, is a little caricature of what a good Catholic [Christian] was in those days, but not too far off the beam. And this was the fruit of the whole idea of merits (which has some merit) was misunderstood in this context and exaggerated out of all proportions and with a certain blissful disregard of what Scripture has to say about these things. 

And finally, the emphasis of the “Western Model” was on getting guarantees of future reward and happiness rather than on being concerned for loving and being united to God in this life and in serving others in need.

–Thomas Keating

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In the next several newsletters, I will share quotations and paraphrases from one of my root teachers, Thomas Keating, whose approach is at the heart of RCMR5.

The Western Model of God [self-outside-of-God and God-outside-of-self] would suggest to someone engaged in trying to be united to God, or make oneself pleasing to him, that this would require efforts on our part in order to please God. And these efforts, since God is out there someplace, would obviously be the result of our natural capacities, efforts, and talents.

Now with this model in mind goes certain attitudes. And these attitudes have been delineated, it seems to me, rather accurately [for those who received this kind of religious education in their childhood] by a professor of Creighton University, Fr Richard Hauser:

1) IN CHRISTIANITY MOTIVATION IS EVERYTHING

2) JESUS CONDEMNS RELIGIOUS PRACTICES MOTIVATED ONLY BY EXTERNAL SHOW

3) THE IDEA THAT WE MUST EARN GOD’S LOVE IS CONTRARY TO SCRIPTURE

These dispositions counter the Western Model of God syndrome that says external acts are more important than internal motivations. The emphasis on external acts is clearly contrary to the whole of the Gospel, starting with Jesus’ battle with the Pharisees.

–Thomas Keating

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In the next several newsletters, I will share quotations from one of my root teachers, Thomas Keating, whose approach is at the heart of RCMR5.

Prior to Vatican II, the general sense or environment in which religious education was communicated seems to have been more of a philosophical model stemming from Descartes, with his dualistic view of reality and reinforced by Newtonian physics with its idea of God out there managing the world from a distance, and its corollary, that those who wanted to be united to God would have to climb an infinite number of stairs in order to get to wherever heaven was.

In other words, heaven was identified as a kind of geographic location, somewhere out there someplace. Nobody knew where it was. and so its access was difficult, even in a space ship. We might call this model of Christian education, the “Western Model,” which was characterized by the self-outside-of-God and God-outside-of-the-self. [Thomas Keating goes on to say that this great chasm or gap is what centering prayer attempts to bridge] 

–Thomas Keating

Open Mind Open Heart by Thomas Keating

Intimacy with God: An Introduction to Centering Prayer by Thomas Keating

Manifesting God by Thomas Keating

“The Monk Manual was born out of a personal need. You see, I’m not naturally very good at living in the present moment or trusting the process of life. I needed a tool to help me, a system that could make living with peaceful being and purposeful doing just a little bit easier.”

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