In the darkest hour of the darkest age, Christian monks developed a meditation tradition unique in the Western world. A 14th-century author described their profound mystical experience as entering "the cloud of unknowing." Yet during the 500 years after this great monastic flowering, this precious tradition - and the direct path to union with God it described - was virtually lost.For decades Father Thomas Keating, together with other monks, examined this great question: could anyone enter the "cloud of unknowing" through a prayer practice specifically created to attain it? Keating reached back in time for clues about the prayer forms of the Christian mystics. He synthesized his work into a "Centering Prayer" method that has helped thousands of seekers travel the contemplative path to divine union.
From infancy, Father Keating teaches, we accumulate emotional layers, or "programs," as a result of traumatic experiences. The practice of Centering Prayer engages directly with the unconscious and loosens old traumas that hinder your spiritual development. This form of "divine therapy" draws from a contemplative method that has brought profound inner transformation into the lives of thousands of practitioners. The Contemplative Journey is Father Thomas Keating's great masterwork: a complete curriculum devoted to a Christian path for achieving the "still point" of resting in God. Each volume includes a study guide.