Open Mind, Open Heart: The Contemplative Dimension of the Gospel

Open Mind, Open Heart: The Contemplative Dimension of the Gospel

by Fr. Thomas Keating

Continuum Publishing Co., New York  © 2001 (GT-Meditation) 148 pp.

This book is the first in a trilogy by Fr. Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk and priest, and is based on seminars on the practice of Centering Prayer. This is described as a contemporary method for renewing the contemplative prayer tradition (direct experience of divine union) prevalent in the first 1600 years of Christianity before being superseded by academic theological analysis. He describes Centering Prayer as "a discipline designed to allow ordinary thoughts to recede into the background and to float along on the river of consciousness without our noticing them, while we direct our attention toward the river on which they are floating."

Comments and questions from seminar participants about their developing prayer practice are also included, and illuminate how similarly we experience mental compulsions, attachments, or emotional programming as obstacles to deep contemplation.

This book has a writing style that is easy to follow (although with a Christian slant), and the prayer practice instruction is practical and simple. It was helpful, too, that the end of the book includes a basic summary of Centering Prayer, as well as tips on extending its effects into daily life.

-- reviewed by Mona Bronson