Thomas Keating

And it was in our first spiritual direction session.

That he introduced me to Thomas Keating's books on how to pray, which was on contemplative prayer.

So I read those books, devoured them, and then began my journey into contemplative prayer and then into the other practices.

The chaplain, as you shared with me, was a Quaker, correct?

And he's like, you need to practice prayers of protection so that you don't open yourself up to that realm.

But I never, I don't remember reading that at all, or I would never have done it, right? So somehow or another, I was blinded to that part of it.

And the terms that you were taught with Thomas Keating and Richard Foster also, they were all influenced by the mystics, the Catholic mystics of the Middle Ages, right? Yes, Desert Fathers and

others, yes.

So I was very happy to be there.

Yeah, I also met with Father Thomas Keating.

Oh, you

did?

And, you know, I had several opportunities to be with different, what do you call it, thinking people.

So that helped me a lot.

Among all of these people, Dalai Lama, Jetsun Ma, Thomas Keating, these are all people I love, by the way, and the Pope Francis, is there a memory that really stays with you?

And for me, everyone has got something to think, but I, you know, Pope Francis, maybe I had time with him more because of that.

And we suffer when we lose access to those capacities, including the ability to differentiate ourselves from others and develop independent judgment.

I've been reading a book by Trappist monk Thomas Keating recently, and something in his discussion of our desire to return to an original experience of unity has really been influencing how I understand a lot of this.

In-depth psychology, the maternal can represent an experience of belonging that precedes the development of an independent sense of self.

So, a young child initially experiences life through an intimate dependence on the people providing care, primarily the mother.

Well, yeah, and we could talk about this after the break if you want.

One writer who's been helpful to me here is Thomas Keating.

And in his paradigm, to kind of summarize it in three or four bullet points, one, he would say we're all born with three instinctual needs, what he would call safety and security, love and affection and power and control.

So every baby coming out of the womb needs love and affection they need to see the eyes of mom and dad staring down beaming love into their inner person with before they've ever done a thing you know just cost money and cause pain in the woman's body and all of that two you know safety and security they need to know that they're safe and secure and at peace and three power and control in a healthy way they need to have agency they can they can use their body they can run around they can do things they can change the world and change who they are Two, at some point in life, one or all three of those needs are sabotaged.

And for me, sometimes that quote just changed my perspective of everything.

And this quote was from Father Thomas Keating, who is a Trappist monk.

he created a process called Centering Prayer.

And his quote, I love this, is, your spiritual journey does not require us to go anywhere because God is already with us and in us, living God's life through us every morning.

And it does, it can speak to you.

And authors, you know, Rumi, Hazrat Inyat Khan, Khalil Gibran, Hafiz, Thomas Merton, Thomas Keating, these are tried and tested and they illumine our souls when we read them.

Look around, pick to one that you're drawn on, that you've always wanted to read and make a decision to give it a go.

There's nothing wrong with amplifying the call by going to those who've trod the road and use their wisdom.

Well, yeah, and we could talk about this after the break if you want.

One writer who's been helpful to me here is Thomas Keating, and in his paradigm, to kind of summarize it in three or four bullet points, one, he would say we're all born with three instinctual needs, what he would call safety and security, love and affection and power and control.

So every baby coming out of the womb Needs love and affection.

They need to see the eyes of mom and dad staring down, beaming love into their inner person before they've ever done a thing.

Um, similar, that, that m- mantric position, uh, tradition has variations.

One of those is the centering prayer of Thomas Keating and others where you- Mm-hmm ... say a word.

When you notice yourself not at, not, uh, being attentive to your presence or not being fully present to, to God's presence, you say the word to re- to return to that.

And the, the idea being that the muscle of returning gets, gets buffed up.

Your mind is gonna wander a thousand times.

Thomas Keating had this lovely line.

He said, "If your mind wanders a thousand times during prayer, that's a thousand chances to come back to God."

Yeah.