To my brethren on this thread:
I have read the posting that Odo did about Centering Prayer, what it “is and is not.” This is the standard introduction by all authors who write about this particular method. It is also the standard introduction used by the authors who write about the non-Christian versions of this meditation method.
I have had the particular grace to have had solid Catholic and Orthodox spiritual directors for the better part of the last 40 years. None of them has ever recommended this or similar methods. Each has insisted that I follow time-tested, saint-proven methods in prayer and meditation. In fact, when this book that I cited came into print I was guided to spend considerable time with it.
Recently my parish became a magnet for this sort of thing—Centering Prayer--when we had a new pastor assigned. In addition to this prayer method, we have had a steady dose of what Pope St. Pius X condemned in Pascendi Gregis, the condemnation of Modernism. I have even been told that the truth depends on who is talking, not some objective source like the Church. We don't even have to listen to the Pope, the bishop, or even a priest anymore because we can listen to the voice inside when we “center.”
For example, it is one thing to say that I am part of the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church. It is also correct to say that I have Christ dwelling in me because of grace or deification or by my reception of the Eucharist. But it is, to my mind, something quite different to say that I AM CHRIST, stating it as an equality. Many have developed an almost pantheistic view of what God is and who they are from the revelations they have supposedly received.
I'm sure that there are many sincere people who have begun their journey in this direction. But I've seen enough damage to people who have gone down this road and don't think that it was an accident that I had spent so much time with this study over a decade ago. Perhaps there is something there, but when people who have studied the New Age and who are recognized as expert by the Church warn against it, I listen and pass along what I have been told.
I use the Jesus Prayer, the Byzantine prayer book, the Desert Fathers, the Philokalia, and most importantly the Scriptures. There are many time-tested, saint-proven sources of spirituality in the wide treasury of the Catholic Church (and I mean to include my Orthodox brethren in this). However, Thomas Merton, Teilhard de Chardin, Dom Bede Griffiths, Fr. Edward Hays, Fr. M. Basil Pennington, Fr. Anthony de Mello, and others don't seem to me to be on the same track as traditional Catholicism or Orthodoxy.
I write because I care. I care because I've already lost a brother in the flesh.
BOB