This is the third book on Centering Prayer I've read (four if you count The Cloud of UnKnowing). The first was one of Thomas Keating's (Centering Prayer's guru grand-daddy). This was a while ago and my introduction to the concept. I didn't find it all that exciting. Then I read David Frenette's The Path of Centering Prayer. More helpful (meaning I was in a more receptive place) but almost entering cribbed from Keating. Bourgeault's text is my favorite, though I don't really get what she (or anyone else) means when they invoke the concept of nonduality.

The book is divided into three parts. Part one describes the 'how' of Centering Prayer, describing the method of centering prayer and rooting it in the Kenotic pattern of Christ. Part two is more abstract. Here Bourgeault discusses nonduality, the prayer of the heart (drawn from the Orthodox Mysticism St. Symeon the New Theologian) and insights from the neurosciences. Part three gives a partial commentary on The Cloud of Unknowning and what it has to teach us about Centering Prayer (and Christian, apophatic mysticism in general).

I think Part 1 is the best short intro to Centering Prayer I've read, though I am more of a dabbler in the practice than a regular practitioner. Part two has got some ideas worth pondering and part three makes me want to read The Cloud again. On the whole, I love that Bourgeault locates Centering Prayer firmly within the Christian tradition (even though she borrows terms like nonduality from the East and Integral Spirituality). She offers a thoughtful and engaged analysis of the Christian mystical tradition and the ways that it paved the way for the flowering of Centering Prayer. I still have questions about it (as I tend to like a more explicitly Christocentric approach) but found her a good conversation partner. ( )