Open Mind, Open Heart: The Contemplative Dimension of the Gospel
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
This book is designed to initiate the reader into a deep, living relationship with God. Written by an acknowledged spiritual master, the book moves beyond “discursive meditation and particular acts to the intuitive level of contemplation.” Thomas Keating gives an overview of the history of contemplative prayer in the Christian tradition, and step-by-step guidance in the method of centering prayer. Special attention is paid to the role of the Sacred Word, Christian growth and transformation, and active prayer. The book ends with an explicit treatment of the contemplative dimension of the gospel. Open Mind, Open Heart will take readers into a world where God can do anything, into a realm of the greatest adventure—“Where one is open to the infinite and hence to infinite possibilities.”
Save more when you purchase this book as part of the Thomas Keating Collection.
Key Features
- Provides instructional guidebooks, workbooks, and daily devotionals to ease you into silent worship
- Combines contemporary psychological wisdom with time-tested spiritual strategies
- Presents valuable insights and practical application
Top Highlights
“Centering prayer is not a way of turning on the presence of God. Rather, it is a way of saying, ‘Here I am.’ The next step is up to God. It is a way of putting yourself completely at God’s disposal; it is to submit to God’s intentionality, which is to give Himself completely to you.” (Page 22)
“Centering prayer is consenting and surrendering to God. The spiritual journey does not require going anywhere because God is already present and within us. It is a question of allowing our ordinary thoughts to recede into the background and to float along the river of consciousness without our noticing them, while we direct our attention toward the river on which they are floating. We are like someone sitting on the bank of a river and watching the boats go by. If we focus intentionally on the river rather than on the boats, the capacity to disregard thoughts as they go by will develop, and a general kind of attention will emerge that might be called spiritual attentiveness.” (Page 20)
“The chief thing that separates us from God is the thought that we are separated from Him. If we get rid of that thought, our troubles will be greatly reduced. We fail to believe that we are always with God and that He is part of every reality. The present moment, every object we see, our inmost nature are all rooted in Him.” (Page 33)
“Denial of our inmost self includes detachment from the habitual functioning of our intellect and will, which are out inmost faculties. This may require letting go not only of ordinary thoughts during prayer, but also of our most devout reflections and aspirations insofar as we treat them as necessary means of going to God.” (Page 13)
Praise for the Print Edition
Thomas Keating, Cistercian monk, former abbot and spiritual advisor, is the father of the Centering Prayer Movement, which during the past thirty years has attempted to recover Christian contemplative prayer from its long exile. Mysticism has been regarded with suspicion in the churches since the end of the Middle Ages, when its proponents St. John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich, among others, described in detail the pathways of contemplative prayer. . . . I wish this book had been around when I set out on my own spiritual path. It would have saved me many alarums and excursions.
—Maggie Helass, commontheology.com
I had been intrigued by Christian meditation all of my adult life. Reading Thomas Merton got me interested in the practice of silence, but I didn’t know how to do it. When I was in seminary, meditation was occasionally encouraged, but those offering the encouragement seemed to imply that I would know how. I didn’t. It would be awhile before someone showed me how to be silent in the presence of God. That person was Thomas Keating. I was introduced to him almost twenty years ago at the end of the last Servant Leadership class I attended in DC. Gordon Cosby pointed to a stack of books and with a twinkle in his eye said, ‘If you’ll take one of those books and work with it, you will save thousands of dollars in therapy.’ The book was Open Mind, Open Heart and it changed my life.
—Sammy Williams, pastor, Northminster Church
About Thomas Keating
Thomas Keating is known throughout the world as an exponent, teacher, and writer on contemplative prayer. A Cistercian (Trappist) monk of St. Benedict’s Monastery, Snowmass, Colorado, he is a founder of the Centering Prayer Movement and of Contemplative Outreach. He is the author of numerous books, particularly of the trilogy Open Mind, Open Heart; Invitation to Love; and The Mystery of Christ. Among his most recent books is The Daily Reader for Contemplative Living, compiled by S. Stephanie Iachetta. He served as abbot at St. Joseph’s Abbey in Massachusetts for 20 years before retiring to Snowmass, where he now resides.