Kess Frey

Centering Prayer is a type of Christian meditation which can add depth to all types of prayer, and emphasises a quiet, resting and receptive openness to God. Since its emergence about forty years ago, it has been variously criticised or misunderstood, and this book aims to build a healing bridge of mutual respect and understanding. The book is written for anyone interested in Centering Prayer, to find out more about this dynamic way of having a relationship with God, and also as an invitation to its critics, to reconsider the approach in a spirit of reconciliation.

Human spirituality can grow and evolve over our lifetime, and this insightful book looks closely at the process of spiritual evolution. The author asserts that, through the love of Christ, human consciousness can evolve into divine consciousness. He considers various spiritual practices, including Centering Prayer, Welcoming Prayer, forgiveness prayer and creative self-expression, which can help unload the 'unconscious', and aid spiritual growth.

Centering Prayer is an approach to prayer which involves resting in God in non-conceptual contemplation, and is open to anyone seeking a deeper spirituality. This book looks in particular at how Centering Prayer can be effective at all stages of evolving consciousness. Evolving consciousness, as identified by Integral Theory, refers to different levels of human spiritual deepening. Integral Theory also proposes that when people are unaware of the stages of consciousness, they tend to believe that the perspectives of their own stage(s) are the only true or realistic views, which can lead to confusion and conflict. This book seeks to bring harmony and understanding to people at different levels and in different religious and spiritual traditions.

This unique book offers a detailed and revealing look into the hidden workings of the Holy Spirit in the human soul's inner depths. Read slowly and thoughtfully, this book elevates the mind, offering what is, for most of us, a new vision of our evolving life in Christ, and Christ in us. The essence of Centering Prayer is consenting to God?s presence and action in us and in our life. The work of the Spirit aims to bring us into the fulfillment of our true self as a spiritual being. The resultant growing freedom to consent becomes cause for increasing peace and joy in the soul. This is a gift of divine love that brings us step by step into the fullness of our life in Christ -- which is a continuing rebirth into the limitless light, life, and love of the divine consciousness.

A REFLECTION ON CENTERING PRAYER'S CONCEPTUAL BACKGROUNDInspired by Thomas Keating's conceptual background for Centering Prayer, this book begins by using the biblical story of Adam and Eve to describe four basic parameters that frame the universal human condition. These parameters or "Fruits of the Fall" are: death/change, sex/desire, good/evil choices and our existential aloneness/incompleteness apart from God. Within the framework of these parameters we experience our basic instinctual needs and their distortions into emotional programs for happiness--which happens when needs are wounded, unmet, or perceived as unmet. Human Ground, Spiritual Ground identifies our basic inborn needs as security/survival/safety; sensation/pleasure; affection/esteem/approval; power/control; and intimacy/belonging. These needs pertain to both our human and spiritual growth. The book describes them in detail, giving examples of their healthy expressions as well as their pathological distortions into self-centered agendas for happiness that form the basis of the false-self system, the key to all of which is our inner motivation. In addition to describing the primary obstacles to human spiritual growth, Human Ground, Spiritual Ground addresses how these unconscious obstacles are overcome through the daily practice of Centering Prayer and the divine action working in us and in our life. The ultimate fruit of this inner purification, healing and transformation process is the shifting of our inner center of identity from human ground into spiritual ground and our life in Christ--which is participation in the divine consciousness. See also Kess Frey's more recent work for Portal Books, Centering Prayer and Rebirth in Christ on the Tree of Life: The Process of Inner Transformation (2013).