Q: While practicing Centering Prayer I suddenly had a very intense feeling of terror come and a sense that I was dying and losing all my loved ones and things I enjoy in the world. I tried to settle into it but it is so intense and I am afraid it will not end. I have been feeling nowadays an emotionless center within me also. Like beneath whatever I am doing there is a sense of just a having no emotion. When I put attention on it I feel fear, sometimes it subsides if I put attention on it and it calms down. Is there any advice you can give about what’s happening? I am afraid I am destroying my life.
A: Thank you for reaching out. Your email was poignant and deeply resonated with me. My heart wants to say, ‘keep going, you’re really being loved into life,’ while I hear your experience of dying. Paradoxical for sure. But the transformative process that Centering Prayer is at the service of, does just that — asks us to let go of everything we think we are and what we think we need. Radical, invincible trust in the Divine Presence becomes the path as the ‘unknowing’ grows.
Be gentle with yourself. The terror doesn’t last, nor does it always require us to move into it. Your acknowledging it may be enough for now. It’s like going up a winding road with a sheer cliff on one side. We see it, but keep our eyes on the road. Whatever we focus on grows. So gently, one breath at a time we consent/surrender to this mystery loving us.
Fr. Thomas Keating taught that the psychological experience of contemplative prayer often feels as if we’re getting worse. But actually we are just being invited to open our eyes more clearly in the inner room and see the elaborate defense apparatus we’ve been operating out of since childhood. It may have served us well then, but we don’t need it anymore. The death of the false self feels like dying … but hold out for the emergence of the true self that has been hidden the whole time.
Often our emotions seem flattened. No worries, they do resurface.
Finally, Fr. Thomas’ poem, “The Last Laugh,” from The Secret Embrace, sums this up for me. Here it is below.
Please feel free to reach out to me if I’ve totally missed the mark or can be of any help.
Blessings,
Mary Dwyer
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The Last Laugh
I watch the seductive dance of everyday life,
But the desire to join has ceased.
Two crucial questions arise:
Where are you?
Who are you?
Nowhere is my destination.
And no one is my identity.
My daily bread is powerlessness.
Temptations can be overwhelming.
Gone is every hope of help.
An abyss opens up within me.
I am falling, falling,
Plunging into non-existence.
Is this annihilation?
Or, is it the path to the Silent Love
That we are?
As the false self disappears,
The true self is born.
Then the dance of human nature with
That Which Is
Takes on a wholly new perspective,
And those who take part in it
Are overwhelmed with laughter
Too deep to be heard.
(Thomas Keating, “The Last Laugh,” from The Secret Embrace)
