Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening by Cynthia BourgeaultMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I have been growing (and benefitting from) more extended times of Centering Prayer for over two years now. Since June, I have been part of a Zoom group from California that meets twice a week (Centering Prayer - Mercy Center Burlingame (mercy-center.org). I love the accountability, and we have been discussing Open Mind, Open Heart: The Contemplative Dimension of the Gospel every other week. I think that book is a better introduction to Centering Prayer than this one. It is more practical with the "how-tos." This one is much more into the theological and psychological implications.
One of the leaders of my California group read from Bourgeault's book. So I read it. It expanded upon some things that I was wondering about when I read Open Mind, Open Heart, but it also got into all this other stuff in the middle of the book that wasn't what I was looking for (it was interesting but a bit too heady).
The end of the book had a thorough explanation of Welcoming Prayer which was just touched on in a CD lecture series I listened to on Centering Prayer. The CDs did not include the speaker's handouts. So I was a bit lost on the Welcoming Prayer part. This book had a detailed diagram about it, and I found that super helpful. So, this helped me like the book by the end.
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