Quarantine and Covid-19 can leave us feeling cramped and isolated. Forced to spend large amounts of time at home, it can feel like those four walls just keep getting closer and closer! Many of us are now doing everything significant in life in one space: school, work, recreation, exercise, etc. Things we used to do in other spaces and places now must be done in one spot.
This makes Centering Prayer all the more important. Centering Prayer is about creating experiences of expansion and limitlessness. This can feel especially helpful during a time when we’re having experiences of restriction and limits.
One of the most creative authors to describe Centering Prayer was Teresa. Teresa of Avila, a contemplative nun and one of the most renowned Christian mystics wrote Interior Castle at the request of her trusted confessor in 1577 in order to explain to the nuns of her Discalced Carmelite reform that they might expect on their journey with God. In Interior Castle, she describes the soul as a massive fortress where God lives:
“I began to think of the soul as if it were a castle made of a single diamond or of very clear crystal in which there are many rooms just as in Heaven there are many mansions.” (Teresa 41)
“Let us now imagine that this castle, as I have said, contains many mansions, some above, others below, others at each side; and in the center and midst of them all is the chief mansion where the most secret things pass between God and the soul.” (Teresa 42)
“You must not imagine these mansions as arranged in a row, one behind another, but fix your attention on the center, the room or palace occupied by the King.” (Teresa 52)
One of her points is that each of us has an interior life. It’s our soul-life. And it is nearly limitless! In your exterior life you may be spending hours in a cramped apartment, a small house with roommates, or your home with lots of family members. But you have the potential to experience an interior life which is like a massive castle with many rooms.
Teresa writes about the expansiveness of the soul:
“I can find nothing with which to compare the great beauty of a soul and its great capacity.” (Teresa 41)
“In speaking of the soul we must always think of it as spacious, ample and lofty; and this can be done without the least exaggeration, for the soul’s capacity is much greater than we can realize … “ (Teresa 52)
You have an interior life which is spacious, ample and lofty. It has a capacity far greater than you realize.
And prayer is the way to enter that expansiveness:
“As far as I can understand, the door of entry into this castle is prayer and meditation … “ (43)
What Teresa meant by prayer and meditation is largely what has come to be known as Centering Prayer. Centering Prayer is non-verbal. It’s not us talking to God in prayer. It’s just us being with God in prayer. It’s spending time in silence with God. And one of the things that happens in divine silence like this is an experience of expansion. We begin to recognize the vast measure of our soul and of God. We experience an inner sanctuary we can enter into at any moment during the day.
It takes time to reach this point. Silence is foreign to many of us. The moment we close our eyes, thoughts pour forth and it can be challenging to still them. But if you stay with it, eventually you will enter into this spaciousness with God. And you’ll find yourself growing in your ability to pause during the day and re-enter this great and wide interior space with God.
