St. Teresa of Avila wrote: 'All difficulties in prayer can be traced to one cause: praying as if God were absent.' This is the conviction that we bring with us from early childhood and apply to everyday life and to our lives in general. It gets stronger as we grow up, unless we are touched by the Gospel and begin the spiritual journey. This journey is a process of dismantling the monumental illusion that God is distant or absent.
Thomas KeatingWhat I really wanted was to fall in love with God. It's amazing what obstacles there are within us, or at least in me, that seem to slow this process.
Thomas KeatingTechnology isn't fulfilling its promise of unlimited progress and solving every problem through technology. With the Enlightenment and its aftermath, there already was a general loss of confidence in the Western religions.
Thomas KeatingLent is a time to renew wherever we are in that process that I call the divine therapy. It's a time to look what our instinctual needs are, look at what the dynamics of our unconscious are.
Thomas KeatingOne of the values of centering prayer is that you are not thinking about God during the time of centering prayer so you are giving God a chance to manifest. In centering prayer there are moments of peace that give the psyche a chance to realize that God may not be so bad after all. God has a chance to be himself for a change.
Thomas Keating