The Truth About Centering Prayer - Why It's Not Biblical

It's time for another edition of Fighting for the Faith, Monday, October 10th, 2011. I am so tempted to have today's edition be like dedicated to one topic. There is, I'm gonna tell you right at the beginning here that there is a chance that we will not discuss anything else except for this one topic today, and like not even do a sermon review.

Thank you for tuning in. You're listening to Fighting for the Faith. My name is Chris Roseborough, and I am your servant in Jesus Christ, and this is the program that dishes up a daily dose of biblical discernment, the goal of which, help you to think biblically, help you to think critically, and to help you compare what people are saying in the name of God to the word of God.

There is no shortage of crazy things being said out there. As a result, we have got to do the comparative work and ask the question, is what we're being taught or what you're being taught in your church really what the Bible teaches, or is it something else?

Is your pastor rightly handling God's word, or is he just, well, teaching something that's really odd or foreign to God's word? I mean, we live in a time where people think that they can modify the approach to how Christianity is to make it palpable and appealing to the culture.

Well, the culture has gone very mystical and very gnostic. Mysticism is a key component of the postmodern worldview, and as a result of it, the church, in their ever so vigilant striving to be relevant and say to the culture, oh, oh, oh, we've got, you want mystical experiences?

Well, we've got that, we've got that. Look, we can go back to medieval Catholicism and come up with mystical practices so that you can experience the ohm of Jesus, you know? Yeah, anyway, that, yeah, we got a problem.

That mysticism is not compatible with biblical Christianity, and we're gonna spend a lot of time on today's edition of Fighting for the Faith looking at this. Now, if you were listening to last Friday's episode of Fighting for the Faith, I highlighted the fact that the pastors .com website, this would be the website that features what is called Rick Warren's Ministry Toolbox.

Last Sunday, on October 2nd, they put out a resource called Centering Prayer, Trust Jesus Brings Transformation, and I spent some time basically walking through that, and what I wanna do today is walk through the opening part of that and basically show you, we're gonna take a journey, if you would.

We're going to go to a Cistercian monastery. We're gonna visit some Trappist monk today and hear from him regarding Centering Prayer. Why? Well, if you remember, when we talked about this last week, the article mentions the fact that there were three Cistercian monks who, in the 60s and 70s, who developed this thing called Centering Prayer, and so rather than going with the cheap knockoff, we thought we'd go right to the source, to the brand itself, and spend some time with you today, basically letting you hear from the monk's mouth, what it is that Centering Prayer is all about and what the spiritual goal is, and then what I'll be doing to provide the counterpoint.

The last word on this is gonna go to a gal by the name of Marcia Montenegro. Marcia Montenegro had spent some time in the New Age, and she wrote an article back in 2005 entitled Contemplating Contemplative Prayer, Is It Really Prayer?

And so I'm going to read her journal article from 2005, the Midwest Christian, I forget the whole, I'll have to look this up and get the whole name of it, but it's Midwest Christian something journal.

Anyway, I'm gonna be reading her article that she wrote about this, and well, basically, she's a Christian apologist who deals with the New Age, and give her the last word, if you would, at least from her expertise on the subject, but so that's what we're gonna do today.

Now, at the opening of the program, I said I reserve the right to only have this be the one topic we deal with today, rather than doing a sermon review and having this be a normal edition of Fighting for the Faith, reason being is that what I'm trying to do is put together a, make this as a standalone MP3 file that people can go to, and the reason being is because that article that was posted at Rick Warren's Ministry Toolbox as well, it's disappeared, apparently.

Yeah, so we're gonna talk about that here in a second. So this is not gonna be a normal edition of Fighting for the Faith, it's not a light edition, but what I would strongly recommend, taking notes on this edition of Fighting for the Faith, which means fuzzy bunny slippers and adult beverages probably would distract from what needs to be accomplished in the work that needs to be done in this edition of Fighting for the Faith.

I don't, I can't remember the last time I invoked anything of that nature, but this is important, this is super important. So let's dive into the program proper and let's talk about the topic. Yeah, there's our centering prayer music.

This is from the New Age Merlin's Magic Chakra Meditation Music, Heart of Reiki. It's driving me nuts. I'm getting sleepy. Anyway, sorry, sorry. I need to pick some better New Age music. Okay, so here's the deal.

Let me remind you of what happened last week. Last week at Rick Warren's Pastors .com website from the Rick Warren Ministry Toolbox, an article was posted entitled, Centering Prayer, Trust Jesus Brings Transformation.

This was written by a gal who, well, let's just say that there's good reason to suspect that she's a pastrix, and so she's the one who actually wrote this, but the Rick Warren Ministry Toolbox Twitter account tweeted out a link to it, and the name of it was Centering Prayer, Trust Jesus.

Now, I wanna read to you, not the how-to, but where this gal, Stacy Smith, claims this all came from, and we're gonna ask a couple of kind of hard-hitting questions up front as we then wander into the history of this and let one man who is responsible for developing this speak for himself as to what this thing is all about.

So Stacy Smith, writing at Rick Warren's Ministry Toolbox, Pastors .com, writes, a healthy spiritual life is an important part of overall wellness, and active and healthy faith life means that we are concerned with something larger than ourselves.

It also means, most often, that we are part of a community of people with similar beliefs and priorities to ours, but we sometimes become bored with our normal spiritual routine, and one way to add something different to our faith life is to try a practice called Centering Prayer.

So if you're bored, I mean, seriously, I mean, let me give you a metaphor that this would make sense. Are you bored with your spiritual life? Well, have you tried the Ouija board? Yeah, the Ouija board, I mean, that's super exciting stuff, and when it's all said and done, I mean, your life won't be boring anymore.

You'll probably have a demon living in your home, wreaking all kind of havoc and just making your life, well, your home, a veritable haunted house, if you would. So are you bored with your life? Try Centering Prayer.

Basically, it's akin to taking up the Ouija board. You'll find out why here in a minute, but the article continues, a Centering Prayer is an ancient, yeah, is an ancient form of prayer that is a combination of prayer and meditation.

The practice was revived in the 1960s and 70s by three Cistercian monks. The practice of Centering Prayer allows for the recognition of thoughts and gently releases them into the hands of God. This is a form of prayer that relies on awareness that the Holy Spirit resides in the one who prays, connecting them heart to heart with God.

Boy, is that, that's a carefully crafted sentence. Let me just put it this way. Yeah, when you find out this idea that the Holy Spirit resides in the one who prays and what that really means and connecting you heart to heart with God and what that really means, you're gonna be basically asking why on earth would Rick Warren's Ministry Toolbox ever publish an article like this?

Now, this is a valid question. And so, just so you know, the three Cistercian monks who are credited with reviving this so-called ancient practice, they are Thomas Keating, Basil Pennington, and William Menninger.

Yeah, so if you know somebody who's really into Thomas Keating, Basil Pennington, or William Menninger, yeah, chances are that they're dabbling in this stuff and this is the prayer equivalent of the Ouija board.

That's, again, that's how dangerous this stuff is and you're gonna find out exactly why. So what I thought I would do is let's dig up some resources. Let's let one of the three men who's responsible for reviving this ancient practice, supposedly a form of prayer and meditation combo of the two, let him speak for himself.

Let him be the one that teaches us this. So here's the deal. Anybody who's read this article at Rick Warren's Ministry Toolbox, which, by the way, the article itself has mysteriously disappeared with no explanation, no explanation whatsoever.

Now, I'm used to playing this cat and mouse game with the folks there at Saddleback Church and that are associated with Rick Warren. One of the things I've noticed over the years of basically covering the weird things that Rick Warren is up to is that when push comes to shove and it ends up that, well, he starts getting bad press or complaints from people regarding ministry resources that have appeared at his website, pastors .com, or videos that appeared on YouTube or things like that.

When those people who are discernment bloggers, of course, those are people who just, they don't have a life. They live in their mom's basement. These are people, according to them, who they are naked on a beanbag eating Cheetos.

These are just disgruntled, terrible people who never have a valid point. There's no such thing as a valid critic in the world of the purpose-driven movement. But anyway, when they start shining the light of truth on the things that are being posted in Rick Warren's name or that have his name associated with it, if it starts to hurt them in a public relations kind of way, those resources have a bad habit of just whoosh, you know, disappearing.

And so over the years, I've learned a technique, and that is that anything that is associated with Rick Warren that you know is heretical, that as soon as you shine the light on it, has a chance of disappearing, you make sure you make copies of it.

You take screenshots, and I did all of that already. So yeah, but see, here's the deal. One of the things I've noticed about Rick Warren is that the folks there at pastors .com do not practice what we would call best practices in responsible journalism.

And what I mean by that is this, is that regardless of which media sources you prefer to read or watch, whether it be Fox News, MSNBC, The New York Times, or World Net Daily, or things like that, responsible professional journalism, oftentimes a journalist will get something wrong.

They will say something that isn't in accord with the actual facts. They'll say something that isn't quite right or they missed a nuance. As a result of it, in their reporting, they're not exactly, they didn't actually tell the truth.

And so it's very, very, very, very common if you read any of these papers to see from time to time something called a retraction or an edit, or they'll put a post together that says this journalist said this in this article, and upon further investigation, we found that this is not exactly true.

Here's what he should have said, or here's what the actual evidence demonstrates. And so this is officially a retraction, okay? The folks over there at pastors .com, they don't seem to issue very many retractions.

In fact, I'm having a hard time recalling any time that they did. So here's the deal is that I'm glad that they pulled the centering prayer article down, but there was no explanation given. So we don't know if the reason why they pulled the centering prayer article down is because they realized, whoa, that's not Christianity, or if they did it for self-preservation reasons because they were getting beat up on the internet as a result of it, and so they pulled it down as a means of spin control.

And so, but here's the deal. If they were engaging in responsible journalism, then they have to, they must issue a retraction. In fact, I'm gonna issue a challenge to Rick Warren right here and right now.

Rick, you need to have the folks there at your pastors .com Rick Warren ministry toolbox post an explanation as to why you pulled that article. If the reason why you pulled the article was because centering prayer is not compatible with biblical Christianity, then we need to hear that from you guys.

You need to explain the dangers of centering prayer and how this is not, not, not compatible with biblical Christianity. And so until they do that, then I think we must all just assume that the reason they pulled this down, just like other things that they've pulled down off their website, was really just nothing more than political spin control.

It's a matter of brand management, if you would, of the purpose-driven Rick Warren brand. That's gonna be my assumption until they prove otherwise by issuing a full-blown retraction, as well as an explanation and warning regarding the dangers of contemplative prayer and centering prayer.

Okay, so that's just kind of walking you through here. So now let's kind of come back, let's circle back and let's talk about, okay, remember in the article itself, which I just read from my copy of it, which I, of course, I took screenshots of it because I've learned over the years that things have a way of just whoosh, disappearing from Rick Warren's ministry toolbox.

But the gal who wrote that, Stacey Smith, pointed out that there were three Cistercian monks who developed contemplative prayer. And when you do the research, you find out who they were. They are Thomas Keating, Basil Pennington, and William Menninger.

These are the guys who developed centering prayer. Now, that being the case, I think it's important for us to let, well, to let Thomas Keating himself explain to us, you know, what's going on? What's the fruit of this centering prayer?

What's the worldview that we need to understand that this is where it's leading us? And so this is an actual YouTube video that was put together with Thomas Keating, one of the three primary redevelopers, if you would, of centering prayer in the modern era.

Him explaining, you know, the kind of the spiritual understanding of what goes along with it. Now, this audio is tough, actually very difficult to understand. But, you know, listen carefully and I'll point things out along the way.

It's actually, it's easy to understand him. It's not so easy to understand the question that's being asked.

Describe for me the spiritual journey from, in a historical way, really looking for the areas. If you were to talk about the person that's lost in the false self and, you know, we're trying to reach the person in the supper that's leading the false life, that thinks the car and the plastic surgery will make them happy.

Where is that? What is that spiritual journey from? The mundane to the divine.

Okay, now this is important. The question has to do with, you know, describe, and he's only got like two, three minutes to do it. The spiritual journey from the false self, from the mundane to the divine.

The false self is the one, is the self that believes it would be happy with a new beamer and some plastic surgery. Okay, so that's the foil here. And now Keating's gonna basically ask the question, how much time have you got?

Everyone's gonna laugh. And then he's gonna start to get into his answer. And I want you to listen carefully to what he believes regarding the divine. This is critical and important because I don't think you can divorce centering prayer from this spiritual religious worldview.

Listen carefully.

Well, have you got a few hours? Since you wanted a short answer, the beginning of the spiritual journey is the realization, not just the information, but the real interior conviction. That there is a higher power or God or to make it as easy as possible for everybody, that there is an Other, capital.

O, second step.

So first step on your spiritual journey is recognizing there's a God or you can call him the Other, capital O. It's weird to me that all the time I've spent hanging out with and studying emergence up close by attending their conferences, sitting down and just listening as they have their emergent conversations and things like that.

One of the major themes of the emergent movement and the emergent movement is full blown into this postmodern mysticism is the constant reference back to recognizing God in the Other. It's weird. Keating's language almost mirrors theirs identically, but we continue.

So first step, recognize that there is an Other, capital O.

To try to become the Other, still a capital. O.

Okay, try to become the Other. Step two is to become God. Notice what he did there, okay? I'm gonna back this up because folks, what you've just heard is the same lie that the devil told Adam and Eve in the garden.

Oh, you will not die if you eat the fruit. God doesn't want you to eat because he knows on the day that you eat of it, you will become like God, okay? I'm surprised we don't hear a slithering sound or the sound of the tongue of a snake going.

You know, I mean, that's how demonic this really is. Listen again, and what you're listening for is the technique he's using. Watch what he does. He says the first step is to recognize that there's a God or the Other.

And so what he does is he takes the word God and he puts a so-called synonym in its place. So God, first thing you have to recognize that there is a God. Let me change the name of God here. And what I mean by that is you need to recognize that there is an Other, capital O.

The reason why he's putting a substitute word in there is so that step two doesn't jolt you out of your mind and you flee the building realizing, whoa, this is a satanic lie. Because if you don't let him exchange the word God for the word Other, step two is you need to become God.

Listen again, watch how he does this. So he takes the word God, he exchanges it for the word Other, and then he says that the second step of your journey is for you to learn how to become the Other. In other words, you need to become God.

I mean, listen.

Real interior conviction that there is a higher power or God, or to make it as easy as possible for everybody, that there is an Other, capital. O.

Yeah, to make it easy as possible, that's so that you don't go, what do you want? I have to learn how to become God, are you crazy? See, so no, this'll help you. Just recognize that there's an Other, and then step two.

Second step, to try to become the Other.

So the next step is you need to try to become God. Still a capital O.

And finally, the realization that there is no Other. You and the Other are one.

So step three is for you to realize that you already are God. Yeah, again, I come back to the article from Rick Warren's Ministry Toolbox, because remember the language that was used in that article. I wanna remind you of it.

Here we go, from the second paragraph. Centering prayer is an ancient form of prayer that is a combination of prayer and meditation. The practice was revived in the 1960s and 70s by three Cistercian monks.

They are Thomas Keating, Thomas Merton, and Basil Pennington. The practice of centering prayer allows for the recognition of thoughts and gently releases them into the hands of God. This form of prayer relies on the awareness that the Holy Spirit resides in the one who prays, connecting them heart to heart with God.

In other words, as one of the three people who revived this practice makes it clear, that understanding of heart to heart with God, it's the realization that you and God are one. That's what centering prayer really is all about.

We continue.

Always have been, always will be. You just think that you want it. And that as the spiritual journey unfolds, one lets go of these false beliefs in one's separation from God. And begins to perceive in all of events and in other people, the same presence of God that one is more and more aware of in oneself at the deepest level.

And thus the words of Paul become something that makes sense, that God is all in all. In other words, in a sense, we not only become God, but are God.

So one of the three men who developed centering prayer, you just heard him say, it's this understanding that we are God. Again, let me play this for you. Because I mean, if your head is spinning and you're going, what?

Right, that's what's really at the heart of centering prayer. The guy who developed it, who designed it, who reinvented it, this is one of the three, okay? He makes it clear that this is all about, well, being God.

That means you being God.

No, in other words, in a sense, we not only become God, but are God. Our little local consciousness disappears with death because it's mostly based on the brain. But the consciousness of our consciousness, which is God within us, remains forever.

And so as we move into God consciousness, so to speak, then we perceive how everything we've done that was good was not us, but God in us, serving God in other people. God in us, loving God in other people.

Or simply, God in us, greeting God in other people.

God in us, greeting God in other people. If you've ever heard a liberal emergent talk about discovering God in the other, this is where this language comes from. So that, folks, was the, well, that was just the first shot.

That's the one to wake you up to make you realize, whoa, holy smokes, there's something rotten in Denmark. Right. When you hear people talk about centering prayer, yeah, keep in mind, the guys who developed it, this is one of them.

This is one of the three that developed it. And the spirituality that he's embracing is basically pantheism, that you have a divine spark within you. You are divine, you are God. And it's all about, so step one is to recognize that there is a God or the other.

Step two is for you to try to become the other, that would be God. And step three is to recognize that there is no other, that you already are God. That's really what's at the heart of this practice of centering prayer.

That's the spirituality that this thing is married to. And the last time I checked, that spirituality didn't get divorced from the practice of centering prayer. Now, we're up on our first break. When we come back, we're going to let Thomas Keating, well, tell us more from an interview that he did regarding centering prayer, and have him explain for himself what it's really all about.

I mean, this is him, one of the three guys who revived it, him describing the practice. I mean, this would be, basically, let me give you a metaphor that you can hang on to. Listening to Thomas Keating talk about what centering prayer is all about, and what it does, and the spirituality that goes along with it, is the equivalent of having Steve Jobs give you an internal tour of how an Apple computer works.

Okay? So, we're dealing with one of the guys who knows centering prayer on the same level that Steve Jobs understood Apple computer. You get what I'm saying here? So, yeah, you don't want to miss the next part of this edition of Fighting for the Faith.

If you'd like to email me regarding anything you've heard on this edition, or any previous editions of Fighting for the Faith, you can do so at my email address, TalkBackAtFightingfortheFaith .com, or you can ask to be my friend on Facebook.

It's Facebook .com forward slash PirateChristian. You can follow me on Twitter, my name there, PirateChristian. We'll be right back.

Sisyoprified religiosity won't save you. You're listening to Fighting for the Faith. Oh, my God. Listening to Pirate Christian radio. We'll be taking your false doctrine now.

The Python's Flying Circus Church.

So, the new pastor came in and shut down the Sunday school, canceled the adult Bible study, dumped the hymnals, sacked the choir, and put in a praise band, and started preaching sermons that sound like they could be preached or done on Dr. Phil's program.

It's awful. I didn't expect a kind of purpose-driven inquisition.

Nobody expects the purpose-driven inquisition. Our chief weapon is purpose. Purpose and vision. Vision and purpose are two weapons. Purpose and vision and ruthless relevance are three weapons. Purpose, vision, and ruthless relevance and an almost fanatical devotion to record are four weapons.

Now, amongst our weaponry are such elements as purpose, vision,. I'll come in again.

I didn't expect a kind of purpose-driven inquisition.

Expects a purpose-driven inquisition. Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as purpose, vision, ruthless relevance, an almost fanatical devotion to Rick Warren and nice Hawaiian jersey. Damn.

I can't say it. You'll have to say it. What? You'll have to say what the bits about our chief weapons are.

I couldn't do that. I didn't expect a kind of purpose-driven inquisition.

Expects, nobody expects the purpose-driven. Inquisition. I know, I know. Nobody expects the purpose-driven inquisition. In fact, those who do. Our chief weapons are. Our chief weapons are. Purpose.

Vision. Okay, okay, stop that, stop that. Our chief weapons are purpose, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Youth Pastor Rick, read the charges.

Dude, you're like hereby charged with being divisive and not following our program.

That's enough. Now, how do you plead? Well, we're innocent. Ha ha ha, we'll soon change our mind about that.

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Again, that's piratechristianradio .com forward slash cheap. All right, we're back. Warning, if you're attending a Christian church that's teaching centering prayer or the Lectio Divina, mantra meditation, stuff like that, they're teaching you pantheism, that ultimately that you are God.

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Okay, next segment. This is from an interview that Father Thomas Keating, one of the three revisers or reinventors or the word here is animator of the practice known as Centering Prayer. Okay, to say that anyone who would deny that Father Keating knows about Centering Prayer or somebody who says, Father Keating, he doesn't know about Centering Prayer.

It just doesn't know what they're talking about. This is one of the guys that is one of the modern day inventors of it. He's the one who put this practice together and you heard from him already that this is all about a spiritual journey where you ultimately learn that you are God, okay?

So this is an interview that he did with the Garrison Institute in October of 2008, where they interview him regarding Centering Prayer. So here's one of the modern day founders of this practice discussing it and what it's all about and what it does and how you do it.

Here we go. So Father Thomas, welcome to the Garrison Institute. We're so happy to have you here. It's really, really great that you have returned. So tell us about Centering Prayer and particularly the role of Centering Prayer in an uncentered time.

Well, obviously, the role of Centering Prayer in an unsettled time is to center. It's a term that comes from St. John of the Cross in the introduction to what he calls the living flame of love, one of his most mature writings.

And it's not.

So it comes from the Roman, Centering Prayer comes from the Roman Catholic mystic St. John of the Cross. You should already be fleeing if anyone wants to teach this to you and thinks that it's a good thing.

Not a bad term for what we're trying to do because as he says, the center of the soul is God. And so as we.

The center of the soul is God. So Centering Prayer is all about learning that the center of your soul is God.

Behind the perplexities and the suffering and the turmoil, at least as an obsession or overemphasis on it, we move towards or turn towards our inmost center and we move from ordinary psychological awareness to the spiritual level of our being, the level of intuition and our capacity for God.

St. Thomas uses that phrase that the soul is a certain capacity for God. So that's basically what we are. And so to open to this capacity, we need to turn our attention from the preoccupations temporarily of outside in order to get the perspective on reality, which has God as its center.

Some theologians have said that God is reality. So not just our reality, but everything that is in a sense is God in the sense of coming from the ultimate reality as the source, whether you consider this personal or impersonal.

The ultimate reality is probably both, adjusts to each thing that exists according to its nature.

So God is both personal and impersonal. That sounds irrational, don't you think?

But anyway, as we move towards the inner self, one approaches what some folks call the true self in the Judeo-Christian tradition would be called the image of God or the image and likeness of God.

Imago Dei, the true self. Have you heard spiritual practitioners out there? You know, like Richard Foster, Ortberg, and others talking about the true self, the me I wanna be? Or emergent folks talking about the Imago Dei?

The likeness is what we don't have yet or which we lost depending on what your religious understanding or perhaps your scientific preference might be. Because in the perspective of evolution, especially spiritual evolution, we are returning to our source.

Spiritual evolution,.

Returning to our source. This is the talk of monism, by the way.

Or as the Buddhists call it, and this is just a private interpretation. I hope they'll forgive me.

So now he's quoting Buddhists favorably.

Emptiness is form and form is emptiness. So in the Trinitarian view of Christian, the ultimate source of the divinity called Father pours himself into the Son, empties himself into the Son who is the form of all the possibilities contained in the original emptiness that is always coming into actuality.

Wow. That's a satanic Christology if I ever heard one. Yeah, let's back the audio up on that one. Listen to what he says. The Father is the ultimate reality who pours himself into the Son. Have you heard this Christology anywhere in the scriptures?

I mean, that's the thing that seems to be missing here. Thomas Keating, of course, one of the three primary men who are responsible for reviving the so-called practice of centering prayer, which evangelicals like folks at Willow Creek and Saddleback and others are embracing whole hog.

Of course, if you're just bored with your mundane day-to-day Christian life, try something new, try this. Well, it comes complete with a Christology. And this is not a biblical Christology.

Listen again. Emptiness is form and form is emptiness. So in the Trinitarian view of Christian, the ultimate source of the divinity called Father pours himself into the Son, empties himself into the Son, who is the form of all the possibilities contained in the original emptiness that is always coming into actuality.

And this

Hmm, this guy doesn't sound like a Christian anything, does he?

Son returns everything he's received to the source or the Father, as is the term we use, and thus form goes back to emptiness. And the Holy Spirit is the enormous love that is exchanged in the total self-emptying of the Trinitarian relationships and celebrates infinite love or compassion.

And so it is this life going on within us that Centering Prayer is moving towards. And so it's movements towards the center, our own center, which is also the center of everything else that exists, which is the ultimate reality or God in the label given by the Judeo-Christian.

So Centering moves us to the center of the ultimate reality. And Christians refer to it as God, but of course, if you're a Buddhist, you don't have to think that at all. I mean, doesn't it sound like he's a universalist?

All paths lead to the top of Mount Fuji, apparently.

Traditions, but which could be called anything, perhaps not be irreverent, to say God doesn't care what we call him. He could be Butch if you want. It's the faith in God as the center of our being. That is not only supporting us in existence, but welcoming us into his, into the, I should say, divine hospitality that is the only host that can give not just gifts, but itself to us.

Does this sound like anything remotely resembling the God or the Jesus described by the apostles in the New Testament?

This is demonic. And so the idea that God is the center of the soul, that's where we're going in Centering Prayer. And in all the marvelous wisdom teachings of the world religions that are accessing the same reality, but from different terminology affected by their cultural conditioning.