The Spiritual Journey series is the foundation of the teaching legacy of Fr. Thomas Keating (1923-2018), who was one of the principal architects of the Centering Prayer movement. This program is for anyone who wishes to gain wisdom and understanding of the Christian contemplative path of transformation into Christ.

“The main reason we put together this whole course in Centering Prayer and its conceptual background was to help us realize that Centering Prayer is a life to be lived, not just a method” (Thomas Keating, December 18, 2017).

Based on Thomas Keating’s Spiritual Journey video series, this program guides participants to the transformative awakening and healing to be found along the contemplative path of consent to God’s presence and action within each of us. It incorporates psychological, as well as spiritual, aspects of dysfunction and healing as a means to make the mystical more accessible to 21st century pilgrims. 

This Spiritual Journey series consists of an Introductory Workshop followed by eight courses based on the video series by Fr. Thomas Keating, designed to support the daily practice of Centering Prayer. These courses provide a road map, as it were, to the journey that begins when Centering Prayer is seriously undertaken.  It seeks to point to the recognizable landmarks on the journey, as well as to its ultimate destination.  Information about each of the courses is provided in the links below. 

The richness of the material presented by Fr. Thomas does not age or lose its impact. Those of you who have had a Centering Prayer practice for several years will be enriched as you hear Fr. Thomas from a new place in your heart. A bonus for students repeating any class is a significant reduction in the price of the class. Your cost is half-price. Come renew your commitment and your practice!

Keating explained the purpose of the Spiritual Journey series as follows: “My motivation was first to realize that the Christian religion has a very deep and very rich tradition of spirituality and contemplative prayer. It’s not merely a moralistic religion or a set of rituals to express our relationship with God. … It’s something that goes very deep, indeed, into our psychic awareness and into our unconscious. So, having realized that the Christian tradition offers insights into the human condition, what we’ve tried to add is developmental psychology and the discoveries in the whole area of the human psyche and psychology that are being revealed as important accompaniments of the mystical wisdom of the ages. What the mystics have always envisioned is now available in many areas as a kind of ‘Contemplation 101” (Thomas Keating, December 2017).