From Pamela Begeman's presentation at the 2019 MN Contemplative Outreach Fall Retreat
- Consent to our basic goodness of our being with all its parts. [Goodness]
- Consent to accept the full development of our being by activating our talents and creative energies. [Participation]
- Consent to accept our non-being and diminution of self that occurs through illness, ageing and death. [Diminishment]
- Consent to be transformed (into Love). [Transformation]
In growing up we … did not know that God was actually present within us; we had to look elsewhere for the security, affirmation and freedom … that only the divine presence can satisfy. The spiritual journey – which is the whole of life - is a training in consent to God's presence and to all reality. …
This gradual training in consent is the school of divine love in which God invites us to accept the divine plan to share the divine life with us in a way that transcends all that the human imagination can foresee.
~ Thomas Keating, Invitation to Love (written in 2000 and quoted in the Spiritual Journey series, which began in 1986)
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The radical consent of deepening contemplation means something even greater: saying Yes to God's presence acting in you. As you continue in contemplation, you learn more about how to let God's presence act in you as the source of your prayer and the source of your life.
[…] Your activity in Centering Prayer is like a rose's petals opening to the sunlight, like surrender unfolding inside you, like self-abandonment awakening within. Your action in contemplation is a radical consent to God's eternal nature more than your own self-initiated effort in one contracted moment in time. … In contemplation, you awaken to this indwelling reality, this gift of love that is the deepest center of your own being and the very heart of the world.
~ David Frenette, The Path of Centering Prayer: Deepening Your Experience of God
This gradual training in consent is the school of divine love in which God invites us to accept the divine plan to share the divine life with us in a way that transcends all that the human imagination can foresee.
~ Thomas Keating, Invitation to Love (written in 2000 and quoted in the Spiritual Journey series, which began in 1986)
~~
The radical consent of deepening contemplation means something even greater: saying Yes to God's presence acting in you. As you continue in contemplation, you learn more about how to let God's presence act in you as the source of your prayer and the source of your life.
[…] Your activity in Centering Prayer is like a rose's petals opening to the sunlight, like surrender unfolding inside you, like self-abandonment awakening within. Your action in contemplation is a radical consent to God's eternal nature more than your own self-initiated effort in one contracted moment in time. … In contemplation, you awaken to this indwelling reality, this gift of love that is the deepest center of your own being and the very heart of the world.
~ David Frenette, The Path of Centering Prayer: Deepening Your Experience of God
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