THE WELCOMING PRAYER

Those of you familiar with the Welcoming Prayer will recognise its similarity with the psychological practice of Focusing on which it is based.  Focusing is an effective psychological practice which brings the emotional wounds hidden in the unconscious into consciousness and which enables us to identify and accept the emotion that is the cause of our distress.

 The Welcoming Prayer will also do this and it will do more.  It is important to remember that the Welcoming Prayer is not just a psychological exercise; it is a spiritual discipline directed to inner awakening.  It takes the attitude of surrender and openness to the action of the Spirit from the Centering Prayer practice into daily life.

 Cynthia Bourgeault explains the Welcoming Prayer method in Chapter 13 of her “Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening.” [1]   I would advise you to read this chapter carefully.  She presents the method with brilliant clarity. 

 She identifies a three step process as follows:

1.       Focus and Sink In

2.       Welcome

3.       Let Go

 In step one, you focus on the frustration you are experiencing and feel it as a sensation in your body.  Whatever the emotional upset, it is associated with a physical sensation and you deliberately choose to feel this sensation in all its intensity.  You don’t try to change anything.  You simply stay present to what you are experiencing.  This rootedness in the physical is crucial.  The experience of the physical sensation prevents the tendency to dissociate and repress.  Remember that Shadow is made up of what we have denied, dissociated and repressed.  You want to experience the emotional distress, to allow it to come to the surface and into consciousness, so that you can accept and befriend it.  And you do this not by bracing, tensing and closing in on yourself but by softening and opening yourself at the level of physical sensation.  This is the bodily stance of surrender.

 Then comes step two.  Fully experiencing your upset, you welcome the emotion that is upsetting you.  It is necessary to interject an important point here.  If, for example, the doctor tells you that you have a terminal illness and you are overcome with anger or fear, you don’t welcome the terminal illness, you welcome the anger or the fear whatever is the emotion you are experiencing.  You aren’t trying to get rid of anything, deny it or repress it; you are simply remaining present to what is.  You accept it; you welcome it.  And you surrender to the action of God within you.

Bourgeault warns that it is important not to rush into the third step of “Letting Go”.  The main work is done in the first two steps, going back and forth between focusing and welcoming, and these must not be rushed.