The Welcoming Prayer can be described as Centering Prayer on-the-go. They both hold similar principles of practicing kenosis (non-clinging or letting go), but the Welcoming Prayer presents them in a more compact, practical form that can be reached for as needed throughout the day. Unlike Centering Prayer, it does not require a twenty-minute session of silent meditation.
You do not have to know or be experienced with Centering Prayer in order to learn the Welcoming prayer. I practiced the Welcoming Prayer for years before I delved into Centering Prayer. I know others who have had the reverse experience. It is up to you to pick up which tools feel useful and accessible to you, for that is what they are—tools or practices to help you engage with the Divine. Different seasons may also need different practices. While I believe in the value of Centering Prayer and work with it when I am able, I am also a mother of tinies and much of my life rhythms are decided for me and out of my control. The Welcoming Prayer is something I can reach for as I’m doing dishes, when my child is having a meltdown, driving in the car, or as I lie in bed at night struggling to fall asleep. Here are the basic steps.
Gently become aware of your body and your interior state.
Take some deep breaths. Feel your feet on the floor. Notice where your body is holding tension. As Cynthia Bourgeault recommends, “Don’t try to change anything. Just stay present” (Centering Prayer, 143).
Welcome, welcome, welcome.
I often say this slowly, with deep breaths between each one. You are welcoming whatever you notice. Whatever is. Don’t try to resist it. Do you feel anger? Welcome your anger. Is your child throwing a tantrum? Welcome the reality of the tantrum and whatever emotions and responses it evokes within you. We are often trained to resist and deny that which we deem negative. But the way free is not to invalidate but to welcome it. You must go through it to find the other side.
Bourgeault writes, “Why are we welcoming it? Isn’t the goal to get rid of it? Actually, no. The goal is to not let it chase you out of presence” (Centering Prayer 144).
I welcome everything that comes to me in this moment because I know it is for my healing.
Please note, you do not welcome inappropriate behavior or trauma such as abuse. But you can welcome any and all of the feelings and sensations that accompany that trauma. You are not inviting these negative behaviors to continue, but you are acknowledging the reality of their existence in your life and whatever their impact on you has been or continues to be.
I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations, and conditions.
Note that “feelings” could be translated, physical sensations. It took me years of wondering why emotions seemed to be listed twice before I learned this distinction.
I let go of my desire for security.
I let go of my desire for approval.
I let go of my desire for control.
These three lines address what Father Thomas Keating calls the “emotional programs for happiness.” “Beginning in infancy (or even before) each of us, in response to perceived threats to our well-being, develops a false self: a set of protective behaviors driven at the root by a sense of need and lack. The essence of the false self is driven, addictive energy, consisting of tremendous emotional investment in compensatory ‘emotional programs for happiness,’ as Father Thomas Keating calls them” (Cynthia Bourgeault in Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, 94-95). These programs are security/survival; esteem/affection; power/control. This stage in the prayer may reveal to you which of these three is most activated by whatever situation you are facing.
I let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person, or myself.
It is important to note that you should not force the letting go process or arrive at this stage too quickly. Bourgault cautions, “The real work in the Welcoming Prayer is actually accomplished in the first two steps. Stay with them—rather like kneading a charley horse in your leg—going back and forth between ‘focusing’ [sensing] and ‘welcoming’ until the knot begins to dissolve of its own accord” (Centering Prayer 147). Sometimes I say the words “I let go” as a prayer. They really mean something more like, “Divine spirit would you help me let go…” Whatever you say, don’t fake it. Allow it to be a genuine reflection of what actually is within your being.
I open to your love and your presence, [insert personal term for the Divine], and your healing action and grace within.
Here the unrest or distress can be replaced with an invitation for the Divine presence to come and sooth, heal, reorient. Take your time. Sink in.
More Simply Put
I like the longer text of the prayer I have just shared above, but the whole process can even be simplified and shortened to these condensed steps:
- Focus or sink in (sense your body)
- Welcome
- Let go
This is why it can be picked up any time, anywhere, in a moment. In the midst of feeling overwhelmed and triggered by my daughter’s emotional dysregulation, I might choose to take a few minute time-out for myself and say the whole prayer at length. But I could also reach for it internally in this simplified state if even a brief break is not feasible. I can take a deep breath in front of her while sensing my body and welcoming what is. Maybe even letting go.
Why Do Welcoming Prayer? What Does it Offer?
The Welcoming Prayer grounds you in the now.
It also seeks to break the automatic and mechanical program of the false self. Most of us get triggered and automatically react, without often even observing our reaction or why it is occurring. We fall victim to the fight or flight responses of our brain. The Welcoming Prayer offers a chance to acknowledge whatever is happening. It’s not dismissive of your pain. It allows you to feel it in your body, sense it, and welcome it. Then eventually let it go, to not be mastered by it.
When it comes to welcoming, Bourgeault makes the distinction between engaging with a situation mentally (attitude) versus to working to shift the actual energy patterns that are created in your body (sensation). She writes, “To work with this situation as an attitude might mean to psychoanalyze yourself (‘Why am I feeling so afraid?’), or to try to talk yourself out of your fear, or maybe even to say, ‘I let go of this fear and give it to Jesus.’ […] To work with sensation means to focus on the actual energy patterns the feelings and attitudes create in your body. Real kenotic [self-emptying] work is done here—and, I believe, only here” (The Wisdom Jesus, 173).
She continues, “Once you understand the difference between sensation and attitude, it becomes possible to hear what is really being said in the most basic, no-frills statement of the kenotic path, which is as follows: Never do anything in a state of internal brace—that is, in a state of physical tightness and resistance: you’ll discover it’s never worth the cost. This statement has nothing to do with giving up (that’s an attitude) or relinquishing your right to defend yourself (also an attitude). At the sensation level the issue is simply this: in any life situation, confronted by outer threat or opportunity, you have a choice between two options. You can either harden and brace defensively, or you can yield and soften internally. The first response will plunge you immediately into your small self, with its animal instincts and survival responses. The second will allow you to stay aligned with your heart, where the odds of a creative outcome are infinitely better” (173-74).
Welcoming does not equal capitulation
One of my stuck places in welcoming and letting go is wondering whether this process will leave me overpowered by others or things outside of my control. Kenosis, or self-emptying, is also a term for surrender. But I appreciate Bourgeault’s definition of surrender so much:
“Surrender, spiritually understood, has nothing to do with outer capitulation, with rolling over and playing dead. It has to do with keeping the right alignment inwardly that allows you to stay in the flow of your deeper sustaining wisdom […] In that state of openness you then decide what you’re going to do about the outer situation” (174).
The point of the welcoming prayer and letting go is to put you in a state of receptivity and openness, rather than closed-off-ness and resistance. From openness, you can better make a grounded decision about how to handle whatever is in front of you, rather than simply be reactive. It doesn’t mean you have to say yes or give in or not care. It doesn’t mean disempowerment. If anything, it’s a deeper more aligned sense of empowerment, one that puts you in alignment with your own true self and the Divine and the energy that flows from both.
Additional Resources for Exploration:
- “Chapter 15: Welcoming” from The Wisdom Jesus by Cynthia Bourgeault
- “Chapter 13: The Welcoming Prayer” from Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening by Cynthia Bourgeault.
- Contemplative Outreach’s page on the Welcoming Prayer: https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/welcoming-prayer-method/
- A 40-day devotional on the Welcoming Prayer, published by Contemplative Outreach: https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/product/the-welcoming-prayer-consent-on-the-go-a-40-day-praxis/. The physical book is rather expensive, but they also have a digital version you can purchase for only $10. When I first started this practice, I found the depth of the devotional easy to access but also helpful in gaining an inner knowing of the practice.
- My own blog post on working with the Welcoming Prayer: Emotional Overwhelm and the Welcoming Prayer
- Here is the simplified text of the prayer without my commentary interwoven:
Gently become aware of your body and your interior state.
Welcome, welcome, welcome.
I welcome everything that comes to me in this moment because I know it is for my healing.
I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations, and conditions.
I let go of my desire for security.
I let go of my desire for approval.
I let go of my desire for control.
I let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person, or myself.
I open to your love and your presence, [insert personalized term for the Divine], and your healing action and grace within.
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Danielle Klafter 