There needs to be a complete and constant interweaving of the two. This book, as a conversation close to life, allows this to happen. If you have been practicing the Prayer regularly, you perhaps have no need of further motivation. The Prayer is, in many ways, its own reward. Yet, on this life's journey, we are all buffeted by many cares and concerns.
Days get very full.
Prayer can so easily get squeezed out. Undoubtedly, some of the asceticism connected with the Prayer lies in making time for it at the sacrifice of other good things. On the other hand, it sometimes happens that when we most have leisure for it during vacation or during sickness this unstructured time, which is a departure from our normal routine, lets regular practice Slip away and we have a hard time recapturing it. We need to be motivated to keep coming back, even when God seems remarkable by his absence. I would never want it to be taken that I think Centering Prayer is the only or even necessarily the best way for each person to enter into the contemplative dimension of his or her life.