<p>In the darkest hour of the darkest age, Christian monks developed a meditation tradition unique in the Western world. A 14th-century author described their profound mystical experience as entering the cloud of unknowing. Yet during the 500 years after this great monastic flowering, this precious tradition and the direct path to union with God it described was virtually lost. </p> <p>For decades Father Thomas Keating, together with other monks, examined this great question: Could anyone enter the cloud of unknowing through a prayer practice specifically created to attain it? Keating reached back in time for clues about the prayer forms of the Christian mystics. He synthesized his work into a Centering Prayer method that has helped thousands of seekers travel the contemplative path to divine union. </p> <p>From infancy, Father Keating teaches, we accumulate emotional layers, or programs, as a result of traumatic experiences. The practice of Centering Prayer engages directly with the unconscious and loosens old traumas that hinder your spiritual development. This form of divine therapy draws from a contemplative method that has brought profound inner transformation into the lives of thousands of practitioners. </p> <p><i>The Contemplative Journey</i> is Father Thomas Keating's great masterwork: a complete curriculum devoted to a Christian path for achieving the still point of resting in God. </p>