Show Notes
We're back after a short break, and we're now at the mid-season mark of season four. In this episode, we step back from guest conversations to reflect on what we've been learning and the themes that have emerged so far.
We explore what it means to bring our pain into the light, reflecting on suffering as a kind of fracture and separation, and unpacking the paradox that we are already whole while also needing to do the patient work of dismantling the false self. And at the heart of it all, we consider why we are always returning: to the sacred word, to our wholeness, to each other, and to God.
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More from Opening Minds, Opening Hearts
When 12-Step recovery meets the contemplative tradition, something profoundly practical emerges. Jim McElroy has spent decades at that intersection, sharing how Centering Prayer and the Welcoming Prayer offer those in recovery a new relationship to pain, not an escape from it. In this conversation, through vulnerable storytelling and the wisdom of Thomas Keating, Jim explores healing as integration rather than elimination, and how both practices bridge the language of 12-Step powerlessness with the contemplative language of consent.
In this episode, we are joined by Heather Ruce, a spiritual director and somatic practitioner, to explore how healing truly happens in the body. Heather shares how understanding the nervous system and integrating somatic practices deepen rather than compete with Centering Prayer. Together, we explore what it means to include our whole self in the divine therapy, how the body holds unintegrated material waiting to be processed, and why practices like orienting to our senses and opening to pleasure are essential companions to our contemplative practice.
This episode weaves together three healing modalities: 12-step recovery, psychotherapy, and Centering Prayer, through the wisdom and lived experience of Howard B. Howard shares what it truly means to accept our basic core of goodness as our true self, and why that acceptance becomes the foundation from which we can look at our shadow and false self. Together, we explore how this radical acceptance, grounded in the belief that we are loved unconditionally, transforms not only how we see ourselves but how we show up in the world.
Welcome back to Opening Minds, Opening Hearts. In this episode, we are joined by Lawrence H, who was introduced to Centering Prayer while serving time at Folsom State Prison in 2009 and has since dedicated his life to sharing the practice with others. In a conversation full of honesty, hard-won wisdom and real hope, Lawrence shares what it truly means to bring our trauma into God's presence and allow it to be transformed. Together, we also explore the dark night of the soul and how Father Thomas Keating understood it not as something to be feared but as a profound and hidden work of divine therapy that carries us toward deeper freedom.
Welcome back, everyone! We are so glad you are joining us. In this episode, we are joined by the Reverend Nhien Vuong, contemplative teacher, ordained minister, founder of the Evolving Enneagram, and author of The Enneagram of the Soul, for a deeply personal and illuminating exploration of the Enneagram as a sacred companion to Centering Prayer on the journey of divine therapy. Together, we explore what it truly means to move from a life shaped by the question 'what is wrong with me?' to the lived and felt knowing that we are already whole, and the profound and practical ways the Enneagram and Centering Prayer work together as companions on the same journey toward wholeness and freedom.