Rule of Life Updae-- making slow progress.

I continue to use my version of the daily office-- a highly contemporary one by Thomas Merton. I like to pray early at dawn or late at night with the lights off and by candle light. In the office there is a pause for "Silence" so that is when I have slipped into the Jesus Prayer or Centering Prayer. the other day when I was doing Tai Chi exercises I tried to do it to the Jesus Prayer and I had some acoustical African music in the background. That was better to some degree - I'm not making much connection through centering prayer. I find it is very hard to empty the mind and center. I last maybe 5 minutes. I am going to actually try Zen Meditation to see if that will improve my concentration. Or maybe centering prayer is just not for me. I went to a Quaker service over the summer and no one was moved to speak. It was total silence for an hour-- not that this was bad but it did not do much for me spiritually.

So my efforts for the next couple of weeks will be to continue to integrate some fort of prayer or meditation with my Tai Chi and try to get some training in Buddhist meditation. I think Salesian prayer practices with the mind and imagination actively engaged might be a better fit for me. I'll try that at the end of the two weeks.