"Some people find help in the centered prayer as John Main describes it: Sit down. Sit still and upright. Close your eyes lightly. Sit relaxed but alert. Silently, interiorly begin to hear a single word. We recommend the prayer-phrase Maranatha. Recite it as four syllables of equal length. Listen to it as you say it, gently but continuously. Do not think or imagine anything -- spiritual or otherwise. If thoughts or images come, these are distractions at the time of meditation, so keep returning to simply saying the word. Meditate each morning and evening for between twenty and thirty minutes.
Christian meditation calls the person to enter within, to move to the realm of silence and solitude, the level of the heart, to let go of thinking and imagining or controlling and to cultivate simple presence to the Divine Presence. One is lovingly attentive to the Divine Indwelling.
In Christian meditation, the mantra -- which is usually the Ma-ra-na-tha (Come, Lord Jesus) -- is spoken throughout the prayer as an effort, not only to be totally attentive, but to be empty and silent and alone before God. The mantra is the instrument that creates the emptiness; it hollows out the soul. Meditation takes seriously the teaching of the masters that creating silence and emptiness is the best invitation to the spirit."
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A similar theme from inward/outward -
"The one journey that ultimately matters is the journey into the place of stillness deep within one’s self. To reach that place is to be at home; to fail to reach it is to be forever restless. At the place of ‘central silence,’ one’s own life and spirit are united with the life and Spirit of God. There the fire of God’s presence is experienced. The soul is immersed in love. The divine birth happens. We hear at last the living Word."
Source: Foreword to Search for Silence by Elizabeth O’Connor
