Sacred Word is actually an important concept in the practice of centering prayer. What it comes down to is, first of all, the word itself. The word should be a simple word, perhaps a word like “peace” or “love” or “joy”. Maybe “Christ,” maybe “beauty”—something to that effect. It probably has a spiritual meaning to you and one that is particularly important to you, but the definition of the word is not what we're actually going for here.

We're actually using a word, the Sacred Word, that is meant to help you to release your thoughts when they come across your meditation. And I can promise you, you will have many, many thoughts. The purpose of that is to simply continue to let go. By letting go we mean acknowledging what the thought is and detaching from it.

That's a very monastic kind of word, but what that comes down to meaning is simply not holding onto it. One of the best ways that the idea of monastic detachment was described to me was, if this is attachment (fists balled), this is detachment (extended hands). It's that idea of just letting it go, right? And so the various thoughts that come to your mind, and again I want to emphasize you're gonna have a lot of them, the Sacred Word helps you to go from here hanging on to whatever that thought is, to going here and letting it go.

The letting go action helps you to return to that goal of getting to the quiet of your heart.