Contemplative prayer is typically practised in silence, seated, for a set period, and is characterized less by any particular posture or gesture than by its distinctive aim: setting aside verbal, discursive prayer, whether petition, praise or reasoned meditation on a scriptural passage, in favor of a wordless, receptive attention directed toward God's presence.
The Cloud of Unknowing's medieval formulation instructs the pray-er to let go of concepts and images of God, since God's essential nature is held to exceed anything the intellect can grasp, and to approach instead through a simple movement of loving intention, likened to a dart of love striking through what the text calls the cloud of unknowing between the soul and God.
The modern Centering Prayer method developed at St. Joseph's Abbey structures this older approach into a repeatable practice: a practitioner sits in silence for a set period, choosing a short sacred word beforehand not as a repeated mantra but as a gentle means of returning attention to God's presence whenever thoughts intrude, letting the word itself recede once that return has happened.
Centering Prayer's founders and later teachers, including Thomas Keating's extensive writing, present it explicitly as a method rather than the whole of contemplation, intended to dispose a person toward a deeper, ultimately wordless prayer rather than to constitute an end in itself, and generally recommend regular practice, often twice daily, alongside continued participation in the wider sacramental and communal life of the church.