Centered Living Book

This is a book I read after a retreat and a visit to the Cistercian Melleray Abbey in Dubuque, Ia. my interest in the use of a Centering Prayer method of meditation was renewed and this was in their book store, so thought I'd read this to see what additional information it had from what I'd learned before about Centering Prayer. This is a type of meditation that uses a method similar to TM and possibly that's why I'd always had a difficult time with actually utilizing this form of meditation in the past and I wanted to gain a better understanding of its history and use today. Unfortunately, after reading this book I really was disappointed in its presentation, although I did find a few parts of the book that were spiritually uplifting and hope-filled, which was good. Centering Prayer is different from TM because, although it uses a focus word, and is suggested to be practiced for 2, 20 minute sessions each day, it's focus is on emptying oneself to allow a full focus of God's Will for us, while TM's focus is an emptying of self for a self-actualization fulfillment. In this book, I felt, the instruction didn't emphasize this as much as might be necessary to separate the two and often gave the feeling that these 2 forms of meditation were the same, except Centering Prayer was Catholic/Christian-based and TM's origin is part of the Vedic tradition of India. So...not sure I gained any really different, or more helpful information from this reading. It's a good book, and don't feel I wasted my time reading it, but to me it was just a 2-star "okay."