1. What Keating Means by “Unloading of the Unconscious”

Keating taught that when a person sits in silence before God—not thinking, not analyzing, just consenting to God’s presence—something begins to happen below the surface.

In his words:

“The Divine Therapy begins to evacuate the unconscious.”

Meaning:

  • Old emotional wounds
  • Repressed memories
  • Defensive patterns
  • Conditioned reactions
  • Hidden grief, anger, or fear

start to rise into awareness—not always as memories, but as energetic impressions, moods, or waves of emotion.

He compared it to:

  • A psychological detox
  • Allowing sediment at the bottom of a pond to rise when the water becomes calm
  • Allowing God’s love to heal the deep strata of the psyche

This is not something the meditator “does.” It simply happens when the ego no longer distracts itself.

2. Why It Happens

Keating’s model:

  1. Throughout life, we develop emotional programs for happiness—patterns of reacting to unmet needs (for safety, affection, control, esteem).
  2. These patterns sink into the unconscious.
  3. Centering Prayer quietly dismantles these programs.
  4. As the ego’s false supports are removed, the “raw material” beneath surfaces.
  5. God’s presence heals it, purifies it, and gradually transforms the person.

So the “unloading” is not a crisis for its own sake—it is healing in progress.

3. How the Unloading Feels

Keating is very clear that this process can feel like:

  • Irrational sadness
  • Sudden bursts of anger
  • Mood swings
  • Anxiety
  • Restlessness
  • Old temptations
  • Memories or sensations with no obvious origin
  • Fatigue or heaviness
  • Feeling spiritually “off” or “empty”

He calls it a grace, but not always a pleasant one.

This matches the emotional phenomenology of:

  • John of the Cross’s “dark night of the senses”
  • Buddhist insight stages (“knowledge of dissolution,” “fear,” “misery,” etc.)
  • Sufi qabd (constriction)
  • Zen’s Great Doubt
  • Psychoanalytic abreaction

The path is different, but the interior process is deeply parallel.

4. Difference from Depression or Breakdown

Keating is careful:
The unloading is not pathology, though it can feel stormy.

Signs it’s unloading (and not illness):

  • You feel waves of emotion, but they move through you, not drown you
  • You are still able to function
  • You sense a deeper stability beneath the turbulence
  • You emerge with greater peace, forgiveness, compassion, and freedom
  • It typically happens during or after deep contemplative practice

He always emphasized seeking mental health support if someone is overwhelmed—grace works through human help as well.

5. How It Relates to St. John of the Cross

Keating interpreted the “dark night of the senses” as:

God removing our emotional attachments and unconscious programs.

He saw John’s “purification” in psychological terms—God’s love flushing painful material out of the psyche.

The “night of the spirit” in John corresponds to even deeper purification:
loss of images, concepts, and the subtle ego structures that cling to identity and control.

Keating’s “Divine Therapy” is essentially John of the Cross adapted to:

  • modern psychology
  • trauma awareness
  • contemporary contemplative practice

6. Parallels in Other Traditions

The “unloading of the unconscious” is not uniquely Christian. Very similar processes appear in:

Buddhism

  • The “Dark Night” stages in the Insight tradition (as described by Mahasi Sayadaw, Daniel Ingram, and others).
  • “Purification of mind” (citta-visuddhi).
  • Waves of fear, disgust, grief during deep meditation.

Sufism

  • The stages of qabd (constriction) and fanā’ (ego melting).
  • Emotional upheaval during remembrance (dhikr) until the heart is purified.

Hindu Yoga (Raja Yoga / Advaita)

  • “Vasana-kshaya”: the burning of latent tendencies.
  • “Samskara release”: karmic impressions surfacing as the mind becomes still.

Zen Buddhism

  • The “Great Death”: the ego collapsing.
  • Emotional storms as the mind’s habitual patterns dissolve.

Jewish Hasidism

  • Hitbodedut: solitary prayer brings up unprocessed emotions that are “redeemed” through divine encounter.

Across traditions, contemplative silence brings suppressed material upward for integration.

7. Why This Happens Cross-Religiously

When the mind becomes quiet:

  • The ego relaxes its grip
  • Defense mechanisms weaken
  • The unconscious begins to speak
  • Painful material becomes available
  • A deeper Self (or soul, or awareness) begins to emerge

Different religions interpret the “force” behind this differently:

  • Christianity → God’s love
  • Buddhism → natural mind dynamics
  • Sufism → divine mercy working inwardly
  • Hindu Vedanta → the Self burning off impurities
  • Jungian psychology → individuation process

But the phenomenology is the same.

8. Where Keating Goes Beyond John of the Cross

Keating develops things John only hinted at:

  • The explicit psychological framework
  • The idea of “emotional programs for happiness”
  • Trauma-sensitive reading of purification
  • Integration with developmental theory (Fowler, Kohlberg)
  • Emphasis on contemplative practice for laypeople

Keating was influenced by Jung, Merton, and modern psychotherapy.