Books like Intimacy with God: An Introduction to Centering Prayer

This book was recommended to me by a monk in his eighties in a meeting of spiritual direction with me. I had been feeling very attracted to the practice of Zen meditation for its focus on the present moment, breathing, and acceptance of change, pain, emotional ups and downs, etc. I had felt that my prayer life was getting too cluttered with words. I had enjoyed for quite some time praying various forms of the hours, but often felt that I was just rushing through them because there was too much verbal/left-brain material. Centering prayer seems to bring together the best of modern psychological insights marrying them to an ancient practice, but making its explanation more simple and applicable to someone of the 21st century. One of the big differences between centering prayer and other forms of meditation, especially Buddhist forms, is that centering prayer is a focusing of one's intention rather than attention. The main purpose of centering prayer is to focus one's intention to allowing God's spirit to come and change one's heart to become more Christlike. This requires a lot of pain and inner turmoil as one's ego/small self becomes dislodged and burned away. It also creates more space in one's soul for acceptance of God's will.