What is “Ignatian Spirituality”? Many of us who have heard of “Ignatian Spirituality” or have done the “Examen” prayer, would immediately respond, Ah I know – It is “Finding God in All Things.” Yes, I agree, but how have we experienced this “Finding God in All Things, and especially in our different ways of trying to discern God’s Will and Ways?” In this context, this brief article, we can only reflect on the basics of “Ignatian Spirituality.”
Before we “find God” we first of all need to “seek God.” And, we do this with the purpose of “discerning what is His Will for me”, this “seeking” cannot be presumed. Thus, it is very important that we “begin” our “seeking” of God’s Will with a clear goal. This is because, we do not “find God in all things” by simply sitting calmly and waiting for God’s Will to reveal itself to us. We need to have clear purpose and goal of why we want to experience and find God in our lives. Otherwise, this is probably one of the main reasons why, we “do not find or experience God”; when we go to prayer and reflect on the meaning of our lives; even though, the “finding and experiencing of God” is His pure gift to us.
God is not a “magical something” that “appears” to us, as and when we want to “experience Him”. And so, a “good way” of “seeking” God, is to understand God from the perspective of a “relationship” which we are very familiar with.
Therefore, it is good to begin with having a conscious desire to want to “seek and find God in our lives.” This act of the will, with God’s graces, is an “active desiring and searching” for God. Thus, this is more than simply “passively waiting” for God.
Take for example, how often have we found ourselves trying to sit down and reflect on our lives and pray; and soon find our minds “drifting away by our distractions, and even falling asleep soon after we shut our eyes. . . Thus, losing our focus? One of the main reasons for this is because, we have “begun our reflection on our lives and prayer” without the proper preparations of: first, becoming conscious of our need to have a clear purpose and goal for our prayer. . . St Ignatius calls this “the grace” we need to seek in our prayer and reflection on God in our lives.
Next, this “Conscious Awareness” of our purpose and goal in our prayer must then lead us to have a “conscious awareness” of our “self”. This refers to having the “sense” of our “inner feelings”; which is very important. For this we can have questions like, “What are my present ‘dominant’ feelings? Are they physical (e.g. sleepy), emotional (e.g. upset), or spiritual (e.g. gratitude to God)? However, there are also times when our “inner feelings” are mild (i.e. no particular dominant feelings.)
This “conscious awareness” of our “self” is very important because our “inner feelings” (of our physical, emotional and spiritual) are inseparable from and they affect our prayer e.g. if I am sleepy, angry, or deeply grateful to God, . . . all these “inner feelings” will create a disposition that will affect our prayer . . . And, I am sure, we have all experienced these “inner feelings” during our prayer and reflection on our lives.
What we do with these “dominant inner feelings” are “the basics” of and the bases and context of our process of trying to seek and find God’s Will and Ways. In other words, we “seek and find” and experience God within the concrete human reality of our physical, emotional and spiritual “self”.
It is only when we are “consciously aware” of our dispositions and these “inner feelings” (as described above), can we “embrace” and appreciate more deeply the reality of “How God is Present” in our lives. . . Without such “conscious awareness,” we may very easily misinterpret and thus wrongly discern that our “inner feelings” as coming from God (i.e. “spiritual”), when in fact they could simply have come from our “physical” or “emotional” inner feelings. Note for example: our feelings of being happy does not necessary mean that we are experiencing the “spiritual consolations” of God’s Presence; they could simply be our emotional feelings.
When St Ignatius of Loyola speaks of “spiritual consolations” i.e. as coming from God; and “spiritual desolations” as coming from the bad spirits (whose purpose is always to draw us away from God’s Will and Ways), he is generally referring to our “spiritual” experiences. As such, he is not specifically relating to our physical and emotional experiences.
The “source” of our “physical” experiences e.g. sleepiness can be identified as our lack of sleep the night before. Our feelings of anger (i.e. “emotional desolations”) could be because someone we love or our teacher, or friend have unjustly accused us of doing something wrong; which is not true. The source of such “emotional desolation” is from our emotions and not from the “bad spirits”; and thus, not a “spiritual desolation” experience.
In short and in summary, l would like to conclude that our “discernment of God’s Will and Ways” would be unclear if, we do not include and make the clear distinctions between our “physical, emotional and spiritual inner feelings”. This is because they are each distinct, but inseparable. And so, when our “physical and emotional feelings” are dominant and intense, they will inevitably affect our “spiritual” inner feelings, vice versa. As such, they will inevitably also affect “how we discern God’s Will and Ways.” (It would not be possible to discuss the complexities of this human reality in the discernment of God’s Will; within this brief space.)
In other words, it is good to note that in the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius, my limited understanding tells me that, “The Rules for the Discernment of Spirits” focuses more specifically on our “spiritual consolations” and “spiritual desolations” experiences. As such, St Ignatius does not explicitly take into considerations the reality of our “physical and emotional” experiences; (i.e. the theories of psychology were not ‘developed’ yet?) Thus, without including the reality of our “physical and emotional” inner feelings; our discernment of God’s Will and Ways, can become “complex and unclear”. As such, further reflections on our “basic human reality” would be very helpful, if we are to use “Ignatian Spirituality” to discern God’s Will and Ways.
By: Fr. Philip Heng, S.J. (Novice Director, Timor-Leste)