Discovering Your Direction in Life through Ignatian Discernment Methods” – Part IV

Focus: Why/How do I Discern?

Theme: How do I Find and Choose God’s Will?

(Ignatian Meditation and Contemplation Methods of Prayer and

Discernment of Spirits)

Friday, March 21st 2003

1.0    PREPARATION

*Please refer to Parts II and III notes.

2.0    PRAYER PROPER - Outline

(*The “preparation” for the prayer above is strictly speaking not prayer i.e. we have not yet started praying.)

2.1 Contemplation:

The Calming of the Storm – Mk 4: 35-41

Imagine yourself on the boat with the disciples and Jesus. Dark clouds are gathering above you . . . you feel the cold wind blowing quite strongly and cutting into your face . . . your hands are beginning to feel cold and frozen . . . you are being tossed violently to and fro in the boat by the rough waves . . . you feel dizzy and feel like throwing up . . . lighting flashes through the black clouds above . . . the sky explodes as though the thunder is going to tear the sky apart . . . it begins to rain and a storm is imminent . . . you begin to fear as the waves are getting higher and threatening to swallow all of you on board the boat . . . more and more water is getting into the boat . . . you and the disciples try to scoop out the water, but no amount of scooping is making much difference . . . the boat is filling up fast and it looks like all of you are going to be drowned in the stormy sea.

As you feel terrified for your life, you suddenly remember that Jesus is on board the boat. So, you frantically look for Him . . . you find yourself knocking and crashing into everything in the boat . . . finally you find Jesus at the corner of the boat . . . to your surprise you find Him fast asleep . . . He must have been so exhausted from the long and hard day.

So, you go to Jesus and you shake His shoulder to wake Him up . . . You then tell Jesus, “Master, we are all drowning; don’t you care? Save us.” Jesus rubs His eyes and tries to shake off His sleep . . . He sits up . . . looks around; looks at all the disciples and then stands up and says, “Be quiet. Be calm” . . . immediately, the wind stops blowing, the rain stops falling and black clouds above being to clear . . . you are all totally taken aback and filled with awe . . . for even the winds and the sky obey Him . . . Jesus then turns to you and says, “Why were you so frightened? Don’t you have any faith in me?”

You find yourself totally at peace and assured with the Lord . . . you begin to think back on the times in your life when you were frightened and did not trust in the Lord enough . . . you begin to see how the Lord had also been present to you . . . even when you felt totally lost and helpless and in agony . . . gathering your courage, you approach Jesus who is now sitting at the side of the boat alone and say, “Master, may I sit with you  for a while?” . . . Jesus turns to you and nodded . . . you sit beside Him . . . after a few moments of silence, you ask Him, “Master, you know what I am going through in life at the moment; you know my family needs; you know how I have failed you in the way that I have sinned against you instead of loving you . . . Jesus looks at you with much love . . .

He doesn’t say a word . . . deep within you, you know that He has forgiven you for all your sins . . . you feel the deep peace and joy within for His forgiveness . . . to your surprise Jesus then looks deeply into your eyes and says in His gentle voice, “I know you are not perfect; I know you have much fear in your heart about what is going to happen to you, your career, your family and your future . . . you worry too much . . . you don’t trust me enough . . . have I let you down before? . . . as you begin to realise more than before how Jesus has never once abandoned you, Jesus says, “fear no more, trust me, love me and peace will return to your heart and your home.”

2.2  Your concluding prayer could be:

To pray the “Our Father”, “Hail Mary,” Glory be or a spontaneous prayer.

3.0  REVIEW OF PRAYER:

*Please refer to Part II and III notes.

4.0 DISCERNMENT OF SPIRITS:

4.1 Ordinary daily living

Strong believers who have been living out their faith fervently would have an accumulated experiential knowledge of how God wants them to live their lives. These believers have a good and “second nature sense of God’s will” and are very in tuned with God.

This means that these people would have a very good sense of always making choices that are in line with God’s will. They would often use their good and mature conscience to help them make such choices and decisions. Such “discerning persons” are sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s promptings in their hearts because they have a familiar and intimate relationship with the Lord. Indeed, they are Temples of the Holy Spirit who have the inner sense of choosing God’s will in their daily lives.

4.2 Discerning God’s Will:

From the foregoing, we see how God’s Will can be sensed and obeyed in the ordinary experiences of our lives if we are strong believers who have an intimate relationship with the Lord.

While most people tend to associate the discerning of God’s Will to be within prayer, this need not necessarily always be the case as God’s Will can also come to us outside our prayer experiences.

5.0    THE RULES OF DISCERNMENT OF SPIRITS – OVERALL FRAMEWORK

5.1 “Two types of persons”

a) A person in the state of grievous sin, and getting worse (consistently) in one’s relationship with God: [314]

• Strategy of the “Bad spirits:” to encourage with the feelings of apparent pleasures and imagined delights of the senses and gratifications.
• Strategy of the “Good spirits:” to come with contrary feelings – like the sting of conscience and remorse.

b) A good person striving to be better his/her relationship with God our Lord: [315]

• Strategy of the “Bad spirits”: to prevent one’s spiritual life from growing. They would: harass with anxiety, afflict with sadness, raise obstacles backed by fallacious reasoning to disturb the soul.
• Strategy of the “Good spirits:” to give: courage, strength, inspirations, tranquility, peace, joy, affirmation, happiness, assurance, compassion, forgiveness, humility, zeal, healing, awe, fulfilled, wholesomeness, increase and renewed in faith, hope and love for God and the like.

5.2 “Golden Rules of Discernment”

a) Spiritual Consolations

• They come from the Good Spirits (who guides and counsels)
• Thus, decisions should only be made during such consolations.

b) Spiritual Desolations

• They come from the Bad Spirits (who guides and counsels)..
• Thus, one should not make any decisions during such desolations.
• One should also remain firm and constant in the past decisions that were made in consolations.
• This means that one should never change one’s decisions in desolations. Other signs of spiritual desolation would be when we are drawn away in faith, hope and love for God through: dryness, darkness, helplessness, turmoil of the soul, confusion, disillusionment, fear, anger, pain, guilt (about doing good), listlessness, tepidity, unhappiness, self-pity, sloth, sadness, pride, jealousy, lack of faith, hope, love for God etc.

5.3 Spiritual Desolations:

a) Reasons why they happen:

5.4  Practical Suggestions: What to Do

a) In times of Spiritual Desolation?

• Wait patiently for the Spiritual Consolations/encouragement to return; we must persevere in the trust that God will give us the Spiritual Consolation again. Meanwhile -- “What do we do?”

• Recall the times of Spiritual Consolations (The purpose of this is to draw strength from such experiences). This is done with the certainty that they will surely return, in God’s ways and in God’s time (provided each of our spiritual desolations are not caused by our negligence etc.)
• Increase our prayer (especially note the quality of our prayer), earnest self examination and some suitable way of doing penance.

b) In times of Spiritual Consolation?

• Humble our selves as much as possible and become aware of how weak and helpless we can be and are during times of spiritual desolations. So, be grateful for the gift of Spiritual Consolation that you are at present experiencing.
• Consider how we would act in times of spiritual desolations. Thus, store up strength for the times when spiritual desolations will set in.

6.0    DISCERNMENT OF SPIRITS

6.1  Some Clarification:

It may be helpful for us first to remind ourselves of what “discernment” is all about. One of the main purposes of discernment in the context of St Ignatius’ “Rules of The Discernment of Spirits” is to discern God’s Will i.e. what God wants of us. Such discernment also means that we have to try to distinguish between what comes from God, (i.e. the Good Spirit) and what comes from the Evil Spirit (i.e. the Bad Spirit) and what comes simply from ourselves.

As Christians, who believe in God’s Spirit, we too are aware that in reality, there is such a thing as “Evil Spirits.” We know, from reading Sacred Scriptures and from hearing stories that these Evil Spirits are powerful and are beyond our human comprehension. Obviously, these Bad Spirits would want to compete with God’s Spirits. Contrary to the Good Spirits, they would try to sow confusion and direct us away from God.

However, when we talk of “Bad/Evil Spirits” influencing us, we are not referring to ourselves being possessed by demons. Demons and possessions are not what we are concerned and are talking about in our discernment process here. They are a separate topic to be dealt with under “occult” and exorcism and the special ministry that deals with such phenomenon. Discernment of Spirits here would be to discover how God wants us to live our lives in our ordinary daily living or more specifically how we can discover His Will in the certain needs that we may have e.g. discernment of vocation, His Will in times of trial, suffering and indecisiveness and the like.

7.0 WHAT IS “SPIRITUAL CONSOLATION”?

(*Please refer to Part II page 11 Chart on “How do we know our Experiences are Spiritual?)

The experiences that draw us closer to God are spiritual experiences. They are not merely psychological/emotions produced by us. They are spiritual because we are “directly” in touched with the Holy Spirit. By this I mean, God through His gracious Will chooses to draw us closer to Him. When we experience this, we experience our God as a personal, loving, just, tender, compassionate, forgiving, understanding . . . God. We call such experiences, “Spiritual Consolations.”

Such experiences come as God’s pure and gratituous gifts to us. They are never earned by us. This means that we do not receive such gifts because we are holy or have done many sacrifices and good deeds to demand such favours from God. God takes the initiative and chooses to give them to us, as and when He thinks is best for us. This is God’s prerogative and He uses His Wisdom to act accordingly. We cannot comprehend why God acts or does not act in certain ways or at certain time. We cannot reduce our infinite and almighty God to our finite human level. We as limited creatures cannot expect to understand and read God’s mind. We can know and perceive God’s will only in-so-far as He chooses to reveal it to us.

Still not yet convinced?

Such feelings of uncertainty are normal especially when we are beginning to learn how to discern God’s Will in our life. Part of the reason why beginners feel unsure of whether the source of their experiences are from themselves or from other sources e.g. mental, emotions etc. is because we really want to be sure that we are not “deceiving” ourselves. That is, we do not want to attribute our experiences to “God’s Will” when in fact, what we experienced is only coming from ourselves (e.g. our wishful thinking, fantasies) or elsewhere.

I believe such uncertainties will be less if we are privileged to experience very deep spiritual consolations at some point in time of our lives: whether in prayer or outside prayer. When we are privileged to have such experiences, our doubts will be less.

Take for example. Several years ago, an Indonesian woman (mid-forties) rang my doorbell and asked for blessing; she was about to go for her chemotherapy treatment. She said, “Father, I have cancer of the brain. After the blessing, she told me how she did not feel the need for God in her life before she was struck down with cancer. She thought she already have everything she needed in life: wealth, health, family, friends and the like. When she was suddenly afflicted with cancer, she was shocked and was very bitter towards God. However, some months later, she felt she needed to return to God.

When she eventually, dared to entrust her life in God’s hands, she said, “Father, I felt a deep peace overwhelming me. I suddenly felt free, light and absolutely sure that God will

always be there for me, regardless of what happens to me. In fact, I began to realize more than ever before that God has never abandoned me at all. It was me who ‘switched Him off.’ From then on, this voice within me has been very assuring. I know it is God’s voice. I have reconciled with God, and have asked for His forgiveness of my past life.

Although, I am concerned about my young children, I now feel ready to go to Him, if my time is up. I know what He wills of me and my family will always be best for all of us.” Such experiences of being “freed” from the fears of our sickness or from our past

hurts, sins and guilt etc. are “spiritual consolations.” As for the Indonesian women (above) we see how her faith was strengthened through her sickness. Spiritual consolations can also be experienced through feelings of “assurance” e.g. the overcoming of our doubts about God’s call in our vocation, or in making an important decision in life e.g. changing our job, buying a new house, migrating to another country and the like.

If we are still not convinced, then why don’t we try to reproduce the spiritual consolation that we experienced in our prayer or in our life? If we try this, we will surely find that it is impossible to produce any spiritual consolations. In short, any experiences we are able to reproduce cannot be spiritual; they have to be only either psychological or physical. This is because spiritual consolations are pure and gratituous gifts from God.

8.0    EMOTIONS

Significant Factor in Discernment:

Emotions affect our discernment process more than we are aware of. In fact many decisions have been wrongly made because they were made emotionally. Marriages have ended in divorce, many priests and religious have left their vocations because of emotional problems; families too have made many wrong decisions when tempers were high and deep hurts have “forced” them into making irrational decisions that split the family up due to e.g. money disputes. In short, such decisions were all made in “emotionaldesolations” and thus without any discernment of what God’s Will was for them.

Emotions follow the general “Emotional Principle” of “I don’t want pain.” Thus, when we find relationships to be unbearable, we allow our emotions to dictate our decisions instead of following the proper process of the discernment of what God wants for us. This is because in emotional situations, we seek the path that we think will give us least pain.

Emotions too have a certain “emotional logic” that follows consciously or unconsciously the general principle of “I don’t want pain” or conversely, “I want more possession, pleasure, power and the like.” This “emotional logic” has an “emotional energy” that destroys objectivity and thus drives a person into making irrational decisions. People who are not strong in their faith would find it almost impossible to make rational and discerned decisions. For example, about a year ago, we read in the newspapers of how a mother jumped to hear death when her only son of 21 years old died of cancer. We can understand how this good mother who loved her son so much found her world around her collapse when her son died. He emotional desolation was so intense that even her good husband and other daughter could not soothe her pain; she had no longer any reason to live and taking her own life was for her the only way out of her pain.

Conversely, this “emotional logic” too operates on the principle of “I want possession, pleasure, power and the like.”

Prepared by: Fr Philip Heng,S.J. Copyrights Reserved