Ignatian Spirituality

“There are three kinds of thoughts in the mind, namely, one which is strictly my own, and arises wholly from my free own will; two others which come from without, the one from the good spirit, the other from the evil one.”
• Discernment is the discovery of the non-free movements in a prayer situation.
Daydreaming! Ironic that this man whose military skills and leadership potential were so remarkable should have come down to us, most powerfully, as a daydreamer. But Inigo’s daydreams held a potent secret. They had, locked up inside them, the key to the gift of discernment.

As the tedious, pain-ridden days passed, Inigo indulged in two kinds of dreaming. On the one hand, he still dreamed of the battles he would command, the military glories he would achieve, the noble ladies he would woo and win. But they were the dreams of “what might have been,” and though they raised his spirits for a short while as he enjoyed the fantasy, they left him, in the longer term, feeling flat and disconsolate.

On the other hand, fired by the books he had been given, he started to dream of a King whose service was potentially even more desirable that that of the king of Spain; he began to wonder how this Christ King might be served; he began to dream of ‘outsainting’ the saints in this great new quest that might be worth spending his life on. They were still daydreams but he noticed an important difference in their aftereffects.

Those dreams left him feeling inspired, energized, and eager. They were not about what might have been, but about something that still lay dormant in the depths of his own heart, like a seed that had mysteriously germinated and was pushing its way to the surface of his life through all this heavy soil of pain and disappointment. These were dreams that didn’t go away. It was into this realization of the difference between daydreams and God dreams (as we might call them) that the gift of discernment was given to Inigo.

It was there that he discovered what we might call the “inner compass” of his heart, which was able to reveal to him which movements within him were capable of engaging his deepest vital energy, and which were leading him only to fleeting satisfactions that left him unchanged and unfulfilled. As he lay there in his enforced stillness and solitude, he learned to notice his moods and feelings and reactions and to measure them against this unseen compass. In his inner silence, he listened with fresh awareness to an invitation coming from deep inside himself to enlist in this adventure of the service of God.

As he ventured more and more deeply into the stories that were inspiring his new kind of daydreaming, he was also finding a new way of exercising his imagination. He began to find himself, in imagination, present in the scenes, conversations, and stories of the Gospels, and he began to participate in the plots of these stories. It is the start, for him, of an adventure into imaginative prayer that was to become a most powerful catalyst for the growth of his personal relationship with God, a method of prayer that is just as vividly available to us today.

On his sickbed, Inigo experienced deep conversion. Gradually, after many setbacks, he limped his way back to life, but it was never again to be the life he had known before; the cannonball had blown that life to pieces. Now Inigo was a pilgrim of God, to whom he was ready to offer all his ideals of knightly service, courage, and persistence.

• That first stage of the pilgrimage – that search for the “I know not what” that was urging him onwards – took Inigo to the Abbey of Monserrat, high on a jagged mountain peak overlooking the plain of Manresa.
• As he made his way down the hill of Monserrat to the plain below he felt the need to stay awhile, in quiet, to reflect on all that had passed and everything that God seemed to be showing him through it. He also made some notes on his reflections.
Daydreaming! Ironic that this man whose military skills and leadership potential were so remarkable should have come down to us, most powerfully, as a daydreamer. But Inigo’s daydreams held a potent secret. They had, locked up inside them, the key to the gift of discernment.


He had been so open to the in-pouring of the Holy Spirit that he was able to interpret his own experience in a way that has universal validity and significance. The fruit of this experience and the wisdom that it generated is recorded in an unassuming little book called the Spiritual Exercises.

Inigo’s notebook was to become a guide, based entirely on his own experience:
• how to become increasingly sensitive to God’s actions in our lives
• how to discover and live true to the very deepest desires within us
• how to make decisions that reflect God’s indwelling presence in the innermost freedom of our hearts
• how to join our lives consciously with the life of Jesus, God-made-man, through the living spirit of the gospel


The word companion became central to Inigo’s life. In Manresa, Inigo had begun to share his experiences with a few friends who showed interest in his Exercises. He used his own notes as a guide to helping them. This continues to be the way in which the Exercises are used: as a guide to a director, mentor, or soul-friend in helping another discover, through prayer and reflection, God’s action in his or her life.

Daydreaming! Ironic that this man whose military skills and leadership potential were so remarkable should have come down to us, most powerfully, as a daydreamer. But Inigo’s daydreams held a potent secret. They had, locked up inside them, the key to the gift of discernment.

Ignatian spirituality is about finding God in our lived experience and allowing him to transform that experience, through his Spirit, for ourselves and for the whole human family.

The great secret of Ignatian Spirituality is that God challenges us to cease to be self-centered, that is, in orbit around our own kingdom, and to become God-centered. Once we become aware of the way things really are organized, we can never again be quite comfortable with ourselves when we are living as though things were still the way our illusions had seduced us into believing.
Helps towards Discernment
• A simple experiment: Stand with a light source behind you, and walk steadily away from the light source. Notice where your shadow falls. And notice whether the path ahead seems dark or well lit. Now turn to face the light source. What happens to your shadow? How does the path ahead of your look now?
• The same is true of our inner journey: oriented towards our own kingdoms, away from our God-center, where does our shadow fall? When we turn towards the sun, God, what does that do to our shadow?

Ignatius explains the underlying pattern of the moods of the two orientations, towards God or away from God:

• For those drifting away from God the action of their lives disturbs them and churns up their moods, creating peacelessness, while the things that come from their own kingdom make them feel good and apparently contented.

• For those whose lives are moving toward God, the opposite effects are apparent: when God is touching them they feel at peace and they know that somehow they are on solid ground; when they are temporarily (we hope!) attending to their own kingdoms, they feel that are really not living true, and they experience inner turmoil.

The beach represents our true center and home in God, and the destination of our journeying. The sea is either moving toward the beach or away from it. In the same way, our hearts, our true centers, are directed toward or away from God. This is the general orientation of our life. The effects of the winds (‘the spirits’): if the wind is blowing out to sea it will impede the progress of the swimmer with the flow tide by working in the opposite direction; if blowing out from the seashore it will speed up the swimmer’s progress.

In the language of our spiritual journey, when we are directed toward our home in God, a wind in the opposite direction will cause turbulence and act obtrusively. Yet the same wind would be seen as a benefit when our journey is directed away from God. If we see these winds as the creative or destructive movements working in our hearts, we can understand how an inner movement that speeds and affirms the journey of a pilgrim on his or her way to God would appear as a movement of opposition for a person whole life is directed away from God.

It is taken as a fact or our lives that basic orientation is toward God, otherwise we would not be seeking to deepen our lives with Him. Thus, it follows that when we experience the ‘solid’ feelings, these are springing from God’s action upon us. Feelings of turmoil have their ultimate source in something that is not of God and often has to do with our own kingdoms.

Since all of us are out to deepen our life in God, and have the same basic orientation toward our home in him, we can see that the bad spirits are like the wind blowing against us, making us feel we are being blocked, experiencing turbulence; the good spirits are like the winds blowing from behind us, giving us a sense of support and encouragement, and speeding our journey and cooperating with it. We are thankful for the supportive winds, and are on our guard when the winds are against us.
Tracking Our Moods
There are two basic kinds of moods, referred by Margaret Silf as ‘being on solid ground,’ ‘living true,’ or ‘being at odds with ourselves.’ These she calls the ‘nettle-bed’ moods or the ‘rose-garden’ moods.

We need to get in touch with changing moods of our lived experience. If we prayerfully review our moods over a period of time we will be able to touch both our ‘solid, rosebud reactions’ or our ‘turmoil, nettle-bed reactions.’ Then we allow God, in prayer, to lead us down to the real roots of those feelings or moods. If there is rage or anger or pride, what is the sore spot all about? Can we put a name on it and own it?

• Nettle-bed feelings of depression may be rooted in anxieties about the future; feeling of distrust may spring from a broken relationship; cynicism may be rooted in betrayal of friendship; arrogance may come from past humiliations.
• Rose-bed reactions of confidence may be rooted in affirmations, joy in the ability to appreciate nature, compassion for the experience of being understood by others, tolerance from being forgiven in life, love from having being loved.

• One of the realities of daily life is that we have ‘furniture’ (some call them ‘landmines’) that people keep bumping into, because they are invisible to others. They can be invisible to us too unless and until we let God reveal it to us in our prayer and reflection on what is happening in our lives. We all have this kind of furniture, which may have to do with bad memories and experiences or some irrational prejudice that has its roots in our own history.

• The trick with the inner furniture is not to try to get rid of it. No one can do that. We do, however, want to make it visible to ourselves. Once we know that it is there, and what it looks like, people may still bump into it, but we will have moved beyond the risk of being thrown off course by those bumps. That makes us more free, and it also creates a free space for others, who no longer experience the tension of our hidden ‘Don’t touch!’ notices. One way is to notice our overreactions. This will help us get in touch with the roots of this tension, and will go a long way to defusing it.

Consolation and Desolation
How to Recognize Them
Desolation:
Turns us in on ourselves
Drives us down the spiral into negativity
Cuts us off from community
Makes us give up on important things
Takes over our consciousness and crowds out distant vision
Drains us of energy

Consolation:
Directs our focus outside ourselves
Lifts our hearts to see the joy/sorrows of other people
Bonds us closer to our human community
Generates new inspiration and ideas
Restores balances and refreshes our vision
Shows us where God is active in our lives and where He is leading us
Releases new energy in us.