IGNATIAN SPIRITUAL EXERCISES TRAINING (ISET)
2023-BLOCK TWO – SESSION 19
SECOND WEEK: RULES FOR THE DISCERNMENT OF SPIRITS
Annemarie: [00:00:00] Hello, everyone. Good to see you. Good to be back. Missed you. Just giving everyone a moment to join.[00:01:00]
Welcome all. We have some people missing tonight—Trevor, Trevor, Adri-Marie, Brenda, and Russell are not able to be with us, so they’ve left me with you and our very capable team of mentors and supervisors, so we’ll journey together tonight. Some of them will be back with us. next time around.
Remember that we’re not meeting next week. It’s the 3rd of July and t’s the night before a big holiday for some people so we have given that day a miss. We won’t be [00:02:00] meeting next Monday.
I’m going to hand over to Tracy to lead us in a time of reflection and prayer. Thanks, Tracy.
Tracy: All right, friends. Well, If you would like, feel free to take off your cameras and just settle in wherever you are. Just allow yourself to get grounded. Find a position that is comfortable to you, allowing your body to sink into that place.
Notice your feet on the ground and the way your body touches the chair you sit on. Take a couple deep breaths as you settle into the [00:03:00] space.
Take a moment; put your hand on your chest, noticing your beating heart and your breath. For the space of an Our Father, imagine the face of love regarding you. Notice how God sits with you. What form does love take? Where do you feel love in your body? Just sit with the sensation of love, [00:04:00] God’s presence.
As we relish in God’s presence, notice any invitation love may [00:05:00] have for you in the following poem.
The Anointing by Drew E. Jackson
There are times when that something
comes over you. You know those times.
Pay attention. Let it fill you to overflowing.
Allow it to move your pen to write.
Open your mouth to say those words,
at which you tremble.
Pick up that brush to paint. Or sweep.
But whatever that something moves you to
do, let the Spirit take you.
To shake the foundations and make new worlds.
To break open new paradigms and
design an unforeseen story.
To love. I will always move you to love.
When it comes it will drip slowly.
Like oil. Running down the crown
of your head leaving little droplets of sweet-smelling perfume in the dust around you.
Don’t wipe your brow. Let it fall.
The place on which you stand is holy ground.
Sometimes that genius will find you in the midnight hour.
Other times it will overtake you at the high point
of the day when all eyes are on you. No matter.
The time will always be right. I have learned
not to be surprised that I’ve been chosen.
We have all been chosen for love.
The anointing was given at creation’s dawn.
The oil always drips. Waiting for you, and for me,
to stand under its flow.
Allow yourself just to sit with God for a moment. Notice any images or [00:07:00] words that come up for you in this space of silence.[00:08:00] [00:09:00]
I will read this one more time. I just ask you to notice a word, a phrase, an image, or an invitation as you listen.
There are times when that something
comes over you. You know those times.
Pay attention. Let it fill you to overflowing.
Allow it to move your pen to write.
Open your mouth to say those words,
at which you tremble.
Pick up that brush to paint. Or sweep.
But whatever that something moves you to
do, let the Spirit take you.
To shake the foundations and make new worlds.
To break open new paradigms and
design an unforeseen story.
To love. I will always move you to love.
When it comes it will drip slowly.
Like oil. Running down the crown
of your head leaving little droplets of sweet-smelling perfume in the dust around you.
Don’t wipe your brow. Let it fall.
The place on which you stand is holy ground.
Sometimes that genius will find you in the midnight hour.
Other times it will overtake you at the high point
of the day when all eyes are on you. No matter.
The time will always be right. I have learned
not to be surprised that I’ve been chosen.
We have all been chosen for love.
The anointing was given at creation’s dawn.
The oil always drips. Waiting for you, and for me,
to stand under its flow.
Let’s just take this moment to notice the phrase, the image, the word or invitation. Just have a conversation with God, with your friend, as we soak in whatever God is leading you towards today.[00:12:00] [00:13:00] [00:14:00]
There are times when that something
comes over you. You know those times.
Pay attention. Let it fill you to overflowing.
Allow it to move your pen to write.
Open your mouth to say those words,
at which you tremble.
Pick up that brush to paint. Or sweep.
But whatever that something moves you to
do, let the Spirit take you.
To shake the foundations and make new worlds.
To break open new paradigms and
design an unforeseen story.
To love. I will always move you to love.
When it comes it will drip slowly.
Like oil. Running down the crown
of your head leaving little droplets of sweet-smelling perfume in the dust around you.
Don’t wipe your brow. Let it fall.
The place on which you stand is holy ground.
Sometimes that genius will find you in the midnight hour.
Other times it will overtake you at the high point
of the day when all eyes are on you. No matter.
The time will always be right. I have learned
not to be surprised that I’ve been chosen.
We have all been chosen for love.
The anointing was given at creation’s dawn.
The oil always drips. Waiting for you, and for me,
to stand under its flow.
Friends, when you are ready, you can come back to this place and let us know by turning on your cameras.[00:16:00]
Annemarie: Thank you so much for that, Tracy. Today we are going to be taking another look at the discernment of spirits and the rules/guidelines for the discernment of spirits. And you’ll remember that not too long ago, a couple of sessions back, Adri-Marie helped us to think about the first set—rules one to 14 of that lot of the rules for discernment of spirits.
I just want to remind us of that and I’m going to just remind us of those first ones. [00:17:00] If you remember that we did those first sets, I’m going to just read through them for you. Kathy sent me a simplified version today, which I think is really helpful and I’m going to send it on to you, but I just want to read through those 14 sentences just to remind you.
So, you’ll remember that the First Rule is about which way the person is orientated, which way they’re facing, okay? So, if the person is orientated away from God, what does the bad spirit do? The bad spirit encourages, but the good spirit bites and stings their conscience, wanting them to turn back again.
Second Rule—if the person is facing and moving towards God, the bad spirit, obviously the bad spirit doesn’t want [00:18:00] that, so discourages and the good spirit encourages.
The Third Rule—spiritual consolation, interior movement towards the love of God, an increase of faith, of hope, and of love.
Then he talks about the opposite of spiritual consolation, which is spiritual desolation, the movement towards things that are low and earthly, a decrease of faith and hope and love. Then you’ll remember there are a whole batch of rules that are all about how to manage the temptations that come to us in a time of desolation.
These first week rules are very much focused on the temptations that connect with spiritual desolation. So, Rules Five to Nine are all about spiritual desolation. So spiritual desolation, that movement towards things that are low and earthly, a decrease [00:19:00] of faith, hope, and love and then he tells us how to handle that. In desolation, never make a change of a decision that was made in consolation, because when you’re in desolation, it’s the bad spirit that counsels us. In desolation, it helps to change ourselves. intensely against it.
In Desolation, Rule Seven, we might feel that God has abandoned us, but God has not abandoned us. God’s grace remains with us. Rule Eight, In desolation, be patient and know that consolation is going to come back again.
And then in Rule Nine, he gives us three possible reasons for spiritual desolation. It might be because of something we’ve done or not done through our own faults or our own negligence. It might be about learning to love God for God’s self—the giver, not just the gifts. And it could be [00:20:00] about learning that consolation is not something we can earn. It’s something that is a gratuitous gift of God.
And then in Rule Ten, he says the only thing that he says in the first set of rules about spiritual consolation, which is store up consolation for when desolation comes. So again, in an odd kind of way, it’s a bit about desolation, even though it’s the one time that he’s really talking in these rules about consolation. Okay; there’s one more thing. In consolation, be humble and remember that it’s a gift. In desolation, remember that God’s grace is always enough.
Then you have that last batch, Number Twelve, Thirteen and Fourteen, which are about the tactics of the bad spirit, the initial kind of tactics. So, the first one, remember the bad spirit is like a spoiled child and if you are firm and you stand up against the bad spirit strongly, the bad spirit, like anybody kind [00:21:00] of gets the message and backs down. But if you give in to the bad spirit, then the bad spirit, the attacks kind of multiply and is almost a snowball kind of effect. Rule Thirteen is about not keeping the temptations of the bad spirits secret but talking to a wise person about them so that they can be kind of brought out into the light. And the last one, Rule Fourteen, the bad spirit is like a commander in war who looks for our weakest point—for those places where we struggle most and attacks us in those places.
So hopefully you remember all of that because I know that Adri-Marie went through all of those, and she’s got a lovely way of teaching them. So, I’m hoping that you’ve held on to them and that you kind of just have a moment of refresher there, because today [00:22:00] we’re going to be looking at Part Two. So, that was Part One. And it’s important to remember Part One, because it connects in some ways with Part Two, and it’s different in some ways.
We’re going to look at the second set of guidelines. If you have your text of the exercises, which I hope you do, you will find them right towards the very back. Okay. You won’t find them in the second week itself. You’ll find them in supplementary material at the back, and if you’ve got the red book, you’ll find it on page 259, and if you’ve got another edition, look for paragraph 328 and you’ll see that it talks about Part Two, Guidelines for a More Subtle Discernment of Spirits Suitable Especially for the Second Week. Okay.
So [00:23:00] who are these rules for—this particular batch of eight? When do we use them? Who are they meant for? So, they’re only to be offered to people who have already made some significant progress in their life of faith.—mature Christians, people who are earnestly striving after God, because people who have already made a firm commitment and who are living out that commitment for some time are not going to be as easily tempted by the overt strategies of the bad spirit.
So, the bad spirit has to up the bad spirits game, as it were, and do something a little bit more sophisticated, a little bit more subtle. That’s what’s going to happen here so that instead of temptations that are linked with spiritual desolation, we’re now going to have a situation in which the temptations that come are things [00:24:00] that appear to be good, that appear to be of God but is actually the bad spirit under the guise of the angel of light.
Okay, so you’re not going to give these rules or help use these rules with someone who is just starting out in spiritual direction or just starting out in their life of faith. That’s why he talks about them as more appropriate for the second week.
Now, that doesn’t mean that you can’t use these rules with someone in the first week of the exercises. You might need to, but it would be someone who’s got quite a strong life of faith, not a beginner. This is about someone who’s already got a very, very strong commitment to God.
So, Ignatius comes up with all of this, remember, from [00:25:00] his own hard one experience. He reflects on his life. He reflects on the movements that he finds going on inside of him. He notices what is happening to him, and he comes up with these guidelines based on lived experience.
So, one of the examples that kind of helps us to see how he came up with these second set of guidelines was when he was at Manresa. You’ll remember that time in the autobiography where he’s stuck in Manresa for those eleven months and he’s spending up to seven hours a day praying in the cave and he’s spending the rest of his time looking after people, having spiritual conversations, ministering to the sick in the hospital there at the St. Lucia hospital. So, really living a life that is really intensely given [00:26:00] over to the things of God.
And in that time, he starts to discover something happening to him ,and I’m going to read a paragraph to you just so that you get the drift of it.
But when he went to rest—kind of at night when he was ready to sleep—many times there came to him great illuminations and great spiritual consolations, which caused him to lose much of the time that he had set aside for sleep—and that was not much. Considering the several times he reflected that he had decided to devote much time to dealing with God and afterward all the rest of the day as well. And consequently, he began to doubt whether those illuminations came from the good spirit, and he concluded it would be better to reject them and to sleep during the time determined. And this he did.
So, he [00:27:00] was having these wonderful consolations and these amazing, powerful spiritual experiences, but he was realizing that they were happening at precisely the time that he was meant to be going to bed. Meantime, he’d already spent seven hours that day praying. Why didn’t they come to him during those seven hours?
Why suddenly, when he was going to sleep, when he needed that sleep to be able to function, was that beginning to happen? And so, he started to be a little bit suspicious of these constellations. Were they coming from the good spirit or were they coming from some other source?
It happened again in Barcelona. You might remember when he had really discerned that he was to go back and study. He was doing serious studies in Barcelona, learning theology, and once he’d gotten his head around the Latin that he had to catch up on, he discovered that a similar thing started to happen to him.
Precisely when he was supposed to be [00:28:00] learning his grammar, and his theological work, at that particular time, that was when he started to have these profound spiritual experiences and he was saying, “No, there’s something going on here that’s actually going to derail the purpose that God has put me here to do.” So, that’s kind of where he starts to understand the complexity and the nuances of what’s going on here.
Okay, so I want you to look at some of these rules.
So, let’s look at Rule One, and I’m going to ask somebody to read that one to us, preferably the one from the Fleming translation, the contemporary version. Is there someone who can read that for us? Paragraph 320.[00:29:00]
Gavin: When we are trying to follow the call of the Lord in our lives, we will find that the good spirit tends to give support, encouragement, and oftentimes even a certain delight in all our endeavors. The evil spirit generally acts to bring about the opposite reaction. The evil spirit will subtly arouse a dissatisfaction with our own efforts, will raise up doubts and anxieties about God’s love or our own response or sting the conscience with thoughts of pride in our attempt to lead a good life.
Annemarie: Great, Thanks, Gavin. Okay, so it’s pretty simple there. The good spirit again gives spiritual consolation and encouragement to someone who is growing and deepening in the spiritual life and [00:30:00] here the bad spirit doesn’t cause desolation so much, but causes a more subtle kind of unsettledness, kind of a subtle jarring that we have to become very sensitive to and very attuned to. It’s more difficult to notice. But there’s that movement that’s going on there.
Okay, let’s read Rule Two. Can you read the literal version, the one on the left for me?
Olga: Second Rule. It belongs to God, our Lord, to give consolation to the soul without preceding cause, for it is the property of the creator to enter, go out and cause movements in the soul, bringing it all into love of his divine majesty. I say without cause, without any previous sense or knowledge of any object through which such consolation would come through one’s acts of understanding and [00:31:00] will.
Annemarie: Great. Thank you. Okay, so that sounds a little bit convoluted, but let me try and just remind us of what’s going on here. This kind of spiritual consolation. Ignatius gives a fancy name to—and it’s kind of nice to know the name, although it doesn’t really matter—but it’s called Consolation Without Preceding Cause— Consolation Without Preceding Cause. This very special kind of consolation is a kind of consolation that you don’t have to discern if it comes from God or if it comes from the bad spirit. It can only be given by God. This particular and quite rare kind of consolation is only ever from God. Okay.
So, it has particular kinds of characteristics. The first kind of characteristic is it tends to be [00:32:00] quite intense and quite unexpected, kind of out of the blue. You are busy washing the dishes and suddenly you are absolutely overwhelmed with an intense sense of God’s love such that you’ve never experienced it before, and perhaps never will again. Kind of just, you weren’t looking for it. You weren’t doing anything. It just came out of the blue and just completely overwhelms—Consolation Without Previous Cause. It’s an extraordinary moment of grace, a profound spiritual consolation, a sense of the all-embracing love of God. There is always a sense of strengthening joy, of clarity of spiritual fruitfulness that’s going to come from it.
Sometimes there can be a sense that there was something spiritual going on before, but the [00:33:00] experience of the consolation is completely disproportionate to what was happening before. So maybe I was saying grace as I normally do before meals. You know, every day of my life. I’m not doing anything particularly dramatic or intense or different and suddenly I have an overwhelming experience of God’s consolation and grace. It’s disproportionate to the activity that went before it.
I’m going to give you a couple of examples. This is an example from the experience of Thomas Merton that you may be very familiar with—18th of March 1958. He even remembers the date because it’s such a powerful consolation. And he writes,
In Louisville, at the corner of 4th and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs. That we could not be alien to one another, even though we were total strangers. [00:34:00] There is no way of telling people they are all walking around shining like the sun.
Okay, that’s a mystical experience, right? That’s a powerful experience of grace and it’s happening at the corner of a busy intersection while he’s walking along, not expecting this to be happening at all. Okay, so a consolation without previous cause. If you were his spiritual director, and he came to you and he recounted that experience, you don’t need to now think, well, is this consolation from God? Or, you know, do I have in the back of my mind that it could still be not from God, that we need to discern it? No, it’s clear. This consolation is consolation without previous cause. Okay, so that’s an example.
I wanted to give you another little example. So let me see if I [00:35:00] can get hold of that, quickly. So, Ignatius says,
One day, he was praying the hours of Our Lady on the steps of the monastery, as usual. His understanding began to be elevated, as though he saw the Most Holy Trinity under the figure of three kings, and this with so many tears and so many sobs that he could not control himself. And participating that morning in a procession which began from the monastery, he could not restrain his tears until dinner. Nor even after dinner could he think of anything other than the Most Holy Trinity, and this with many and widely diverse comparisons, and with much joy and consolation, such that throughout his entire life this impression of feeling great devotion while praying to the Trinity remained with him.
So, it’s enduring, something that happens that is so profound and so enduring and some people never [00:36:00] have an experience of consolation without previous cause, and that’s okay. For other people, it may be a rare thing that happens once, twice, three times in a lifetime. This is not an everyday kind of experience.
The key thing about it is you don’t have to discern which spirit it comes from, because only God can go in to a soul and move it in that way, without any preceding cause, without us thinking about and engaging in some spiritual activity.
Okay. My experience is that when somebody in the exercises or in spiritual direction shares a consolation without preceding cause, there tends to be such an overwhelming sense of God’s grace, of being on absolute holy ground that happens both within the person and the director, as the director [00:37:00] listens. There’s an immediate sense of clarity that this is a gift of God. This is something that is given by God.
Most consolations however do have something that precipitates them that kind of triggers them—comes before them and that’s how it mostly works. Most consolations have something that sparks them, and those consolations may well be given by God, or they might be given by the bad spirit for the purpose of deceiving the person and gradually leading them away from the greater good.
Because remember, the bad spirit knows that a person who is mature in the spiritual life and who’s earnestly searching after God isn’t going to be tempted by something that is obviously less good or bad. They are only going to be tempted by something that [00:38:00] looks really good—that looks like it’s going to deepen their life of faith and it’s going to be of service to others. That’s the only kind of thing that kind of person is going to be vulnerable to.
We’re going to look now at Rule Three. Can someone read that for us, please? This is consolation with preceding course. Shirley, do you have it in front of you?
Shirley: Yes. Paragraph 331? When there is a reason for consolation, whether it be from certain thoughts or achievements or events, or even more so from certain people who have such an effect upon us, then either the good spirit or the evil spirits [00:39:00] can be involved. On the one hand, the good spirit brings about such consolation in order to strengthen and to speed the progress of our life in Christ.
The evil spirit, on the other hand, arouses feelings so that we might be drawn to focus our attention on wrong things, or to pursue a more selfish motivation, or to get our own way before all else. Quietly and slowly the change is brought about until the evil direction becomes set and clear.
Annemarie: Thanks, Shirley. So, it’s kind of what we’ve been saying. The bad spirit and the good spirit give consolation for two entirely opposite purposes . It’s fairly simple. The good spirit wants to strengthen us and speed our progress in the life of Christ. The bad spirit gives us consolation for exactly the [00:40:00] opposite reason so as to begin to insidiously change that generosity that we have and erode it or direct it towards something that is less good.
A couple of characteristics of this kind of consolation with preceding cause; it doesn’t come out of the blue. It’s in response to some kind of stimulus. some kind of spiritual practice, perhaps prayer, perhaps talking about the things of God, being at a worship service. There’s some kind of stimulus that elicits that consolation. It could be listening to spiritual music, going for a prayer walk, whatever.
And there’s a recognizable link between the consolation and what came before it. So, I’m sitting, overlooking the beautiful view of [00:41:00] Manresa from the balcony there, and I’m looking out over that cathedral and out into the city, and I start to have a profound sense of God’s love and a desire to share in the charism of Ignatius more deeply. Okay?
Well, if I’m standing in the place where Ignatius was, and I’m looking out. in that way, and I’m thinking about it, that’s likely to be a consolation that is being triggered by the circumstance that I find myself in. I’m in a place that’s eliciting it. I’m at a moment that is very sacred. All of these things are part of that. I’m actively engaging. I’m thinking about it. I’m praying about it. I’m opening my heart in an intentional way to God, whereas the consolation without previous cause tends to come BANG out of the blue. God does all of it, [00:42:00] whereas here, I’m participating in the consolation.
Gallagher, who’s written a fantastic book. It’s a blue book. It’s called Spiritual Consolation and Ignatian Guide for the Greater Discernment of Spirits. That’s the book that’s all about the second set, and he’s also got a podcast that’s free and I’ll let you know where to find that.
It has a couple of questions. So, if you’re trying to figure out, you know, what am I dealing with here? When you’re listening to someone, you’re thinking, is this a person who’s really committed to God who’s got a mature faith? Was this really an experience of spiritual consolation? Did they feel an increase of faith, hope and love? Yes. Okay. Was it a profound, intense experience of being totally drawn in love of the divine majesty? And did it come out of the blue? Well, if it did, it’s probably consolation without previous cause. Or was the person praying or engaging with [00:43:00] spiritual thoughts and feelings and memories? And if they were, then it’s probably consolation with previous cause. So, kind of just be listening out for that.
Rule Four. Somebody can read that for us, please? Angela. Do you have it there? Great. Paragraph 232.
Angela: For a person [00:44:00] striving to lead a good life, the evil spirit ordinarily appears like an angel of light. For example, we find ourselves inspired by pious thoughts or holy desires. And then after some time we are caught up in the pride of our own thinking and in the selfishness of our own desires.
Annemarie: So, the bad spirit starts by inspiring the person with something good, pious thoughts, holy thoughts, good desires, and then ends up trying to distort those good desires.
So, Ignatius now in these next set of rules is going to say, well, what do you do if this consolation without previous cause, if you’re trying to discern it, whether it’s from the good spirit or the bad spirit. So how do you discern that? How do you figure this out? He’s got some tips for us.
So, Rule Number Five. Somebody read that for us? Shelley? [00:45:00]
Shelley: We can grow as discerning persons by examining carefully the path our experiences have taken us. If in reflection, on the course of our thoughts and our actions we find that from beginning to end our eyes have remained fixed on the Lord, we can be sure that the Good Spirit has been moving us. But if that’s what started off well in our thoughts and actions begins to be self-focused or turn us away from our way to God, we should suspect that the evil spirit has somehow twisted the good beginning toward an evil direction, and possibly even to an evil end.
So, we can discover that an originally good course of thinking, resolving, or acting has led us to be weakened spiritually, or even to become desolate, or [00:46:00] confused. The signs of desolation give clear indication of the evil spirit’s influence.
Annemarie: All right, thank you. So here we get something that Ignatius is saying, we need to be sure that the beginning, the middle, and the end are all wholly good. What can happen is that if it’s a consolation that is not from the good spirit, everything looks great in the beginning. We’re fired up about some kind of ministry or some kind of way of prayer or whatever it is that we really feel is coming from God, and then things start to unravel, maybe over the course of many months. It may only be six months or a year down the line that you start to realize that the thing that started the desolation that eventually comes actually started with this—what looked like a [00:47:00] wonderful inspiration of God and something that you thought was what God was inviting you to. But in fact, that consolation was not coming from God, but coming from the bad spirit.
So, it starts off, and in the beginning it’s really hard to differentiate or to tell, but eventually the bad spirit cannot help but leave its traces—kind of its imprint somewhere along this path. Relationships may start to fray. Your prayer life may start to come unstuck. The ministry may start to become less fruitful. There may be a loss of joy in whatever it is that you were inspired to do. It starts to unravel slowly, and it may only be when it starts to unravel that someone comes to you in spiritual direction and says, “I don’t know what’s going on. I’m not in a good place,” and for someone who’s got a really strong sense of God and a really deep sense of faith. And then [00:48:00] it’s often helpful to say, “Well, do you remember when it started, that you started to feel like this?” And then to kind of trace back right to the beginning, where that might have might have begun.
Because generally, the decision that was made was not what God wanted. Often it happens in terms of ministry that something is really going well—someone, for example, is finding that the preaching is having a powerful impact and then they get invited to go and teach preaching at a seminary or go and do a whole big preaching tour or whatever and this seems to be the invitation of God. They get really excited and enlivened by it and for a little while it goes really well, but they haven’t taken into account the impact that that’s going to have on their marriage and their children and the other ministries that they’ve been involved in. And somehow things start to kind of come unstuck because this isn’t actually what God had wanted this person to [00:49:00] be doing.
So, we have to reflect on the whole course of what is going on and if what started out seeming to be a consolation or the invitation of God, little by little has led to something bad, it might not be something bad in itself, but something that is not good for this particular person in these particular circumstances, or something that distracts the person from what has been kind of a deeply consoling path before, kind of the long trajectory of their faith life with God.
If it leads to something less good than the person had proposed to do before this whole thing happened; if it leaves the person ultimately weakened in spirit, less consoled, less at peace with God; If it disquiets their spirit; if their sense of peace and tranquility starts to go, their sense of joy, then [00:50:00] you know, there’s something off about it.
So, you’re looking for what is the trajectory here. Is it leading the person more and more to the good, more and more to a deepened sense of faith, hope, and love or is it beginning to pull the person away, even if it’s quite subtle, so you’re trying to really notice that.
I’m going to send you—because we don’t have time to do it together—a kind an example, a case study of a priest called David, because I think it really illuminates how this unraveling process can happen in quite a powerful way. So, it comes from this book, but I’ll send you those pages to have a little look at. Okay.
So, let’s go to our next rule. We need to get to Rule Six. Somebody going to read rule six [00:51:00] for us, please.
John: I’ll be glad to.
Annemarie: Thank you!
John: When we recognize that we have been duped by the evil spirit through a certain thought progression or course of action, we should review carefully all the stages which we pass through from the time when the evil became apparent back to its very beginnings with its good intent.
By means of such a review, we will find that we can more quickly catch ourselves when we are being led on by the deceit of the evil spirit. And so, we are more enabled to keep ourselves on guard in the future. Finally, there are further insights in regard to consolation in the progress of our spiritual life.
Annemarie: Great. Thank you, John. Okay. Liz, I’ll get you to read the next one, but we’re going to just stay with rule six for a moment. [00:52:00] So basically Ignatius is really doing this thing of, we need to reflect on our experience. It’s really important to keep reflecting and often, when we come to the point of recognizing that we’ve been duped by the bad spirit, you can kind of go, how could this have happened? How could I not have seen what I can now see with such clarity? Suddenly it’s so obvious when the deceits of the bad spirit are unmasked eventually in a conversation with one’s director, one can often go, “Oh my word. Now I realize. You know, when things started to go wrong, how things started to unravel.”
But Ignatius is saying we can preemptively look at that; review how it happens step by step. What were the stages that I got hooked into so that the next time the bad spirit tries a similar tactic, we’re less likely to be fooled. We’re [00:53:00] less likely to be hooked because we have already thought about the way that we are vulnerable to being led astray.
I would remember once when I went to confession with a Jesuit, who knew that I was very interested in Ignatian spirituality and rules for discernment and goodness knows what else, but it was when I was a student at University, and I’d gotten completely derailed by something that looked really good but had gotten me into quite a difficult situation down the line.
And he said, I want you to write an essay looking at what happened and how the evil spirit hooked you, as your kind of penance to kind of reflect on this process. It was one of the most valuable things I ever did, was to go back and to actually see that the thing that had hooked me was feeling that I could make this huge difference if I just connected with these [00:54:00] people who wanted me to be part of what it was that they were doing and I got so sucked into that dynamic that I wasn’t able to see very clearly. I wasn’t able to kind of weigh things up. I got caught in this wave of enthusiasm without slowing down enough. Now I kind of recognize how much I need to slow down and really talk to someone who’s got a bit more objectivity because I tend to get fired up quite easily by things that I’m passionate about. So, it can be really, really helpful to do a little bit of kind of unpacking and almost a postmortem of the experience for the future.
Okay. Rule Seven. Liz.
Liz: As we continue to make progress in the spiritual life, the movement of the good spirit is very delicate, gentle, and often [00:55:00] delightful. The good spirit touches us in a way that a drop of water penetrates a sponge.
When the evil spirit tries to interrupt our progress, the movement is violent, disturbing, and confusing. The way that the evil spirit touches into our lives is more like a water hitting hard upon a stone. In persons whose lives are going from bad to worse, description given above could be reversed. The reason for this difference lies in the conflict of opposing forces.
In other words, when good or evil spirit finds their heart a true haven, they enter quietly just as anyone comes home. By contrast, evil spirits cause great commotion and noise as they try to enter into the heart of a just person intent upon doing good.
Annemarie: All right. Thank you, Liz. Okay.
So, you’ve got some very beautiful and powerful images there and what Ignatius is trying to do now is to [00:56:00] say, you know, these are different moments at which we might catch this trajectory that’s going in the wrong kind of direction. So initially, we might not see it very easily, but we need to look for the beginning, middle and end and that was the rule five.
Then he says when we got to the next one, rule six, we might not get it until the very end, and if we only get it at the very end, well, it’s still useful to think back so that next time maybe we can catch it earlier. But better still is to catch it at the very beginning, which is really quite difficult to do, but the way to catch it potentially at the very beginning is to notice and become very attentive to the way that the movements of the spirits feel within us. Does this consolation; does this movement that’s going on within me feel delicate, [00:57:00] sweet, quiet, like a drop of water that falls on a sponge?
If you put a drop of water in your hand and you drop it onto a sponge, you won’t be able to hear it. That softness with which the sponge absorbs it; it’s so quiet. It’s so delicate. That’s the movement. But a drop of water coming out of a tap that bashes against a stone, the water comes up and there’s a noise. There’s a clattering. There’s a different kind of feel to it. And so, it’s about helping the person to notice the movement that’s going on within them. Is it gentle and soft and in tune with that life that they have that is orientated towards God, or is something jarring, even if it’s a very, very small jarring. You want to take notice of that because a movement of consolation that comes from the good spirit does not jar. It’s like [00:58:00] someone going into their own home. They have a key; they don’t open with noise, but someone who’s going into a place that isn’t their home, that shouldn’t be there has to break into it and there’s a different kind of energy.
Okay. Last one—Rule Eight. Okay. So, remember, we talked about Consolation Without Previous Cause that was in Rule Two. Okay. Consolation Without Previous Cause remember can only come from God. Okay. In Consolation without Previous Cause, you have to discern—could be coming from God, could be coming from the bad spirit. These are some ways to notice it.
Now Ignatius goes back to Consolation without Previous Cause, and he is going to tell us that there’s a little caveat, something we need to be aware of in relation to that Consolation without Previous Cause. Can someone read Rule Eight for us? [00:59:00]
Rhonda: I can.
Annemarie: Go ahead. Thanks, Rhonda. When the consolation experience in our life comes directly from God, there can be no deception in it. Although a delight and a peace will be found in such an experience, the spiritual person should be very careful to distinguish the actual moment of this consolation in God from the afterglow. which may be exhilarating and joyful for some period of time. Quite often, it is in this second period of time that we begin to reason out plans of action or to make resolutions, which then cannot be attributed as directly to God as the initial experience, which is non conceptual in nature because human reasoning and other influences are now coming into a total picture of this consolation period. A very careful process of discerning the good and evil [01:00:00] spirits should be undertaken according to the previous guidelines before any resolution or plan of action is adopted.
Annemarie: Right. Thank you for that. Okay, I’m going to read you a little case study. I know we’re close for time, but I’m keeping an eye on it.
I just want to read you a little bit about Philip and then I’ll explain.
Philip is a 52-year-old married man who is deeply dedicated to Christ. For many years, he sought to love God and his family and witness faithfully to the Lord in the workplace. Over these same years, Philip has developed a deep life of prayer and a growing closeness to God. His life is full and in the vicissitudes of daily living, he experiences a profoundly rooted sense of God’s love.
Okay. So, he’s one of these mature, grounded people to whom the rules of the second set will apply. Okay.
One year ago, Philip was reflecting on God’s [01:01:00] great goodness to him throughout his life. And as he prayed, he was moved by a profound sense of gratitude and felt a desire to respond more fully to that love arose in his heart.
Okay, I’m going to skip over this a little bit, but basically, he starts to wonder if he is being called to become a deacon in his church. Okay, so he goes to make a retreat at a local retreat center to discern whether God is calling him to the deaconate.
That summer, Philip made his retreat and prayed willingly with the scriptures proposed by the director and found the days blessed with a warm sense of God’s closeness. On the fifth day, Philip went out walking along the shore. After a time, he sat by the water, thinking of nothing in particular, just simply watching the gulls and the waves.
Suddenly, he felt the presence of God in a powerful and overwhelming way, a way that he had never known before. He was absolutely sure the [01:02:00] experience was from God. Every inch of his being knew it. The certainty brought with it a sense of great awe and he broke into tears. He had never felt so totally loved by God.
The experience was so profound, his tears continued often throughout the day, and again when he spoke to his director that evening.
Okay, so we know it’s Consolation Without Previous Cause, right? Overwhelming, intense, coming out of the blue, he’s just sitting listening to the waves, etc.
The warmth of that graceful experience by the sea remained with Philip during the next days of retreat, and he continued to reflect on that gift of love. He perceived something new had entered his relationship with God through the experience, and he sensed this new manifestation of God’s love was an invitation to show his own love in a new way. It seemed evident that this new response of love must be the call to the diaconate that he was discerning in the retreat.
With joy in his heart, he understood that his discernment was complete. He now knew God was indeed calling him to [01:03:00] serve as a deacon. He looked forward to sharing his newfound clarity with his director that evening.
Oh dear. Okay. What is happening here is that he’s had an experience of Consolation Without Preceding Cause and then in the subsequent days, he makes some links that were not in the consolation. Did anything in the consolation have anything to do with the diaconate? No, there wasn’t a single word about the diaconate in that consolation. Okay. He is going now to make these kind of links and jumps that this means that God wants him to become a deacon.
So, if you’re not looking very carefully as a director, when you get to the election, you might be fooled into thinking something like, you know, Philip comes and says, “Now I know my election is clear. I’m called to be a deacon.” No, no , no, no, you’ve got to discern [01:04:00] this carefully because the subsequent consolation that comes after that consolation without preceding cause—stay with me—is now a Consolation With Preceding Cause.
Okay. The second block of consolation, the afterglow is caused by the Consolation Without Previous Cause. Okay. Are you with me? Kinda. Okay.
So, you’ve got to distinguish the actual time and the actual experience of the consolation from what comes after it—the afterglow experience. So if you think of it like when you turn a stove on; I don’t know what kind of stoves you have in the U S but anyway, in South Africa, if you turn an electric stove on, given if it’s not load shedding, which is rare, the electricity comes on and it heats it up and it’s hot, hot, hot.[01:05:00] And then if I turn the switch off and I turn the electricity off, the plate doesn’t immediately go to cold. It stays hot while it cools down. And it’s in that cooling down space that you have to be really, really alert and careful and discerning.
Okay. So, distinguish between the time of the consolation itself and the time of the afterglow.
The afterglow time, you may have an experience that is what God is saying. You may make links that are correct. It may be that God is indeed calling Philip to be a deacon, but it’s not crystal clear. It still has to be discerned. It doesn’t come with clarity from the Consolation Without Previous Cause.
Okay, so that’s it for now. I’m going to give you a chance to go away and have a little bit of a ponder about your own experience. I’m wondering whether any of this is ringing [01:06:00] any bells in your own life. Um, whether you can identify an experience like a consolation without preceding cause or a consolation in which you were deceived and you later looked back and realized actually that wasn’t what God was asking at all, even though I thought it was at the time and then have some time in your groups. Then we will have our usual plenary.
So, I’m going to invite you to come back at 20 past the hour. That gives you just over 15 minutes to reflect with So, 20 past the hour, we will come back. We’ll see you then.[01:07:00]
Annemarie: Welcome back. Sounds like we might have quite a few things to talk about tonight. That sounds like a chuckle there, Gavin, do you have something to, to start us off with? Okay. Anyone want to share something?
Gavin: Annemarie, can I just say that I had two ladies on either side of me with experiences of [01:08:00] Consolation Without Previous Cause so I was on holy ground.
Annemarie: Thanks Gavin, very special. I don’t know if anyone would like to just share an experience of your own around any of these rules or guidelines, experience of Consolation Without Previous Cause, or an experience where you got your spun that the bad spirit was kind of derailing you in a way that you didn’t realize at first, or whether there’s something that you’d like to ask, something that doesn’t feel clear, whatever it is, we’ve got the space to do it and I’m going to enlist the help of my tutors on this call. So, if you have anything to add or to say, please do. [01:09:00] Vivianne.
Vivianne: Yeah, thanks. We, as a group, kind of kept circling around and appreciating the role of the PNF and being free as a real central idea to keep in mind as we were embarking on discernment just to continue to hold that in the light. It wasn’t something you expressly said but it seems very much there of that whole idea of to make our loving response to God, we need to recognize our unfreedoms and realize our attachments, so a couple people talked about stories from their own lives, and it seemed that that was a really central idea that we appreciated getting to recognize.
Annemarie: Wonderful. Thank you, Vivianne. I think that where that really comes into play a lot—and we’ll look at discernment itself in relation to the [01:10:00] election—is when one comes to that point of decision making and you need to be at that point of balance and that point of freedom, and absolutely, the PNF is the thing that helps us reground in that all the time more and more deeply. I think that it’s really important and helpful that that’s a thread that’s running through and that you’re seeing so strongly.
Ignatius doesn’t explicitly talk about it in the rules for discernment of spirits, but it’s very much there in his writing on discernment for making a decision. And obviously those things are absolutely interconnected. So, you can’t really separate them out. We are separating them out to look at them, but it’s an artificial, separation because all of those things interweave and come together so strongly. That’s really helpful. Thanks, Vivianne.
Vivianne: And just to add another thought, as you said [01:11:00] that, it’s making me think about the three humilities that we’re going to get to but just this idea of going from wanting this or wanting that to go, actually, I just want you God. I want to go wherever you go and so that whole piece of freedom being a really beautiful piece to help us to be okay with the feeling of desolation or not, or our lack of feeling something rather than these kind of superstitious connections to me getting the thing I want, you know? Yeah.
Annemarie: Yeah. I think that’s a really helpful deepening of that idea and we’ll see that as we come through the second week, and we look at the different key meditations and how they take us deeper and deeper into that growing sense of freedom and indifference. [01:12:00] John.
John: During the teaching, I guess I was really struck with all the aspect of invitation in the whole thing, and in our little group talk, Bob brought up about being attentive, and so, the invitation to pay attention and be aware. Vivianne talked about attachments, aspects of our false self, if you will, the influence. Anyway, it was really helpful having the group there with the participants because it was just really rich today.
Annemarie: Fantastic. Thank you, John. And I think you know that thing of awareness, it comes in that title of the rules as well, that these guidelines are for helping us to become more aware [01:13:00] of the interior movements that are going on within us and for leading us to a place where we can choose what we come to discover is of the good spirit. So, I think that’s a really key word that you you’re highlighting there as well.
There’s something special when you’re talking in a group and suddenly there are these amazing kind of links and connections happening that I think the spirit does something sometimes when we are opening these things up together in a small group and just sharing at that kind of depth. Thanks for that, John. Shirley.
Shirley: Thank you for today. It was really good. I have a question about a person who comes, and they have expressed, [01:14:00] “Whoa, God spoke to me. This is the way it should go. This was a really good week.” You know, cause or not cause, they have made a decision. They’re on their way or they’re leaning to a decision. They’re on their way, and as a spiritual director, just practicalities of how you slow someone like that down, who are moving and they’re going, and you can almost see a train wreck. That’s my question.
Annemarie: Thanks, Shirley. Yep. I think that that is something that Ignatius is pretty worried about too, because he brings it up in the annotations as well that when people are overly enthusiastic and they are going at something, that’s when things [01:15:00] can kind of get derailed.
I think it’s about, first of all, really allowing the person to feel heard, because when people come into the direction space with a consolation, whether it’s without previous cause or with cause or whatever, their experience is that something very powerful is happening. So, it’s important to really listen deeply to really appreciate what they’re sharing—to hear it, because if they don’t have a sense that you’ve really got the intensity of the experience that they’ve had, they’re not going to be able to hear you when you caution them and slow them. So, it’s to kind of get that really critical balance between holding the gift of what’s being shared and what has happened in their week, and not diminishing that in any way, but also saying to them precisely because there’s so much good stuff going [01:16:00] on, it’s really important at this point for us to move gently and slowly, and to really just kind of check out and confirm that this is where God is leading.
Sometimes at this point, if you think that there’s something going on and there’s a kind of false consolation, I would even talk to them about the rules for discernment of spirits and say, you know, this may well be exactly what God is saying. You might be exactly right, but we want to be really careful because the implications of moving ahead are so important and so significant for your journey in Christ, and so significant potentially for the ministries that you’re involved in, that we want to really just test it out and be sure that this is God’s invitation.
That’s kind of that word invitation coming in again that John brought up earlier. [01:17:00] It’s really holding what they’re giving, honoring it, and very gently saying, you know, sometimes this energy can be used in a way that can derail the good that’s going on, so we really want to just go step by step and just be really, really sure. And mostly, if you’ve developed a good rapport with the person; if you’ve got a connection with them; if you’ve got that trust and especially if you bring Ignatius along as an ally and you say, you know, I want to share with you. As Trevor often does, something that Ignatius might say to us. you know, just really to take it slow and to kind of try and be at that place of balance as we’re discerning this, because the implications are really important and really big. Most people will cope with that.
I think it is the role of the [01:18:00] director to act as that point of balance to bring someone back to kind of say, let’s stay with us a bit. It seems really important. Let’s spend another week really just listening again. Yeah, not always easy though, Shirley. .That’s for sure. Does that help?
Shirley: Yeah, that does. Thank you.
Annemarie: Angela.
Angela: As you were answering Shirley, you talked about energy, and we do get energy when we’re making these decisions. I had heard a little bit like to try to notice the difference between the energy of invitation and the energy of compulsion. I feel compelled. And I don’t know if you have anything to say on that. I
Annemarie: I think that really aligns quite a bit with the images in Rule [01:19:00] Seven about the drop of water on the sponge and the drop of water on a stone. An invitation is a gentle, quiet, peaceful kind of energy, I would say, whereas feeling a sense of compulsion has something of that jarring-ness to it. It’s a harsher feeling.
So, I think that’s quite helpful. It kind of adds another set of words when we’re discerning. Does this feel like an invitation or does this feel like something I’m being pushed into?
We’re not really looking completely at decisions at the moment. We’re kind of moving in this conversation quite a bit around the area of decisions and it is interwoven, but these rules for discernment of spirits, just to say they also are at play when there’s not necessarily a big decision being made. It can be about things that are really [01:20:00] quite subtle, but the reason it’s important around decision making, and I think the reason it’s coming up strongly, is that when we get to the election, which is right at the heart of the second week, obviously, this is where the rules for discernment of spirits, particularly those related to the second set are most critical so it makes sense. Angela, I think I would hold those words. They’re helpful. Elizabeth.
Elizabeth: Yes. Annemarie, you read the section of the bio about Ignatius with his losing sleep and realizing that God wants me to sleep, not to receive these even seemingly wonderful [01:21:00] revelations. And that’s something that my director during the exercises, gently taught me—nothing as dramatic as what Ignatius experienced—but I could sit in the morning and an hour could turn into two hours, it could turn into two and a half hours, and it would result in what she helped me notice—a little fatigue, a little maybe leaving undone some of the more mundane, in my mind, parts of my day. It has awakened me to the reality, which the Ignatian paragraph does so well, that God may well prefer me to be asleep than to be immersed more in a passage of scripture. And this whole wonderful idea of what would the [01:22:00] living one have me think right now? What would the living one have me feel right now? That’s the question. I never knew that. I really never knew that. I just always thought, they’re good things, the more the better. So, that’s been an area of these rules that has been really life giving for me.
Annemarie: Sounds like you had a great director, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth: I did.
Annemarie: You know, I think there’s also such a sense that it’s not just about the experience within the prayer, the consolation itself, but it’s that thing of Ignatius is interested in the whole of our life and in the consequences of what’s going on in all of our experience. And so, we are also looking at external parameters, not only the internal parameter of [01:23:00] what’s going on inside of the prayer, but also what’s the impact on the rest of life. As Ignatius kind of grew from his own experience, the Ignatian approach is quite clear about invest deeply in the time that is set aside for prayer. Sleep when you’re meant to sleep; study if you’re supposed to be studying. Whatever it is that God has asked you to do, it may not only be about the prayer, but there are these other dimensions too, that have to be held in balance.
Also looking at the consequences because Elizabeth was pointing out so beautifully, you know, that there was an impact, that although, stretching the prayer to two hours or two and a half hours may have felt very deeply life giving and consoling in the experience itself, that the fatigue and the impact, if that had continued too long, might have [01:24:00] completely started to unravel the good of what was going on in the retreat.
So yeah, wonderful that your director could kind of help you see the wisdom of seeing what God wants for me right now. Thank you for that. It’s really a helpful example.
Gavin: Annemarie, I just want to share about my director, Father Andrew, the one and only Father Andrew. His lot would go for 10 past nine, and I’d hear him pitter patter to the bar for 10 past four, and he was very insistent that nighttime is for sleeping so you really wouldn’t get away with any special revelations at three o’clock in the morning, normally. [01:25:00] He really did give me an example of what it meant to live a balanced, listening, sleeping life. Understandably, he was a monk, and I was married, but thank God for Father Andrew.
Annemarie: A wise man. Yeah. Thanks, Gavin.
If you go back and look at the annotations in the light of the rules for discernment of spirits, you’ll see how they dovetail with each other. It’s really interesting to go back and read through the annotations at this point. And remembering that thing about the director being a kind of an anchor point, a place of balance for the person, so that when the [01:26:00] person is leaning too much in one direction, the director helps that person to kind of come back into a place of balance. So, if someone is not praying enough, the encouragement to pray more. If someone is praying too much, the encouragement to come back to that place of balance. So, there’s a very important dimension, I think, to the role of the one who’s accompanying that comes up here.
Have any of you had an experience that you might be willing to share of kind of thinking that something was. where God wanted you to be and the sense of the consolation that pushed you into a particular space and then down the line realizing [01:27:00] actually not so much. You’ve had a bit of an example around that already from Elizabeth in one sense, but I’m wondering also not necessarily related to your prayer but related to maybe ministry or life. I wonder if anyone has an example that you feel you could share. Tracy.
Tracy: Yeah. I shared this with my group, but it’s so present to me right now that it’s a little easier to share. In this past season, I said yes to so much—like in school and work and ministry to friends, and I made a lot of commitments, and they all felt like good, right things to do, and I was excited about all of them. [01:28:00] I have probably had one of the most exhausting seasons of my life, but it has shifted just in this last month. Everything has slowed down, and I have felt God’s invitation to say “No” a lot more and the peace that has come over me with that “No,” and the clarity of the yeses, it feels so good in my body.
As I reflect on this past season, I realized where I said yes to some things that I needed to say no versus the yeses that were still yeses, but those yeses suffered. because of these other yeses I made, if that makes sense. Even though that was a hard thing to learn and a hard way to learn, it’s been a good experience for me to remind myself that by slowing down, it’s part of taking better care of my body. It’s taking better care of the people in my life that are important to me, in addition to the [01:29:00] very specific things I feel called to do right now with God.
Annemarie: Thanks for that Tracy. So, the things that kind of became too much were all good things.
Tracy: Yes.
Annemarie: They were all things that you would probably be using your gifts would be life giving for the people you were doing them for so it’s that beautiful example of being tempted by the good and yet realizing looking back, but at some point in those many yeses that accumulated, things started to maybe kind of be impacted a bit and things that were important things that were what God wanted for you and your awareness of that.
I love the way you talk about the impact on your body, like the kind of physical awareness of that too. And then it’s kind of Rule Six, isn’t it? It’s [01:30:00] looking back at what happened. Why was it that I got kind of tempted by the good to say, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. What were the things that contributed to that? And then that learning of next time possibly being more alert and aware that a similar dynamic could happen. It’s a fantastic gift. That’s really helpful. Thank you. Shelley.
Shelley: A couple of us in our group had experiences of heading down a ministry path, as you’ve said, and then realizing things fell apart or something like that. It’s still not quite clear to me [01:31:00] exactly what all was going on as I went into what I thought was consolation, but the Rule Six was a really helpful invitation, and we kind of talked about that. But I said there’s almost a sense of, as I reflected back on that experience over the years wondering. There was a lot of fruit in my character, even the ministry fell apart, and it seemed to be quite unfruitful. There was a lot of character fruit of humility and drawing near to God.
I was saying that was a hard one to know. Was that God? That consolation from the good spirit in that drawing in, so I’ve always kind of wrestled with that a little bit.
Annemarie: Yeah. So, kind of seeing two dimensions going on—the ministry side having a kind of negative [01:32:00] spin as it unraveled a bit and yet, something about your own depth of humility and dependence on God having deepened in that process.
Shelley: Yeah. So, I was just kind of reflecting, I don’t know that that is a sense of making a decision or sensing consolation from the evil spirit, or just a sense that God is always at work, redeeming hard things.
Annemarie: The sentence that was in my mind is about, you know, God works all things to the good for those who love him. You would know from your own grappling and wrestling is what feel that whole experience has. Yeah. Sometimes both can be true at the same time as you’ve experienced yourself. [01:33:00] Thank you, Shelley. Diana.
Diana: I shared in my group, I recently went through an experience of discernment and had an opportunity to apply to a different position and it was kind of lucrative, as ministry positions go. It would have been more prestigious or status and like a good opportunity for growth. I felt myself attracted to this position because I was like, “Oh, I can do this.” It was a consolation in that sense, but then as I was discerning it with my spiritual [01:34:00] direction supervisor, she pointed out or she asked the question, is there a freedom in choosing this position? Or does it sound like there’s freedom to go one way or the other, and that really helped me to think about what I am attached to, and whether those attachments are healthy and good. So, it was just like a reminder of like how subtle things become the more you mature or the longer that you walked with Jesus and how careful we need to be and humbling too. I think recognize, like, oh yeah how [01:35:00] susceptible to this if I’m not paying attention.
Annemarie: Thanks Diana. I think that’s such an important thing—that recognition of the subtlety of it and I think that’s why in the exercises and walking with people who really kind of engaging intensely, we really have to be listening very, very deeply because the temptations are not generally the very overt ones that –the kind of subtle freedoms that can be used by the bad spirit to hook us and the consolations that are not necessarily free consolations entirely. I think that’s a really helpful noticing. Thank you for sharing that, Diana.
It kind of brings us back to [01:36:00] Vivianne’s initial point about that freedom that came up so strongly in her small group, which is kind of core to the whole thing. Anne.
Anne: I think it was Socrates that said, “Know thyself,” and that’s the beginning of wisdom. I was just thinking about the role of the Enneagram in allowing us to have a real understanding of ourselves and our disordered attachments, and I think to me, it seems important; it kind of links with discerning and what is the trigger for this? What do I hope to gain from this? So, you know, this may be attached to my ego in some way, so I just thought I’d bring up [01:37:00] the enneagram.
Annemarie: Thanks., Anne and I think it’s such a valuable tool for self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is such a big piece, particularly I think as we get into more subtle discernments and we’re trying to work out where the areas of freedom and unfreedom are. I think that’s a really good reminder for us. Thank you for that.
We’re going to come to do quite a bit around decision- making, discernment, and the election. Not quite yet, but in a couple of weeks’ time, so I’m hoping that some of this conversation that we’re having tonight—this morning for most of you—is going to be something that we continue to unpack as we move into looking at making decisions in the exercises because they’re the other piece that we need [01:38:00] to kind of bring together with us. Okay, we’ve got time maybe for one more. Time seems to be flying tonight. Anyone else got something? Tracy.
Tracy: I’ve got a question that sort of came up out of our group discussion that I know is a little bit of a divergent, so you know, but whatever. We were talking about Consolation Without Cause and the sense of like how we have these ongoing experiences where we just feel God’s presence, you know, unexpectedly versus the experiences that are like a Thomas Merton experience that have a lifelong shift. And so, there was partially a question about the differentiation between those two types of Consolation Without Cause. But then, part of what came up with that is this idea [01:39:00] of the gift of tears and I know Ignatius had a season where he had the gift of tears, where tears would just come over him, and I just wondered if there’s a relation to that and Consolation Without Cause.
Annemarie: I think that, you know, tears are often a sign of the intensity of a consolation and, you know, certainly for years Ignatius couldn’t get through mass without sobbing. Tears were a huge thing, and I guess he prayed for the gift of tears, and he sure got it. It is interesting that, you know, there are these consolations that come out of the blue that aren’t necessarily these powerful life changing ones that are kind of part of the ebb and flow of our spiritual life.
But I think [01:40:00] where it comes really important to know, is this from God is about big things and usually when there’s a big thing going on, the consolation, if it’s going to be something that God is wanting to show us really powerfully, that kind of Consolation Without Previous Cause is going to be not only unexpected or out of the blue, but also have that weightiness of being overwhelming, profound, life changing, unforgettable, rare, those moments that you kind of touch something.
And if you look at Rule Two, it talks I[01:41:00] about bringing it all into love of his divine majesty. There’s a strong kind of sense in the language that there’s an overwhelming sense of being brought into that awareness of God. So, I think that Ignatius is saying, when you’re going to have a kind of consolation that you cannot back doubt that it comes from God, there’s going to not only be not a preceding cause in it, but it’s also going to be very, very strong, very powerful, something you can’t miss.
I think the other consolations that come kind of unexpectedly but are more day to day, those I would treat [01:42:00] more in the same way as other consolations, the kind of With Previous Cause consolations. I would be just holding them gently, and I think it’s quite important not to give the impression that you then have to come to every consolation with suspicion, every consolation with cause, kind of thinking, is this from the good spirit? Is this from the bad spirit? Because then we don’t allow our directees to savor the consolations and the gifts of God.
But it’s just to say, keep that tiny fraction of knowing that if it is a consolation that is not one Without Previous Cause that there’s a possibility that it might not be from God. So, you don’t take it as being dead certain from God, but you kind of have a presumption that leans towards it’s from God. But you also are just keeping an [01:43:00] ear out for if things start to unravel along the way, or if it feels like this is not a drop of water falling on a sponge, but there’s something jarring about it that you can kind of then have this little question mark. This is something we wanted to stay with a bit longer and just really kind of taste and discern a little bit more, which is kind of important. So that’s what I think, Tracy, but I’m not someone who necessarily has a final word on that.
Toner is the guy who’s a real expert on all of this. So if any of you want to go really deeply into the discernment of spirits, into the scholar who’s really studied it in greatest depth in the English speaking language, then you look for Jules J. Toner’s A Commentary on Saint Ignatius’s Rules for the Discernment of Spirits: A Guide to the Principles and Practices if you are really passionate about going into it in some depth, but it is a very scholarly work[01:44:00] and it goes into all the nuances. So, if you are at all feeling like you might be confused, don’t read it now; just kind of try and get the basics sorted out first. If you want to go into the real nuances, then that’s the book to go and get hold of.
Okay. We are going to stop now because we’re at the end of our time and I’m just going to hand over to Cherie-Lynn to lead us in a few moments of prayer to end our time together.
Cherie-Lynn: I am inviting you to, once again, if it’s comfortable, you want to turn off your screen and just to savor some of what you are feeling this evening or this morning [01:45:00] from the discussions, the teachings, to perhaps be aware of how your mind has heard what you’ve received in our time together,
How has your body received what you have heard together?
How has your [01:46:00] heart received?
How have your emotions received?
Has there been anything in what you’ve heard that has been something of a coming together of something you’ve wondered for a while? An aha moment.[01:47:00]
You might want to take a moment to thank God for all the joy and the settling of what you felt.
And then to notice what has not quite settled—the questions you are left with. Any [01:48:00] sense of unfreedom?
Has there been a time where you perhaps have been so busy trying to focus on all that has been input that you feel you haven’t been quite as attentive as you would have liked to be?
And what is it you would like to ask[01:49:00] of your God at this time, and so in whatever has been your experience of this learning as well as all the learning that has gone before, what is the golden thread[01:50:00] that is being laid out before you that you will take into your next day, your next week, your next season?
For all the experiences, we give thanks, Lord that you have been with us and [01:51:00] that the journey continues, that there is always more.
And I invite you to close together with everyone else as you turn on your screen and we share the grace together.
May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with us all now and evermore. Amen.
Annemarie: Thank you, Cherie-Lynn. So, we won’t see you next week, but we wish all those celebrating the 4th of July a wonderful [01:52:00] holiday and celebration, and we will see you all on the 10th of July, so in two weeks’ time. God bless. I’m sending you stuff to read to keep you busy in the meantime and look forward to seeing you soon. Take care.