These next two weeks we are invited to focus on the skill of discerning spirits. Keep in mind that Good spirits (or God’s own Holy Spirit) always work to bring you more fully into knowing, loving and serving God. Only the Holy Spirit can and does enter without your permission because God is the source of creating you. Evil spirits (or even lesser “good spirits”) require our permission and cooperation to occupy our inner lives. We often give that permission under the pressure of evil spirits in the culture – attitudes such as racism, ageism, sexism etc. are examples but so also is cooperation with self-centeredness or self-aggrandizement. The gratification of personal wants can occasionally be from God but may also be purely for selfish pleasure or satisfaction. God’s work with our desires focuses on expanding our skills in genuinely loving ourselves and others. Remember that love always seeks the good and even the best from and for each person.

As we specifically “practice” discerning spirits from our prayer and our daily life we want to keep several things in mind:

1. Thoughts are often responses to spirits. Note for example what your thoughts are if you are cut off in traffic and have to wait in the doctor’s office.

2. Spirits, both good and evil work on our emotions. Emotions themselves are not especially moral (good or bad), they often arise spontaneously from stimuli in the culture or in the created world. For example, you enjoy a moment of pleasure in a beautiful morning, or annoyance at rain or wind. What do you do with this feeling? That is where the spirits of good and evil enter in.

3. Decisions are nearly always experienced under the guidance of good or bad spirits (or both). For example, spontaneous “deciding” to purchase something that attracts you. Even the decision not or the decision, subtly made, to not do some work or act of evil or good you planned to undertake. You have probably read the following paragraphs from material distributed earlier in the process, but they deserve a second reading to help you effectively use a tool to discover more carefully what is happening in your inner life.

Journal keeping here is designed to help you reflect on the content of various movements of spirits each hour, day, or week; to recall and reflect on your own experience, and to pay attention to various inner movements that might be “at play” during the day, that will give you an indication of the state of your own inner life at this time (note movements in mind, heart and even stomach, back, or head). These can be thoughts, feelings, sensations, responses like suddenly becoming sleepy or anxious for no apparent reason.

These movements can be named in any number of ways. As a kind of “code” we have chosen to call them “graces and fears” – that is movements toward God’s life versus movements of self-centeredness, or away from God (usually grounded in fear, but sometimes manifesting as boredom, anger, annoyance, judgmental attitudes, gossip, pettiness, divisive conduct etc.) In the Spiritual Exercises St. Ignatius terms movements as consolations and desolations, but subsequent use in psychology of these terms (or similar ones) has confused the issues around discernment, so we have chosen less “loaded terms.”

If we use the spiritual sense of these please note that any movement you experience that leads to God is a consolation – even one that doesn’t “feel good”- and any movement away from God is a desolation. During the following two weeks, continue reflecting on your prayer (after you have prayed) and twice per day reflecting on the activities, thoughts, feelings and decisions of your day.