Transcript Predispositions for Discernment:

Predispositions for
Discernment:
Interior Freedom: rid the soul of
inordinate attachments.
– Ignatius referred to inordinate
attachments as “honor, riches and pride.”
Predispositions for
Discernment:
Knowledge: Understanding one’s
limits and patterns of temptation is
needed for the naming and claiming of
one’s deepest desires.
Also, understanding of the
complexities of a given situation.
Predispositions for
Discernment:
Imagination: The ability to imagine
new possibilities and imagine things
could be other.
Transcendence begins when one
imagines things could be other.
Predispositions for
Discernment:
Patience: The ability to wait
attentively for an answer is key.
The ability to delay gratification
and discipline one’s self to listen
for the movement of the good or
the spirit.
Predispositions for
Discernment:
Courage: The courage to act, to make
the change or choice once one knows
the good.
Goal of the Examen
The Examen consists of a spiritguided exploration of one’s life.
It is built on the premise that we are
seeking to grow gradually into the
truest being that God has made us to
be.
Authentic growth necessitates true
insight.
I. Prayer for Enlightenment
The prayer for enlightenment is a
humble request to God for insight into
the mystery of who we truly are in the
eyes of God.
I. Prayer for Enlightenment
The prayer of enlightenment is a
transparent disrobing before God.
I. Prayer for Enlightenment
It takes seriously the Psalmist’s depth
filled chant:
“You formed my inmost being; you
knit me in my mother’s womb … my
very self you knew … my days were
shaped before I even came to be.”
I. Prayer for Enlightenment
The prayer of enlightenment opens
our hearts and minds to God to
inform us of our deepest self through
the resonating echoes of our thoughts
and feelings in response to life.
I. Prayer for Enlightenment
So, the prayer of enlightenment is to
recall that we are in the presence of
God and humbly ask God to
illuminate the movements of the spirit
in the days activity.
II. Prayer of Reflective Thanksgiving:
The prayer of reflective thanksgiving
grounds us in the fundamental stance
of the Christian.
Our basic human nature is one of
dependence on God.
II. Prayer of Reflective Thanksgiving:
Of ourselves, we possess nothing and
yet we are gifted by God at every
instant in and through everything.
II. Prayer of Reflective Thanksgiving:
Our gratitude to God for God’s good
gifts on two different levels:
1. Gratitude that we are at all.
– Thanksgiving for being created and
sustained by a loving God.
2. The second level is for the particular
gifts of this day.
III. Practical Survey of Actions:
Sifting through the activity from the
day and attend to the thoughts and
feelings that we experienced in
response to our activity.
The primary quest in the survey of our
days activity is to find how God has
been active in our everyday life.
III. Practical Survey of Actions:
Uncovering the movements of God’s
loving activity in our daily lives.
Our interior moods, feelings and urges
and movements in response to our
world are “spirits” that draw us
towards or away from God.
III. Practical Survey of Actions:
The “spirits” need to be sifted out and
discerned so that we can more readily
know and understand God’s presence
in our thoughts, feelings and actions.
III. Practical Survey of Actions:
The sifting is the naming and claiming
of the consolation and desolation in
our lives.
IV. Prayer for Healing:
The prayer for healing invites healing
and reconciliation into the broken
places and the areas of desolation in
our own lives.
IV. Prayer for Healing:
It enables the natural movement of
our heart’s longing to be made whole
for those times during the day where
we have failed to be gentle, kind,
patient, caring and compassionate.
IV. Prayer for Healing:
It opens the desolate thoughts,
feelings and actions of our day to
Christ’s healing Mercy.
IV. Prayer for Healing:
It opens the desolate thoughts,
feelings and actions of our day to
Christ’s healing Mercy.
– Out of the practical survey of our
actions, we become aware of how we
have lacked God and failed to bring
to life our truest self.
IV. Prayer for Healing:
It invites God to make whole the
desolate areas within one’s being and
reconcile the harm that one’s actions,
motivated by desolation, have caused.
V. Intention of Hope for the Future:
The organic development of the
Examen leads us to face the future by
integrating the consolation from the
day and Christ’s healing of our
brokenness into our lives.
The intention of hope is essentially an
act of surrender to reality and our
truest selves.
V. Intention of Hope for the Future:
It is saying “yes” to God’s grace in our
lives.
– It means bringing into
consciousness how we hope that
growth and change will unfold as a
result increased awareness and
prudence in our daily lives.
V. Intention of Hope for the Future:
In naming and claiming the
consolation in our lives, we name and
claim our true self.
– Our true self is always a self for
others oriented towards the
common good.
V. Intention of Hope for the Future:
Our intentions of hope are composed
of possible concrete actions towards
the common good flowing organically
from the grace of our Examen.
What is the purpose of
praying the Examen?
Integration!
Integration!
The Examen fundamentally
necessitates the unity of the affective
and the rational, the wholeness of the
human person.
Integration!
Affectivity and reason inner penetrate
each other and are in constant
interaction.
Our feelings and desires are stirred by
what we understand, know, reason
about, and evaluate.
Integration!
This is a constant mutual interaction
between the affective life and the life
of the mind.
Integration calls us to
harmony:
Which is different for every person.
Some of us are heady people who need
to integrate our affect.
Some are oozing masses of feeling and
we need to integrate our thoughts to
reason things out.
Integrity requires harmony between
both.
Obstacles that block our
conscious awareness:
Physical factors- physical health
factors provide obstacles to
discernment.
– Time and resources can prevent
obstacles as well.
Obstacles that block our
conscious awareness:
Psychological and emotional –
Important to discern the difference
between clinical depression and acute
anxiety.
Obstacles that block our
conscious awareness:
Addictions and attachments – These
limit a person’s effective freedom.
– Not only drugs, gambling and sex
but also things like shopping,
fantasy, daydreaming,
entertainment or work.
Obstacles that block our
conscious awareness:
Rigidity in attitudes – An extreme need
for certitude or a need for complete
ambiguity and total freedom.
Obstacles that block our
conscious awareness:
Lack of imagination – The inability to
make use of our imagination to think
of what could be other.
Obstacles that block our
conscious awareness:
Fragmentation – Not experiencing the
fullness of our affectivity: anger,
aggression, resentment, jealousy, envy
greed and so on.
Obstacles that block our
conscious awareness:
Fear – It can lead us to control and
manipulate rather than to be open to
the spirit.
Social or cultural Factors- Political and
social systems that impose external
limitation of our choices.
Obstacles that block our
conscious awareness:
Theological Factors – our image of God
can impede our confidence and trust
in God’s love.
– To be truly Human means to accept that
we can potentially know and do the good
at all times and in all places.
Obstacles that block our
conscious awareness:
Images of self – distorted self
perception or the lack of ability to
accept one’s real self works
destructively by creating a habitual
discontent with one’s self.
Enlightenment:
By bringing about enlightenment
(wisdom, loving kindness,
compassion, non-duality and
interdependence), the Examen
provides the basic reference points for
our understanding and acting in the
world.
Innerconnectivity:
The Examen connects us to the world
around us by illuminating the innerconnectivity of all creation.
The “inner” and the “outer” are deeply
connected.
The Examen reveals our co
responsibility with others for the state
of things
Enjoy the Process:
The Examen teaches us that means
are just as significant as ends and in
fact are ends.
The reality of our daily lives is just as
important as our accomplishments.
Kindness and compassion is far more
important than the content of our
resume or the size of our bank
statements.
Social Transformation:
The Examen leads to social action and
social transformation based upon
reconciliation, rather than victory
from one side.
This harmony and reconciliation
starts with the self through the
Examen and moves out into
cooperation for a just society.
Conclusion:
The Examen leads us into
habitually doing the greater good.
Conclusion:
The greater good is that which, if put
into effect, would “give praise,
reverence and service to God.” It gives
a greater praise or glory to God.
Conclusion:
Given the possibilities and limitations
of our given circumstances, the
greater good is usually the choice that
most embodies the reign of God.
Conclusion:

Using ones gift to create a world in
which the dignity of all people is
upheld.

The greater good is always the more
universal good. It always is, of
necessity the common good.