Ignatius of Loyola Taught Us a Contemplative Way to Heal Pain and Discern Our Next Steps

Ignatius of Loyola Taught Us a Contemplative Way to Heal Pain and Discern Our Next Steps

Guest Writer Lowell Grisham

We observe the Feast Day of St. Ignatius on July 31.

No one has done more work on the discipline of discernment than the Jesuits, the monastic descendants of Ignatius of Loyola. Although I can’t recall who taught it to me, I’ve used an Ignatian discernment method from time to time for many years when I’ve faced a choice between two options. Here’s how someone gave it to me:

In a battle in the early 1500s, Ignatius was seriously wounded. (I believe an artillery shell shattered his leg.) He spent months in painful convalescence. However, he found that his pain was sometimes relieved when he entered periods of active imagination. He imagined his life after he was healed and released from the hospital. He made up stories about his future, using all his senses to place himself there. He created scenes from his imagined future and experienced them vividly—with sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell—thinking and feeling what his alternative life might be. 

Whenever Ignatius was actively imagining, his pain decreased, and time seemed to pass more quickly. He discovered that his imagination gravitated toward two narratives. In one, he would become a great, chivalrous knight, perform valiant deeds of courage, and win the hand of a noble maiden. In the other, he would become a knight for Christ, boldly taking the gospel to the most remote, challenging, or needed places. 

While in active imagination, Ignatius experienced relief with either narrative. But he noticed a significant difference in where his spirit went afterward, when he was simply taking care of business in a normal state of consciousness.

He noticed that in the hours following his narratives about becoming a noble warrior knight, he experienced turbulence, discomfort, and even desolation. But he became aware that in the hours following his imagining of becoming a knight for Christ, he experienced consolation, harmony, and peace. Ignatius interpreted the sense of peace as the presence of God, drawing him into God’s will for him and helping him discern the direction of his future. So he embraced the vision of that second narrative and became a noble knight for Christ, seeking to undertake the most outstanding service possible to the Church and the world.

The presence of peace is a sign of God’s will. In the chaos and storm of a decision, I sometimes use a form of Ignatian discernment practice when there are two potential options or directions. First, I’ll set the two options before me. Then, one day, I’ll spend time actively imagining myself living in the first option, using all five senses to create scenes from that future possibility. Then, I’ll go about my regular daily activity, keeping a bit of attention on where my spirit goes. Another day, I’ll spend time in active imagination, living with the other option. Then, I’ll pay attention to my spirit, mood, and intuition during my ordinary daily work. What aftereffect is there following each separate scenario?

If I sense consolation and peace in the ordinary time following active imagination with one narrative, and if I perceive turbulence in the ordinary time following imagination with the other narrative, I’ll accept that as a sign of God’s will. The presence of peace is the key. 

Where does the peace of Christ lead us, especially when our boat seems tossed and we’ve lost our direction? A sense of peace can guide us toward God’s will for us and toward the fullest exercise of our creativity, courage, freedom, and service. Sometimes, a little active imagination can lead us toward discernment. 

Lowell Grisham

I use this in my life to discern directions for ministry and to offer it to others who are discerning a path on this journey. It was loaned to me by Lowell Grisham, the retired Rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Three Things You Can Do With a Feeling. Two of Them Don't Work

Three things you can do with a feeling. Two of them don't work.

Guest Writer Dr. Lara Patriquin

Part of an ongoing series on the transcended mind — what it is, what it isn't, and how to spend more time there.

One Small Thing

Ever notice how fast your energy can change?

You wake up feeling good. Coffee's right, the morning's easy, you're looking forward to the day. Then one small thing happens — a curt email, a certain tone in your spouse's voice, a driver who cuts you off — and the whole weather system flips. Ten seconds ago you were fine. Now you're tight, irritated, replaying it.

Here's the strange part: the small thing wasn't big enough to explain the shift. It didn't create all that energy. It released it. It brushed against something already stored — something older, heavier, waiting. In my language: it knocked on the Bunker.

Because everything you feel is energy. Not metaphorically — literally. An emotion is a surge of energy moving through your system, designed to rise, peak, and resolve on its own. But the experiences we couldn't let all the way in — the criticism, the loss, the embarrassment we pushed down instead of feeling — that energy never resolved. It went into storage. And stored energy doesn't sit quietly. It waits under pressure for anything out there that resembles it.

That's what a mood is. That's why the reaction is so often bigger than the moment in front of you. The size of the reaction belongs to what's underneath.

Here's the part worth memorizing — I first heard it framed this way in a talk by Michael Singer, and it may be the single most useful teaching I know. When a feeling comes up, you have exactly three options.

Suppress it. Push it back down. This is the reflex — I don't want to feel this. It works for about a minute. But nothing suppressed goes away. It goes into the Bunker, and from the Bunker it runs your life. You don't deal with it anymore. It deals with you.

Express it. Vent it. Snap at the driver, fire off the email, say the thing. This feels better than suppressing — briefly. But expression doesn't empty the Bunker either. It just sprays the pressure onto the people around you, and creates new material to store.

Release it. This is the one nobody taught us. When the energy comes up — even the old, painful stuff — you relax. You don't push it down and you don't act it out. You let it be there, and you let it finish. Emotions are self-completing. They rise, peak, and resolve on their own. The only thing that stops them is our interference.

And that's the reframe worth sitting with: when old stuff surfaces, it's not a malfunction. It's your inner system trying to clean itself, the way the rest of your body does. The stored energy rises on its own schedule — a slow driver, a certain tone of voice, a smell — because it wants out.

You couldn't handle it when you were eight. You can handle it now.

Here's the smallest version of the practice. Next time a feeling rises — irritation in traffic, a knot before a hard conversation — try this: take one slow breath. Unclench whatever just clenched. And say to yourself, I can handle this — because you totally can. Then let the sensation be there, as raw energy, without naming it or explaining it. No thinking; you can think later. Just stay, and let it finish. It usually takes about ninety seconds.

That's the seed of a skill I call not closing. It's the foundation of everything I do with coaching clients — and it doesn't take years to learn. If you'd like help making it your default instead of your exception, just reply to this email. I'd love to hear from you.

So the whole practice fits in two words: don't close. Relax. Let it through. One feeling at a time, the Bunker empties.

 There's a whole book about this! 

Thrive Mind - A Parable of the Subconscious

The bunker is the subject of my book — how we build it, what it quietly costs us, and the glitch in the nervous system that lets it seize the controls: the mechanism that convinces us we’re small and under threat, when our real nature is joyful and brilliant.

It’s in my editor’s hands now, out in the next few months. Here’s an early look at the bunker itself:

What working with me looks like

We go into the bunker together, calmly, and take inventory — questioning the beliefs that keep you defended, and changing your relationship to the emotions you’ve been bracing against. Less a discipline, more like clearing out a room you forgot had a window.

Curious what’s in yours?

Book a call

Thinking 2.0, 961 S. McClelland, Salt Lake City, Utah 84105, United States

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Lara Patriquin, MD

Associate Professor of Radiology

School of Medicine, University of Utah

Speaker and Coach at Thinking2.0

(505) 269-4097

Book your complimentary call here.

 joanna. joannaseibert.com

Daily Celtic Prayers

Daily Protection Celtic Prayer

“May the guiding hands of God be on my shoulders,
may the presence of the Holy Spirit be on my head,
may the sign of Christ be on my forehead,
may the voice of the Holy Spirit be in my ears,
may the smell of the Holy Spirit be in my nose,
may the sight of the company of heaven be in my eyes,
may the speech of the company of heaven be in my mouth,
may the work of the church of God be in my hands,
may the serving of God and my neighbor be in my feet,
may God make my heart his home,
and may I belong to God, my Father, completely.”

—Lorica of St. Fursa (Fursey), 7th Century, Translation composite, from Facebook Page of the Rev. Dr. Frederick Schmidt.

Fred Schmidt posts a prayer on his Facebook page almost every day. I cannot get this one out of my mind. St. Fursa was an Irish monk who was among the first to spread Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England in the seventh century. A “Lorica” is a protective prayer in the Irish Celtic tradition, often used before going into battle. It may have originated from the Latin word "lorica," meaning breastplate or armor. It may have been inspired by Paul’s writing in Ephesians 6:11 to “put on the whole armor of Christ.” 

As modern Christians, we can learn a great deal from the Celts. We have a treasury of their wisdom because they highly valued writing and education. On the other hand, I think of others who worshiped God, whose traditions we know nothing about because their experience—rather than writing—was primary to them. We need both.

This form of prayer should meet us as we wake up in the morning, perhaps with that first cup of coffee or tea, or even before then.

We may need to return to it during the day, leaving a copy in a convenient place so we do not forget to put on “the whole armor of God.” Sometimes life feels like going into battle. However, my experience is that when prayers like this become part of us, we recognize that the struggle is over and love has already won.

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/