Exercises

My own journey in prayer has been significantly shaped by the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, a Catholic saint who developed a four-week prayer sequence intended to guide the individual into a deepening relationship with Jesus and a clarity in making choices.  This page uses that model and its component “weeks” to provide exercises focused on life review, models for living and loving well, and discernment when times of difficult decisions are before us.

Week One

Introduction: Where Have I Been?
In the traditional exercises as Ignatius developed them, the first period of time or first “week” was spent considering the course of one’s life up to the present time, with particular emphasis on looking at life experiences from two perspectives. The first perspective invites reflection on ways in which one has or has not felt loved, accepted, at home in the world, whether one deeply knows oneself to be a child of God. The second perspective assumes that after realizing oneself as a beloved person, it is then possible to see accurately and without defensiveness all the ways in which one has failed, failed others, failed to fulfill the promise of one’s life, failed to honor significant commitments. Having completed these reflections, a person is then prepared to look towards the future with new eyes, ready to change direction and live with purpose. The following series of exercises, adapted from those created by Ignatius for his first “week,” offer various ways of considering the course of one’s life journey thus far. Each exercise includes readings and questions for reflection, ideally in a journal.

The focus for this exercise is considering where, when, and how I feel at home, what that experience is like for me and the ways in which it arises in the world, in my life.
Readings: Psalm 139:1-18

Excerpt from Paul Tillich (provided below)

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, because we have violated another life, a life which we loved, or from which we were estranged. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: “You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!” If that happens to us, we experience grace. After such an experience we may not be better than before, and we may not believe more than before. But everything is transformed. (Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations)

The Psalm talks of a foundational sense of being known and loved. Have you had such a sense in your life? Do you sense any kind of connection to a larger force or mystery, what some call God?

Tillich talks of being judged acceptable and worthy aside and apart from anything we do. Our culture tends to value individuals in terms of what we do, sometimes by who we know or the resources we can command. Do you experience yourself as acceptable apart from the work you do or what you own (put another way, can you imagine feeling worthwhile if you had no job, were disabled and needed help with basic life tasks, lost your home)?

Questions for reflection and journaling:

  • When, where, and with whom do I feel most at home in the world, content?
  • When, where and with whom do I feel most unsettled, out of step, unbalanced, dissatisfied?
  • What patterns can I see from these responses?

Practice: as you go through your day, notice whenever you feel content and at home.

The focus for this exercise is looking particularly at my place in nature and seeing that as the natural world includes ongoing creation, so does my life include ongoing growth and development and change.
Readings: Psalm 104

Excerpt from the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measure. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers. It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and death, in ebb and in flow.
I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.
Is it beyond thee to be glad with the gladness of this rhythm? To be tossed and lost and broken in the whirl of this fearful joy? All things rush on, they stop not, they look not behind, no power can hold them back, they rush on.
Keeping step with that restless, rapid music, seasons come dancing and pass away. Colors, tunes, and perfumes pour in endless cascades in the abounding joy that scatters and gives up and dies every moment. (Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali)

The Psalm envisions a natural world of exquisite detail and harmony, all fitting together. Can you identify times when you have experienced this interconnected web of life? Would you describe those times as sacred, and why?

Tagore writes of being caught up in natural processes that are always moving, and suggests the continual movement can be challenging to us. Have you ever returned to a place or people and found everything changed? How did that feel? When you think of inevitable changes all of us face, such as loss, aging, family transitions, do you anticipate those changes with fear or resignation or pleasure? How do you explain your response?

Questions for reflection and journaling:

  • Do you frequently have time to be in nature, away from all electronic devices and the demands for others?
  • Is the natural world part of your faith perspective in any significant way?

Practice: as you go through the day, look for a small change around you that you did not initiate, and imagine feeling grateful for that change.

 

The focus for this exercise is noting deep longings and how those are expressed or understood through prayer and meditation.
Readings: any version of the Lord’s Prayer/Our Father

The Bodhisattva prayer of lovingkindness

May I be filled with lovingkindness; may I be well.
May I be peaceful, and at ease; may I be whole.
May you be filled with lovingkindness; may you be well.
May you be peaceful, and at ease; may you be whole.
May all beings be filled with lovingkindness; may all beings be well.
May all beings be peaceful, and at ease; may all beings be whole.

The traditional Our Father/Lord’s Prayer is a masterpiece of succinct expression of deepest longings. Without getting distracted by internal debates about traditional beliefs surrounding the prayer, go through each sentence and identify what fundamental human longing is being given expression, e.g., “give us this day our daily bread” points to the physical need for sustenance as well as the symbolic need to find satisfaction of our deeper needs in some form each day.
The Bodhisattva prayer similarly gives voice to deepest longings, but from a different perspective. Compare the prayers of the two traditions:. Where are the longings being voiced the same, and where do they suggest either different longings, or different potential satisfactions for those longings? Which understanding of fundamental human longing sounds closer to your own experience?

Questions for reflection and journaling:

  • What does the word prayer mean to you?
  • If that definition suggests an activity that seems to require particular beliefs, what if prayer is giving expression to one’s deepest longings—can you identify your deepest longings?
    • When/how do you give expression to them, and for what purpose?

Practice: as you go through the day, notice when you feel an especially deep and strong desire—for connection, for peace, for a sense of wholeness—and what seemed to trigger that desire.

The focus of this exercise is growth in inner freedom and an ability to notice places/times of unfreedom.
Readings: Mark 10:17-27

The traditional Buddhist parable of the raft:
One day a disciple asked the Buddha how long one should persevere in a practice before changing to another practice. The Buddha asked the questioner whether he had ever used a raft to get across a wide river. The questioner replied that he had. The Buddha then said, “And when you reached the other shore, what did you do with the raft?” The disciple said, “I simply left the raft there and walked on.” The Buddha said, “So it is with any practice: once it has served its purpose, once you have fully understood what it teaches, you leave it behind and continue your journey.”

Our culture encourages attachment to things, to power, to control. Such attachments are not in and of themselves harmful, but only become harmful when they restrict our freedom to grow and change. Of those kinds of attachments (to things, to power, to control), which is most important to you presently, and why? What “raft” do you presently depend on to get you through the days?

The story of the rich young ruler depicts a person who wants to grow spiritually but simply cannot step beyond his attachments. Where are you now being invited to grow spiritually, and in what ways are your own attachments hindering a free response to that growth?

Questions for reflection and journaling:

  • What are you presently most attached to in your life (or, asked differently, what can you simply not imagine living without)?
  • Attachments come in different degrees, with different effects. Which of those attachments you identified restricts your freedom, and in what ways?

Practice: as you go through the day, pay attention to moments when you feel blocked or hampered, or find yourself wishing you could be elsewhere, be with someone else, be doing something else.

The focus of this exercise is considering the fundamental purpose and direction of my life.
Readings: Buddhist parable of the poison arrow:

Suppose someone was hit by a poisoned arrow and his friends and relatives found a doctor able to remove the arrow.  If this man were to say, ‘I will not have this arrow taken out until I know whether the person who shot it was a priest, a prince, or a merchant, his name and his family. I will not have it taken out until I know what kind of bow was used and whether the arrowhead was an ordinary one or an iron one.’  That person would die before all these things are ever known to him.

William Stafford, “Ask Me”
Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.
I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.

The Buddhist parable demonstrates how readily we focus on less important aspects of experience, possibly in order to exert a sense of control over them. Can you recall times when you became so caught up in a side issue that you lost sight of what was most important, perhaps even making poor choices as a result? How did you come back to focus on the central elements (if you did)?

Stafford imagines the level of life in which we are totally self-directed, and a deeper level in which we align ourselves with a larger direction that may carry us along in ways we had not intended. Have you experienced these different levels in your life journey? How closely are they aligned for you at present?

Questions for reflection and journaling:

  • If you look back over your life in terms of places you have lived, what was your great passion, your overriding ambition, when you lived in each place? Another approach to this question is to look back at your life decade by decade, and recall the goals and direction of your life in each decade.
  • Do you ever feel a restlessness in your life at present? If so, when/how does that restlessness show up? If not, can you recall times of restlessness earlier, and what resulted from that restlessness, how did it resolve for you?

Practice: as you go through the day, notice when any sense of restlessness emerges and see if you can discern the source of the restlessness.

The focus of this exercise is learning how to listen for life’s/God’s invitations.
Readings: “Praying” by Mary Oliver

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

1 Kings 19:11-12

Our culture encourages us to regard our life journeys as self-initiated and self-directed, believing that whatever happens is the result of our individual choices. Even when unpredictable events outside our control confront us, we are still encouraged to see ourselves as being able to determine our responses to those events, thus reasserting control over our lives. Oliver’s poem and the Old Testament story suggest that other possibilities are present, though we will need to listen and look carefully for them, as they will be subtle and easy to overlook. Do you sometimes pause before plunging into a course of action to consider whether deeper, more nuanced patterns might be at play? In hindsight, do you see yourself as having sometimes missed subtleties, additional possibilities, because of not listening long or deeply enough?

Questions for reflection and journaling:

  • Have you ever experienced yourself being pulled or drawn into a direction or decision (as opposed to forging ahead or feeling self-directed)? Where did that pull seem to come from, and how did you respond to it?
  • How do you sort through and evaluate the multiple requests/demands for attention and action that are directed at you daily, weekly, over the course of your life? What do you do when an unexpected or surprising invitation comes your way?

Practice: as you go through the day, experiment with holding off on a decision or choice that awaits your action, and see if other possible resolutions present themselves, especially unlikely ones.

Week Two

Introduction to the Second Theme: Who and What Shows Me the Way?
After the life review of the first “week” or section, the next series of exercises turn toward exemplary lives that can provide us with the guidance needed to shape our own lives in new ways. Ignatius naturally used the life of Jesus, as a Christian of his time would; these exercises consider both the life of Jesus and the life of Buddha, founders of spiritual traditions that have shown their wisdom over time and across cultures and can speak to us today, while offering very different perspectives on how to live with purpose and compassion. Karen Armstrong’s Buddha is the source of readings on the life of Gotama, the individual who became the Buddha.

The focus for this exercise is noticing the very first evidences that signal to us we have entered a time of crisis requiring change.
Readings: Luke 1:26-48

Armstrong, pp. 19-28
Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, because we have violated another life, a life which we loved, or from which we were estranged. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: “You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!” If that happens to us, we experience grace. After such an experience we may not be better than before, and we may not believe more than before. But everything is transformed. (Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations)

The passage from Luke recounts the first movements towards a special birth in humble, even unlikely, settings involving ordinary people.  Yet this particular birth would change the world forever.  When you think of significant change, do you tend to imagine it coming in dramatic, powerful form?  Beyond human control?  How do you experience change that overtakes you, without your having initiated it?

The account of the Buddha’s beginnings locates another special birth but in a setting of power and wealth.  We often believe ourselves powerless as individuals to effect significant change, unless we have the resources Buddha was born into, resources of power and wealth.  Yet he will relinquish those resources in order to effect change, seeing them as obstacles to change.  Can you identify places of power and resources in your life that could be instruments of change?  Does the power you have, the resources you can muster, inhibit your working to effect change in any way?

Questions for reflection and journaling:

  • Can you identify times in your life where change became imperative, because of a crisis or because an accumulation of events and needs reached a tipping point?
  • Can you identify times in your life where change began so quietly and subtly as to be unnoticed until at some point you began to realize things were different than before?

Practice:  as you go through the day, see if you can find small, almost indistinguishable, evidences of something different coming into being, in your workplace, your home, your inner life, and/or the community at large.

Week Three

Introduction to the Third Theme: Turning Points and Breakdowns
The next series of exercises maintain a close focus on the paradigmatic moments of Christianity and Buddhism, when the central revelation each tradition offers is unfolded. In the Christian narrative, this paradigmatic moment is Jesus’ arrest, suffering, and death on the cross; in the Buddhist narrative, the paradigmatic moment is Gotama’s experience of enlightenment while sitting beneath the Bodhi tree. The revelations sometimes overlap, sometimes diverge, and are offered in very different kinds of events, yet the intent is the same: to open the seeker to life-changing depths of meaning.

The focus for this exercise is recognizing those moments when we stand at a crossroads in our lives, where paths diverge and a choice has to be made.
Readings: John 13:1-17

Armstrong, pp. 79-80
The story of Jesus’ last night with his disciples is a paradigmatic account of a final effort to communicate fundamental truths, similar to what anyone of us might strive to do if we believed our time was limited. His disciples find his communication confusing, since it speaks of service and humility while they were anticipating glorious struggle and triumph. Have you ever found yourself confused by a mentor or teacher or leader, believing that what you were emulating was different from what the teacher had communicated? How have you seen your ideals change in the course of real-life struggles?

The story of Gotama’s decision to sit in meditation beneath a Bodhi tree is a paradigmatic account of how fundamental Buddhist teaching was borne. Have you ever been so lost and confused, or so determined to reach a decision, that you settled into place, either literally or metaphorically, and refused to budge until clarity came? Can you imagine being so intent on discovering some meaning that you would set aside everything in order to find it? Have circumstances ever seemed to force you into confronting a difficult decision whether you wanted to, felt ready to, or not?

Questions for reflection and journaling:

  • What are some of the crossroads you have reached in your life, what choices did you face, and how did you reach your decision?
  • In looking back, do you see any possibilities you missed at the time?  Do you carry regrets about the decision you made?

Practice:  as you go through the day, observe whether, when you come upon difficulties, you typically avoid them or deal with them immediately and directly.

Week Four

Introduction to the Fourth Theme: New Life Emerging
The final section of the exercises closes a circle of sorts, returning to focus on the course of one’s particular life but now with an eye towards the future and whether new priorities, a change in direction, might be warranted as a result of the work done in the exercises to this point and the insights gathered from careful consideration of the lives of two exemplary teachers. The challenge of this final series of exercises is to discern whether the life I am living is the same as the Life that wants to be lived through me.

The focus for this exercise is recalling when you have had experiences of new life.
Readings: John 20:1-10

Thich Nhat Hanh, Going Home, “The Kingdom of Happiness”
Read the familiar account of the Easter morning discovery of an empty tomb as though you are one of those who arrived on the scene. Do you feel mostly afraid, mostly elated, mostly bewildered? Have there been times in your life when you believed all was lost and yet life continued, perhaps even something quite new emerged? If this is a story taken not literally but symbolically, what does it say to you about the possibilities of transformation for yourself?

Hanh links suffering with love, and suggests love is the one force that can overcome suffering.  Have you seen your own experiences of pain healed?  If so, what was the healing force, where did healing come from?  What places in your life are still unhealed, where are you presently suffering?

Questions for reflection and journaling:

  • Recall times in your life when everything changed:  what was the reason for the thoroughgoing change?
  • In your experience, does significant change tend to come all at once, or incrementally, erasing what was before and establishing something new, or adding to what is already in place?

Practice:  as you go through the day, pay attention to moments of suffering that have nothing to do with you at all.