Ignatius’s "Discernment of Spirits" as Emotional Intelligence

McLeod Ganj, July 20, 2020

In a cave in northern Spain between 1522 and 1524, Ignatius of Loyola had a series of spiritual experiences that changed his life as well as created a spiritual revolution. As a direct result of his mystical awakening, he, along with seven of his “companions,” went on to found the Society of Jesus. One of these men, Francis Xavier, came to India in 1542. His body is still venerated in the basilica in Goa that bears his name.

If one thing stands out about the early exploits of the Jesuits, it is their decisive action, which they attributed to following the plan that God had for them. To uncover God’s Will, they used a spiritual technique that Ignatius developed in his retreat at Manresa: “The Discernment of Spirits.”

Now that I’ve paid my respects to Father Ignatius, let me look at the actual process of what he called “The Discernment” to see if there is a way for someone who does not hold to the religious tenets of Christianity to use his methodology--yes, even a person with a more rational mind set to access more information about his or her decision making process to come to a workable decision about a course of action. I suggest that using the methodology of Ignatius might allow us to listen to our deepest emotions without allowing them to hijack our decision-making process.

Ignatius lays out two sets of 14 “rules” for making a choice. I have tried to remain faithful to the spirit of Ignatius while simplifying them. I’ve also bypassed Ignatius’s insistence on conformity with the teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church.

Ignatius invites us to weigh what he calls “Consolation” and “Desolation” regarding a specific course of action over a period of time. Ignatius believed that the forces of good and evil are at war inside you. They try to sway you. Our job in prayer is to observe the battle, to sort out the emotions, and eventually to allow the correct decision to emerge.

I’ve used the word emotions here, and I think that discerning what our deepest emotions are telling us might be a useful way to look at what Ignatius calls “spirits.” Consolation indicates a feeling of peace and contentment, while desolation points to upset, even revulsion, perhaps even the feelings we might normally associate with depression. When we feel at peace, “consoled,” we are aware that we are on the right path, but when we feel uneasy, we sense that we are treading a path that leads to uncertainty or even harm, emotional or physical.

However, our past experience has educated us, colored our emotions, and conditioned us to behave in a certain way. We are aware of some of this conditioning, but a great deal remains unconscious. A note of caution here: we are not engaging in a course of psychotherapy, and while it may be useful to uncover and deal with the emotional undercurrents of our past, I think that in ordinary circumstances, weighing what our emotions tell us about a course of action does not require this level of analysis.

Allowing our deep emotional responses to inform our decision does however require a kind of detachment. And in order for this process to unfold, Ignatius recommends that we not jump into a major decision impulsively. Rather, he would like us to weigh what I’m going to call our inner movements. Allowing our deepest emotional instincts to have a voice in our decision-making might be closer to what’s called in modern psychology “emotional intelligence.”

Let me give an example. Let’s suppose that I have a friend with whom I’m deeply in love. I think we can all agree that love is an extremely powerful emotion, one that can dictate our actions in both positive and negative ways. My friend tells me that he has to move to another city for a long period and that our relationship will have to endure that separation. This appears, at first, to be beyond my personal control.

But suddenly the thought crosses my mind: I will just follow him or her. The motivation is love. What could possibly go wrong? Lots. But there’s also the possibility that the move might also open the gate to new, rich experiences and a wonderful new side to our relationship.

So now let’s set aside some thoughtful time to “discern the spirits,” to weigh the emotional impulses that are driving the decision and see if we can sort them out. A lot of people would counsel “weighing the pros and cons.” The process might include making lists with both positive and negative consequences: shifting house, disruption of our normal daily routine, work and financial realities, and readjusting close personal ties. Of course, make a list. Evaluate each possibility.

But Ignatius would, I think, ask us to take another step. Let’s say, for the sake of the example, that most of the practical issues could be easily resolved, that the actual shifting was possible, that money would not be an issue, that family and friends support the decision, but we are still undecided. He would ask us to make a decision through prayer and seek a deeper answer.

What might this look like, even for a nonreligious person who would like to explore the possibilities of the move in greater depth? First, we would formulate the proposition: “I will move to another city to be with this person I am in love with.” And then, with our mind as quiet as possible, we allow the feelings and emotions to arise, without judging them. I cannot predict what might happen in an individual case, but let’s just take an obvious one: The overwhelming emotion is to simply pick up and move. But that’s followed by what seems to be an equally overwhelming fear that things might go wrong, that the added strain would distort my relationship and my friend would reject me. It’s possible.

A series of emotions arises, and they are a jumble. But if we are able neither to reject nor to push them away, over time they begin to sort themselves, and the picture becomes clearer. We may decide to move, or we may decide to stay, but in either case, it requires much greater determination to draw on a deep inner source of strength to follow through and take whatever steps are required to fulfill our plan.

Father Ignatius would be pleased that his inspiration has opened new possibilities in our own lives, even if he is dismayed that we have decided to remain agnostic regarding his theological claims.

Music, Genius & Surprise

December 2nd, 2007

I wanted to show the Garapons that we have some culture in San Francisco with a trip to Davies Hall and a concert by the San Francisco Symphony under Michael Tilson Thomas. MTT never disappoints. When we bought the tickets, I found out that MTT was not on the podium. Disappointment.

Let’s go anyway. Wednesday was the only night Jean and Marie-Christine had for un spectacle musical!

As we sat down, I began to read the program; by the time the musicians had taken their places, I knew that we had really lucked out.



There are some moments in life that astonish, that knock your socks off. This was one. With music, somehow, it seems that your body can respond if properly tuned, even if words fail. You just sit, stirrings arise from deep inside, and then sometimes are followed by a completely different set of feelings. It is like a journey. Then the last cords sound, and there is applause. The culture tells the body to respond. The emotions choose the decibel level.




I have often wondered what it must have been like to hear young Mozart play. Despite the fact that he was promoted by his father as a kind of musical sideshow to make lots of money, not much different from the parents of any child actors today in Hollywood, or some very famous personalities from the more recent past, such Judy Garland whose experience was not entirely happy, I still have the impression that Mozart loved music. A person could not compose Don Giovanni or the Magic Flute under duress or carrying mental scares.

No question that he was a genius born into the world with such extraordinary gifts that you might think that they come from the angels. And still he had to have some kind of training.

Listening to the remarkable Lise de la Salle play Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto, questions like these flooded my mind, that is after the last astonishing bars had faded. She was born in 1988, began playing at 4, was at the Paris Conservatory by age eleven, and to my ear, at age 19 has the grace and command of an Arthur Rubinstein at the end of his career. Clearly she is a musical genius of the highest order, and it is also clear that she loves the piano. Here is a link to the program notes about Lise.

And what a performance it was. To give a hint of her command of the powerful Russian feeling, the emotions of those opening lines, I found a short video of Mme de la Salle playing the amazing Toccata in D minor Op.11 of Prokofiev.

A spectacular evening. Applause please!

The Indian Tomb of Jesus

In 1983, the German writer on esoteric subjects Holger Kersten published Jesus Lived in India, which popularized the legend that Jesus' final resting place was Srinagar in Kashmir. The claim that the tomb of Jesus is the Roza Bal shrine was first asserted in 1899 by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. 

Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was a religious leader and apologist. He argued that Jesus survived the crucifixion, traveled to India, married, had children, and died a natural death at the age of 120, eventually being buried in the Roza Bal shrine under the name Yuz Asaf (or Youza Asouph). 

In 1976, the Spanish philosopher and scholar of comparative religion Andreas Faber-Kaiser published Jesus Died in Kashmir, presenting what he considered historical and physical evidence to support this claim. Somewhere in this amalgam of legends, we learn that Jesus was returning to the place where he’d spent the hidden years of early childhood until he became a prophet in Galilee, learning the wisdom of pre-Islamic sufis. The storytellers must account for the six-century gap between the execution of Jesus and the founding of Islam. But I quibble. The first wave of newly minted Western seekers had just discovered India and seemed swayed by the notion that Jesus had also been influenced by Indian magic. A shrine with an inscription and a name was, of course, conclusive evidence.

I’d read at least an abbreviated account of the connection between Jesus and India. On my second trip to Srinagar, I asked my host, Gul Mohammed, the son of a Kashmiri merchant I’d met in MacLeod Ganj, if he could arrange for a local guide to take me to the tomb of Jesus. A few days before, there had been an incident in the ongoing tension between the majority Hindu government of India and the Muslim majority population of Kashmir, and I’d been told that a white face might not be welcomed in the Old City. Of course, Mo knew an older, well-connected, respected, and savvy Sunni driver who could get us in and out safely. 

But first, didn’t we want to visit the world's oldest wooden mosque? This is Khanqah Shah-i-Hamadan, 14th century. Made entirely of wood, it is unusual and stunning. We got out of the car, but we were not allowed to enter. The guards, however, were extremely courteous and friendly. They left their positions at the main gate, came up to us, introduced themselves, and showed us as much as they could through the windows. They had been the target of extremists, so their instructions were only to admit Muslims who were intending to pray.

Our next stop was Jama Masjid. Situated at Nowhatta in the Old City, the Mosque was commissioned by Sultan Sikandar in 1394 CE and completed in 1402 CE. As we drove in, just past the main gate, looking for a parking space, a few women began to gather around our car and pound on the bonnet. More women began to run over towards us. Our driver-guide apologized, backed up quickly, and told us we would have to skip it. He then told us that we’d been spotted; we could continue an abbreviated tour, driving slowly but not getting out of the car. 

Probably 15 minutes later, we drove up to a very ordinary building, about the size of a Western two-car garage. The roof was tin and needed a coat of paint. The sign said that the opening hours were restricted to Wednesdays between noon and 3 PM. It appeared to be the shrine of a minor saint, not a major figure like Jesus, who appears in the Quran. 

The belief that the tomb belongs to Jesus is a central belief for the Ahmadiyya Muslim community but is rejected by mainstream Christian and Muslim scholars, as well as the local Sunni Muslim caretakers of the shrine, who maintain it is the grave of a local Sufi saint. Modern scholarship generally dismisses the theory as legend or myth with no historical basis. 

Photo credit: Indrajit Das/Wikimedia Commons

According to local Kashmiri traditions, Yuz Asaf was a saint or prophet who came from a foreign land. A few historical interpretations link "Yuz Asaf" to an Arabic or Urdu variant of Josaphat, which is also associated with the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat, an Islamized and Christianized version of the life of the Buddha.

Photo credit: Indrajit Das/Wikimedia Commons

Yes, this is the small shrine that we were taken to when I asked to see the tomb of Jesus. You can see there is more than a little dispute over whether this is his actual burial place. You know that the mullahs want to settle a dispute quickly and definitively when there’s a large sign with a long quote about Jesus from the Quran.

There it is, just as we saw it on our trip into the Old City. It was on a closed day, so we couldn’t get out of the car even under more favorable circumstances.  It is not common for white skinned Westerners to be wandering around this part of Srinagar unless you’re a scholar of esotericism trying to prove a point.

The grave of Yuz Asaph. Photo credit: Indrajit Das/Wikimedia Commons

Standing in the need of prayer. After our adventure in the Old City, we were welcomed inside at Hazratbal. It is a huge Mosque, not located in the old city, but on the eastern shore of Dal Lake. We took off our shoes, faced Mecca, and prayed.

Ty and I sing at a Latin high mass

My leaving the formal Catholic fold was a long, slow process, with hours of prayer, personal introspection, and my share of suffering. However, I can pinpoint the moment I knew I was done to an exact day and hour.

For most of the time I lived in San Francisco, I was a member of the Museum of Modern Art. On November 4, 2003, their special exhibition of Marc Chagall’s work was closing. It was a fabulous exhibition; I had already seen it twice, maybe even three times. On that last Sunday morning, the Museum was going to open to members from 6 AM, before the huge crowd expected at 9:30. I had a plus-one ticket. I asked Ty Cashman, a friend and former Jesuit. Ty and I worked with the same Zen teacher; we’d done several seven-day meditation retreats together; he was super-educated with a PhD in philosophy from Columbia; he’d been a student of Gregory Bateson; he taught a class on Spiritual Exercises at a small private university on the Presidio. 

We met at 6 AM at Mission and 3rd Street and spent a full three and a half hours with the 153 paintings and other works by Chagall, carefully displayed over two floors of the wonderful building. We spent most of the morning just contemplating. It was not the first time we’d shared the early hours of the day in silent meditation. A few comments here and there, but mostly just deep appreciation for the astounding images of a poor Jew from the shtetl who’d transcended any sectarian feel in his work. Seamlessly incorporating the imagery, even iconography of his adopted country, he’d carved out a spiritual, almost magical world that had actually contributed to healing France after the brutality of Nazi occupation. I can describe it as a spiritual experience.

 

At 9:30, as we left, I thought that we’d go to breakfast and say goodbye, but Ty said, “We just have enough time to get to the 10 AM Mass at Saint Patrick’s. Let’s go.” I was surprised, but said sure, and we quickly crossed the Park to the high Latin Mass at the predominantly Filipino parish. Right from "Introibo ad altare Dei," Ty and I were leading the whole left side of a large congregation through familiar tunes. His seminary had been in the Midwest, mine in New England, but our Jesuit choir training was shared. The chubby Monsignor noticed us with a broad smile. The emotional participation at mass in a Filipino church is exuberant compared to their Irish co-religionists. Singing our hearts out, Ty and I shared that high. 

It came time to receive communion, and we approached the altar. It was something that I don’t usually do. I still believed in the sacrament of Penance, and I had not been to confession, but it felt appropriate. Standing before a rather stern-looking woman, the minister of Holy Communion, she said, “The body of Christ,” and I responded spontaneously, “Praise Lord Jesus Christ.”  She stopped, looked at me angrily, and said, “The proper response is 'Amen.’” She wasn’t going to allow any ecstatic response in her line. I followed instructions and said Amen, but in that instant, something changed. It felt irrevocable. I didn’t know it at the time, but it would be years before I again set foot in a Roman Catholic Church to receive the Eucharist. 

Was that too extreme? Of course. I could always find a church that was less insistent on the correct formulation. The narrative of Jesus is carefully, thoughtfully, reverently transmitted through words and ritual practices that have been handed down to us over the centuries. I’d been a real part of that transmission; I’d even been to Saint Patrick’s before, when I stood as the ninong for the granddaughter of one of my workers. Over many years of study and prayer, I’d added my own personal, even mystical understanding of those teachings. Now standing humbly at the table of the Lord, I was met with a burst of anger and told that my response was not acceptable, or it felt that way. Of course, there are a thousand mitigating circumstances; there was no right and wrong, but in that moment, the spell had been broken. 

I allowed this experience of the Eucharist to devolve  into a series of sharp exchanges with many former Jesuit friends about whether one had to have his or her feet firmly in the neoplationist camp before one could talk about the “Real Presence.” And I wasn’t buying it.

And why? And what next? 

Do I even want to talk about this moment? I mentioned that both Ty and I had done the seemingly endless hours of Zazen retreats, just sitting from dawn to dusk in a completely still room, usually with a handful of others or, when the leader had a reputation for insight, integrity, or depth (there are a few of those left), crowds. The work in these Zen retreats was the koans. Detractors talk about impossible riddles designed to throw a wrench into the ordinary, expected inner works; proponents speak of craftily designed word games that might provide a startling insight. I’ve had both experiences and many others over the more than 30 years I’ve been working with a teacher on the koans. You are allowed to switch the subject and the predicate. There are few rules in a logical or discursive sense. 

The feature of the retreats I want to point to here, besides the concentration and silence, is the meetings with your teacher to discuss the koan and your meditation. 

These meetings give Zen its distinctive flavour. You might present an answer to the koan; with a bit of luck and hard work, the teacher will ask a few follow-up or checking questions. Or you might be sent back to the dojo with a hint about where to focus. The length of the meeting can be seconds or hours. I will not add any fiction or wish fulfilment to the pile of idiocy about koan work, other than to say that after many years, I have a clear feeling that I am part of a vibrant conversation about awakening that Buddhists have been having for hundreds of years. And that conversation has been carefully, thoughtfully, reverently transmitted through words and ritual practices that have been handed down to us. The content is different, but the mechanism of transmission shares a lot with the Jesus narratives. 

But what is different was more important for me. My koan responses that felt right, where the opening went deep; they were part of a meditation practice; they were spontaneous, without a lot of thinking about what I should say or what would be clever; they came from a place that I can only describe as intimate. A far cry from “The proper response is ‘Amen.’” 

I’m getting older, and maybe some of my rough edges are beginning to soften. Now and then I’ve thought about that rather stern woman. I have no idea why she responded the way she did, and it’s none of my business. But I owe her a debt of gratitude. I began to meditate on the Real Presence as a koan rather than rigid dogma from the Council of Trent 500 years ago, a mystery I could enter with a sense of wonder and intimacy. 

“Praise Lord Jesus Christ.”

Marc Chagall, The Good Samaritan (1963–64). Collection of the Rockefeller Archive Center. Photo: © Mick Hale.