In the following pages, lists of negative and positive feelings, and false and true images of God and self are given. The feelings and images mentioned are common enough, but they are no more than illustrations selected from the much more varied experiences of actual individuals.[1]

1.    Negative feelings are experienced by everyone

It is important to notice your “black” feelings. It is alright and not a sin to experience negative feelings.

2.    Patterns of negative feelings may suggest themes for prayer

If you have a recurrent set of negative feelings (that is, a persistent return of the same kind of feelings), this might indicate the graces you need from God and what theme, what Scripture passages, might be useful for you to pray over.

3.    False images of God are linked to negative feelings

Traditionally Jews and Christians have warned against the worship of idols. Idols are false images of God. But here the phrase refers to imaginative forms at work within your own soul, rather than in the outside world. We are not usually conscious in a direct way of the false images that influence us. But our negative feelings in religious matters may lead us to new discoveries, to clarify what we have only vaguely sensed, about the way the divine mystery in our lives is subjectively “shaped” and narrowed by false images. If progress is made in recognizing a false image of God, the power of that false image begins to weaken. It may not disappear altogether until it is replaced by a better image.

4.    False images of self are usually linked to false images of God

Our relationship with divine mystery tends to be an interpersonal polarity, and corresponding to a false image of God at the upper end of the pole, we will usually find a false image of one’s self at the lower end. For example, if you feel God is like a “cold father”, you may feel yourself to be a “neglected child”. Such false self-images need to be identified in all their particularity in order to get free of any self-pity, anger, or bitterness that holds them in place. They are not always easy to dislodge — they often have been “in possession” of your soul for too long a time.

5.    True images of God are given in the Eight Themes

It is not enough to clean out false images from your spiritual cupboard. The beautiful and true images of God revealed to us in Scripture need to be recognized, brought gladly into our hearts, and given the place of honor in the heights of our spirit. You cannot do without images — those subjective structures of the human imagination that mediate and enable experiences of the divine mystery. But in Jesus Christ, the Divine Word, all the self-revealing acts of God were taken up and brought to their fullest symbolic power. Jesus is God’s self-image. God’s self-image is inexhaustible because God exceeds the limits of human receptivity. In the whole Bible, therefore, but especially in the Gospels, true images of God are expressed and given to us in a rich variety of situations, actions, and interpersonal exchanges. Pray with Scripture passages that bring true images of God into your deepest soul, and you will find healing and growth.

6.    True images of self may also need attention

As prayer with the “Eight Themes” proceeds, you may discover which false images afflict and inhibit you. It is hoped that God will provide you with new self-images which may replace any old ones which have come to light and have begun to wither. Sometimes we have to “bend the iron the wrong way” by strongly emphasizing the true self-image: “I am a chosen person.” “I am a beloved disciple of Jesus.” “I am a beautiful holy being”.

7.    Your true images of God and self may be associated with your Name of Grace

If you are making headway with true images of God and of self, you will usually begin to experience positive feelings more often. The lists of feelings and images given in the two models are merely examples of what you might experience. In practice, you will probably have diverse images of God and self. Maybe your true images of God and self will give you a sense of your unique Name of Grace.

[1] John Wickham, SJ “Appendix A: Eight Themes for Prayer with Scripture” in Prayer Companions^’ Handbook. Ignatian Centre Publications, Montreal, Quebec Canada Third Edition, 1991, p. 200ff.

TABLE 1: False Images of God and Self

TABLE 2: True Images of God and Self

TABLE 3: Prayer themes, graces and scripture readings

HERE IS ANOTHER WAY to understand the idea of Identity —> Vocation —> Mission = Name of Grace. In an article entitled Now I Become Myself, Parker Palmer writes:

“It can take a long time to become the person one has always been. Often in the process we mask ourselves in faces that are not our own. There can be much dissolving and shaking of ego to endure before we discover our deep identity — the true self within every human being that is the seed of authentic vocation. We hear a lot about vocation in the church. Vocation, or calling, is sometimes seen as coming from a voice external to ourselves, a voice of moral demand that asks us to become someone we are not yet — someone different, someone better, someone just beyond our reach. That concept of vocation is rooted in a deep distrust of selfhood, in the belief that the sinful self will always be “selfish” unless corrected by external forces of virtue. It is a notion that can make us feel inadequate to the task of living our own lives, creating guilt about the distance between who we are and who we are supposed to be, leaving us exhausted as we labor to close the gap. But there is another way of looking at vocation — not as a goal to be achieved but as a gift to be received. Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already possess. Vocation does not come from a voice “out there” calling me to become what I am not. It comes from a voice “in here” calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth by God.

“The birthright gift
 It is a strange gift, this birthright gift of self. Accepting it turns out to be even more demanding than attempting to become someone else. We sometimes respond to that demand by ignoring the gift, or hiding it, or fleeing from it, or squandering it. There is a Hasidic tale that reveals, with amazing brevity, both the universal tendency to want to be someone else and the ultimate importance of becoming one’s self. Rabbi Zusya, when he was an old man, said, “In the coming world, they will not ask me: ‘Why were you not Moses?’ They will ask me: ‘Why were you not Zusya?’”

“We arrive in this world with birthright gifts — then we spend the first half of our lives abandoning them or letting others disabuse us of them. As young people, we are surrounded by expectations that may have little to do with who we really are, expectations held by people who are not trying to discern our selfhood but to fit us into slots. In families, schools, workplaces and religious communities, we are trained away from true self toward images of acceptability; under social pressures like racism and sexism our original shape is deformed beyond recognition; and we ourselves, driven by fear, too often betray true self to gain the approval of others. We are disabused of original giftedness in the first half of our lives. Then — if we are awake, aware and able to admit our loss — we spend the second half trying to recover and reclaim the gift we once possessed.

“Wearing other people’s faces
 When we lose track of true self, how can we pick up the trail? One way is to seek clues in stories from our younger years, years when we lived closer to our birthright gifts. From the beginning, our lives lay down clues to selfhood and vocation, though the clues may be hard to decode. But trying to interpret them is profoundly worthwhile — especially when we are in our forties or fifties, feeling profoundly lost, having wandered, or been dragged, far away from our birthright gifts.”Wearing other people’s faces
 When we lose track of true self, how can we pick up the trail? One way is to seek clues in stories from our younger years, years when we lived closer to our birthright gifts. From the beginning, our lives lay down clues to selfhood and vocation, though the clues may be hard to decode. But trying to interpret them is profoundly worthwhile — especially when we are in our forties or fifties, feeling profoundly lost, having wandered, or been dragged, far away from our birthright gifts.

“Those clues are helpful in counteracting the conventional concept of vocation, which insists that our lives must be driven by “oughts.” As noble as that may sound, we do not find our callings by conforming ourselves to some abstract moral code. We find our callings by claiming authentic selfhood, by being who we are, by dwelling in the world as Zusya rather than straining to be Moses. The deepest vocational question is not “What ought I to do with my life?” It is the more elemental and demanding “Who am I? What is my nature?”

“Everything in the universe has a nature, which means limits as well as potentials, a truth well known by people who work daily with the things of the world. Making pottery, for example, involves more than telling the clay what to become. The clay presses back on the potter’s hands, telling her what it can and cannot do — and if she fails to listen, the outcome will be both frail and ungainly. Engineering involves more than telling materials what they must do. If the engineer does not honor the nature of the steel or the wood or the stone, his or her failure will go well beyond aesthetics: the bridge or the building will collapse and put human life in peril.

“The human self also has a nature, limits as well as potentials. If you seek vocation without understanding the material you are working with, what you build with your life will be ungainly and may well put lives in peril, your own and some of those around you. “Faking it” in the service of high values is no virtue and has nothing to do with vocation. It is an ignorant, sometimes arrogant, attempt to override one’s nature, and it will always fail.

“Joining self and service
 Our deepest calling is to grow into our own authentic selfhood, whether or not it conforms to some image of who we ought to be. As we do so, we will not only find the joy that every human being seeks — we will also find our path of authentic service in the world. True vocation joins self and service, as Frederick Buechner asserts:

“By and large a good rule for finding out is this: the kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done. … The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.[1]

“Buechner’s definition starts with the self and moves toward the needs of the world: it begins, wisely, where vocation begins — not in what the world needs (which is everything), but in the nature of the human self, in what brings the self joy, the deep joy of knowing that we are here on earth to be the gifts that God created.

“Contrary to the conventions of our thinly moralistic culture, this emphasis on gladness and selfhood is not selfish. The Quaker teacher Douglas Steere was fond of saying that the ancient human question “Who am I?” leads inevitably to the equally important question “Whose am I?” — for there is no selfhood outside relationship. We must ask the question of selfhood and answer it as honestly as we can, no matter where it takes us. Only as we do so can we discover the community of our lives. As I learn more about the seed of true self that was planted when I was born, I also learn more about the ecosystem in which I was planted — the network of communal relations in which I am called to live responsively, accountably, and joyfully with beings of every sort. Only when I know both seed and system, self and community, can I embody the great commandment to love both my neighbor and myself.

“There are at least two ways to understand the link between selfhood and service. One is offered by the poet Rumi in his piercing observation: “If you are here unfaithfully with us, you’re causing terrible damage.” If we are unfaithful to true self, we will extract a price from others. We will make promises we cannot keep, build houses from flimsy stuff, conjure dreams that devolve into nightmares, and other people will suffer — if we are unfaithful to our true self.

Herbert Alphonso SJ writes:

the single greatest grace of my life is that I discerned my truest and deepest ‘self’, the unrepeatable uniqueness God has given to me in ‘calling me by name’… My own personal experience and my ministry of the Spirit have taught me that the deepest transformation in any person’s life takes place in the actual living out of this very ‘personal vocation’.[2]

Alphonso believes that the experience of one’s ‘fundamental consolation’, one’s ‘God-given uniqueness’, which he calls one’s ‘personal vocation’[3] is not only the ground of one’s relationship with God, but is foundational in any process of discernment. Dermot Mansfield SJ speaks of one’s ‘primordial experience’:

It is vital for any spirituality, or way of prayer, or process of spiritual accompaniment, to attend to that primordial experience, when I know that I have been called into existence to be uniquely who I am and to be sustained by that look of love. [4]

Alphonso argues that one’s personal vocation ‘becomes the criterion for discernment for every decision in life, even for the daily details of decision-making.’[5] He supports his argument reflecting on Jesus’ personal vocation, ‘captured in but one single word “Abba”.’[6] Based on his personal experience, Merton makes a similar claim: I have my own special peculiar destiny which no one else ever has had or ever will have… Because my own individual destiny is a meeting, an encounter with God, that God has destined for me alone… it is a gift of God to me which God has never given to anyone else and never will.[7]

[1] This article by Parker Palmer can be accessed at:  https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/working-life/2001/04/01/now-i-become-myself

[1] Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC, HarperOne, 1993, 118-119.

[2] Herbert Alphonso, The Personal Vocation (Rome: Centrum Ignatianum Spiritualitatis, 1990), 14. Alphonso (1930-2012) was an Indian Jesuit priest, director of the Ignatian Spirituality Centre and professor of Spiritual Theology at the Gregorian University in Rome.

[3] Alphonso, The Personal Vocation, 14.  

[4] Dermot Mansfield, “Spiritual Accompaniment and Discernment,” The Way 47, no. 1&2 (2008): 159.

[5] Ibid., 58.

[6] Ibid., 31-2.

[7] Thomas Merton in a letter to Mark van Doren, March 30, 1948. see Robert E. Daggy, ed. The Road to Joy: Letters of Thomas Merton to New and Old Friends (New York: Farrer, Straus, Giroux, 1989), 22.

Scripture 1 Corinthians. 12:4-13

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses. For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptised into one body —Jews or Greeks, slaves or free —and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.      

Imaging

I imagine myself in the place where my deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.        

The grace I seek

I pray for the gift of knowing and accepting my truest and deepest self, the unrepeatable uniqueness God has given me in “calling me by name”, so that I might fully and creatively live out God’s call to me in my life.

Points for private prayer

1. Ponder your birthright gift of self. These questions might help:
   1. What did I dream of becoming when I was a child?
   1. What fascinated me?
   1. What were my hobbies and interests?
   1. Have I wandered from my birthright gifts? Did others disabuse me of them?
   1. What clues to my selfhood and vocation — though the clues may be hard to decode and interpret — were laid down in my youth?
   1. What clues might there be in my childhood to the unique, God-given meaning of my life?

Writing

Spend some time at the end of the prayer making some notes on your prayer. These questions might help.

What fills you with “deep gladness”?

• At home:
• At work:
• In creative projects:
• With other people:
• By yourself:

How do these things overlap with the deep needs of the world?

How could you give yourself more of that feeling of gladness?

What could you change in your existing roles and projects, or what new roles and projects could you pursue?

Is there anything you would need to let go of in order to find that gladness?

Scripture

Jesus said to the Pharisees: “There was a rich man who dressed in purple garments and fine linen and dined sumptuously each day. And lying at his door was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table. Dogs even used to come and lick his sores” (Luke 16:19-20).

Carl Jung on Self-acceptance[1]

“To accept oneself as one is may sound like a simple thing, but simple things are always the most difficult things to do. In actual life to be simple and straightforward is an art in itself requiring the greatest discipline, while the question of self-acceptance lies at the root of the moral problem and at the heart of a whole philosophy of life.

“Is there ever a doubt in my mind that it is virtuous for me to give alms to the beggar, to forgive him who offends me, yes, even to love my enemy in the name of Christ? No, not once does such a doubt cross my mind, certain as I am that what I have done unto the least of my brethren, I have done unto Christ.

“But what if I should discover that the least of all brethren, the poorest of all beggars, the most insolent of all offenders, yes even the very enemy himself—that these live within me, that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I am to myself the enemy who is to be loved—what then?

“Then the whole of Christian truth is turned upside down; then there is no longer any question of love and patience, then we say ‘Raca’[2] to the brother or sister within us; then we condemn and rage against ourselves! For sure, we hide this attitude from the outside world, but this does not alter the fact that we refuse to receive the least among the lowly in ourselves with open arms. And if it had been Christ himself to appear within ourselves in such a contemptible form, we would have denied him a thousand times before the cock had crowed even once!”

The grace I seek

I pray that I might love and accept myself.    

Imaging

I imagine that I am the rich person in the Gospel. I leave my house one day but, instead of ignoring the poor person covered with sores who lies at my door, I turn and look.  I discover that I know the person.  The person is me. I look at my body covered in sores with dogs licking them. How do I feel towards that person (me)? What do I do for myself? How do I speak to myself?

Points for reflection  

1. How am I growing in self-compassion?
2. How am I kind to myself?
3. Do I have a good reputation with myself?

Close with an Our Father.

[1] Carl G. Jung. Die Beziehungen der Psychotherapie zur Seelsorge  (The relationship of psychotherapy to ministry) (Zurich: Rascher & Cie., 1932).

[2] The word ‘Raca’ in Aramaic means “empty one, fool, empty head”.

Introduction

MANY PEOPLE FIND IT DIFFICULT TO LOVE THEMSELVES, TO BE SELF-COMPASSIONATE. Self-compassion can be defined as being touched by and open to your own suffering, not avoiding or disconnecting from it, generating the desire to alleviate your suffering and to treat yourself with kindness… Self-compassion also involves offering nonjudgmental understanding to your pain, inadequacies and failures, so that your experience is seen as part of the larger human experience.

You know that you are growing in self-compassion if you are:

• being kind and understanding towards yourself in instances of pain or failure rather than being harshly self-critical,
• seeing your fallibility as part of the larger human condition rather than as something that isolates you, and
• holding your painful thoughts and feelings in mindful awareness rather than avoiding them or, conversely, over-identifying with them.

Gospel  (Mark 12:28-31)

One of the teachers of religious law was standing there listening to the debate. He realized that Jesus had answered well, so he asked, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.”

What I desire

I ask God for the grace to be increasingly self-compassionate.

The Loving-Kindness Meditation

1. Sit in a comfortable position with your back upright. Close your eyes and bring your attention toward your breath. Remind yourself that every living being wishes to live in peace and happiness. Connect yourself deeply to this desire: “Just as all beings desire to be happy and free from suffering, I am entitled to the same happiness and freedom from suffering”. If you wish, you may take a moment to feel what kind of emotions this intention stirs up within you.

• Repeat the following phrases in silence and serenity:

In the name of Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, may I be peaceful

In the name of Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, may I be healthy

In the name of Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, may I be happy

Take a moment to truly comprehend the meaning of each phrase. If necessary, repeat a certain phrase more than once to create more clarity. You may also choose a single word and repeat this to yourself. It is important that you devote yourself to the desiring part of the exercise: that you truly desire these things for yourself. In other words, it is about the intention, not about the results. If you notice your mind starts wandering, simply return your attention to the phrases. Don’t be harsh on yourself, it is normal to get distracted.