Lenten Reflection #2: Getting Inside the Thought Bubble With St. Ignatius
The mind is a world unto its own, where angels and demons rove about, whispering sweet nothings to our psyche.
Stop being childish in your thinking. In respect to evil be like infants, but in your thinking be mature.
1 Corinthians 14:20
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It’s a scenario so common we have idioms to describe it: you wake up on the wrong side of the bed with a case of the Mondays. Your thoughts are a litany of grumbles: the shirt I want to wear is dirty, the cereal is stale, the coffee weak, he’s taking forever, she’s prattling incessantly, and to top it off, everything is way too cold.
The mind is a thought factory that takes no breaks, never stalls or slows down. It processes interactions, recalls memories, replays episodes and constructs narratives with a rhyme and reason of its own. Why does that person you haven’t seen in years suddenly pop into your head on a morning walk? Why does that biting criticism from your boss play on constant repeat, as though the brain has a glitch? Why in old age do the memories of childhood come flooding in, in vivid color, but you cannot even recall what you did a week ago?
With the demands of the tangible world, it’s easy to overlook the world of the mind, to let it roam free, like an unsupervised child. Sometimes this is a good thing. Thoughts venture to wild and imaginative places, they build forts and design castles and concoct elaborate tales. At other times, this is not such a good thing; unruly thoughts wander to destructive dead ends; they whine, moan, relive painful memories, dig up wounds, and ignite within us bonfires of annoyance, anger, malice, depression and despair.
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While Hamlet says that nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so, St. Ignatius of Loyola takes a different spin on the interplay between thoughts and morality. His spiritual exercises are founded on the supposition that every thought originates from one of three places: “One which is strictly my own, and arises wholly from my own free will; two others which come from without, the one from the good spirit, and the one from the evil one.”1 You can know the origin of a thought by its fruits:
If the beginning and middle and end of the course of thought are wholly good and directed to what is entirely right, it is a sign that they are from the good angel. But the course of thoughts suggested to us may terminate in something evil, or distracting, or less good than the soul had formerly proposed to do. Again, it may end in what weakens the soul, or disquiets it; or by destroying the peace, tranquility, and quiet which it had before, it may cause disturbance to the soul. These things are a clear sign that the thoughts are proceeding from the evil spirit, the enemy of our progress and eternal salvation.2 (emphasis added)
Have you ever felt an unwarranted compulsion obsess over a situation that makes you really angry? It sounds like this is what St. Ignatius is getting at here. That sneaky, relentless devil gets into our heads and pushes buttons, seeking to agitate and fill us with bile.
With so much obscurity in the spiritual life, this clarity is a much-welcome guidepost. And he doesn’t stop here. St. Ignatius further provides council on how to guard against these destructive thoughts:
When the enemy of our human nature has been detected and recognized by the trail of evil marking his course and by the wicked end to which he leads us, it will be profitable for one who has been tempted to review immediately the whole course of the temptation. Let him consider the series of good thoughts, how they arose, how the evil one gradually attempted to make him step down from the state of spiritual delight and joy in which he was, till finally he drew him to his wicked designs. The purpose of this review is that once such an experience has been understood and carefully observed, we may guard ourselves for the future against the customary deceits of the enemy.3 (emphasis added)
Even though capricious, even though mysterious, thoughts don’t steer the ship. They can be directed. They are even, to an extent, our responsibility. In the same way that “adulting” entails the tangible tasks like cleaning, cooking and budgeting, St. Ignatius posits that mature discipleship entails the more obscure practice of analyzing thoughts.
A regular practice of reflecting on thoughts undoubtedly solves some of the mystery behind negative thought patterns. It can signal areas for change. Sometimes the correlation is clear: certain activities, environments, people and even foods can condition a mind to succumb to the temptations of the evil spirit. Take the following everyday scenarios, for example. The chaos of a messy house, the agitation of consuming too much online content, and the frustration of being stuck in traffic and missing an appointment all may well put an individual into a vulnerable and wobbly mental space.
But some of the mystery is never entirely resolved. Our fallen nature makes us always prone to entertain negative thoughts that destroy our peace. And perhaps the best amelioration is to petition God for the means to heal our thought life, as the anonymous author of the spiritual classic Cloud of Unknowing advises:
Seek to develop special ways, tricks, private techniques and spiritual devices by means of which you can put [negative thoughts] away. And it is best to learn these methods from God by your own experience rather than from any man in this life.4
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What are your thoughts about thoughts? Is St. Ignatius on the money to place so much significance on thoughts?
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The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. Translated by Louis J. Puhl, S. J. Loyola Press, 1951: Paragraph 32, page 18.
The Spiritual Exercises. Paragraph 333, page 148.
The Spiritual Exercises. Paragraph 334, page 148-9.
The Cloud of Unknowing. Translated by Ira Progoff, Dell Publishing, Inc., 1957: Chapter 31, page 133-4.