9. My awareness and desire can be transformed through spiritual disciplines.
(Before looking at the questions below, take a few minutes to think about this statement. Invite Jesus to speak to you about what He would like you to notice.)
IT HAS BEEN SAID THAT AS HUMANS WE ARE REMARKABLY CAPABLE OF SELF-DECEPTION AND ARE OFTEN UNAWARE OF OURSELVES. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THIS STATEMENT?
IN WHAT PLACES AND SITUATIONS HAVE YOU BEEN MORE AWARE OF YOUR FEELINGS, EMOTIONS, DESIRES?
IF THERE WERE ACTIONS YOU COULD TAKE TO RETURN TO SOME OF THOSE PLACES AND SITUATIONS, WOULD YOU WANT TO?
Many spiritual disciplines help to train our bodies, and that’s good. But our hearts are an even more important consideration in our journey of transformation. Jesus once described Pharisees as “whitewashed tombs.” In other words, their outward behaviors looked nice and clean, but their inner persons were decayed and dead.
Our interior life is the true picture of who we are. Two aspects of our interior life that particularly need transformation are desire and mindfulness. God’s Spirit helps us in the formation and function of these qualities. First let’s look at desire. On our own, we struggle to have good and pure desires. To have desires that are truly for good, without ulterior motives, requires the influence of Spirit. One way of understanding this could be to suggest that
any good desire originates with the Spirit, we simply agree with the Spirit and chose to make that desire our own. If it is the Spirit that initiates the desire, our part will be to affirm and claim the desire for ourselves. Once we have made it our own, we then take action to bring that desire to fruition. For this to happen, we will need to discipline ourselves to be open to the Spirit’s leading and willing to submit to these invitations.
Character qualities helpful in this process include openness, submission, repentance, transparency, and vulnerability. Thankfully, there are spiritual disciplines that can help us develop these qualities. For example, we might put ourselves in an environment that requires us to practice submission, perhaps volunteering somewhere or serving under someone. We can develop openness by sharing deep emotions with a trusted friend, spiritual director, or mentor. The discipline of confession is helpful in developing repentance.
This is just a sample of ways that we can choose to practice disciplines with the goal of developing good and pure desires. The second element of the heart is mindfulness. The name may make it sound more like an element of the mind rather than the heart, but the mindfulness we are considering here is spiritual awareness. It is a noticing of things that comes not from our own intellect but from the guidance and help of the Spirit.
This Spirit-awareness is critical, perhaps even more so than desire, because we need awareness to be able to notice the Spirit’s invitation to a desire. To be able to notice the areas of our person that need attention and healing, we need Spirit-awareness. Before we can respond to Jesus’ invitation into abundance, we need to be able to notice Jesus. This Spirit attentiveness is then critical for our transformation. Disciplines that may help us develop this Spirit-awareness often include silence and solitude.
As long as our attention is distracted with the ordinary things of life, it will be hard to develop attentiveness to the Spirit. Meeting with a spiritual director is another discipline we might choose to aid us in developing mindfulness. The Ignatian practice of examen, a Spirit-guided reflection of the past day, week, month or year, is another discipline we can use to increase in Spirit-awareness.
The human heart is vast, deep, and complex. It is the essence of who we are. It manifests itself in outward acts and behaviors, but our behaviors and actions are not always a true indication of our hearts.
More than our behaviors, therefore, our hearts need disciplines that help shape them to reflect the heart of God, to be the person He created us to be.