On the other hand, I attended a couple of his Techno Cosmic Masses while I was in Oakland and found them overwhelmingly distracting multimedia experiences with a feeling of everything and the kitchen sink thrown in un the hope that something interesting might happen in the mix. A bit over the top to be useful to me … but certainly fascinating and creative.

Ignatius is holding open a space for God’s action (“the good spirit”) in someone being a shaking out of complacency, or a sting of conscience, etc. At such times the bad spirit would be the one trying to keep things smooth and easy and on an even keel. BUT the mark of both dynamics (“upside down” or usual) is that God is doing all God can to be there and in relationship with each of us AND that relationship is the answer to our deepest heart’s desire. Because God answers the echo of our deepest desires we can have the trust and experience that walking in the way of God’s desire is something we deeply want ourselves and feels natural to us, right, in some deep sense comfortable.

Steve: Margaret is a great communicator of Ignatian spirituality — anything by her is worth a look.

I think you are dead right about the basic optimism of Ignatian spirituality. I remember reading something by Matthew Fox claiming Ignatius was obsessed by sin and the hard work of atonement but i don’t think you could find a mystic with a greater confidence in our human openness under grace to be with God and for God. That optimism extends to the whole world too as a place where God happens and anyone can join in.

That’s one thing I like about Ignatian spirituality – it has, it seems to me – a basic positive, optimistic view of people and their relationship with God. We’re basically good, instead of basically bad.

The question of what you do with an experience might be different depending on where you place the emphasis. For example, some feelings of badness respond best to antacid, others to therapy, etc.

In the example you give of finding something in yourself that could be called bad where, in the ’spiritual’ way of thinking is the bad spirit. I would say that looking at the bad spirit as the cause of whatever trait you’ve noticed doesn’t help much — who knows what blend of nature, nurture, grace and freedom bring you to be who you are? But maybe the bad spirit is clearly visible in the strand of your experience that is ashamed and wants you to stay away from God. If that’s true what do you do with that feeling of shame and that impulse to keep your distance? Well, I’d be looking for what else is going on in your experience that might be from ‘the good spirit’ that carries feelings more creative than shame, opinions more life-giving than deadly, and desires rather than fears. Ignatius’ basic principle is that the bad spirit is a liar and a bully (and a coward). When you can make out where the bad spirit is taking you (shame and self-loathing and distance from God) you can take a bet that the other direction would be better, truer, and more life-giving.

The way ‘you’ see God is also at stake in discernment like this. Follow the shame and God seems fearsome and judgemental and hardly worth risking a relationship with. But who’s the God behind the other spirit, the other movement — whatever it might be for you — toward life, truth, goodness? I’d wager that God is worth getting close to.

Any clearer or am I making the waters muddier?

But what are you supposed to do with it? If it’s just psychological, it seems the healthy thing to do would be to acknowledge it, accept it, delve into it, learn from it. But if it’s a bad spirit’s influence, should you turn away from it or ignore it?

When I notice things in myself that could be called bad, I usually want to stay away from God becaue I feel ashamed. So maybe polarizing things into good and bad keeps one from God? Sorry – the more I think about this, the more confused I get.

I can understand if someone doesn’t believe there is a spiritual component to the cosmos, or if someone considers the spiritual realm a purely psychological phenomenon. There are some ’spiritual’ approaches to psychology that divide up the psyche in such a way that the spiritual element is, almost by definition, wholly positive. And their are also psychological systems that see a spiritual benefit in integrating what appear to be ‘darker’ aspects of one’s psyche.

What is harder for me to understand is a belief in a spiritual realm that is wholly positive where the spiritual realm is meant in some strong cosmological sense.

In practical terms, to be able to ‘do discernment’ it is enough to be able to notice and differentiate the aspects of one’s experience of the world into those which lead to life and those which diminish it. In that sense discernment can work phenomenologically without getting into discussions of metaphysics. But to look at how discernment works I think requires at least the belief that the spiritual realm is polarised. Some commentators parse that polarity as between God or the Holy Spirit working in the person as one ’spirit’ and anything that opposes it as the other. Others stick to a more psychological interpretation in terms of God’s desire that human beings should be fully alive. My own belief is that speaking about spirit as part of the real world makes the most sense but it isn’t absolutely necessary to the practice of discernment.

Sorry … long-winded!

Discernment thrives in an interesting hermeneutical atmosphere. Blanket distrust of one’s own experience makes discernment impossible. Wholesale acceptance also bypasses discernment, equally (?) harmfully. Discernment takes an attitude of basic trust in experience — giving it chance to develop and become discernible — coupled with a capacity to learn where trust has been wisely given and where not. An Ignatian approach to discernment is about discovering what aspects of your experience are truly friendly (to savour, encourage and develop them) and which are not (to perform damage limitation).

That make any sense? Or am I misconstruing your friend?