Discernment of Spirits and Mental Health
You gotta know this stuff
Hello! Welcome to Loved Like Lazarus! Some/most of you are familiar with the concept of the discernment of spirits created by St. Ignatius of Loyola. Hopefully I can give you a refresher on the basics as well as share two examples from my life on the discernment of spirits (one success and the one failure). Frida Kahlo and I are kindred spirits. It’s all about exclusively presenting ourselves for the viewer to judge. Call it vanity, call it self deprecating, but let’s raise some ‘unilateral’ eyebrows and get this started.
Discernment of spirits is all about determining your thoughts and moods in order to make correct decisions/judgments/actions in your spiritual life. Thoughts and moods are a huge part of mental health, so if you know and apply the discernment of spirit exercises in your life, you will be better all around. If you suffer with mental illness then the discernment of spirits is even more important because your thought process, moods, brain chemicals are…. let’s just say special….
For a normy, there are three ‘voices’ that speak to you in your head. The Holy Spirit, the evil spirit and your spirit. For a crazy, the ‘your spirit’ voice can have one or more sub-members (i.e. depression, anxiety, bipolar, schizophrenia, eating disorder, PTSD, OCD, disassociation disorder, paranoia, borderline) Let’s just call this other ‘your spirit’ mental illness sub-spirit, Bob. Bob sucks. He’s a bully and adds to your discernment one more variable which causes confusion and complicates the process.
Discernment of spirits relies on figuring out if you are in a state of consolation or desolation. In consolation you feel peace. You feel a ‘closeness’ to God. Prayer and spiritual things are exciting to you and come easily. Desolation is the opposite. You cannot sense God’s presence very well or at all. There is turmoil and things are confusing. Prayer is bland and maybe even a drudgery. The theory is if you know where you are, you can figure out where you are going.
St. Ignatius has 14 rules for Discernment of Spirits. Here is the list I consulted. These are all very good to know for everyone. But I think that these three stand out as more important than the rest if you struggle with mental health:
When you are in spiritual desolation, think of this truth: God is giving me all the grace I need to get safely through this desolation.
Chances are if you have long lasting periods of poor mental health it will affect your spiritual life and you could be in desolation frequently. But remember that the Lord’s graces are enough for you. Eventually there will be a repose.
When you are in spiritual desolation, be patient, stay the course, and remember that consolation will return much sooner than the desolation is telling you.
It is easy for the cardinal virtue of Hope to move towards despair while in a period of desolation. Pray that the two other cardinal virtues of Faith and Love increase and Hope will follow. Keep practicing the faith and receiving the sacraments. Keep loving God, others and yourself.
When you find burdens on your heart in your spiritual life, temptations, confusion, discouragement, find a wise, competent spiritual person, and talk about it.
This is the most important one. Just like seeing a priest, counselor or a close friend are means to help those who suffer with mental illness, the same people help with spiritual health. We are made for communion with others, it is how God made us because that is who He is, the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
It is wise to have someone check in on you without you instigating the conversation. Someone needs to know if you are doing well or not. If you know someone who has mental health struggles, if there is any intuition of contacting them, just do it. It could be the prompting of the Holy Spirit.
Meeting with a Priest or a Catholic counselor is also very helpful. They can discern with you if the feeling/thoughts you are experiencing are mental, spiritual or a combo. Each is treated differently.
I didn’t know about the discernment of spirits until I arrived at the Seminary. I distinctly remember sitting in class and hearing this teaching and being like, “wow… I haven’t done/did the opposite of pretty much all of these… knowing this would have saved some heartache for sure.” The main part of seminary is discerning whether or not you are called to be a priest. While I was there I heard the phrase, “do not leave the seminary in a state of desolation (rule 5)” many times. There are times when seminarians have been known to even leave in the dead of night and never return. That sounded like a spooky ghost story sentence. But I assure you the Holy Ghost probably wasn’t the one leading those ‘dead of night’ departures.
During the silent 3-day retreat, I started to have the inkling that the call to the priesthood was not so strong as it was when leading me to enter the seminary. The main confirmation was an image I had in prayer. I saw myself on the top of this tall power pole with power lines continuing behind and in front of me. There was a flood and the water kept rising. Eventually it was right beneath me. I had the sense that I had to jump into the water and swim away from the electrical lines. Otherwise, I would be trapped underneath them and that would not be ‘conductive’ to being alive. I had to take a leap of faith and jump into the flood. At first there wasn’t any land around me, just open water. Eventually, I washed up on a tropical island. I was safe and the ordeal was over. Together with my spiritual director we came up with the meaning that the seminary was the power pole. I was clinging onto it because I worked so hard to be accepted and I was unsure of where my life would go if I decided to leave. I also wasn’t having any images in prayer of doing priestly things, like hearing confessions or celebrating mass. Apparently those are common confirmations to a seminarian that he still has the call to the priesthood. I was in a state of consolation. I had a positive feeling about leaving and wasn’t doing it out of fear. This was practicing the rules for spiritual discernment well.
A blundering discernment of spirits example happened right after I left seminary. You’re probably thinking. Didn’t you just learn about discernment of spirits in seminary and applied it correctly when you left? You are correct. But, I am not that great in applying new things into my life because I am lazy and not very motivated most of the time.
So after seminary, I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do next. I knew I was moving to Phoenix to live in a men’s household and do some ministry. I was also definitely going to start dating my future wife. The problem was I needed a job. I got a temporary job as a stocker in a grocery store (super humbling) for sure and not very impressive to my future in-laws and my ability to provide for a family. If you read my post of My Mental Health Journey Part III, you might remember I started working for a mechanical engineering company as a drafter. I think it was a good call at the time to fulfill the in-law blessing of marriage and checking the provide for a family box, but spiritually/mentally I didn’t take into account the sustainability of the job.
Though out this time I was doing well mentally and physically. I had great roommates, I had a beautiful girlfriend/soon to be fiancé, and a job that I was proficient at. However, spiritually I was pretty desolate. I’ve heard most seminarians who discern out of the seminary have this same problem. It is hard to make the transition from heavily structured intensive communal and individual prayer, to solo unstructured prayer. Because of my background of working with kids as a teacher, a summer camp counselor, experiencing life changing inner healing ministry, and just all around loving the experience of helping people, I decided I would go back to school and pursue a counseling degree. However, I didn’t pray about it, I didn’t have a spiritual director to talk to about it, I didn’t take the time to consider I had crashed, burned and withdrawn on 3 separate occasions while getting my bachelors degree, I didn’t realize the difficulty of working full time and going to school, and I ignored/suppressed feelings of caution I was experiencing in my spirit. So yeah, very poor discernment on my part. Here is a list of the violations of the 14 rules for spiritual discernment to show my lack of spiritual discernment smarts:
4. When your heart is discouraged, you have little energy for spiritual things, and God feels far away, you are experiencing spiritual desolation. Resist and reject this enemy tactic!
5. When you are in spiritual desolation, never change anything in your spiritual life.
6. When you are in spiritual desolation, use these four means: prayer (ask God's help!), Meditation (think Bible verses, truths about God's faithful love, memories of God's fidelity to you in the past), examination (ask, How did this start?), And suitable penance (don't just give in and immerse yourself in social media, music, movies ... ... Stand your ground in suitable ways!
7. When you are in spiritual desolation, think of this truth: God is giving me all the grace I need to get safely through this desolation.
8. When you are in spiritual desolation, be patient, stay the course, and remember that consolation will return much sooner than the desolation is telling you.Those are two examples of my life when it came to discernment of spirits. One in a state of consolation (and good discernment) and one in a state of desolation (and poor discernment).
11. The mature person of discernment: neither carelessly high in consolation nor despairingly low in desolation, but humble in consolation and trusting in desolation.
13. When you find burdens on your heart in your spiritual life, temptations, confusion, discouragement, find a wise, competent spiritual person, and talk about it.
That is a pretty bad percentage there haha. If you remember from my previous Mental Health Journey Part I, I have a string of withdrawing from school when I get depressed, anxious, and burnt out. Needless to say the same thing happened here and I withdrew from the counseling program after a few months. It was really bad spiritual discernment and regular discernment too. It was my biggest monetary mistake of losing many ‘dollar-bucks’ and it was a catalyst for future mental health problems I reckon.
So, there are two examples from my life that show experiencing consolation (and good spiritual discernment) and experiencing desolation (and poor spiritual discernment). It is my hope that you learn up on the practice of the discernment of spirits and put it into practice in your life. If you want a good book with everything you need to know about the discernment of spirits, this one by Timothy Gallagher, The Discernment of Spirits: An Ignatian Guide for Everyday Living is very good. There was also an overlap of me not listening to the will of God in my life in this post. I just saw this book (I haven’t read but it looks legit) from the same author, Discerning the Will of God: An Ignatian Guide to Christian Decision Making, if you want to read about a similar topic of discerning God’s will for your life and how to make better life decisions.
I think if St. Ignatius was around 1500 years earlier, he would have mentioned the #9 rule to Martha and the other people in spiritual desolation after the death of Lazarus:
9. Why does a God who loves us allow us to experience spiritual desolation? To help us see changes we need to make; to strengthen us in our resistance to desolation; and to help us not get complacent in the spiritual life.
Martha and the crowd needed to increase their faith in Jesus and His resurrection power, to resist the perceived finality of death, and to have a wake up call in order to the live with heaven in mind.
Comments:
What is your impression of Frida Kahlo?
I’ve been told my voice is similar to Kronk from the Emperor’s New Groove. I recommend watching the whole Angel/Demon shoulder clip here. Who is your doppelgänger?
Do you have a success story with the discernment of spirits?
Which one of the 14 Rules do you wish you would have practiced in your past?