Examen of Consciousness
Examen of Consciousness St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556), founder of the Society of Jesus or Jesuits, proposed a daily exercise which he called the Examen of Consciousness or the Daily Examen—a ...
Love Upwelling
Love Upwelling Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself” (Matthew 22:39), not “as much as you love yourself.” We are to love our neighbor in the same way we love ourselves. “We love because ...
Praying Unceasingly
Praying Unceasingly For Jesus, prayer seems to be a matter of waiting in love, returning to love, and trusting that love is the bottom stream of reality. Prayer isn’t primarily words; it’s ...
Walking Meditation
Walking Meditation Jonathon Stalls, founder of Walk2Connect, writes about learning how “we share a common journey of wanting to love and be loved; that we want to feel safe, comfortable, and ...
Giving Thanks
Giving Thanks Many cultures and religions have a beautiful tradition of saying a prayer before or after a meal, expressing gratitude and asking for blessing. If we are accustomed to praying ...
Staying Grounded
Staying Grounded There are lists upon lists of things you can do to help the environment. You’ve read and perhaps tried many of them: reducing, reusing, recycling; walking, biking, or taking ...
Conversations with Nature
Conversations with Nature Although creation may be “wordless,” we can still dialogue with it as St. Francis did. Bill Plotkin suggests a practice of “talking across the species boundaries” in his ...
Moving Beyond Matter
Moving Beyond Matter Look around you and notice your surroundings at this moment. Let your eyes fall on some object—perhaps a candle, tree, rock, or creature. Simply observe the object, without ...
Making a Mandala
Making a Mandala Mandala, the Sanskrit word for circle, is a Hindu and Buddhist symbol for the universe. It represents the Whole of which we are a part. In Carl Jung’s ...
Falling and Failing into Love
Falling and Failing into Love In many ways prayer—certainly contemplative prayer or meditation—is planned and organized failure. If you’re not prepared for failure, you’ll avoid prayer, and that’s what most people ...
Boats on a River
Boats on a River Most people have never actually met themselves. At every moment, all our lives long, we identify with our thoughts, our self-image, or our feelings. We have to ...
Living Simply
Living Simply We discover simplicity in the silence of contemplative prayer. As we let go of thought and sensation, we reconnect with our Center, our source of abundance and enoughness. You ...
Ecstatic Dance
Ecstatic Dance In order to fully participate in the sacred dance, our hearts, minds, and bodies must all be present and open. Too often in the Western world, the body is ...
Kenosis
Kenosis The Trinity is unhindered kenosis or self-emptying, self-giving, holding nothing back. Jesus modeled such vulnerability and surrender: becoming human, serving the poor and the sick, and giving up his life. As Paul ...
Mirroring
Mirroring Contemplative knowing intuits things in their wholeness, with all levels of connection and meaning, and perhaps how they fit in the full scheme of things. Thus, the contemplative response to ...