The Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius can help people get in touch with that which they most desire, and so encounter God. But for this to happen, pilgrims must be set free to follow their own feelings, writes the Jesuit priest and author of God of Surprises. There is a growing interest in spirituality, the word now appearing in the mission (sic statements of business corporations, in government decrees on education, in medical journals, in football management. How is this interest to be sustained and developed so that if flows creatively into national and international life? This is vitally important question, for sprituality is not necessarily creative: it can also be very destructive.

I see part of the answer to this question in the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius Loyola. Written in the sixteenth century, they are now being used by a wide variety of people of different Christian denominations and none. When Ignatius of Loyola first drafted them he was a layman, without any academic qualifications or formal training in spirituality. Until he was converted to Christ while convalescing from battle wounds, his life had not been outstanding either for its morality or its spirituality. But now, having recovered from his injuries, he started out on pilgrimage for Jerusalem, and spent three days at Montserrat near Barcelona preparing to make his general confession. Afterwards, he stayed for about ten months at nearby Manresa, undergoing inner experiences of spiritual darkness and of enlightenment. As a result he began compiling the Spiritual Exercises.

He believed that by following this series of Scripture-based, Christ-centred meditations and contemplations, people would experience what he called movement of the spirits, which we might term changes in mood and feeling. By reflecting on these experiences and what gave rise to them, by speaking of them with a retreat-giver, the person making the Spiritual Exercises will begin to recognise what is creative and distinguish it from what is destructive. Following the creative and avoiding the destructive is, in religious language, doing the will of God.

Just as the Spiritual Exercises were written out of Ignatius?s own experience, so they appeal to the experience of the person making them, whom I shall call the pilgrim. The methods offered in the Spiritual Exercises of praying, meditating, contemplating, reflecting, reviewing the day, discerning the spirits are all earthed in the pilgrim?s own experience. Because each person?s experience is different, the Exercises were designed to be given individually, and they are to be adapted to the individual pilgrim?s willingness, capacity, ability and availability.

In every meditation and contemplation in the Spiritual Exercises the pilgrim is encouraged to pray for the grace which I desire. The emphasis on desire runs from the pre-face, We ought to desire and choose only that which leads us more directly to the end for which we were created, to the final prayer, a contemplation to attain Love, which includes, I pray for what I desire. Here it will be to ask for interior knowledge of all the great good I have received, in order that, stirred to profound gratitude, I may be able to love and serve God in all things.

This emphasis on desire accounts for the creativity which the Spiritual Exercises can release in the pilgrim. Desire is not something we create or arouse in ourselves: it is something we discover. Our deepest desire acts like a kind of drill which bores through layers of more superficial desires within us ? desire for health, wealth, repute, status, security ? until it reaches the wellspring of all our desire, which is God. You created me for yourself. My heart is restless until it rests in thee, as St Augustine wrote.

It is through desire that we come to true freedom, able to appreciate, value, cherish and enjoy God?s creation without being possessed by it. It is through desire that we begin to learn discernment, for when we choose according to our deepest desire, the decision resonates in our psyche, bringing a measure of peace, tranquillity, strength and joy: when we choose contrary to our deepest desire, this sets up a dissonance within us and we experience some measure of sadness, emptiness, inner turmoil and darkness.

The Spiritual Exercises spread rapidly when they were first given in the sixteenth century. They were given free of charge in a variety of forms, from residential retreats to retreats in daily life, the content being adapted to the needs and desire of the pilgrim. Those who had made the Exercises would then pass them on to others without having to undergo long training courses. But it was the popularity of the Exercises which led to their undoing. Individual retreat-giving is very labour-intensive, and Jesuits started taking short cuts. One well known retreat-giver in France was giving the Spiritual Exercises to over 200 people at a time. Soon the preached retreat became the norm, as it still is in many countries today: it remained the norm in Britain until the late 1970s. But wherever the Exercises are once again given individually, there is a resurgence of interest in Ignatian spirituality not only among people of many different denominations, but among those who have abandoned churchgoing but not the Gospel.

But if retreat-givers are afraid of allowing individual pilgrims to find their way freely, and instead seek to control their paths, the present resurgence of interest in individually-given retreats and in spirituality in general could be short-lived.

Right from the start, when the Inquisition first noticed the Spiritual Exercises and questioned Ignatius, they accused him of Illuminism ? of believing that the individual could have direct access to the Holy Spirit, bypassing the Church. This objection could not be sustained against the text of the Spiritual Exercises with its Rules for thinking with the Church and the Exercises were subsequently approved and commended by many popes. The Inquisitors? instinct was sound, however: it was not in fact a theological instinct, but a fear, probably unconscious, that pilgrims who really discovered the freedom of detachment from all created things might be very difficult to control and to govern. I believe that fear of individual freedom is still as great, if not greater, today than it was in the sixteenth century, and that it is a fear which pervades every part of society: it is by no means limited to church authorities.

The fear of another?s freedom runs deep in all of us, for it may pose a threat to our security. As long as I am in control, in charge, all is well. I am secure, therefore I am. But when others start threatening my security, then I must bring them under control. In spirituality there is need of constant vigilance lest we become, unconsciously, controllers of others.

I see a tendency to revert from the individually-given retreat, which only began in Britain in the late 1970s, to the group/preached retreat. The group retreat has its value: it may serve as a useful introduction to the spirituality of the Exercises, but it is unlikely to release the creativity so frequently found in those who have made the Exercises individually. All kinds of plausible reasons can be given for the group retreat ? that people need more instruction in bible study, theology, ecclesiology etc. before they can profit from the Exercises ? but lurking under these reasons can be a fear, usually unconscious, that the individual, having found freedom, will no longer be controllable.

Ignatius tells the retreat-giver always to be very brief in giving any instructions, so that pilgrims may make their own discoveries. Individual retreat-givers can often fail to observe this prescription, talking too much, preaching at an individual retreatant, not allowing them to explore what may come up in their consciousness, telling then that such things are a distraction, when the true reason is that the pilgrim may be exploring a topic which the retreat-giver has never dared to examine.

When the Spiritual Exercises are given ecumenically, pilgrims seem to profit more and the results are more lasting than when they are given to one denomination alone. Yet there is a general reluctance to give the Exercises ecumenically. The root of this reluctance is the same as the four centuries? reluctance to give the Exercises individually, viz. the fear of losing control. If the barriers of our separate denominations were to fall away, where would we be then? What would happen to our Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian identity to which we are so attached, even though that very attachment can be a cause of Christian division?

Another unconscious way of controlling the ministry of the Exercises is to ensure that most serious retreat-giving takes place within established retreat houses which, of their nature, are only accessible by a very tiny percentage of people, who have the time to spare and the money to spend. Also to ensure that those who are to give the Exercises are required to undergo long and elaborate training, which few will be able to afford because the training is too expensive and takes place during normal working hours, when the majority of lay people are not free to attend. There is much work to be done in developing retreats in daily life, which are available outside working hours, and which cost nothing more than travel expenses, and in developing training methods which deter no one because of cost, or the times at which they are held. Perhaps the greatest task of all is to help people get in touch with their own experience and their own spirituality, by finding a language which avoids all religious jargon and is easily understood.

THE unconscious desire to control is also to be found in the attachment of many retreat-givers to the term Retreat Director, a term which Ignatius Loyola is careful to avoid, because for him the only director is God. The desire to control is also to be found in many of the modern handbooks produced to help the giver of the Exercises for they read like washing-machine instructions, whereas Ignatius himself was always flexible, never rigid, except in his insistence that pilgrims should be attentive to their own experience.

One way of ensuring that people are kept in control is to dismiss this insistence. I have read some modern spiritual writers who write as though from Olympian heights of utter certainty, and who pour contempt on consulting our own experience, as though it were an invitation to contaminate pure spirituality. We have to guard against being controlled by St Paul?s Powers and Dominions, which are not disincarnate demonic forces flitting through the night, but can be very corporeal preachers, teachers, experts, assuring us with unshakeable confidence that they can teach us the sure way to a fulfilled life, or the sure way to heaven.

Many Christians have been taught that their own feelings are to be ignored and that desires are dangerous and to be countered, otherwise we cannot do the will of God. There is no surer way of deadening a human being, of ensuring that we obey, pray and pay. Ignatius?s emphasis on the importance of desire is totally opposed to this approach, but pilgrims in touch with their deepest desires, and therefore open to the promptings of the Spirit, are not going to be passive, and are likely to disturb us all with the peace of Christ. We need to pray for more of these disturbing pilgrims, guardians of our precious gift of freedom.

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