Anyone who daydreams can understand Ignatian discernment. Ignatian discernment is a beautiful concept that helps individuals make decisions that may align with their values and beliefs. It’s a reflective process that takes into consideration the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of the person.
St. Ignatius Loyola developed a process of decision-making or discernment from his own experience. When he was recovering after a cannonball injury, he discovers the diversity of the spirits that move him. He seeks out their meaning and concludes them for the reform of his life and, above all, for the definitive understanding of the service of God alone. Next, he learns progressively not only to practice the virtues but also the discernment to regulate and measure them. They revitalised his heart and gave the energy to choose a specific path, which he called consolation. Those interior facts which left one restless, hollow or with distaste, he called desolation. And he came to understand that consolation usually came from the Spirit of God touching into one’s heart and thoughts. He came to learn that the spirit of disease, hollowness and restlessness came from the enemy of human nature that he saw as the evil spirit.
With this understanding of how God leads a person, Ignatius began to develop a set of guidelines for individuals wanting to make decisions as to where God is calling them. He called those guidelines the Rules for the Discernment of Spirits. Those guidelines help us make serious decisions that the individual needs to make—what path of life to take, what occupation best suits one’s gifts and talents, changing jobs, buying a house, choice of college for a son or daughter or determining the best living environment for an ageing parent. These are decisions in which there are competing choices and not just a choice between good and bad.
Ignatius counsels that the first two times are appropriate for weighing the facts and feelings and then coming to a decision. When one is for the third time, more work and attention will be needed. It can involve listing the advantages and disadvantages, looking at the decision from a stranger’s perspective or imagining oneself at the moment of death and looking back at the decision. Usually, when one ponders on such realities, consolation or desolation is stirred up in one’s heart, and it can enlighten one to make the decision.
Finally, when a decision is made, St. Ignatius advises the individual to bring the decision before God and offer it up to Him. As he offers it in prayer, Ignatius expects that God will fill the person with consolation which is the confirmation of his choice.