A Journey from Ego to True Self in the Spiritual Exercises Group

“What brings you into this Spiritual Exercise meeting?” When I asked the participants this question, most of them answered, “I want to deepen my relationship with God.” We were a group of eight, engaged in our busy lives, and yet we wanted to come together through the Spiritual Exercises. 

The Spiritual Exercises are a set of Christian contemplations and prayers written by Ignatius of Loyola, who lived from 1491 to 1556. This practice helps deepen our relationship with God and make important life decisions through seeking God’s will in our daily life. We have committed to 30 weeks of daily prayer and reflection and supporting one another through a weekly meeting. 

When we meet, we share our experience of using Ignatius’s method of contemplating the Scriptures over the past week. The group facilitators offer material for the coming week and facilitate the group to help members pay attention to God’s movements. The group facilitators help members live out the consequences of their relationship with God. 

During our time together so far, I lived through a season of frustration and mild depression. The frustration was propelled by the rejection of my applications to two full-time Christian spirituality faculty positions. When I meditated on Jesus’ temptations, I learned more about myself. I was trying to acquire power, status, and possessions through these jobs. 

When I contemplated Jesus’ Gethsemane prayer and facing of his own death, I saw Jesus’ sorrow, agony, and need: “Stay with me!” In his prayer, even though he expressed his desire, he finally accepted God’s will from his heart. Jesus was able to suffer and die for the love of his disciples, other people, and us because he surrendered to God’s will. 

In contrast, his disciples, especially Peter, denied knowing Jesus and ran from him. Many religious leaders were trying to lead Jesus to his death at the hands of the Roman Empire in order to keep their power. I sensed Jesus’ voice, the disciples’ wounds, and religious leaders’ nefarious agendas. 

Gradually, Jesus Christ revealed why my ego wanted these faculty positions. I wanted to hide my issues within the power of a position, for example, my low-self-esteem, my fear of being rejected, and my inadequateness. However, Jesus kept inviting me to come to his heart and see myself as I am, as he sees me. I practiced facing my darkest wounds, pain, and the fear that can take me over. In my contemplative prayer, I was able to name these and see them as they were and embrace them. As I continued my comtemplative practice, I started feeling gratitude and joy as I got to see myself as Christ sees me. I could accept myself for the small things that I can do in the service of God even though I don’t have a powerful position. This process of accepting myself as I am was liberating. This journey took me from my ego dominating my self-image to being able to see myself truly and in the eyes of the Lord. 

I became more naked before God and the group members as I shed my ego, which was trying to grasp power, fame, and security for itself. The more naked I became, the more my authentic self could embrace who I truly am. I became more seeking of God’s wisdom, will, and presence so that, now, I may bring God’s love to those I meet. The whole process gave me spiritual freedom. I became much more true to myself, engaging in small acts with God’s loving heart rather than doing work that feeds my ego from praise and status. 

How did this happen? My answer is that it happened by God’s grace. I appreciate that I can deeply engage in Ignatian contemplative prayer with the other group members. And whenever I share my experiences with them, they hold me as I am, without judgment. The group’s support creates a space where the Spirit leads me to spiritual freedom. I am grateful that the group members are accompanying me on this journey. 

In this season of the coronavirus crisis, we are still gathering to share via a Zoom call. Even though we prefer to meet in person, gathering virtually is an excellent way of joining together. Despite the physical distance, we can sense our spiritual closeness through God. Each member has their own crisis, health issues, or relationships; we have been sharing our concerns and emotions and are holding each other together in God. This solidarity with one another gives us space toward others during this crisis. If we have a community where Jesus Christ is at the center, we can have faith, hope, and love no matter how severe the problems are that we face, and we can get through this crisis as we expand our solidarity and compassion to others in the world.

The Reverend Dr. Daeseop Yi is pastor and a scholar of Christian spirituality with a Ph.D. from the GTU. He is a NCB Visiting Professor of Spirituality and a Spiritual Director. 

Praying with Ignatius During Lent

St. Ignatius, who started the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), was a 16th Century saint who had a major conversion experience while recovering from surgery. He wrote about his experiences of prayer, and called them "Spiritual Exercises." He designed the prayers as a 30-day "retreat," but added a 19th annotation at the end, saying, "If for reasons of business or family obligations, you can't go away for 30 days, you can do this retreat in 30 weeks."

The Narrow Task of Teaching Biblical Hebrew

Is Biblical Studies in conflict with faith? This was not the question I was asked at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley in a survey given to Ph.D. students. Rather, the question was: How do you handle the conflicts of biblical studies with your personal faith? 

My initial thought was: What conflict? Contrary to the assumption that there was a conflict, I felt a strong harmony between biblical studies and devotional reading of scripture. Seconds after my initial reaction, a list crossed my mind of friends and acquaintances who had "lost their faith" as a result of intellectual conflicts arising from their seminary training. This was what the survey was addressing.  

Eat This Scroll

The Spirit’s command to Ezekiel, “Eat this scroll,” is one of many startling moments in the history of prophecy.  I think of it when I’m reflecting on reading—a thing I do often, having spent much of my life as an English professor.  We eat the words we read:  we take them in; we ingest them; we rely on them for spiritual nourishment, as our bodies rely on food.  Eating is a powerful metaphor—and perhaps more than a metaphor—for reading.  It reminds us that we do not live by bread alone.

Thanksgiving 2019

Whoever claims to abide in Him must walk as Jesus walked. 1 John 2:6

Dear Friends,

So much in the life of Jesus happens on the road while walking—teaching,

healing, sharing meals, and encountering people from all walks of life. The

passage from 1 John 2:6 instructs us to walk, even as Jesus walked, though the

text translated into English often translates the Greek walking words (periepatesen and peripatein)

with live and lived. Both words—live and walk—offer sightlines into the life of faith.


Seeking Jesus in the Gospel of John

The question, “What are you looking for?” are the first words of Jesus in the Gospel of John. The question is addressed to potential disciples, two of John the Baptist’s disciples, who ask him, “Where are you staying?”

Jesus, extending a gracious invitation, says to them, “Come and see.” And so begins the adventurous journey of the first disciples in the Gospel of John. 

Jesus’ question “What are you looking for?” reverberates on many levels in the minds and hearts of people down through the centuries. It’s a question that stirs us as well. What are we looking for? What are we seeking? The gracious invitation to come and see—to investigate Jesus’ teaching, person, and hopes for humankind—fills the pages of the Fourth Gospel. When one is invited to find out where Jesus stays (abides) one is invited into the joyful, challenging adventure of discipleship. Throughout this Gospel people are invited into a journey of spiritual discovery that quenches one’s thirst and feeds one’s soul. 


“What are you discussing with each other as you walk along?”: NCB and Sacred Consciousness

Jesus wants to know what’s on our minds and hearts. He wants us to pay attention, too, and helps us notice our, so often unconscious, awareness of the holy in our everyday lives and in our hearts. Jesus cultivates, as it were, our sacred consciousness.


On the Emmaus road he approached the couple fleeing Jerusalem with this question: What are you discussing with each other as you walk along? They hedged in their response—after all, he’s a stranger and they’re part of a persecuted group. But he got their attention. In response to his question, they stood still and looked sad. This may have been the first time they really paused and felt the depth of their sadness. His holy listening enabled them to do so. 


Receiving the Divine on Friday Nights at the Movies

Recently, a favorite author of mine wrote (somewhere I can’t now seem to recall or find) about a man who “has had a greater impact on [his] life” than anyone he’s ever known. He bragged that this friend, among other things, hadn’t watched a film since “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” was in theatres (1988, in case you were wondering). “He’s too busy living his adventurous life” is how I remember him putting it. 

Which left me feeling rather self-conscious.


Emmaus Notes: Luke 24:13-35

Imagine the couple fleeing Jerusalem after Jesus’ death. They’ve not experienced “Good Friday” as we do, already sending Easter cards and preparing for the celebratory feast. They’re engulfed in loss, grief, and fear. 

We encounter them a few days after Jesus’ gruesome death as they’re walking to Emmaus. If Cleopas is the same person written about in John 19:25, it’s probable that the two people walking to Emmaus are Cleopas and his wife Mary, who stood at the foot of the cross with other women who loved Jesus. Remember the scene they’ve witnessed. 


The Enneagram for Influencers

Please join us on May 11 for a workshop led by Dr. Kay: The Enneagram for Influencers—A Faith & Work Forum, 9 a.m.-1 p.m., First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley ($15 fee; free for students)

Allow me to propose this unscientific experiment: If you’d like to know what intellectual and emotional pre-occupations the influencers of our culture are currently wrestling with, find a brick-and-mortar bookstore that sells only new books, then do a slow walk through the business and psychology sections.  

European Christian Missionaries and Their False Sense of Progress––What does maturity look like? Whiteness is a horrific answer to this question.

*Please join us for a discussion and lecture with Dr. Willie James Jennings on Saturday, March 16. Find more information here.*

European Christian Missionaries and Their False Sense of Progress

What does maturity look like? Whiteness is a horrific answer to this question.

by Willie James Jennings

Can white people be saved? For some, the question is deeply offensive. It suggests that there is a category of people whose existence raises the question of the efficacy of salvation. But for now I am less concerned about the efficacy of salvation and more interested in the status of two keywords in the question: salvation and whiteness. These terms point to a history that we yet live within, a history where whiteness as a way of being in the world has been joined to a Christianity that is also a way of being in the world. It was the fusion of these two realities that gave tragic shape to Christian faith in the new worlds at the dawn of what we now call the modern colonialist era, or colonial modernity.

A Many-Stranded Thing

I looked around at my fellow passengers on a plane recently and thought, as I often have, “Everyone has a story.”  Each person there was in the middle of something—preparing for an interview, traveling to visit a dying parent, fundraising for a non-profit, taking kids to Disneyland, honeymooning, celebrating retirement.  The events that got them to that flight that day unfolded in the context of complicated lives full of turnings and decision points, disappointments and completions and new beginnings.  Each of them could have told not one story, but many.