Spiritual Practices and Identity
Cameron
Shipmate
in Epiphanies
Following some emerging debate in a different part of the Ship, I thought it would be interesting to explore how what we do (spiritually) shapes who we are. I have placed the discussion here because these are questions of identity that are deeply held and are very likely related to protected characteristic(s).
Some spiritual practices (e.g. meditation) are meant to change us, and lots of training programs for religious ministers focus on ‘formation’, which can be a bit vague but often focusses on prayer and worship patterns.
From my experience: I think prayer has at times shaped me, and meditation certainly has.
What spiritual practices have impacted on or contributed to others identity? How is this experienced? Are the effects predictable? Does it affect connection with others within and outside your tradition?
Some spiritual practices (e.g. meditation) are meant to change us, and lots of training programs for religious ministers focus on ‘formation’, which can be a bit vague but often focusses on prayer and worship patterns.
From my experience: I think prayer has at times shaped me, and meditation certainly has.
What spiritual practices have impacted on or contributed to others identity? How is this experienced? Are the effects predictable? Does it affect connection with others within and outside your tradition?
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I think our spiritual practices do shape us, both for good and ill. I think each of them can have a bright and a shadow side.
For instance, back in my full on charismatic evangelical days the verve and energy of the whole thing certainly made me more confident and outgoing. The flip side was that it could become very intense and guilt-inducing if you weren't turbocharged the whole time.
There was a lot of Bible reading, study and preaching and teaching too and whilst I'm not on the same page as I was back then I remain very grateful for the overview of the scriptures I gained back then.
I'm now Orthodox and am feeling my way into the rhythms of the liturgical year, something I'm sure many RCs, Anglicans and Lutherans also value within their particular traditions - and indeed, those 'Free Church' or independent people who dip into all that also.
I'm sure there's a lot to be said for patterns and 'rules of life' adopted by various religious orders or 'neo-monastic' communities.
I have dabbled with Ignatian spirituality and found it helpful but it never 'grabbed' me to the extent that I wanted to pursue it as an overall rule as it were.
I read the Richard Rohr meditations but don't practice any of the exercises.
I suppose these days I simply try to attend the Liturgy when I can and try to follow a regular pattern of daily prayer - a kind of 'office'. It's for others to say whether that makes any difference to the way I conduct myself.
I generally stick to Orthodox prayers but will occasionally bring in some hymns and prayers from other traditions. I don't tend to go near charismatic style services these days. I wouldn't criticise anyone else for doing so, although I have done in the past as I painfully moved away from that tradition.
I have a soft spot for Anglican Evensong and Compline. I also like Wesleyan hymns and the all too rare four-part harmonies I dimly remember from growing up in South Wales. We weren't 'chapel' but the influence was there.
I s'pose my bottom line these days is that personal or individual spiritual practices should be consistent and regular but are a framework not a strait-jacket.
I really really hate obedience, but I have to admit, it does a lot for my um, spiritual fitness.
Seriously though, I needed to be reminded of that. I dont have the address or phone number, and I don't know who does. but someone will have the address at a meeting on Tuesday, because her sister -in-law used to live there. Thank goodness for small communities.
Anyway when my neighbour saw me upset because the bank was in the process of changing all the account numbers and it was doing my head in, she drove me down to a a smaller branch where the lovely teller sorted out my money for Christmas - so sometimes we are the helper and sometimes the one being helped. (neighbour stored stuff in my garage when they were moving in).
I began doing spiritual retreats in my early twenties when I was finding my way back into the practising Catholicism of my childhood (I had been sent to Presbyterian Sunday School at weekends and to a Catholic convent school during the week and had loved both traditions but couldn't reconcile them, so drifted along in mild agnosticism for a number of years). The approach most commonly found on eight-day retreats (Roman Catholic and Anglican) is Ignatian and lays an emphasis on choice and freedom, discerning God's will for our lives. The meditations are active or kataphatic, in that retreatants are asked to use the imagination to place ourselves in biblical scenes and note the emotions and desires that come up as we recreate the scene of the Healing of the Paralytic or read John 13:1-16 and imagine what it would be like to have Jesus offer to wash our feet. The point of the Spiritual Exercises is to deepen our understanding of how God works in our lives through the recognition of feelings of consolation and desolation, learning to detach from society's ambitions or consumerism, or superficial self-centred daydreams, in order to focus on a greater freedom in Christ.
After a few years, I found I was drawn to a less verbal or imaginative method of prayer and began to do silent retreats within the Carmelite tradition, which draws on the via negativa of John of the Cross and the insights of Teresa of Avila. This spiritual approach emphasises a silent or wordless apophatic prayer, to simply stay in the Presence of God without words or images. This involves a trust in unknowing, to stay in the presence of a Hidden God and sit with darkness and doubt.
The paradox for me is that these contemplative practices are what lie at the heart of practical daily activism and community work in food gardening or helping with school feeding projects or participating in Bible study groups. Prayer or meditation are never an end in themselves.
Interesting.
One might say you've got the best of both worlds there, @MaryLouise, the Catholic contemplative tradition with a dash of the Reformed emphasis on Bible study etc.
I appreciate that it's probably hard to reconcile or combine the two in practice though, but I'm sure you'll have been enriched by each.
We Orthodox types don't tend to go in for meditation as such - other than in the hesychast 'Jesus Prayer' sense which comes with various caveats ('Don't try this at home without an experienced guide').
It tends to be a case of, 'Here's the Liturgy, here's the lectionary and Calendar, here're the Hours. Get on with it.'
We do tend be suspicious of the 'imagen' aspects of the Ignatian model. It's new-fangled 16th century stuff ... at least the 'lectionary divina' and 'examen' aspects have 4th century antecedents so that must be OK. 😉
I quite like the paradox you highlight - which really may not be a paradox at all - between contemplative prayer and social action. I don't feel comfortable with all of Richard Rohr's stuff but like the emphasis on 'Action and Contemplation' that he has.
I don't know much about the Carmelites but know that Dr Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury has a lot of time for them and St Theresa of Avila. I'm a big fan of Rowan Williams so that's a good recommendation as far as I'm concerned.
FWIW it sounds like you are onto something.
This is (unsurprisingly) a long way from anything I found in my mostly liberal evangelical tradition. "Spiritual practices" there would have been love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness & self-control.
I'm intrigued that you find paradoxical what I'd paraphrase as placing sustaining individuals at the centre of sustaining communities.
This jumped out at me.
Thank you.
I have founf following prayer book offices (most recently common worship morning and evening, NZ prayer book night prayer) formational too, but in recent years I have struggled to be consistent - I find myself feeling too busy, saying rather than praying, and then have long gaps when I abandon the practice.
I picked up meditation from a mindfulness intervention and that has stuck on some level. That’s probably because it is mostly about survival for me. But I still find that makes me more accepting of myself as I am, while also more aware of the needs of others.
When praying, I find that I am most engaged in the practice when I use a book, light a candle(s), and have a particular place. The rituals and placement of the body seem to matter. I found the idea of an app for when I am travelling appealed on one level, but a device puts me in distracted rather than focussed mode. I am confounded by busyness!
I think that when I retire (DV) I am going to try to focus on re-establishing and committing to a regular pattern of prayer, that helps me to shape myself around the words and the message carried by them.
In terms of spiritual practices that have shaped me in particular and specific ways, music is often key—in particular, I might say singing of and engagement with hymns as a spiritual practice. Hymns are not just a Sunday morning thing for me, but a daily thing; likewise with other forms of sacred music, and with music in general. But hymns are in a category of their own, and form something of a prayer book for me.
Hmmm ... are the fruits of the Spirit 'practices' as such?
Sure, they should manifest themselves practically in our outlook and the way we live and treat other people but, for want of a better word, what most posters are describing are 'techniques' or 'methods.'
What the Reformed tradition would call 'means' or 'means of grace' I suppose. Someone will put me straight if I've got that wrong.
I don't know much about the 'liberal evangelical' tradition. I'm not sure it was a thing when I was an evangelical, although there was a sliding scale between ultra-conservative and more liberal forms - although they wouldn't have labelled themselves 'liberal' in my day.
I might be wrong but I'd associate liberal evangelicalism with some Baptist, Methodist and URC churches and a segment of Anglican evangelicalism and tend to think of it as evangelical in style and ethos but more liberal on Dead Horse issues and the handling of scripture.
I think of it as a bit different to the 'Emergent' thing that was a thing for a while but I'm not sure why or how.
Other traditions may mean something somewhat different by “means of grace.”
Most days I read the daily Office through yearly cycles of readings from the Old Testament (the Psalms in particular) and the gospels. I often just sit with a single passage or a few words. This is what used to be called Lectio divina which involves meditating on the readings and is different from the discursive reading done in Bible studies. I've never found the Rosary easy as a prayer of repetition but it is a great soporific help with insomnia.
With a new Youth Centre in the village, we have a number of Gen Z youth coming to evening meetings and are embarking on a series in queer theology as well as our usual women's feminist NT reading and discussion of topics and themes. On certain nights each week, the local church halls are closed for various recovery modalities including AA, Al-Anon, Nar-Anon and process addictions recovery (mostly to do with gambling because we have a number of casinos in nearby towns). There are also support groups for those dealing with diabetes, depression and bereavement, not attached to any particular church. The largest attendance is of course Stop Gender-Based Violence groups and most of us do volunteer work at shelters for survivors of intimate partner violence. There are transitional housing programmes for abused women and their children as well as call centres (a room with a landline phone) for counselling or emergencies.
My normal practice is Ignatian in flavour. Accepting and rejoicing in the now. Have to practice that a lot too. Especially in hospital.
As I understand it, the word "spiritual" is essentially Pauline, and means "having the Holy Spirit" - and in this context, I take the word "practice" in the sense of "medical practice" rather than "music practice". So the Fruit (singular!) of the Spirit is the manifestation of the indwelling Holy Spirit. I don't know to what extent this reflects liberal evangelical understanding, but it was the understanding that I formed growing up.
This is by way of making a couple of points - about the language we use and what we emphasise in our own traditions (eg in contrast to the "disciplines" of prayer and bible study); and bearing in mind MaryLouise's point about comprehending other traditions.
And rather more ecumenical. As far as I can piece together, liberal evangelicalism was predominant until conservative evangelicalism started flexing its muscles in the 1960's. (Think John Stott and Martyn Lloyd-Jones.) The Anglican Evangelical Group Movement was disbanded in 1967. I'm less clear how the developments affected other Protestant denominations.
In other words, the tradition I experienced formatively was some way down the long and waning road. The starting point for comprehending other traditions is understanding our own.
And in an ecumenical sense, one reason I describe the kind of church I attend here in rural South Africa in detail is because it is so very different from churches in a post-industrial welfare state like Britain or mainstream Protestant churches in the US or Canada or settler churches in Australia: those are less multicultural or polylingual. There, the State or social services have taken over many activities formerly done by the church. Here in one smallish country town with many satellite townships and informal settlements we have numerous churches (African Zionist and Ethiopian movements, Dutch Reformed churches, pentecostal and charismatic gatherings, healing rallies and prosperity campaigns by Nigerian preachers, Evangelical, Anglican, African Methodist, Uniting Congregational, splintered breakaways from Hillsong or Vineyard, Baptist, Roman Catholic). In urban centres, many of these faith communities are in decline and that may happen here. Spirituality is fluid and evolving or altering year by year, as migrant or refugee groups move in and out in patterns of semi-gration.
I've heard the term used more loosely in small r reformed circles to refer to any 'means' or outward observance that is intended to develop our spiritual lives, but I can't cite particular examples for some reason!
Anyhow, yes, as @Pease says, 'spiritual disciplines' would have been a term I'd have been familiar with in my charismatic evangelical days. That tended to be personal Bible study and prayer and little by way of meditative practice, although some forms of 'biblical meditation' came in and out of vogue.
The charismatic scene could be very faddish of course and by and large, to be fair, my own neck of that particular wood tended to avoid some, but by no means all, of the most egregious of these.
As for the fruits of the Spirit, as far as I recall these were expected to develop 'naturally' by virtue of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and there wasn't a great deal of emphasis on doing anything to cultivate these. As for spiritual gifts on the other hand, there were books, conferences, seminars and a whole cottage industry based on all that ...
On the whole, I'd say there wasn't great deal of emphasis on what Catholics would call 'spiritual formation' but it was certainly there in an implicit way even if not labelled as such.
Methodists/Wesleyans also use it in a much broader sense than the other traditions mentioned.
Well, thank you. I tend to think that Protestants don't see God as present, therefore there is much effort to find him. I'm open to correction.
I can't speak for more liberal Protestant traditions but by and large I wouldn't say that God was particularly 'absent' in Protestant spirituality - if we can put it that way.
The Reformed tradition is sometimes presented as being overly cerebral and all about intellectual assent to certain propositions but I'm not sure that's entirely fair.
Some would presumably say that the 'apophatic' spiritual practices assistant with Carmelite spirituality, which @MaryLouise cites are examples of 'God's absence', at least in 'practical' terms.
In a general sense, I'd say that those Protestant traditions which 'did away' with the sense of the Real Presence in the Eucharist, for example, didn't dispense with the idea of the presence of God per se. The focus of the locus shifted elsewhere, if we can put it like that, either into the preaching of the Word as in the more preachy parts of Protestantism, or the 'worship time' at the more charismatic end of things.
I am simplifying things there, of course.
But the general point is that the focus and emphasis shifted which is different to saying that it disappeared altogether.
That's an interesting observation. I think it depends on denominational genealogy as well as "where" one would tend to see God present.
My background is in U.S., conservative, independent Baptist churches that lean calvinstic, hold to the imminent return of Jesus, but which have a memorial view of Communion.
I really never understood how we could be listening to the words of Jesus, drinking and eating the lesson of the Gospel and not recognize or even welcome his presence -- even if we reject any ____-substantiation. I've never been at a communion service smaller than 2 or 3. Wouldn't the Lord be there with us?
The Presbys I worship with now have some concept of the presence of Jesus during Communion. I like that very much.
I've never been part of a denomination that practices "the Gifts" as @Gamma Gamaliel has been. So that kind of immediate experience of God is not part of a regular service or prayer meeting, but not uncommon for people to claim in private worship.
About 20 years ago Richard Foster's "Celebration of Discipline" reached into and among us non-demonstrative cavinistic types. For a while. It sounded wonderful. But without a community structure (I've been thinking about this thread in conjunction with the Church as Community thread) and culture that supports it, it's really hard to keep up on the kinds of practices that Foster wrote about. I think people also felt discouraged by not experiencing the type of immediate communion with God that they had hoped to have.
I grew up in a church with a very strong culture of congregational singing. No band. Just an organ and piano. And the congregation. I haven't experienced anything like it until we started at our new church 2 years ago. I'd forgotten what it was like to sing in a congregation that loves to sing with musicians who love to support the congregational singing (rather than focus on showmanship).
I need to make this part of my day to day life again. The church has a music blog I could use, where they publish the songs for the next week's service, so that people can become familiar with them or use them in private worship.
Thanks for bringing up singing, @Nick Tamen .
I’d also note that one spiritual discipline/practice that has always had traction in the Reformed tradition is journal keeping. One reason for journal keeping was as a means of seeing how God/Divine Providence was at work in the life of the person keeping the journal.
For that reason, Foster founded Renovaré. Twenty-five years ago, our congregation had a number of Renovaré groups. Two of them are still going. (The group I was in disbanded when half of our members moved away.)
And I’m glad you found the mention of (congregational) singing helpful, @Kendel. It is very important to me.
Interesting that Foster's 'Celebration of Discipline' has been cited by a number of posters. It had widespread influence and did have some impact in the group I was part of. I agree with @Kendel that it would require the kind of close-knit church community Foster was part of as an evangelical-ish Friend for it to 'work' properly.
The charismatic evangelical scene I was part of was certainly close knit. It was very supportive but also pretty claustrophobic at times and did go through some 'heavy-shepherding' periods, although the intensity of that did vary. I wouldn't say it was a cult but drifted close to it at times.
The journal keeping thing is interesting too. I've not practised that, other than on a retreat, but I can see the value of it.
From a different perspective, I was thinking about how I learned to pay attention to breathwork and the body during meditation from doing a vipassana (insight) retreat some years ago. I had been fidgety during morning meditations and wanted to do something different, so booked for a 10-day retreat in the mountains in late winter.
Conditions were more spartan than expected. This was not intended for Westerners, it was led by Nepalese Buddhists and many of those attending were monks or nuns who had travelled from Myanmar, Nepal and a Korean monastery in Gauteng. The leaders came from Nepal and almost nobody spoke English. We slept in a communal dormitory on mats and showered in cold water. No coffee or tea, just cold water and after a bowl of dal early in the morning and steamed vegetables at noon, we fasted until the next morning. A gong woke us at 3am and 90-minute meditations with breaks went on until about 10pm. This was not the Goenke vipassana course but far more ascetic and for the first few days I struggled very hard to just stay awake and do the sitting practice in a half-lotus position. My body rebelled and everything hurt. Others were much more experienced but fellow retreatants were very kind and considerate, an atmosphere of metta or lovingkindness enveloped me.
The only instruction was to pay attention to the breath entering and leaving our nostrils and to let the mind quieten down. After the fifth day, I could keep still and stop trying to control the breath, just observe it. The tension headaches and knot in my stomach eased and I understood how exhausted and stressed I had been for months. I had the impression of inner spaciousness and lightening up, feeling relaxed and alert. My physical boundaries seemed to soften and my breathing slowed and deepened. I began to look forward to getting up in the darkness and walking down the hill to the meditation hall. The moon was so bright we could see snow on the mountains and it was so peaceful.
This was a sharp learning curve. In most of our societies, not just in the West, we have a long history of despising the body and treating it as an enemy. One reason we are told to 'take a deep breath and calm down' when agitated is that we habitually breathe in a shallow and rushed way. In meditation, I've often found I have a racing mind and get easily distracted; too much caffeine and spicy food leaves the system over-stimulated, and the sudden cessation of stimuli while sitting in silence results in a bored mind throwing up numerous distractions. Just slowing down and taking time to still the inner noise has helped me be more patient in prayer.
It is also interesting to note how some of us value group contexts and some solitude, and some both.
The heart of the group context for me is probably singing, but in my cast the congregational parts in the (Anglican) mass - the sanctus and benedictus in particular. I can remember some occasions when I was liturgical sub-deacon, looking out over the people becoming one body, united in the ryhthm, as we sang. Not quite Merton’s street corner realisation, but something like that. Perhaps liturgy is a bit like this for you, @Gamma Gamaliel ?
And yet solitude gets me too - when I maintain the practices.
There also something about being out of doors and away from the everyday. For example, I can remember walking up a mountain with some friends in New Zealand, with an amazing view at the top over the Marlborough Sounds. It was stunningly beautiful. But it was on the walk down, separated from my friends, that a shaded patch of the track of no special significance was suddenly quite still, and I was alone and not alone.
Perhaps it’s something about still simple spaces. Ah well, perhaps we can be found, if we are not looking too hard…
In answer to @Cameron's question to me about liturgy ...
Well, if I'm honest I find the Orthodox Liturgy pretty hard going at times, but obviously nowhere near as tough as the hard-core ascetic Buddhist retreat @MaryLouise describes.
I do remember a Vespers at an Orthodox conference before I became Orthodox where a vert deep silence seemed to descend, rather in the nature of what Quakers might call a 'gathered silence'.
There's a lot to get through in an Orthodox Liturgy and some priests seem to rattle through it as if it's a racing commentary.
'And they're off: "Blessed-is-the-Kingdom oftheFatherandoftheSonandoftheHolySpirit ..."'
But it has its moments.
As indeed do other liturgies, of course.
As per @Lamb Chopped and @MaryLouise obedience and serving the wider community are very much both spiritual disciplines and means of grace.
@Gramps, the ability to sing in spontaneous or unrehearsed four-part harmonies is very much part of Xhosa hymn singing, where each family has their Sunday evening hymn and young children are taught by their grandmothers to sing and dance with others. Favourite hymns are sung at family reunions and celebrations, at funerals and of course in church. If someone is leaving on a journey, family and friends will gather at the airport and sing the much-loved Presbyterian hymn Guide us, O Thou Great Jehovah/ Pilgrim in this barren land, Ndikhokhele o’Yehova. It is amazing how everyone knows how and when to join in, how to use a whistle or beat time or drum, when to rise into descant. The strong rhythmic clapping never falters.
Here is a link to the hymn sung at the 2023 Opening Revival Meeting of the Uniting Presbyterian Church of Southern Africa at a presbytery in the Western Cape, led by manyano women's fellowship doing amaculo where they shape their mouth cavities as a resonance chamber to mimic instruments and deepen their voices. This is known as overtone singing. (Twenty years ago, the use of mobile phones as video recorders would have been banned and it is quite distracting.) Many older tunes and arrangements date back to 1790 and the London Missionary Society in the Eastern Cape where Xhosa leader Ntsikana was converted and wrote his Great Hymn about encountering Christ as a white ox.
I'm grateful over the years - and there are quite a lot of those by now - to have gained a lot from several different ingredients. The ones I'd specifically mention, not in chronological order, are:-
- From my low church, evangelical earlier years, regular reading of scripture.
- The Daily Office, particularly since I retired. That of course gives you four daily readings and several psalms. These days I prefer direct engagement with the readings straight from the lectionary rather via somebody's notes that tell me how they think I ought to respond.
- The Jesus Prayer. I know I'm CofE and not Orthodox and the Orthodox might disapprove but so be it.
- The Ignatian tradition, and again, I'm not RC but so be it.
- From that a practice of dialoguing and using a notebook.
When it comes to Sunday services, I greatly value Holy Communion. It really speaks to me. However, there was a former time when it didn't and I've realised over the years that there are many better Christians than me to whom it does not say very much.
Before I became Orthodox I used to cross myself Orthodox style at their services, simply because it wasn't a practice I'd picked up anywhere else. They didn't object. I once asked a priest about it and he said he didn't mind at all as there seemed to be something 'authentic' about it. I'm not sure how he evaluated that.
What he did object to, though, was the habit of some Anglican clergy of aping everything the Orthodox do in services, all the 'moves' and struttin' their funky stuff, whilst remaining quite different in theology and practice.
I've seen some Anglican clergy do that and it just doesn't look 'right'. Conversely, I've seen others do it and it doesn't feel at all forced or artificial.
The same applies to other forms of worship, of course. Some forms of charismatic worship feel more authentic to me than others but then I'm not the arbiter of what does or doesn't constitute authenticity nor do I have a 'window' into people's souls.
As far as Ignatian practice goes, in my experience the Jesuits are very generous and more than happy to share it with others and for people to adopt or adapt elements of it within their own settings.
It's not up to me, of course, but if you're comfortable using the Jesus Prayer than surely I'm 'allowed' to continue to sing Wesleyan hymns or the good old Welsh hymn 'Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah.'
I've not watched the videos from MaryLouise yet and I'm sure I don't sing it as well or in the same style as they do there but I'm sure the Almighty doesn't object.
I've always found the Jesus prayer indispensable while on plane flights undergoing turbulence because a single desperate invocation mumbled over and over is all my plane-phobic mind can handle. This prayer habit I adopted after reading JD Salinger's Franny and Zooey when a chain-smoking distraught Franny discovers a Russian Orthodox hesychast text known as The Way of the Pilgrim. A lifesaver.
I s'pose I'm not very 'hesychast'.
I do use the Jesus Prayer and a prayer rope but am not sure I can 'evaluate' it particularly. I can understand how it would have the kind of calming effect you describe, though.
I've been thinking about the question of how our practices change us and whether we find them "helpful" and those are interesting ideas because perhaps we never know or see how we may or may not have changed; and what do we mean by "helpful"? I was asked a while ago by a friend who is rather more conservative evangelical than I am whether God "speaks to me" during my times of meditation and that was a hard one because really the short answer is "no" - but I feel it's an important practice for me so I continue it. I believe it was Thomas Keating who said that even if the Virgin Mary comes to us during our times of contemplative prayer, the correct response is, "Not now, dear, I'm doing my meditation."
I've always been drawn to contemplative prayer but it came to the fore some years ago when everything seemed to be falling apart and I went on a weekend retreat with a friend where this form of prayer was the focus. I knew it was the way forward for me and have continued - in a sometimes more, sometimes less, regular way - ever since. At one time, when things were particularly grim, I clung to a holding cross (particularly during the wakeful nights) and told whoever might be listening that "If you're there, you're going to have to accept this as my prayer because it's all I can do."
I also find sung worship uplifting although in the tradition I'm currently part of I'm occasionally carried along by a rousing tune and then find I've uttered beliefs that I no longer hold. This can also be true of hymns.
I am also a very natural journaller and my writing is a combination of verbose, self-centred outpourings, prayer requests, answers to prayer and quotations that feed my soul, to name but a few things.
I currently feel drawn to exploring the Ignatian tradition in more detail.
I would like to think I am on a progressive trajectory of improvement and discovery and that all these things, plus working with the Enneagram and my training in spiritual direction, have contributed to that. But who knows? What would I be like if I hadn't done these things and had these experiences?