By Paul Wilkes
From Huffington Post

All major religious traditions honor the power of confession and offer pathways to self understanding, peace of mind and forgiveness. But imbedded in these venerable traditions is something else: the possibility and the encouragement to change our behavior.

Acknowledging our wrong-doing — sin — is only half the equation. It is like breathing out stale air without taking in the fresh.

In the next two installments of this exclusive HuffPost series, I offer different forms of confession that I write about in my book, “The Art of Confession: Renewing Yourself Through the Practice of Personal Honesty.”

In this installment, we’ll talk about confession from a Jesuit point of view and then from a Buddhist perspective.

Consolations and Desolations: A Simple Night Prayer

Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order, was quite the sinner as a young man. A soldier and a playboy, he seemed to be following a well-trod path until he was injured in battle and forced into a long period of recuperation. Instead of the popular books of adventure, he began to read the biographies of saintly men and women. Something stirred within him. He found himself not only interested, but excited about their lives. The sour aftertaste of his dissolute life and interests faded, replaced by a longing to live heroically another way, in service to others.

Ignatius would eventually become one of history’s great spiritual masters, and he asked his followers to spend a few moments each night recalling the moments in which they felt most alive and worthwhile that day — consolations — and those in which they felt the opposite, dead inside and worthless — desolations.

Ignatius did not have the benefit of modern psychoanalytic theory, but it was his experience that God did indeed speak through our deepest feelings and yearnings and that we should listen to them.

You may find it useful to set aside a specific time and place for this practice. Allow your mind to wander through the day that is ending. You don’t have to be systematic or complete. Your subconscious holds secrets ready to be revealed. And you may find yourself dwelling on what seemed to be some of the more trivial occurrences of your day.

Here are a few prompts, use as few or as many as you want:

What did I do that made me happiest?
Where did I feel ashamed of myself?
What action would I do over again and how?
What habits or tendencies worked for or against me?
When did I feel most in alignment with what is best in me?
Stay with the feeling and allow it to lead you inward.

Consider how you may want to avoid or change the circumstances or attitude that caused desolation. See if you can put yourself in a position to experience more consolation.

It’s as simple as that.

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