Examen Prayer | Step 4: Forgiveness And Letting Go

The Ignatian Examen Prayer. This practice will help you to slow down, develop an “attitude of gratitude” and pay attention to the presence of the Sacred in your everyday life. Today we will go over Step 4: Forgiveness and Letting Go.

Transcript

Okay,

Here we are again on our third day of exploring the richness of the Examine prayer of Ignatius of Loyola.

And so I'm very gonna quickly just go through the what the steps are that we've been through so far and the Examine really should take maybe 15 minutes when you do it but we're just gonna quickly review those steps and you may want to pause after I've reviewed them and do them because it is cumulative and and you may want to look back over the Daily Grace videos from the previous couple days because this all works together there's a great wisdom here in Ignatius as he puts these steps together and so we want to give yourself the gift of having gotten to this point with grace right given as we explore steps three and four today so as a reminder the steps are that we first of all there's the pre-step of reminding ourselves that we are forever and always in the presence of grace right we are forever and always in the presence of grace and once we take a moment or two to pause there and welcome that and we turn to the second step which is calling to mind and heart the gratitude this is the foundation for the whole thing my gratitudes over the past 24 hours what am I grateful for right what are the blessings the gifts that are in my life I want to slow down and see them right and let them let me pray them back to grace don't miss them this love song that grace is singing to me so the gratitudes and then we get into the second step which is the petition step in which I turn to grace and I say okay it's a love song here how am I doing am I singing the tune so I give you permission grace to show me and in your own words you say to grace show me show me and then we review our day we look back over the previous 24 hours and review our day and yesterday we we looked at those positives those things that we we celebrate that the ways that we were invited to love and we said yes love of ourselves love of others ways that we said yes to letting grace flow so you may want to pause here before we move to the further review step today and then the next step which is I'll get to in a moment so you may want to pause just for a moment to let yourself settle into those first three steps and let them settle into you and live in you before we move to the next step so you can do that now if you like and we will continue with the review so we've reviewed the ways we've said yes to grace and now we may notice when we review our lives and we will pause for a moment to do this again right we're looking now also for the ways that I haven't said yes to grace so there are many ways that I've said yes to love but and through my own human condition and my own brokenness the way I live doing wanting certainly to do my best and and loving some ways I succeed in some ways I don't and so another part of the route the review is to look and see how have I not said yes to love where did I deny the impulse to love where was I invited to be loving and we may know some of those I know those sharp moments when I've been unkind or acted out of survivor self to use core language right survivor self part just led the way and sometimes there's an impulse to say well I'm just gonna let that go and it's all good it's all life is perfect as it is I don't think so so much we we don't do ourselves and the world a service when we deny the ways that we've been unloving so we want to look at them through the eyes of love this isn't judgment or harsh critique it's I look at the ways I have not been loving so that I may grow in love tomorrow so the I can light up bing bing bing right and they have thinking these last three chakras last two chakras big thing I open up so I want to see clear seeing right clear seeing so in a moment I'm gonna invite you to mmm to call to mind and heart those ways of the past 24 hours that you have not been loving that maybe you had that harsh word with someone or you feel this heavy on your heart at the sense of guilt or something that you didn't respond and love the way you want to from your healthy self and we want to see that and that takes us to the next step the fourth step of the exam and which is what we call the forgiveness is or the let goes I acknowledge it so I can give it back to grace so that I may grow in love so let's just pause for a moment well you can keep listening and and there'll be an opportunity to pause me in a second if that feels like it would be a good thing to do and just close your eyes and let yourself settle into that review if you haven't already done it and now we're looking specifically over the past 24 hours those ways that I have not been loving or is invited to dance in love and if you're a human being you want to find one if you go two or three days and like I haven't I don't see anything I'm gonna say with all love and kindness you're not looking hard enough right I'm not looking hard enough if I think I'm perfect I think I'm just pure pure love right so taking a moment and you may pause the tape here if you like that may feel like a good thing to do to look back over the past 24 hours and see where did I deny the action of grace where did I not sing the love song you call that to mind and heart so once you've done that then we bring ourselves to this fourth step of the exam and which is the forgiveness isn't let goes and this is such a tender and beautiful part of the exam and that we're just quickly going through here but I do invite you to sit with that right those those missteps and those ways that we haven't been loving aren't there for us to carry like burdens for the rest of our lives right they're there perhaps to give us a little insight into the dance of love and how we may grow in it and so we own it that act that unkind word of that harsh action or that survivor self way of wounding someone and we give it back to grace and here's an image you may sit with today I drop it like a drop into the ocean of the mercy of grace if grace is this loving benevolent presence that for Ignatius again this very personal unconditional love of God to use Ignatius's language right I hand back with perhaps a sense of sorrow and a desire to grow in love I give back those things with and I'm sorry and I let it go and so if that speaks to you in this moment you may want to pause and spend some time doing that I invite you to take that letting go and that dropping back that forgiveness and let goes into your day today