Examination of Consciousness with Love
For over 500 years, deeply spiritual people who are busy with their everyday lives have dedicated one or two 15 minute pauses a day to stop and be grateful, reach out to the Divine for light and accompaniment, and walked through their day contemplatively. This, in the Ignatian tradition, fosters what is known as being contemplative in action: one contemplates their action so that in action they can contemplate. One of the most important things to contemplate in these pauses is relationships and social connections.
Science today has proven that taking at least one pause a day to look at your three longest social interactions to see how loving, life giving, connected and in-tuned it was for you and the persons involved, significantly improves your sense of wellbeing, which in turns improves your mental and physical health. Dr. Barbara Fredrickson, a leader in Positive Psychology with her focus on the benefits of positive emotions and her broaden and build theory, stumbled onto this fact when asking people to reflect on their emotions throughout the day.
Dr. Fredrickson had been studying emotions for years and never has she seen the simple fact of reflecting on them bring about positive and lasting result. However, this time, she included questions that reflected on people’s social interactions and she and her colleague saw such significant changes in people that she was shocked by it. This exercise did not just effect people’s moods, but also it affected their heart rhythms and vagal tones significantly for the better.
Consciously examining your interactions to seek where love and connection was present improves your ability to see these things in the act of doing it, because you are primed to contemplate love while in action, eventually improving your ability to connect and your ability to reflect.
So how do YOU do the Examen with this in mind?
1) Find time to take a pause of at least 15 minutes
2) Give thanks for everything YOU can bring to mind (the smaller the better)
3) Ask for light to see your interactions with love
4) Walk through your day stopping where you have had the most significant interactions (at lease 3 is ideal and it can be with the same person). Then ask how loving it was, and how intuned and connected you felt.
5) Sit with what feeling you have after this and give thanks again. Then ask for the gift of love to continue as you enter a new day or move forward with your day.
You are welcome here.
