There has been a kind of evolution in our capacity to name the psychological realities and aspects of our life. So much so now that I believe one can no longer be considered a serious spiritual director without taking into account the place of the unconscious in spiritual direction and in people's lives, and the place of the unconscious in the assimilation of Gospel values.

          The unconscious has always been a part of the spiritual life in the Catholic tradition. As I read Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, Ignatius, it seems to me that these "greats" were some of the first developmental psychologists although they would certainly never have named themselves that way. They were dealing with matters of the unconscious, putting different words to it. Dealing with the unconscious has always been in the Christian tradition of spiritual direction.

          Freud and Jung had not been here. They had not articulated the ways of the unconscious and its laws and pressures. However, the classic writers had other models to express themselves. They were talking about the same phenomena.

          This chapter will discuss three areas: a model for the unconscious, the dynamics of projection, and a model of prayer, which I have called the "Examen of Unconsciousness."

          Paying attention to the unconscious is certainly a way of staying on the cutting edge of spiritual direction. Dealing with the unconscious is more acceptable now, but it was always in the tradition. The moralists, for instance, have spoken of the intention larvata, the hidden intention behind human acts. It is another way of speaking about the pressures, movements, and influence of the unconscious. It has been in the tradition somewhat, but now we are seeing the importance of it. We are naming the unconscious and focusing on it.

          In 1972 George Ashenbrenner wrote an article in Review for Religious in which he took the idea of the Examination of Consciousness, which was very important to Ignatius, and placed it in a usable form for contemporary people. It is that form that current directors have been using ever since. He followed the traditional five phases of Ignatius:

• first:  the phase of enlightenment;
• second:  the phase of gratitude;
• third:  the phase of reflectivity;
• fourth:  the phase of repentance and
• fifth:  the phase of resolution.

          Ignatius thought it was so important to make the Examen of Consciousness that he suggested it could never be omitted. Even in the midst of a very busy day in which one might not be able to get to liturgy or make an hour of contemplation, or any other devotions, one would not be excused from the examen. It was not because the practice of the examen was an important thing in itself, but rather the practice of being reflective about life was going to help one to be more attentive to the invitations of grace.

          This whole area of being conscious of the way that God is entering into the lives of people has been with us for a long time. There are different ways of naming it, different ways to describe it. If one keeps in mind that the reality of God entering into a person's life, and that person's responding is basically the same throughout the ages, then one can take these various ways that people have of describing that process as a kind of metaphor. 

          For instance, Teresa of Avila speaks of this dialog or this interchange between God and the human person in terms of seven mansions. It is her way of describing how one goes through the seven mansions to a point where the person is completely united with God. On the other hand, John of the Cross speaks to us about this encounter in terms of active and passive nights. One is in an active dark night of sense or a passive dark night of sense, or an active dark night of spirit or a passive dark night of spirit. That is his metaphor or structure.

          Ignatius, who did not use the metaphor of either the nights or the mansions, is also very concerned about this life of the individual with God, describing it in terms of weeks. It is his metaphor of the seasons that one goes through. He speaks of someone who is in a "first week" stance --the stance in which one is concerned about who God is, who they are, what is their identity. They further ask, what does it mean to be a creature, what is my own sinfulness, and the way in which I recognize my own need for repentance. What is the meaning of sin in the world?. Ignatius speaks of a "second week" stance, in which a person is more in a decision-making stance, looking at the life of Jesus and trying to be more like him so that good decisions can be made. He has a "third week" stance in which the retreatant is being confirmed in suffering so that decision-making can be firm even in the midst of suffering. Finally, there is the "fourth week" stance, in which the person is confirmed in peace and joy in union with the risen Jesus.

          It does not make too much difference what metaphor one uses or who one reads. Whether one is into mansions or weeks, or whether one is into the nights of John of the Cross or some other metaphor one is using, all of these writings have certain characteristics in common. When speaking about the Christian spiritual life, no matter which of the authors one reads, they will say that the spiritual life in the Catholic Church is more than an interior experience. It is more than something that happens in one's head. It is that, but it is also what goes on in these hands and in this body, with these people, in this world. Charity, the operative love of neighbor is the measure of a Christian spiritual life.

          A second point that is very important in understanding various metaphors used in catholic spirituality is that the spiritual life has both an active and a passive thrust to it. There are things that we do. There are things that we have to take command of and with which we have to move forward. We have to take initiative and move. On the other hand, there are also aspects of the spiritual life that are more passive, more receptive.

          Thirdly, these first two aspects of the spiritual life are linked to apostolic effectiveness. We are expected to be actively engaged in loving the neighbor as well as loving God. Operative charity is an essential part of the spiritual life.

          Fourthly, the person living a spiritual life is committed to quality decisions. The decisions that one makes in one's active engagement in the outside world become a very important responsibility for someone with a spiritual life.

          It is unfortunate that many of the books that one reads suggest that the spiritual life and the religious life are something interior, as though somehow this relationship with God and this attentiveness to quality decision-making happen only in one's head, or happen only during a particular prayer period or at a particular religious celebration. The word "interior" narrows the whole idea and the reality of what is going on. Today one of the things that has helped us to become more aware of this larger reality that spirituality is something interior but also something exterior has been the popularity of Jungian psychology. From it we have become aware of how certain aspects of "our self" are up front and active and other parts of the self are less involved and more receptive or passive. Although these parts are less conscious and in the background, they are parts of us to be united to God in apostolic service. 

          When we look at the area of the unconscious and particularly when we start to link it with spirituality, there are three phrases particularly important that come to mind: uncreated grace, created grace, and psychological experience.

          Perhaps at a time when people were less sophisticated in terms of knowing something about psychology -- certainly that was true in the days of Ignatius, or Teresa of Avila or John of the Cross -- it might not have been so important to make these distinctions. For another age these realities were all of a piece. What was created grace, what was uncreated grace, what was psychological phenomenon did not make all that much difference. Today it does make a difference, and it is enlightening to think about the distinctions.

        Uncreated grace means God's initiative to us: that gracious attitude by which God enters into our life and alerts us to his presence. It is God's action towards us. It is a part of ontological mysticism. It is completely God's initiative and control, his attitude, whether I am aware of it or not.

          The second phrase is created grace. It is the same reality of God entering into my life, but this time looking at it from another point of view. My response back to God is what we call created grace. We take for granted God enters our life and we have to practice and become more aware of our own initiative back to God. These considerations of created grace can be know as psychological mysticism.

          The third phrase is psychological experience or psychological phenomenon. If you have been doing some reading in the classical spiritual writers, you will remember that a certain number of the classical writers will talk about locutions or visions or gifts of prayer or divine touches. There are many other phenomena that are mentioned in classical writings to describe what happens in our awareness when God enters into the life of a believer. Today we might not be as familiar with words such as locutions, vision, and touches, but we have many of these bodily experiences. For instance, we know of an altered state of consciousness or an out of body experience or time suspensions or body sensations of tears or sexuality. These psychological phenomena can happen to people while they are praying, and indeed do happen at times. 

          It is important to make the distinction between grace and psychological phenomenon. We have become rather fascinated with the psychological phenomena. One of the unfortunate repercussions of this fascination is that we often gauge the value of our religious experience or our progress in the spiritual life on how notable is psychological phenomena is. This is a misleading comparison. Psychological phenomena or body response are not an important criterion or standard for measuring how good or how poor is a person's relationship to God, or how much progress a particular person might be making in their relationship with God.

          The intensity or drama of the experience has much to do with what kind of personality and background one has. It says more about that personal background than it does about their progress in faith and love or their goodness or how pleased God might be with them.

          Today we are very involved in the drug culture. We have become aware of how low blood pressure, for instance, or low blood sugar can produce certain phenomena in people. One can attend classes on how to bring oneself into certain altered states of consciousness. We need to make distinctions between grace and psychological phenomenon because we know we can produce the psychological phenomena and not necessarily have it connected with God.

          Even in our catholic tradition one notices that people such as Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross had very different ideas about the value they put on psychological phenomena. Teresa, for instance, loved her psychological phenomena and she talked a great deal about them. She liked her various gifts of tears, her states of altered consciousness. John of the Cross, on the other hand, took a very different attitude toward the phenomena of prayer. He did not value extraordinary experiences and foster them in the way Teresa did. He tells people in his writings that if one has great thoughts, great ideas, and great experiences about God, one thing is sure: It is not God. God is always beyond, always bigger, always better than whatever thoughts or feelings or experiences one might be having about him.

          Louis Lallemont, S.J., who was the Tertian Director of some great saints like St. Isaac Jogues, St. Rene Goupil, and the North American martyrs, used to tell his tertians before they went out into the parishes, missions, and schools to give retreats, that the importance placed on psychological phenomena and the value people were putting on them was exaggerated. Extraordinary phenomena in prayer were a sign of weakness and a lack of integration. That comment has always been a sobering warning to me.

          It is helpful to make these distinctions because we can learn how to produce psychological phenomena. We are not, on the other hand, able to produce created grace or uncreated grace. Grace is always received as a gift from the gracious God.

          When one is doing spiritual direction, preparing people for retreats, or helping a retreatant be reflective about his or her life with God, one has many practices that people can use. The director can have them make mental prayer, do spiritual reading, or be particularly attentive to liturgy and the sacraments. The director can remind them to practice the examen of consciousness, or have them make retreats or have a spiritual director. All these practices are a way of setting the atmosphere or a way of trying to bring the person into a relatedness with God so that they can be aware of their own sinfulness, rejoice at their own giftedness, and be alert to the way in which God is really present to their life. This leads to a more adequate response.

          If, however, one follows any of these practices consistently, it is quite possible that one will only get a hold of the conscious part of the ego. It is important that we give God not only our ego, what we are aware of, but that we give God our whole self, conscious as well as unconscious. [You shall love the Lord with your whole soul]

          If one is to be concerned with the unconscious part of oneself as well as the conscious part, then one must consider more than conscious behavior and awareness. Psychologically, healing takes place in a person when the conscious and the unconscious are realigned. Although it is true that healing, getting the person more integrated, is a very important aspect of spiritual direction, retreat work, and the spiritual life, healing is not the whole concern for the director. Healing is one step in the right direction. The next more important step is discipleship, which is the main reason for spiritual direction. Good direction brings one to quality decisions about how one will incarnate his or her graces in the world. 

          Dealing with the unconscious is an adult enterprise. It is NOT a process for young children or even teenagers. It is the task of the second half of life. In the first half of our life the focus is on ego-development, and trying to get our awareness together so that we can get through school, raise a family, be responsible in our work, and contribute to society. These are all ego tasks. On the other hand, when we arrive at mid-life, the task turns to the work of integrating the less conscious parts of ourselves. Practically, mid-life begins for many people about ten to fifteen years after a major commitment. For many people that puts them into the mid-thirties to mid-forties. At mid-life dealing with the unconscious becomes very important. A diagram may be helpful. 

          Our consciousness can be compared to the small circle in the center of the diagram. What we are unaware of is quite vast. This is represented by the larger area filled with fragments of experience: things that happened in our family when we were little, what happened to our grandmother and grandfather, our aunts and uncles and all those people and events that go into making up the human person. This is the make-up of the personal unconscious. We are aware of only a very small portion of these experiences and impressions. In addition there are other symbols, patterns, and residual forces that are common to us because we belong to the human race. We are the result of millions of years of evolution. We are a part of generations of people who have come before us. This is known as the collective unconscious. It is this whole reality that constitutes my psychic heritage as a person and that needs to be brought into relationship with God.

          Here is a second model:

          There is a pattern of development that happens to all of us as we mature and integrate our history and experience. One way of thinking about it is to see it in five stages. In the first stage we have many unconscious, unrelated fragments of personal and collective experience in us, and we do not even know about them.

          In the second stage these fragments begin to come together in some kind of a cluster or a pattern. For example, think of a time when you played with iron filings on a sheet of paper. When a magnet is put underneath the iron filings, the filings cluster together and take on the pattern of the magnet. It is something like that, at least metaphorically in the unconscious. In the unconscious we have patterns, clusters, or complexes that start to gather together the various experiences of the personal and collective unconscious. All of this is very unconscious to us. When one has a cut, one can look at it and say, "Oh yes, there it is. I can see it. I can put something on it to help heal it." However, it does not work that way with the unconscious. It is not as though a person could look inside oneself in the morning and say, "Oh, look at that. I have a piece of my unconscious coming forth." 

          What happens? How do we know that something in the unconscious is ready to come together and is ready to get integrated? It is often through the phenomenon of "projection." This is our third stage.

          These complexes, these unrelated fragments which are now in a pattern, are projected to the outside. What a person experiences is a burst of emotion out of proportion to what is going on.

          For instance, I can remember one day waking up in the morning and being very angry with my mother. Now I am ordinarily seldom angry with my mother. I think she is very nice. However, that morning I awoke raging at her. 

          Knowing a bit about projection and about how the unconscious works, I began to realize that it was not so much my mother that I was angry at, but rather my mother was an internal, psychological figure that my unconscious had made. It was a figure inside me. I had some part of the unconscious that was ready to come forth to be integrated. The "out of proportion" emotion was my clue. I was being alerted to the fact that something was happening in the unconscious.

          Let me give you another example. One time when I had moved into a new parish, I went over to the local rectory to register. When the young priest opened the door, I immediately did not like him. As I went into the office and filled out the registrations forms, I became angrier and angrier. I did not understand why I was so upset. After filling out the forms, I went back home, all the time fussing and fuming. Later in the day I was still sputtering and complaining. Now there's an example of where something inside me is ready to come out, and I have projected it onto the most convenient person or the most convenient place. In this case it happened to be the young priest who answered the door and gave me the forms.

          Once one begins to know how the unconscious works, then one does not take bursts of emotion, out of proportion to what is going on, so literally. My task at a time like this was not to call my Mother and say, "Oh, I am sorry that I am so angry with you", or that I had to go over and apologize to the young priest for being so upset with him. Neither person would know what I was talking about since the upset was happening only inside me. Rather I needed to look within myself to become aware of what was stirring and being projected.

          Those were two examples of a negative projection. Projections can also be positive. I might become infatuated with someone, or I might become overly enthusiastic about something. Projections may be positive or negative. Either way I need to take care of them. Otherwise, I am going to walk around in a kind of inflation or deflation, holding on to a lot of projections. It is not an honest way of proceeding, and it is not a fair way to make decision for oneself or for other people.

          The fourth stage of this pattern of development is that of separating myself from the projection. In other words, I may have projections, but I am not my projection. My projection is just one small aspect of who I am. In the case, for instance, of being very upset with my mom on a particular morning (of course, all this was going on only in my head. I had not seen my mother for about five months at that particular point. She lives 900 miles away from me.) I had to start thinking about how I might separate myself from the projection. I had to admit that this "inner-mother" towards whom I was so angry was not the same as the outer real mother. I had to start becoming aware of and own those feelings that are within me. I had to start owning them and realizing that they are a part of me, even though I am going to experience them as a part of something or someone outside of myself. If all goes well and I begin to make that separation, I will realize that the inner-mother is not the outer-mother. In other wards, there is often a difference between my image of someone or something and its outer reality.

          I can then move on to the fifth stage in the pattern of development. In the fifth stage the projection is integrated. I will have some understanding of how that integration has taken place. I will return to my normal self. I am no longer overly angry, overly excited, or overly infatuated; but rather I am "back to normal."

          I do not want to give the impression that there is going to be a certain little phase of life where I get all of this taken care of and then somehow I never have to worry about another projection for the rest of my life. It does not work that way. What does happen is there will be a phase of life where I will have to become very skilled in how to use and how to deal with projections. Once I have learned that skill, I will be called upon to use it for the rest of my life.

          One might ask, why bother about projections. What difference does it really make? Do I really need to be so integrated? Is not such effort an extra that people do because they are interested in self-growth? The answer is no. In everyday life people are getting sick.

          Sometimes people are fired. We have had some very serious examples of where witches have been burned and whole races have been exterminated. History books are filled with stories of how individual people or groups have risen up and done very outrageous things, all in the name of what they think is their consciousness. We understand now that this extreme behavior with its devastating results was an example of these layers of complexes coming forth and getting acted out.

          For those of us who are involved with Ignatian spirituality, which puts heavy emphasis on quality decision-making, paying attention to the unconscious becomes very important. No one wants to make decisions out of only one part of the "iceberg". These decisions effect not only me, but they are also affecting all of the people who are the recipients of the results of that decision. I might be, for instance, the principal of a school or a nurse in charge of a department. I might be a teacher and have several students under me. I do not want my decisions to be coming out of the fact that I am angry with my mother, or I would not want my decisions to be coming out of something that unfortunately happened to me in my childhood. I would want the decisions coming out of what I am very conscious of: the way that God is gracing me at the moment and out of the goodness and the richness that is within me. Quality decisions do not come out of my unconscious limitations or compulsions.

          Being aware of the unconscious becomes particularly important when I am dealing with a group. The group enterprise has a plethora of unconscious material in it. Whether I am making a decision as an individual person or I am making a decision in a group, such as in communal discernment, it is very important that these decisions are coming out of grace, discerned action for the kingdom. It demands that I and the people in the group are very careful of our conscious and our unconscious motivations, ideals and fantasies.

          Today we are aware of the high divorce rate, of the many young people suffering from addiction and depressions. We are experiencing break-ups and dysfunctionings that make no logical sense and are not proportional to the circumstances. We have to begin to understand breakups and dysfunctioning in a more informed way. There is much more to the human persons than we had once realized. 

          Here is another model that shows what happens in adult life. There may have been a time in the past when we assumed that all development stopped when a person became eighteen or twenty-one. Today we know that adult growth continues throughout one's lifetime. I am sure there are many ways of speaking about this, but here is a model that I have found to be useful in thinking about how adult life develops. 

          A common pattern of adult growth is boy meets girl, they fall in love, marry and raise a family. If one looks at that particular sequence, which is very common, we have the situation of two people becoming very infatuated with each other. He or she is everything and wonderful, and there has never been anybody else in life quite like my lovely Joe or beautiful Sally. It is a time of "no doubt." What is happening in the individual persons is that all of these positive aspects of themselves are being thrown out (projected) on to the other person. They are seeing not only how nice that other person is, but they are also seeing how nice they themselves are also. Infatuation does not last a long time. I do not know precisely how many months or years to put to it, but I would give it a year and a half or two years at best. It is a time in which people are mutually enchanted with each other.

          Soon after infatuation people begin to settle down into a pattern of relationship. It is the second phase of nesting or manipulation. This is the phase of adult life in which we get comfortable. We settle down into a new job or a new household. We begin to settle in. We begin to move things around or manipulate things so that we are comfortable and everybody else is comfortable, too. During this phase of manipulation and nesting one does not pay much attention to some of the negative things that are going on. We do not notice that our husband or our wife is annoying us, or that the kids are really getting to us, or that the job is not all that we had hoped.

          This time of manipulation and nesting in which we are trying to get settled, to find our niche, usually lasts a long time. It may take ten to fifteen years for those going through it the first time. 

          Towards the end of this period, a person wakes one morning and days, "How did I ever get into this?" When that morning comes, a person has entered into the third phase know as crisis. When this 

feeling of crisis happens, a person often assumes that the crisis occurs because of some external event or circumstance. It is caused by something that happened out there in our world: we lost our job, we got fired, one of our children becomes ill, or someone in our family died. Obviously, all of these things may have happened to an individual, but the real cause of this crisis has much more to do with what is going on in us psychologically than it has to do with what is going on outside us. 

          In the crisis period we are more concerned about just how awful we feel. I once heard Carl Whitaker say, "A person will not change unless there is a lot of pain." Perhaps that is not always true, but it is often true. In our crisis period we feel terrible: nothing seems to fit together for us, we are not sure how it will all work out, and we need to do something to get out of the pain.

          Many people solve their crisis by running away from it. In this phase of adult growth many people change jobs, change partners, change cities or change anything that will get them away from their anxiety. By making the change they move out of crisis, find a new situation, and move right back into infatuation over the new circumstance. Unfortunately, if someone has not alerted them to what they are doing, they will circle around these three points of infatuation, manipulation/nesting, and crisis. At each crisis they cut off from their anxiety and find a new situation of infatuation. The difficulty with this pattern is that once a person starts back at the beginning, he or she will loop through the cycle faster and faster. At a certain point if a person has not been reflective and has grown from the experience, he or she will be in a state of flux all the time.

          In the best of all worlds people move from the period of crisis into the area of resolution, the fourth phase. It is here that we begin to deal with our unconscious. We begin to look at projections and all the other complexes, dreams and manifestations of the unconscious. We name them for what they are. We are aware that the projections are more about what is going on inside ourselves. This phase of trying to get resolution, trying to get hold of projections, trying to understand what to do with them, takes a long time. Dealing with projections appears to be an ongoing process and a sign of greater maturity.

          If our resolution continues, we will be able to move on to integration, the fifth phase. In this fifth phase I will feel more whole. I will experience that my real desires and my daily behavior are more integrated with life. It is not as though I will never again have to deal with the matter of the unconscious, but now I have the tools to proceed. There is more in us that needs integration, but basically we are trying to move through the five phases without getting stuck along the way.

          There is a parallel between the five phases of infatuation, manipulation, crisis, resolution and integration with the mysteries of faith represented in Holy Week.

          Palm Sunday is the model of infatuation. Here were people watching Jesus as He came through on the donkey, waving the palms, saying in effect, "Here is our hero. Everything will be fine. Everything is wonderful. We are excited and infatuated with the situation." It was for them a time of no doubt with an emotional reaction obviously out of proportion to what was going on.

          The second aspect of Holy Week is the whole area of the trial and the betrayals. What happened in the trial and the betrayal? Here one had people like Annas and Caiphas, Herod, Judas and several others, trying to manipulate, trying to find themselves a comfortable niche in their particular social setting. It is not unlike our own experience of manipulating/nesting and trying to find our place or our niche in adult life. 

          The crisis or third phase, of course, is seen in Good Friday. It seemed to the people that all was lost. What were they going to do? Jesus had been killed and all seems to have been lost. That is what happens in our own crises. We do not know where to go. Everything seems confused. Where do we go next? We are not sure how it is all going to work out. 

          Those of you who have spent time working with the unconscious, whether you are doing your journaling or your dreams or working on your projections, will appreciate the idea that integrating the unconscious has much to do with the Descent into Hell, the fourth phase of psychological maturity. It is the Holy Saturday experience. Holy Saturday is a rather strange day. It is one of those days when one is nowhere. A person is getting ready for Easter and at the same time is still in a Good Friday mood. For some people they just experience it as a kind of a insipid time. It is like the afternoon after a funeral. Where do we go next? It is not crisis. There is not a lot of upset. It is a time of quiet in which we are not sure what is happening, where anything is going. It is this descent into Hell, this seeming to be nowhere and yet somewhere at the same time.

          If all goes well, we should be able to move into the last phase of psychological maturity which is the Easter experience. This is a time when we become integrated. The fruits of that integration are peace and joy. We can be loving and wise. We can be creative. This is a gracious time because we are able to benefit from our having to deal with the conscious and the unconscious. If we do not deal with them, we run the risk of ending up being an old prune or a curmudgeon. On the other hand, if we have dealt with our unconscious, then we ought to be able to have the experience of joy, gratitude and wisdom, creativity, and peace. All these qualities we hope will be present in the second half of life.

          As one works as a spiritual director in retreat work and individual direction one will see people living out the mysteries of faith, especially the life-death-resurrection mysteries as these people come to terms with their unconscious in the second part of life. Work with the unconscious can come from a prayer period or in doing the examination of unconsciousness.

          Ordinarily, when we show people how to make an hour of prayer, we have often divided it for pedagogical purposes into three aspects: preparation for prayer, the prayer itself, and the reflection after prayer.

          To prepare for prayer we ask people to read the Scripture, take a body position that helps them focus, breathe in rhythm. These are all ways of becoming more calm and focused. 

          After the preparation one moves into the prayer itself. This can take many forms. In Chapter five there will be a thorough discussion of lectio, meditatio, oratio, and contemplatio . All these are valid ways of praying and all, or any of them, may take place in a particular prayer period.

          After the prayer period, people are asked to reflect on what has happened. One needs to take out a journal and write what went on between God and me during this prayer period.

          That is the traditional way that we have of training people to make formal prayer. In another model one can use the time differently and include some of these areas of the unconscious. Call it the Examination of Unconsciousness. It moves one step beyond the Examination of Consciousness which is dealt with more thoroughly in Chapter Five.

          In the first part of the prayer, for instance, one can honor the unconscious by taking time to write down a dream, some projection, a slip of tongue, or some other aspect of the unconscious of which one has become aware. One takes time to write it, to do an active imagination, to associate oneself with the various symbols and images. One gets involved in the unconscious part of oneself. This part of one's prayer period takes about l0-15 minutes.

          The second part of the prayer period is devoted to listening to the Word. It is here that one takes up the Scripture and reads the passage for prayer. A person may or may not be able to see a direct connection between the Scripture passage that one is reading and the dream or the projection that one is working on. Sometimes there is a connection; other times, not.

          In the third part of the prayer one stands before the Mystery. How I do that depends on how I am being called: whether one is reading life through scripture, whether one is coming to some kind of practical application, whether one is getting in touch with what one really wants and desires. At times I am just stand there before the Mystery and realizing who God is and who I am. This third phase is the main part of the prayer hour.

          Toward the end of prayer period there is a fourth phase that could be called gathering the fragments. It is a time to make the rational connections that may be there, to formulate any understandings that I have about how God has entered into my life and how I might be responding.

          In the last phase of the examination of unconsciousness one allows a few moments to accept the healing and integration. It is a time for deciding how I am going to use whatever I learned. How will I incarnate my consolations? How am I going to bring that insight or grace into history? What forgiveness and healing do I need to receive or give?

          Such praying and integration of the unconscious can be very useful over a long period of time. It is not that in every single prayer period you are going to be able to know something important to incarnate. However, over periods of time the unconscious and the conscious will be coming together in healing. The decision-making will be grounded in grace rather than in ego or in pressure or compulsion.

          In conclusion let us consider the gospel story in Luke about the multiplication of the loaves and fish [Lk. 9:] In that story the apostles come to Jesus and say, " Lord, we have all these people here, and we do not know how to feed them. What do we do with all these people?" And Jesus says to them:" Take out your loaves and your fish and distribute them to the people." That is what the apostles do. I imagine them doing this very reluctantly because they are saying to themselves, "How are we going to do this? We only have this little bit." Jesus, on the other hand, is saying to them, "Do not worry about the people. I will take care of the people. You just have to worry about giving out your loaves and your fish." It is like that for us. We have to offer whatever we can. We have to take our five loaves and our two fish. We have to give them out. If it is 11:30 at night and we have not distributed them, we have to give them out because by the next day the bread will be dry and the fish will smell. On the other hand, if we have given out our loaves and fish by the middle of the afternoon, we can "play" for the rest of the day. It is a question of knowing one's limits and respecting one's grace.

          We are distributing our loaves and our fish when we take this next step in spiritual direction, the Examination of Unconsciousness. 

          We are grateful for the way that God has entered into our lives. We are anticipating the deepening friendship that is coming to us; and we are becoming more truthful, too. In putting together the consciousness and the unconsciousness we are in a better position to make our decisions with quality. It is the quality of decision-making that is the essential element in retreat work or in spiritual direction within Ignatian spirituality.