Category Archives: Spiritual Writing

Exercise 27: The Examen

Background: St. Ignatius is closely tied to the Catholic Tradition.  His work still guides many spiritual retreats.

One of his practices is an exploration of those things which bring us closer to God– consolations, and those things which bring us further from God– desolations.

It should be noted that The Examen might be written or practiced by thinking and saying the words.

Spiritual Exercise:

  1.  Find your center by placing your feet flat on the floor.  
  2. Breathe and relax, as best you can.
  3. When you are ready, bring the last 24 hours to your mind.  Continue to breathe slowly, in through the nose and out through the mouth.  Begin by reliving where you were 24 hours ago.  Gradually, bring yourself through the last day of your life.  Do your best to deeply engage your senses as you relive this day; feel the events on your skin, hear them, taste them, even recall the smells.
  4. Consider your desolations:
    1. What are you least thankful for?
    2. Where can’t you see God?
    3. What seems to be moving you away from God?
  5. Release your desolations by breathing slowly and calmly.
  6. Consider your consolations.
    1. What are you most thankful for?
    2. Where can you see God?
    3. What seems to be moving you toward God?
  7. Release your consolations by breathing slowly and carefully.
  8. As you consider the last 24 hours in their fullness, are there any things you would like to consider: was God, perhaps moving in things you initially labelled ‘desolations?’  Is it possible that God was not present in things you initially labelled ‘Consolations’?
  9. Release the word-based part of the practice.  Enjoy a moment with God.

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Exercise 9: Sacred Writing with a Deliberative Focus

Background: This practice might be particularly useful for those of us who use writing as a way to process our thoughts and feelings.

Exercise

1) Gather the items you will need to write.

2) As best you can, release your worries and concerns.

3) Take a few deep, cleansing breaths.  You might even consider using, briefly, one of the other exercises to come to a place of peace.

4)  Talk to God.  Express the things that are on your heart.

5)  Listen.  Is God saying anything in response?

6)  Write an account of this experience.  Begin, as best as you can remember, with the things you said to God.  Then write the things that God might have said to you in response.  Express how sure you are?  Is it just a vague suspicion that God responded?  A deep conviction?  Somewhere between?

7)  When you are done with this account of what happened, write about the things you are thinking now.  How do you feel about the things God said to you?  How do you feel about the things you said to God?

____________________________________________________________________________________________

You can help in turning The Faith-ing Project into a fully functioning community.  You can do this in several ways:

  • Share your thoughts, feelings, and criticism below in the comments.
  • email otherjeffcampbell7@gmail.com to share something directly with the Project’s Director, or to ask to be placed on the mailing list.
  • Access exclusive content and help The Faithing Project continue to deliver this conetent to a world in need: become a Patron.
  • follow @faithingproject on twitter.

 

Exercise 8: Sacred Writing With an Unconscious Focus.

Background: The most important thing, here,  is to keep writing.

The act of writing calls on a very different part of the brain than the act of editing.  Write, write, write!  This is not the time for editing.

Exercise:

1) Gather whatever materials you will need.

2) Consider the following list.  Choose one or two prompts to return to each time you feel that you might run out of things to write:  God, you….    /  God I…./  I am…/  I was…./  I will…./  I believe….   /  I fear…./  I know…

Let these words be a sort-of refrain that you return to.

3) Set a timer for a duration; about as long as you feel like you can write.  Renew your comitment to write, and to continue to write during this time.

4)  Take a deep cleansing breath.

5)  Begin.  Do not stop until your timer beeps.

6) Read your work.  Consider what it means.

7)  Take another deep and cleansing breath.

8) Spend some time with God.  Thank God for showing up in your work today.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

You can help in turning The Faith-ing Project into a fully functioning community.  You can do this in several ways:

  • Share your thoughts, feelings, and criticism below in the comments.
  • email otherjeffcampbell7@gmail.com to share something directly with the Project’s Director, or to ask to be placed on the mailing list.
  • Access exclusive content and help The Faithing Project continue to deliver this conetent to a world in need: become a Patron.
  • follow @faithingproject on twitter.

 

You Are Welcome Here.

The goal of The Faith-ing Project is to enrich your spiritual life.   Our hope is that this  might be a gymnasium for the soul; a library for the spirit; and a toy store for the psyche.

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I’ve begun a series of reflections on contemplative themes in popular culture.  ‘Mystic at the Movies’ begins with a multi-part deep dive into Academy Award Nominee ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once.’  You can read the first installment here.  

I recently collaborated with the wonderful Auden Campbell to create a poem and video acccompanied by music.  You can find it here.   

To watch a delightful conversation I had the pleasure of participating in, click here.   

These last months have been both strange and fruitful for me.  I find myself exploring and considering the spiritual world from angles I’d never even considered.  And when I think about a rather cruel boy scout ritual called ‘Snipe Hunting’ I see that this is a unique lens to explore the journey as a whole and these latest changes in particular.  For now, Snipe Hunting is a podcast.  I suspect it will become my next book.

Snipe Hunting

You can listen to ‘Snipe Hunting’ here.  

You can access a growing catalog of new audio meditations that have been lushly produced and musically accompanied here.   

 

My latest book release is ‘Words Made Flesh.’ 

There is this disconnect.  We know that The Bible is important, but it sometimes can feel  so distant from us.  It does not need to be this way.

Four spiritual practices can help to bring these words to life.  Prayer and journaling rooted in the scriptures can begin this process.  The time honored practices of Lectio Divinia and Holy Imagining take it even deeper.  When we put these to work we find that eternal truths come to life in a whole new way, deeply embedded in the workings of our own lived realities.

Words Made Flesh uses the four Gospels as a case study.  The four practices are applied to the story of Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection.  As practices and events are explored in a chronological and systematic manner, we come to appreciate Christ’s life in a whole new way, even as we learn these new practices.

‘Words Made Flesh’ is now available.  You can preview the introduction here.    You can order it here.

If you’re interested in books more focused on spiritual practice without the exploration of deconstruction, take a look at the faith-ing project guides.  Samples of some of the Faith-ing Project guides can be found here.  If you would like to go straight to ordering the books at amazon, click here.

You can find general information about building a spiritual practice here.

It’s such an honor to be involved with projects that I would listen to even if I wasn’t a participant.  The ‘Be Still App’ is a prime example.  They are an amazing resource and feature several meditations from this page and my books.  Find out more here.

 

Our  audiofiles have been supplemented with videos.  Click here to see our audio file page. 

 

Spiritual Exercises By Category

If you do not find what you are looking for here, click this link.  Many of our resources, including audio files, strategies for bringing the practices home, contemplations built around the work of famous authors, and contemporary traditions can be found there.

Spiritual Exercises Listed Individually

Exercise 1: God’s Name   (written and audio)

Exercise 2: Breathing With God (written and audio)

Exercise 3: A split-Breath Prayer

Exercise 4: A Time for Silence, A Time for Speaking (written and audio)

Exercise 5: Lectio Divina (written and audio)

Exercise 6: 3-phrase Cycles

Exercise 7: More Lectio (written and audio)

Exercise 8: Sacred Writing with an Unconscious Focus

Exercise 9: Sacred Writing With a Deliberative Focus

Exercise 10: Centering Prayer

Exercise 11: The Word We Need the Most

Exercise 12: Constant Repetition

Exercise 13: Apophatic Meditation  (written and audio)

Exercise 14: Candles, Clouds & Waves

Exercise 15: The Riverside Meditations

Exercise 16: Apophatic Meditation with Variable Phrasing

Exercise 17: Emphasizing a different word within a phrase

Exercise 18: Who am I, God?  Who are you, God?

Exercise 19: A Second Riverside Meditation (A related audio accompanies this practice)

Exercise 20: Tonglen

Exercise 21: Listening to God Listen to You

Exercise 22: Slowly Honing in Via Lectio

Exercise 23: The 5 Remembrances

Exercise 24: A Walk with Jesus

Exercise 25: Padres

Exercise 26: Nature Adoration

Exercise 27: The Examen

Exercise 28: The Jesus Prayer

Exercise 29: A Prayer for…

Exercise 30: The Five Senses

Exercise 31: Adoration

Exercise 32: 7-11 Breathing

Exercise 33: Through a Verse, One Word at a Time

Exercise 34: The Examen with Multiple Questions

Exercise 35: Loving-Kindness and Grattitude

Exercise 36: A Welcoming Prayer  (Written and audio)

Exercise 37: Apaphatic Prayer focused on Trinity

Exercise 38: The Countdown

Exercise 39: Emptiness, And Fullness (A related audio file accompanies this practice)

Exercise 40: Mirroring

Exercise 41: Mindful Walking

Exercise 42: Another approach to Lectio Divina

Exercise 43: Be Still.

Exercise 44: An alternative Examen

Exercise 45: The Eye Through which…

Exercise 46: Apophatic Meditation with an Emphasis on Breathing

Exercise 47: Oneness Within a Network of Living Things

Exercise 48: A Second Oneness Meditation

Exercise 49: Observing the Breath

Exercise 50: Mantra Meditation Revisited

Exercise 51: A Body Scan (Written and audio)

Exercise 52: Metta (Loving-Kindness) Meditation II

Exercise 53: You are Closer Than Our Breath

Exercise 54: Labeling Thoughts

Exercise 55: Advent Meditations

Exercise 56: Advent Visualizations

Exercise 57: In God’s Womb

Exercise 58: God’s Breath, God’s Name.

Exercise 59: Breathing This breath with God.

Exercise 60: Beginning the Journey

Exercise 61: All Shall Be Well

Exercise 62: Embraced by the Silence

Exercise 63: And Now!

Exercise 64: St. John of the Cross and God’s Breath

Exercise 65: Hand washing as a Spiritual Practice

Exercise 66: Mindful Eating

Exercise 67: Tonglen for Times of Strife and Discord

Exercise 68: Three approaches to Sati (mindfulness meditation)

Exercise 69: Box Breathing

Exercise 70: Greeting and naming (ideal for contemplative walks)

Exercise 71: Finding Hope

Exercise 72: Oneness on a Winter Night

Exercise 73: Whole Body Mystical Awakening

Evercise 74: Welcoming With a Bow

Exercise 75: The Possibility of Resurrection

Exercise 76: Resting in Peace

Exercise 77: Body Scan for Pain and Soreness

Exercise 78: Finding the still point in the New Year

If you are interested in taking a look at some brief meditation prompts like the one below, click here.

” we can actually change our reality by being grateful first; not as a response but as an innate way of being.” – –Cynthia Bourgeault (1)