The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [150]
But no matter how you imagine evil operating, the way that the “enemy” works within people is instantly identifiable and seems to have certain traits that make it recognizable. However you understand it, you’ll see that here, especially, Ignatius is a worthy match for Freud or Jung in his canny understanding of the human psyche. “Smart guy,” a psychologist once said of Ignatius after I described some of these insights.
These tips, called Rules for Discernment, are not so much techniques like those above, but insights.
Let me share the ones that I have found the most useful.
The Drop of Water
If you’re going from one bad thing to another, on a downward path, the enemy will encourage you to continue. The enemy “makes them imagine delights and pleasures of the senses, in order to hold them fast and plunge them deeper into their sins,” says Ignatius. So if you’re engaging in sinful behavior, the evil spirit will make you feel good about those things. If you’re engaged in some sleazy business scheme, the evil spirit will say, “Oh, just keep going. Don’t worry. Imagine all the money you’ll make. No one will find out. Everyone’s doing it. You deserve it. Everything will be fine.”
In the 1940 Alfred Hitchcock movie Rebecca, based on a Daphne Du Maurier novel, there is a marvelous scene in which Mrs. Danvers, the wicked servant of the house (played by Judith Anderson), is peering out a window alongside Mrs. de Winter, the new wife of the master of the house. The jealous servant despises the new wife and has succeeded in making her life in the house miserable. Lonely and forlorn, the new Mrs. de Winter gazes at the ground below her, as Mrs. Danvers encourages her to kill herself.
“You have nothing to live for, really, have you?” she purrs. “Look down there. It’s easy, isn’t it? Why don’t you? Why don’t you? Go on . . . go on . . . don’t be afraid.”
That’s the way the evil spirit works: encouraging us to continue our bad thoughts or bad actions, moving us backward. “Go on,” it says. “It’s easy, isn’t it?”
For persons on the downward path, the good spirit acts in the opposite way. Here you feel the sting of conscience “with remorse,” says Ignatius. If you’re stealing money from your company, you will feel a jolt in your conscience, saying, in essence, “Wake up! You’re doing something wrong!” That’s the good spirit at work.
Here Ignatius famously uses a homey metaphor: the drop of water. For those going from bad to worse, the evil spirit feels like a drop of water falling on a sponge: soothing, calming, encouraging. Or as Ignatius says, “delicate, gentle, delightful.” But the good spirit in these cases is like the drop of water falling on a stone: startling, hard, even loud. “Violent, noisy, and disturbing,” says Ignatius. As my friend David would say, “Pay attention!”
By the way, when we are going from bad to worse, the startling drop of water on a stone can come both interiorly and exteriorly: it can take the form of hardnosed advice from a friend, who jolts us out of spiritual complacency.
For those moving in the opposite direction—which is most of us—trying to lead a good life, striving to go from good to better, the feelings are reversed. In this case the good spirit is like the drop of water on the sponge; the bad spirit the drop of water on the stone.
Let’s say you’ve decided to volunteer at a soup kitchen. In this case, the good spirit gently encourages you on this good path. Here, says Ignatius, the good spirit will “stir up courage and strength, consolations, tears, inspirations, and tranquility. [The good spirit] makes things easier and eliminates all obstacles, so that the persons may move