A Morning Prayer of Mindfulness

The Jesuits teach a beautiful practice, the examen.  It is a process of reviewing one’s day before sleep — actually, an examination of conscience.  The examen offers a simple but powerful series of questions which, if entered into with a sincere and focused mind, allows us to enter into fuller awareness before we live another day.

According to St. Ignatius, the author of this helpful little tool, the examen takes about 15 minutes, and is encompassed in five steps: thanksgiving, a prayer for illumination, the examination of the day itself, a processing of what one discovers there, and hope for the morrow.

• First, we give thanks for the benefits the day has given us.
• Second, we ask grace to know where we have failed, for the light to understand our weaknesses and the insight to recognize grace where it has been offered.
• Third, we attempt an account of our soul from the moment of waking to the present hour.  In a lovely essay entitled, “The Examen Reexamined,” Deborah Smith Douglas suggests helpfully that this review ought to take in not only our acts, but much more importantly, the feelings, motivations, and shifting moods that informed and conditioned our behavior.
• Fourth, we ask pardon for our faults, and also, experience gratitude for what we can be proud of, for the surprising epiphany, the achievement we didn’t know we could reach.
• Fifth, one asks for the strength to live more wisely, lovingly, and consciously, the next day.

As a response and an invitation to the examen at night, I have composed a Morning Prayer of Mindfulness.

It is intended to help us befriend our days on the threshold, before we fully enter them, to bypass the distractions and to-do lists before they overtake us, and to lower the cup of awareness into the depths of our selves, in order that we may shape our days with the inner guidance that each of us has available to us.

It is a prayer composed of questions.  It shouldn’t take more than ten minutes.  I hope you will try it for a week and see how it changes your life.

1. What do I want to experience today?
2. What do I want to learn today?
3. What do I want to give?
4. How will I attempt to grow, just a little?
5. What will I create?
6. What will I decide?
7. What will I release?
8. How will I keep it Real?

Blessings, and namaste.

Kathleen