An outline for an hour of prayerful reflection regarding our shadow might be as follows:
- Spend three to five minutes in centering prayer in order to quiet our mind and center it upon the presence of God’s Holy Spirit or the Risen Christ within the depths of our being.
- Humbly ask God for enlightenment concerning our shadow and the courage to face and acknowledge the truth about ourselves.
- Reflect upon a Scripture passage that may suggest a possible insight into our inner being and pray over it. If some fault or evil is described, say to oneself, ”There, but by the grace of God go I.” If it is a challenge to the practice of some virtue, try to discern what qualities of character· need to be further developed in order to practice the suggested virtue.
- Become convinced that regardless of how many faults and evil inclinations we see in our character, God will not reject us.
- Deepen our conviction that we can trust God always to be on our side as a friend who loves us exactly as we are, will always love us, and can’t help but love us, his children, regardless of the situation.
- Perhaps, instead of using a Scripture passage, one may reflect quietly on some insight from another reading that seems to speak to our needs, problems, and our potential for good or evil.
- Another way would be to take the opposite letters of one’s MBTI score and see how they reveal our unconscious shadow and what challenges this unrealized shadow offers us.
- Still another way would be to reflect prayerfully in the presence of God upon one’s inferior and tertiary functions, or the opposite temperament of one’s conscious type, and see what values these repressed parts of our personality we might try harder to activate and put to good use,
- Another time, one might reflect prayerfully over those faults and evils in others which upset us and cause us to become pessimistic in regard to their future, and try to discern any similar tendencies within our own character.
- One might try in God’s presence to discern how one may make friends with one’s shadow and experience a conversion in regard to one’s faults.
Resolutions: How Might One Change
After making some resolutions about how one is going to change as a result of these reflections, one may conclude the period of prayer with fervent intercessions to God the Father, the Risen Lord Jesus, and the Holy Spirit in order to actualize the repressed potential for good that has just been brought to consciousness.
When a period of prayer is effectively on target, one may feel frequent experiences of conversion whereby we become aware of our shadow and take the necessary steps to redirect the forceful psychic energies discovered.
We should attempt to deepen our conviction that we can trust God always to be on our side as a friend who loves us exactly as we are, will always love us, and can’t help but love us, his children, regardless of the situation.
Making conscious the unconscious shadow does not rid ourselves of the faults discovered, or automatically result in the actualization of their potential for good. This is one of the errors of psychoanalysis when it presumes that mere adequate self-knowledge or enlightenment will automatically result in the necessary changes for the better. Self-knowledge is simply the first step that begins an on-going, lifelong conversion of morals.
We do not fully know the God-chosen goal of life for us as individuals or for the human race as a whole. We do believe, however, that God does know. Otherwise life would be absurd – a result of mere chance or luck.
We can also believe that God will plant in the depths of our inner being the necessary knowledge by which we can know what is expected of us in the task of leading ourselves, and the world, toward its God-given goal of wholeness.
We need to touch this inner light each day in order to discover what task God wishes us to carry out at that particular moment.
Editor’s Note: If you are new to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, or want a comprehensive explanation of how your prayer life can benefit from a knowledge your MBTI type, consider obtaining a copy of Msgr. Michael’s newly revised edition of Prayer and Temperament.