The examined day

In 1548 a Spanish soldier turned priest named Ignatius of Loyola published a small manual he'd written during years of wandering and prayer. The Spiritual Exercises were designed as a thirty-day retreat: structured imaginative prayer, discernment of what moves you toward life and what moves you away from it, and a daily practice he thought so important that he told his followers never to skip it, however busy they were. He called it the Examen.

The Examen takes ten minutes at the end of the day and has five steps. Become quiet and grateful. Ask for light to see the day honestly. Walk back through the day, hour by hour, noticing where you were most alive and where you were most closed. Face one thing you'd do differently, without drama. And look to tomorrow with intention.

That is the whole practice, and it's been done every night by Jesuits for nearly five hundred years. It's also, you may notice, the three-line log from day two with a soul added. You've been doing half of this for two months.

What Ignatius adds is discernment, and it's the gift of this key. He noticed that over a day, some moments leave you feeling more alive, more connected, more yourself, and others leave you flat, closed, and smaller. He called these consolation and desolation. He said they're information. If you track them, over weeks, they'll show you what you're for.

Vault Human holds the Examen as a practice anyone can do, whatever they believe. The vocabulary is Catholic; the method is human. You can do it with God, or with your own honesty, and it works either way.