Putting on the Mind of Christ

How to Amend and Transform Our Automatic Behaviors

"For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” (Rom 7:15)

Have you ever felt like St. Paul and said to yourself: "I keep doing what I do not want, and not what I want to do"? Is there a part of you that you just can't seem to change those automatic responses? Do you desire to grow in holiness, yet just find yourself stuck in a habit?

This post is about how we can help ourselves, through the Lord's grace, to become unstuck so as to become who we desire to be and what we want to do. Here are a few steps to change our brain/body's automatic responses through the faculties of our soul, using holy imagination.

Prelude: Accepting the Invitation

When we have responded—in reacting without forethought, whether unintentionally through disordered desires or unhealed wounds, or even knowingly—in a way that does not reflect Christ-likeness or the heart of Our Lady, we are invited to amend and be transformed by grace through the Holy Spirit. Here is a path we can take to cooperate with grace.

We accept this invitation and commit to being open to the Holy Spirit's prompting, being intentional in our awareness, and being mindful of who and how we bring ourselves to the gifts of encountering others who are also made in the image and likeness of Christ. We can love because He first loved us (1 John 4:19).

Step One: The Prompt and Intentional Awareness

When we become aware, either right at that moment or soon thereafter, we are being prompted by the Holy Spirit through our conscience, or during our evening time of reflection while praying the Examen, we accept the invitation of the Holy Spirit to illuminate our soul— we ask God to reveal:

• What happened during the encounter?

• How did I respond (react)?

• What were my thoughts? words? behavior? emotions? feelings?

Step Two: Reflection

Here is where we engage the intellect (one of the faculties of the soul) to sift through our inner world, using the truths in our formed conscience, of what may lie underneath that which has been unexamined. Jesus Christ, who sits now with us, offers a gentle accompaniment with a touch of certainty, kindness, and mercy, we ask:

• What was my intention(s)?

• What beliefs were operating at that time?

• What was the driver(s)? unmet needs, attachments, or unhealed wounds that may have influenced my reaction?

Step Three: Discernment

Continuing the presence of Jesus, with the intercession of Mary—we ask:

• Who was God calling me to become in that moment?

• What would be the more Christ-like response for this encounter? ( Here we may need to read, study, and pray through the scriptures - consider the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius to come to know - Jesus' teachings, thoughts, feelings, and responses- to grow in love, and to come to serve as Jesus did.

• What would I have to believe, choose, and desire if I were fully aligned with grace?

  
  

Step Four: Commit

The next step is to work on what has been revealed is to engage our will (another faculty of the soul). We commit to being guided by the Holy Spirit, to be oriented toward the good, and to be formed in truth with intention for a renewed disposition of the heart.

Sometimes this same behavior is repeated throughout the day or week. It is one that we may find ourselves confessing each month. St. Ignatius offers us a tool to use for changing an unwanted habit: the Particular Examination of Conscience. Here we focus on one particular vice - such as impatience by tracking twice a day for 7 days.

Step Five: Using our Holy Imagination

Once we have discerned and committed to respond differently, we prayerfully re-enter the encounter through our imagination. Here we recreate the moments from its beginning, letting it unfold with the new response, where we respond in freedom, choosing to put on the mind and heart of Christ.

If we are tracking our negative habit using the method of the Particular Examination of Conscience, yet we find ourselves in different circumstances needing different responses due to the content or focus, the focus remains the same. How should I have responded? Then imagine it.

And then the next question to ask at the evening Examen is: what do all of these have in common? What is the driver? Discovering those disordered attachments or an unmet need reopening an unhealed wound will require other steps to be healed ( that will be addressed in a different venue - a spiritual direction session or retreat).

The Effect of Replaying: Forming New Pathways

God created us in His image and likeness with a brain/body that has been built with multiple integrative, yet t times competing systems for maintaining homeostasis. Therefore, it is very efficient and will use stored memory or past patterns rather than learning something new, unless it is acted upon by our mind’s intentions. Our brain has been created as a predictive organ to be efficient. It relies on previously formed neural patterns to generate rapid responses automatically, unless novelty is introduced. When we simply react, we are drawing from these established neural pathways.

So when we intentionally “replay” the encounter with a new, grace-filled response, our brains experience something new – a novelty. This new experience is added onto the neuro pathways, a process called neuroplasticity. To note that the brain, being in the dark essentially, is surrounded by the skull, does not distinguish between a reply and its original encounter. Both are experienced as real. This takes the replay and overlays it onto similar pathways, thus changing our memory of the original event. It now has a renewed pattern to draw from.

As we continue to change our old patterns into new ones with conscious effort, they eventually become a ‘habit’ – an automatic response that is more Christ-like.

Summary: Integration of the Faculties of Soul/Mind with the Brain/Body

Through this process, we intentionally are engaging our intellect – to understand and discern the truth, using our will to choose the good and to commit; and using the third facility of the soul, imagination, to rewire our brains as we rehearse for the future to shape the reactive patterns.

St. Paul reminds us to “put on the mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2:16).

What has begun as a conscious awareness, intentional reflection, and a reply has become, over time, having our soul/mind/heart aligning the brain/body responses so it becomes our nature, a heart disposed towards what is good, true, and beautiful – who is God, who is Love loving.

Dr. Karen Shields Wright