Coaching practices for Spiritual Attachments Examination

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Spiritual Attachments Examination, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

  • Now that the warm feelings have drained out of my practice, I’m forced to see how much I was in it for that glow
  • I’ve started catching a smugness in myself
  • I keep starting this nightly prayer practice and then dropping it the second life gets busy, because I’ve made it this long involved thing
  • Some parts of my day leave me feeling alive and like myself and others leave me weirdly drained and small, and I usually just push past both
  • I can’t bring myself to get rid of a single thing of theirs

Practices that may help

  1. Working with attachments in the night of the senses
    Use the night of the senses to examine what you have been clinging to for identity and security.
    The Dark Night of the Soul: John of the Cross
  2. Don’t make gods into demons
    Don’t let spiritual practice become a source of pride, judgment, or superiority over others.
    Lojong: Tibetan Mind Training
  3. Practice the Examen daily and briefly
    Do a short Examen most days rather than a long one occasionally.
    The Ignatian Examen: Five Movements of Daily Review
  4. Notice the feelings (consolation and desolation)
    Pay attention to where you felt energized and connected versus drained and pulled away.
    The Daily Examen: Reviewing the Day
  5. Use symbolic objects as tangible continuing bonds
    Keep meaningful objects that represent the person and use them consciously, not compulsively.
    Continuing Bonds in Grief, Made Practical
  6. Distinguish adaptive from complicated continuing bonds
    Notice whether your bond with the person supports life re-engagement or prevents it.
    Continuing Bonds in Grief, Made Practical
  7. Investigating the five aggregates
    Examine whether any of the five skandhas — form, sensation, perception, formations, consciousness — is the fixed "self" you take yourself to be.
    Anatta: The Buddhist Teaching of No-Self in Practice
  8. Review the day following your feelings
    Walk back through the day in sequence, tracking the emotional quality of each moment.
    The Ignatian Examen: Five Movements of Daily Review
  9. Invite the release — do not force it
    Ask the exile if it is ready to release the burden, and trust its pace.
    IFS Unburdening, Made Practical
  10. The Daily Examen: Reviewing the Day
    The Examen is a short, structured evening review from the Ignatian tradition: you replay the day with gratitude and honest attention to where you felt drawn toward or away from your values, then carry one resolve into tomorrow. It is a centuries-old contemplative practice; its benefits are best described as mechanistically plausible and widely reported rather than established by controlled trials.

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