Paper Short Abstract:

Ignatius of Loyola defines the Third Method of Prayer (Spiritual Exercises). Physical, psychological and spiritual discipline are fundamental in this form of apophatic prayer-meditation: a movement of detachment, of emptying or knosis, leading to personal liberation and (dis)identification in God.

Paper Abstract:

During my autoethnographic research in search of contemporary spiritualities I ended up doing a course called Journeys of Experiencing God. It is the adaptation of the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola to everyday life, without the need for a physical retreat. In those five years of radical participation I was able to see the importance of the Third Method of Prayer, which is important in Ignatian spirituality.

In this way, there are two apparently opposing movements: one marked by apophatic prayer, and the other, of the opposite quality, cataphatic prayer.

Therefore, in relation to the proposed theme of the metaphysics of non-identity, I will focus on the first prayer, that of negation. In it there is an attempt to empty, to search for an inner silence which is configured through the metaphor of the desert. Beyond becoming an intellectual exercise, the form of learning entails a process of physical-psychic-spiritual disciplining in which an act of detachment, of knosis, is promoted. In a change of forces, it is a matter of "letting oneself do" and not of doing, enabling access to the inner/inner knowledge of God.

The prayer by anhélito, described by Ignatius of Loyola, is a way of achieving this prayer, of approaching God through the conscious elimination of images, words, concepts and symbols, a concrete example of detachment that promotes a personal liberation channelled into "living in God's world".